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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7517974" data-attributes="member: 6779196">English words have multiple definitions. The one you are using here is only one of them. “sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention; noteworthy“ is indeed one thing “significant” can mean. Statistical significance is another, which is why I brought it up. Another is “having a particular meaning; indicative of something.”They all have particular meaning within the the game rules, so they do indeed meet the definition of significant.Sure. They need to be mechanical to have particular meaning within the game’s rules system. Now can we please leave this pedantry aside and focus on the actual discussion of gold’s use in the game?Really? Then kindly tell me how you determine whether or not the bribe succeeds or fails without a formula. I’ll wait.Fine. What word would you like me to use to mean “signifying* something within the rules system,” oh great and wise master of semantics?*wow, would look at that shared Latin rootAre we really going down this route? You really want to Ship of Theseus the D&D ruleset? Because the community’s reaction to 4e is pretty clear evidence that there are rules that make something D&D and rules that make something “not D&D.” No, there is no individual rule that is needed to play D&D. But there are rules that are essential to the subsystems which comprise D&D as a game system, and there are rules that are not. Counting coins is in the latter category.The way you are presenting mechanics and roleplay here is fundamentally incompatible with my view of them. You set them up as two separate components of playing a character. You talk about your decision making process as being influenced portionally by each discrete element totaling 100%. Whereas I would say that roleplaying is a thing you do, and mechanics gamify the act of roleplaying. My decisions when playing D&D aren’t influenced fractionally by roleplaying and fractionally by mechanics in a zero-sum way, where each percent I’m influenced by one is a percent I’m not influenced by the other. It’s 100% roleplaying and 100% by mechanics. They are each an inseparable part of the other, because D&D is a roleplaying game.Interesting, because your comment that kicked off this argument was, “I've never once heard anyone complain about there's no reason for money because there's now way to buy something that makes you empirically better at your job. "What's the point of winning the lottery if it can't increase my chances of winning a fight against muggers?" The implication there certainly seems to be that you think lack of combat mechanics is the reason some people find gold to not be useful in D&D.Yes, I am aware that I have to make up a gold economy system myself if I want one in D&D. That is quite literally the thing I have been saying this entire time. If you want gold to matter (read: to signify something with particular meaning within the mechanical system of rules known as Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition), you have to do the work to make it matter yourself, because it doesn’t in the rules as written.</blockquote>

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