Re: (TFT) oil stuff. - light spells, farmers, and dwarves

[John J Hyland <johnnyboytmm@juno.com>]

-- "rsmith" <rsmith@lightspeed.ca> wrote:--------------------
>> ...for the oil lamp to compete. 
>>
>> I haven't decided how to handle this, yet. 
>
>Well consider that no matter how handy not just anyone can 
>afford a $500 Light item unless your economy is 'modern'  
>enough to support buying things >on an installment plan.  
>Sure, maybe the average guy is paying more over time for the 
>lamp oil (nice to know about the liter per day thing BTW) but 
>that doesn't matter.  If he can't save up the 500 to buy the 
>light item, he's stuck buying the alternative.

	Very true, part of the cost of being poor.

	Rick
===========================================================

I think this is really the heart of the matter.  If I am a run of the mill yeoman farmer, I only use artificial light sources for a couple of hours a day, before bed, and the hearth provids some light as well.  So I can stretch that 1 liter of lamp oil for most of a week.

Now a $500 light item may be more cost effective in the long run if I was using it 24/7, but i'm not.  And even if I wanted to, I'd have trouble coming up with $500 in coin all at once.  Much of my daily commerce is in barter, and most of my income goes to supporting myself and my family.  $500 is probably about half the coin I encounter in the average year

Now an adventurer may have fewer assets than me ( I have livestock, feed, tools, a home, furniture, perhaps a barn, etc) but has a much more coin oriented economy.  So maybe he can scrape up $500 for a light, now he may want to spend it on chainmail and a broadsword first, but eventually the light item makes sense for him.

Now where it really makes sense is for an underground keep.  Say a dwarven city.  In my dwarven city, most of the living space is near the surface, but the important areas that are not have light spell street lights.  Yes it may be industrial magic, but I don't have a problem with that, it is just too useful for the dwarves not to do.  Of course only well established, well ordered, and prosperous locations can undertake a project like this one.

The average farmer, he uses oil.

John



________________________________________________________________
The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand!
Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER!
Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today!
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"