Re: (TFT) Jobs table: 100,000 simulated soldiers and farmers

[Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com>]

So TFT is supposed to have an economic system.
I see a relative pricing system but nothing on economics.
Economics has to do with labor, not relative costs.
Economics is the labor an individual or group does to produce goods and
services that help meet the hierarchy of needs of the individual or group.
Money is just a good like any other physical object, its just treated in a
very specialized way by a kind of axiomatic agreement that allows for
storing wealth, acts as a medium of exchange, and a standard of value.
Money still has to be produced and that requires labor, as a matter of fact
it is the labor that gives money its value.
Oak leaves as money makes little sense for a culture living in an oak forest
as it is too easy to acquire.
Oak leaves as money for a culture in a desert may be a different story.
Over history a myriad of goods have served as money depending on
geographical location and time-period but TFT describes a system of
metallic, state issued currency thats pretty specific.
TFT does not address how much metal there is nor the labor involved in its
production and simply gives a cost relative to other goods listed on the
weapons and gear tables.
This doesnt work.
The easiest example involves daggers and great swords.
I run down to the nearest Cidri-mart and buy a great sword, $150.
I take it to a smith and tell him to melt the thing down and make daggers
out of it, $100 per week labor.
Thats 7kg for a great sword into 0.1kg daggers, 70 of them at $10 a pop.
The obvious fix would be to bump up the weeks of smith labor but if you do
that then why does a great sword only cost $150 vs. the smiths $100 a week
pay?
Possibly what they were looking at was something like a week and a half to
produce a great sword and 10 daggers hammered out per week but that means
that Cidri-mart, or any merchant, operates without making any profit at all.
Maybe there is no store at all and one must go straight to the smith to get
something made but this assumes a smith just hanging around waiting for
something to do, or for some reason making a surplus of weapons in the hopes
that someday hell be able to sell the surplus before it becomes obsolete.
I can see instances where there might be more smiths in an area than
required for awhile but Id expect prices for smithing and its products to
drop accordingly and some smiths to leave the area entirely, elseif Id
figure the smith to be a pretty busy fella.
Of course one could simply frame economics out of the game pretty much by
focusing on a dungeon-crawl or similar one shot scenario but if the
players are going to be allowed to gain experience and advance then issues
of economics are gonna come up without a VERY delicate balance that would
require a TON of design work.
So lets say that old Bilbo has gone on his adventure, dealt with Smaug, but
the battle of the Five Armies never happened.
So these guys are sitting on a mountain of treasure and the nearest
settlement is Dale.
Gold is fixing to become very cheap in Dale in that scenario.
Making the Figures gladiators (slaves) or maybe even buck privates in the
military where players choice is very regimented could work but its pretty
restrictive and can lead to other problems over time.
The gladiator bit is the easiest to control but is pretty much just playing
basic Melee every session.
The military may duck some of the economic issues but players are gonna
expect to advance in rank over time and eventually be in command of some
portion of the army in a warfare situation which is a whole other can of
worms and high-level command is more about logistics than anything else
which is straight back to issues of economics.
Why not fear a billion man army from China invading the mainland u.s. ?
Because they cant feed and water a billion souls long enough to get here
for one.
Some folks just wing it but that tends to be the worst approach of all
IMO.
Im not saying it cant be done successfully but more often than not Ive
seen the make it up as you go approach lead to some very unsatisfying
results.
Lets say a player tries the great sword to daggers bit in a wing it
campaign.
The GM explains that it takes 7 weeks to produce 70 daggers.
The player asks for further clarification as to why this would be.
The GM says that its because each dagger takes about 4 hours to produce
(assuming 40 hour work-week for the example).
Upon further questioning about the process the player finds out that the GM
is envisioning a smith and his apprentice hammering out the blades with hand
tools.
The player thinks about this for a bit and proposes building a water powered
trip hammer.
The GM says you cant do that.
The player thinks about this and asks if he can buy bread.
Of course replies the GM.
How is the flour milled inquires the player.
Uhhhh says the GM.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,"
says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
 "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not
have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own
arguments, you don't. QED."
 "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a
puff of logic.
 "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that
black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.
 Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's
kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he
used it as the central theme of his best-selling book Well That About Wraps
It Up For God.
 Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to
communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and
bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

This doesnt mean a GM has to make things easy, quick, or cheap for the
player but to just say you cant do that in a fantasy RPG seems in poor
form to me especially if the player is asking for something that was clearly
available to medieval technology in a medieval campaign.
Instead of designing adventures Ive come to focus on designing game
environments.
By this I mean I try and setup an area in such a way that it functions
something like a simulation.
If I put a forest somewhere then I want to know a bit about its makeup; what
kind of trees are prominent, what is the average size, what are the tallest
trees and how many are there, where are they located, is there any rare
woods of note, what lives there
If I put a village somewhere then I want to know why its there, whats its
population, how is it fed, how is it governed, how is labor accomplished,
what goods are imported and exported
Using the Earth as a model greatly simplifies this process (using small
islands even more so).
Once Ive got a play environment all I need are players.
I can let players roll-up any Figure they please as their choices will help
dictate where the play will go.
This is not always the case with an adventure as players may choose
certain Talents that will never have an opportunity to be used in the
adventure, like Shipbuilder in a dungeon, etc.
Coming from the play environment perspective when a player picks Shipbuilder
(Ill use my Viking longship for the example) I have a pretty good idea of
where the tallest trees are (thus limiting the maximum size of a ship in
single piece keel construction) and how many there are from the get go.
If Ive put the biggest trees in the middle of the woods and have a tribe of
Orcs living in the area then I really dont NEED an adventure, the players
take care of that mostly on their own.
And just in case I have the Dark Lord principal that pretty much says that
if a player has Shipbuilder but is pussyfooting around and delaying a trip
to the deep woods then the Dark Lord is likely to beat them to the punch and
end up with the biggest boats in the region.
Its certainly not perfect, and surely not everyones cup of tea, but I find
the approach useful and seem to be able to produce content that many players
seem to enjoy with it.
So to have an economic system requires a bit more than x-number of silver
equals y-number of gold that just sort of appears outta the aeather.
A simple example is the stone money of Yap island.
There is no stone on Yap island so to get one of the massive coins an
expedition must be outfitted to voyage 300 to 400 miles to Palau island
where permission to quarry must be bargained for from the locals, the stone
cut and dressed,  and then returned to Yap.
(Interesting story about a shipwreck victim who was rescued by Yap islanders
and later returned bringing much improved quarrying tools as a gift of
thanks that ended up causing inflation)
This money serves for large transactions like a brides dowery, a seagoing
boat, or a heard of livestock.
A more complicated example would be Bitcoin.
The labor done here is via computer processor and in a tools to make tools
to make tools regression a report from about a decade ago estimated roughly
1.8 tons of raw material to manufacture 1 desktop computer including 528
pounds of fossil fuels, 48 pounds of chemicals, and 3,300 pounds of water.
(Interesting story about a wallet server absconding with a boatload of
Bitcoin in a kind of too much gold, not enough dungeons situation)
Bitcoin as money seems to be partially laundered and seems to be used for
some black market transactions among other things.
Athens had the mines at Laurium, Lydia the Paktolos river, and so on and so
on
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