... doesn't overlook or ignore inheritances et al. It proceeds from a set of assumptions that emphasizes other priorities.
I know it has been an extremely long time (internet time anyways) since I have replied to some of the comments previously addressed to me in various threads. This is because I have been extremely busy. New work assignments and clients, the CAP, new assignments and flight camp, various trips, vacations and stuff with the family (I got a white-water rafting trip this weekend with the wife), work for church, remodeling and repairing the home, etc. have all kept me hopping. And tired.
Hopefully now that the summer is about over things will calm a'bit though my squadron has just been put on alert for hurricane season and I've still got a back-log of training materials to wade through. But I'm hoping it'll slow down a little anyhow.
But when I can and as I can I hope to go back through some of the old responses and questions directed to me and answer them as best I can. I'm thinking maybe one response a week or something like that, and hopefully I can create a new thread about once a week or so to as I've got a list of subjects I'd like to post about. We'll see what my schedule allows. Anyway stuff like this distracts and relaxes me so when I have the time it's good to divert myself from other things. I can't say when I'll get to what but I'll get to what I can as I remember about it or re-read it.
As for my response to this thread:
I think this assumption about what can be done with possessions in the game misses much of the same point as how people look at possessions in the modern world. I know that there is a tendency to look at things in the modern world (generally speaking) as being based purely upon their monetary (or cash, to "cash in") value. That is to say that everything that exists is usually assumed to have some fixed, or even floating, monetary value (in hard currency terms as a measure of liquidity and immediate usefulness, meaning an "exchange rate"). And the tendency therefore is to want the immediate value of the thing and therefore the impulse is to "liquidate everything." A desire to instantly convert whatever you have to "cash" and thereafter to exchange the cash for something else that you want more at the moment than what you originally converted into cash. You see this all of the time on shows (valuing and exchanging heirlooms for established cash rates) about old goods, and in the abominable savings and investment rates in many developed countries. People don't really prepare much for the future, build upon their assets, invest, or save (in historical times one would say the much more well understood term hoard), instead in the modern world the impulse is to immediately liquefy and then spend. This attitude is so prevalent and ubiquitous in the modern world it is rarely even questioned and even rarer is the analysis and consideration of the fact that it has not always been so. As a matter of fact, hieratically speaking, it is only recently so.
Now I could say a lot about what I think the value, or true lack of value is, in such an approach to assets, properties, goods, savings (hoarded treasure in historical times), estates and lands, heirlooms, etc. But suffice it to say I think that the attitude that you liquefy or covert all of your possessions, treasure, heirlooms, relics, artifacts, family objects, etc. into immediate cash is not an attitude that would be common in historical times (especially not medieval), nor would it be common to many settings based upon a semi-fictional or fictional alternative fantasy world, for obvious societal and economic reasons. It is rather simply a modern attitude superimposed upon a gaming structure based upon historical antecedents that would not have really worked at all in any way similar to modern economic principles (especially regarding cash) or interests. It is like taking a Dorian culture, superimposing upon it Victorian morals and social customs, and saying, well, a fantasy based Dorian society would therefore look a lot more like London than Greece, wouldn't it?
In historical times, just to use an example of what I mean, titles, historical precedents, class structure (not as the game uses the term, most of the classes in D&D are not classes at all, but professions, and very unusual and extra-class professions at that, as the term is commonly used), treasure hoards, etc. were far more effective components of power and wealth and influence than was mere cash. Indeed it is only into rather modern times at all that cash alone was seen as real power to obtain and do things in the world. Cash alone, and even up until the industrial revolution, was seen merely as a means to obtain titles, power, real wealth (and cash alone was not real wealth), lands and estates, investments, properties - in other words things that were seen of real value and which offered an on-going income. (Cash did not really become psychologically associated with the idea of being a "hard asset in and of itself" until very recent times. Until then it was a method of obtaining things that made you wealthy or powerful or influential.)
For instance if you got cash through adventure or warfare you immediately set about getting lands, properties, and if possible sponsorship and titles. Cash alone was meaningless because it could, unless you were careful, be so easily removed from your possession by someone having far more influence, authority, or power. (Laws and systems of justice, like economic systems, were also far different than in contemporary times.) It was these things, these hard assets, which gave you an opportunity for advenancement and for a steady source of future income, not cash, though cash might contribute to your overall opportunities for advancement. People did not take cash and invest it as an abstract investment vehicle to make more cash because things like modern businesses and stock markets and industries do not exist as we think of them today. The entire economic system rested upon entirely different premises and as a result it worked in entirely different ways than is common in modern times.
