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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wlmartin" data-source="post: 6518462" data-attributes="member: 6679380">OKImagine a desert world setting (like Athas a bit)But with one really important twist, water doesn't exist.Mechanically, for civilized people there is a solution in something called Waterstone. Waterstone is a crystal substance that grows in deep underground caves. If heated (by a flame or such) it will produce water but due to its magical nature it can give off a lot of water for a small amount of crystal. This means that you get about 1 litre of water from about 1 shard of waterstone weighing 5 grams. It is traded as a comodity and strictly controlled on this basis. 5 grams of waterstone is worth 1 cp, so about 500g to a gold piece (or 2gp per Kilo, equating to 100 Litres of water per gold piece(unsure on the dynamics of this yet, may tweak it)The point is that its treated like gold, valuable and hard to come by (mined in strictly controlled, valuable and guarded mining locations)If i control it like this I run into a problem, how does life go on outside civilized society?If i say that waterstone caves exist, animals and monsters grab waterstone for themselves and then just bake it in the sun to eek out the water.. great, that is do-able.However, since I am trying to limit the availability (and increase the value) of waterstone, is this feasible? After all if it is as good as gold, its not likely to just exist without competition for the resource?Does that mean that with this competition animal life would die out once the tribal types take it over and thus the only animal or wildlife that exists would be at such unexplored or uncotested locations fart further from organized societies/tribes?OR... am i just making my job too difficult and should just de-value it and keep the same concept but that it is common enough that it isnt traded</blockquote>

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