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

[CofDublin@aol.com]

Sorry about that. My comments are now spaced so you can see them
 
In a message dated 9/21/2011 2:13:02 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
CofDublin@aol.com writes:

In a  message dated 9/20/2011 10:07:48 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,   
mejobo@comcast.net writes:

On Sep  20, 2011, at 11:31 PM, Jay  Carlisle wrote:
Well, enough rarity also  helps... regardless of  whether or not that 
actually makes its production  labor intensive.  You also have the issue 
where you 
can have a system where  money gets  its value from the stamp of approval 
on 
it, not from any  inherent  properties.... in which case its given 
arbitrary 
value (usually   actually just a percent, based upon total amount of a 
given 
coin, of the  total  wealth of a nation valued non-monetarily).
 
 


When money got its start in Lydia in the 600s BCE,  the stamp of approval  
was just a way to certify its purity. This was  enabled by the discovery  
that, by using schist (touchstone), one  could see the purity of gold and  
precious metal alloys. This made it  easy to detect forgeries. It gave 
trade a  
boost, much like every  good innovation in the ability to spend money  to 
this 
day. That's  why it caught on & spread to so many  places.






>  Oak leaves as money makes little sense for a  culture living in an oak  
forest as it is too easy to  acquire.
 
 


And too fragile
 
 




>  Oak leaves as money for a culture in a  desert may be a  different story.




Still too fragile.







>  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.

An unrealistic weight for  a sword... even claymores are only about  2.5 kg




You're right. Medieval swords seem to average about 1lb./foot overall.  
This varied by  
region, with Irish and Arab swords being lighter in  general.



.

Still, making too much surplus isn't  good (and it will  drive up your  
prices, though having no wait  could be nice for some  more commonly  
sold  items).
 
 


Too much surplus drives prices down, not  up.



>  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.

Probably not.  Within the context  of the whole of Middle Earth, gold is 
still a valuable  commodity...  unless they get so much gold that it ruins 
it 
(like for the  Spanish  in real life, to an extent), which would need to be 
a 
LOT  relative  to how much was in Middle Earth before, the effect isn't to 
make   gold cheap in Dale, per se, its to make Dale rich- EVERYTHING will 
be   
cheap, given how wealthy everyone is (cept, of course, they dont' all  get  
the 
gold, as I recall).
 



When Mansa Musa of Mali went on hajj to Mecca,  he devaluated gold for 12 
years  
in Egypt and in what is now Saudi  Arabia. Price on goods super-inflated as 
a 
result of his generosity and  wealth.

If your campaign is getting unbalanced, 1  way to right things is to make  
taxes and fees and tithes. Then  tinker with your economics by introducing 
a  
change at Court  off-stage. Another thing that medieval kings also did was 
to 
recall the  currency and devaluate it. This was hard on the economy but it 
is a   way to raise prices realistically.



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