(As a matter of fact one of the very ideas underlying D&D and many fantasy based games is that the more powerful party can relieve others of their money by strength of arms. As often also happened in the real world. It was however much more difficult to relieve a man of his fortified and well armed and well-soldiered lands and estates. Or a baron of his region, or a king of his nation. Meaning cash and money were assets easy to lose, more important treasures could and would be secured in far better ways. To own something didn't mean others couldn't take it away from you, it meant that to keep it you had to be strong enough or clever enough to keep it. And you couldn't do that with cash. Cash had no built in method of self-defense from the ambition of others, as an estate or castle or keep might. In games for instance it is common for PCs to take or even steal from others. But if such a world were real then believe me others would be at least attempting to take back or to take from the PCs as often as opportunity presented itself. Kings and nobles would seize, thieves steal, more powerful warlords loot. You could not assure your own safety or property through the power of cash. Cash would simply be a lure for attack and ambush and forcible seizure. Unless your treasure was well-hidden, or in some better and more secure form than cash or money then you'd be spending as much time defending what you possessed, as hoping to add the possession of others to what you already owned.)
If an individual did obtain cash it was immediately set to work at the getting of real and physical things that would thereby grant power and influence to the owner. Things were not liquidated in order to obtain cash, cash was expended in order to get productive and important things, and it was in that way that one became powerful, influential, and ultimately wealthy and successful. In many ways that economic system was the exact polar opposite, or at least the very obverse image of our own. Therefore the intent of those types of economies were not to sell things to get cash, but to use cash to get things. I don't know if I can explain this any more explicitly but those types of comic systems were very different from our own, operated by entirely different principles, and has entirely different aims. Cash was not King, but rather Kings used lands and estates and properties and the law and influence to make cash. It didn't operate the other way around. Few people bought kingdoms know matter how wealthy they were or could become, and few could become wealthy by cash alone because there were precious few ways to make it or spend it compared to modern methods. And because there were few ways to make and spend it it tended to be hoarded or accumulated to use at really big projects like public building, and warfare. But cash was not used to make more cash, and things were not sold to get cash, rather cash was expended to obtain or maintain power or to get things or positions or titles or influence. Wealth did not rest upon cash, cash resulted from wealth, which was a far more long term and dangerous project and prospect than is the case today. Money in societies that used it has always been useful, of course, but it has up until very recent times not been the chief determination of power. And that is what is being entirely missed with the idea of superimposing modern economic systems based upon modern societal and cultural paradigms and mores and economic concerns, such as the industrial or high tech based economy, upon a basically medieval fantasy model. (Now of course some fantasy models do to some extent mimic the modern world more closely than others, but when you have a society in which individuals are running around toting swords and spears and bows instead of mass produced guns and plastic credit cards then it only makes sense that the economic system will operate upon entirely different principles and models.)
In an historical and basically fantasy-historical model it is far more likely that gold will be given as presents (such as the Vikings did with rings and bands) to faithful underlings, that treasure will be spread around to impress allies and rivals alike and to maintain a power base, and that important heirlooms will be closely guarded and protected to maintain lines of legitimacy and historical claim than it would that such things would be liquidated and converted into cash to buy a new suit of armor. What men did intend was buy lands and estates and then attract local smiths and their families seeking the protection of the landowner, and the smith then lived on the property to make armor and weapons as his keep or payment to the landowner (sometimes earning money which was often then reseized through the tax base). And thereby having that system established the landowner would thereafter attract followers and soldiers and the system then would continue to grow and feed itself, unless of course the owner lost out to a more powerful competitor. But rare was the occasion when an enemy could be bought off with cash for any length of time. Oh, they could be bought off alright, for maybe a year or so till they wanted more, but what could be done with real wealth was attract followers to protect what you owned. Which wasn't a big pile of cash. Rather it was far more important things through which you could generate cash, if necessary. Most of the time cash wasn't necessary. Men and servants and animals and crops and soldiers were. And you kept them through power, and influence, and property, not cash. That idea came about much, much later.
