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Re: (TFT) Jobs table: 100,000 simulated soldiers and farmers
At 1:06 -0400 9/21/11, Jay wrote and wrote and wrote:
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.
As I think Joey said (and I agree with most of his responses): not in
today's monetary system. Admittedly credit cards and electronic
banking are modern innovations, but promises and considerations and
indulgences have been traded for millenia. I would agree that
scarcity and difficulty of duplication (and probably imperishability)
are important for specie, but not that the intrinsic labor of
producing the specie sets its value in the economic system.
Oak leaves as money makes little sense for a culture living in an oak forest
as it is too easy to acquire.
Seashells used as medium of exchange on polynesian islands?
I run down to the nearest Cidri-mart
Slay-Mart?
Stop'n'Chop?
Target (ew)?
Jack-in-the-Back?
Kroakers?
Shears?
La Madeline Guilliotine?
:-)
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.
?? I'm thinking most of the cost of the sword or the dagger is in the
labor, not the material.
Gold is fixing to become very cheap in Dale in that scenario.
Sell short. Well, it's true, but I'll guess Dale citizens will still
know how valuable gold is in other cities and the treasure will
diffuse pretty fast out to the rest of Middle-Earth. It's a shock to
the economy but a transient, and the long-term situation should
equilibrate back pretty near what it was before. Unless the shock is
severe enough to cause a Keynes to emerge in some kingdom and start
printing paper money.
How is the flour milled inquires the player.
Uhhhh says the GM.
But milling grain down to flour is a relatively "dumb" process - the
millstone doesn't have to be precise about where, how hard, or how
many times it hits. I think the GM says "go right ahead" and months
later the player ends up with a water-powered machine for converting
great swords into iron dust.
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.
Demonstrating that either most theologians, or most book-buyers, are
not too perceptive. Given that a majority of book-buyers are also
voters and then examining the American government for a few moments,
I know which way I'm betting ...
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.
The American Civil war was pretty bad, in terms of fraction of the
population killed. So was the 100-years war in Europe. Some of the
Mongols' conquests were even worse.
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.
Totally agreed. This also implies that the GM has to be able to keep
a step ahead of the players in terms of economic consequences. One
saving tactic for the GM goes something like "...in the dead of the
night, the undead army hired by the NPC who thought of this 10 years
ago (and is now rich enough to afford an undead army) steals up to
your trip-hammer mill with torches blazing. There are 200 of them.
Roll initiative." In other words, if it's that good an idea, someone
has done it.
Instead of designing adventures Ive come to focus on designing game
environments....Once Ive got a play environment all I need are players.
If it entertains your players, it's all good. I can *easily* imagine
a play-group that meets routinely having a blast at this (and I know
I would).
For one-shots, I'm somewhat convinced that you need environment
(which makes sense), players with characters, and a plot-line (with
options, so that the players are not "herded" through a story).
A more complicated example would be Bitcoin.
Interesting!
Back to the cyber mines for me...
--
- Mark 210-379-4635
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Large Asteroids headed toward planets
inhabited by beings that don't have
technology adequate to stop them:
Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.
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