Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 8242215" data-attributes="member: 72555">Money is a sign of povertyTaranya is the greatest city in creation.  Other places have kings and emperors, but the greatest of those isn't fit to polish the boots of the lowest Tarrian.Gold, as a decoration, is common; typically you use a coating of it, then toss a transmutation glamor on it that makes the coating be the last thing that wears off.  This doesn't need all that much gold, and doesn't make the thing heavy, but it makes the item appear to be gold to all intents and purposes.  "Solid gold" items would be like a "solid cheese cow"; I mean, sure, but why?  Gold-coat-transmuted iron is lighter and stronger and stays shiny even if you cut it in half.  It is just a superior substance.Actual gold isn't used by Tarrian citizens for commerce.  Citizens who need to deal with primitive civilizations and deal with their currency goes and gets enough for their needs before traveling.Taranya is a meritocracy.  To each according to their ability.  As high end members of the military, you just get stuff.  Housing, entertainment, whatever.  You don't worry about money, and in fact you don't have money, at least not money that is used to buy stuff like slaves, food, housing.  Money is a symptom of poverty, and heroes in Taranya are not poor.Being a Hero, your life is busy.  You only have so much time.  So finding things to do in the small amount of free time is your problem, not paying for them.  And the better your status, the more people work on finding great experiences for you in your off-time.There are non-citizens who live in Taranya, and they do deal in currency.  But it is like the debt books of slaves in our history; the slaves might have an economy internal to themselves, but it isn't really of interest to the owners, except when it gets in the way.  Non-citizens dealing in gold or whatever in Taranya are engaged in lesser pursuits.Taranya restricts how much they are paid and how many there are as a way to keep the parasites out, more than because they want a good deal or whatever.  But sometimes Taranya wants things and there is always more things to do than there are Taranyans to do it; so lesser importance tasks are passed off for "gold" to non-citizens.  Especially unsavory tasks, like garbage disposal, fodder at the bloodgames, etc.You don't need or want an unlimited number of non-Tarians doing those tasks.  That is unsightly.  So your problem is restricting who does the task more than finding a salary high enough to hire them.The real restriction on gold isn't "do you have gold", but it is that wanting significant amounts gold makes you look soft (what are you buying from non-Tarians?  Are you ... eating their food?  Off mission?  Ew.).  And looking soft is how you lose status.  And losing status costs you the other privileges.  Similarly, "not working" or not being the Hero you should be also costs status.---So what I'd do is introduce a fuzzy status system.  You can get some gold, but the more gold you withdraw in a short period the more likely it is to reduce your status.  You can also get magic items.  Gaining status is done by finding more awesome magic items, doing tasks for people and organizations that count, defeating awesome foes, and advancing the needs of Taranya.And if they fail a "I want gold" check, it will not be because they don't have gold to give, but because something more important -- say, the college of transmuters is using dozens of tonnes of gold in an experiment, so we are a bit low right now; come back next week.  Do the primitives you are trading with use silver?  We do have this cursed statue of a monkey god that the museum didn't want that needs disposing of, you can melt it down.</blockquote>

Verification