With that being said as prelude treasure (and I use that term to cover all things like properties, lands, estates, treasure and treasure hoards, important heirlooms - that more often than not implied some historical connection to power or nobility or influence - legacies, and all such related things) would not be converted to cash in order to achieve some more immediate and consumer-based end. (Indeed the very idea of consuming, in the modern sense, was not as we think of it today since so few resources were converted into consumer goods because the number and variety of consumer goods was necessarily limited in comparison to our world. You might have a large variety of a few basic items but not a real variety of goods and items compared to us.) Instead treasure would be put to use to achieve other and more concrete ends and purposes.
Such as, but not limited to:
Storage and Hoarding - This would have numerous advantages. Give it away to assure loyalty as was the case with Vikings, who along with most ancient and medieval societies did not often give presents of pure money but gave presents of things, created and already worked and fashioned things, because of the simple reason that good craftsmen and artisans were in relatively short supply so one assured one's prestige in gift giving not by giving money but by giving impressively worked and crafted goods and items. One also used treasure to buy stores in case of emergency or preparation for war, famine, disease, etc. But once again you didn't exchange things for money but rather you used money to buy important resources, which were always in demand (it was very rare for supply to exceed demand in non-theological societies, because it took a long time make things - this is a consideration that should not be overlooked - because in the modern world we often have supplies that exceed demand - non-technological societies have the opposite problem - so they look at wealth not as money but as commodities).
Attraction and Influence - Treasure and land and estates and titles and important things attracted followers and those eager to sell their good sand skills for protection, and a chance to work and live in relatively safety. This is something basic and fundamental to ancient (the importance of the Pax Romana) and medieval societies that we moderns are mostly oblivious of. Safety from war, death, starvation, invasion, rape, terror, and disease were all far more valuable than mere money, which could assure security form none of these malignant influences. Often treasure and nobility and estates could not either, but they were considered far more secure than money as defensive systems. In addition treasure equated to influence and power. Money itself did not.
Income - The very term income means to come-in. (People nowadays think of it as their earnings or wages, it was not - it was something you got off your lands or estates or investments.) It did not mean money as we think of it today. It meant food and crops, resources, labor, trade-able things and objects and items, as well as money. But in time of real famine and disease money was useless. It was often also useless in time of war, unless it had previously been used to purchase troops, because the enemy would often either not take your money (knowing he would get it by conquering you anyway) or simply agree to the ransom or payment then conquer and kill you anyway. But things, important things like estates, and lands, etc. could be used to generate income. So the system worked in reverse to our modern way of looking at money, which is basically abstract.
Fame - Fame was often nearly as important as power and influence. Sometimes it was a source of power and influence. It assured nothing in itself, which again is often the opposite of our society, but fame could be used to exchange to gain some influence with those who did have real power. Fame could derive from achievement (extraordinary genius, like that of Archimedes, though it did not save Archimedes), or through historical ties or ties to those in power. You couldn't buy such ties with money alone and attempting to do so was looked upon in most cases as foolish and often beneath contempt, but historical ties could be linked to money or wealth to try and gain more power and influence over those with greater power. Hence the vast importance of historical legacies.
So, that is my response to this in a nutshell. Medieval and ancient societies do not have the same types or kinds of economic systems or interests or concerns that we do and therefore they did not look at money in the same way that we do, and they had much more respect for and placed far more importance on things like legacies, heirlooms, hard assets and treasures of all kinds than we do, who tend to think of such things as little more than their corresponding monetary value. And therefore fantasy gaming worlds, derived basically far more often than not from medieval and ancient backgrounds and models than from modern ones would also tend to have systems that are far more like historical models than modern ones. Modern ones concerning "money" as we think of it wouldn't even make sense in the context of most non-tehcnolical and non-modern societies.
Now of course the details would vary depending upon which exact era you are discussing and what geopgrhaical or cultural point you want to investigate, but the basics remain the same. Most people would have been far better served to inherit an estate and a legacy than a wad of cash, which could in such societies far more easily stolen and would be far harder to protect and really prosper from by the way.
Well, I'm sure I made plenty of typos but I got other things to do. I edited as best I could.
