TNE: Treasure as Social Power

[User]

Only if your DM doesn't combine bulk purchases, which he or she should.

[PhoneLobster]

Only if your DM doesn't combine bulk purchases, which he or she should.

For these purposes "limitless" is not many.

A mere two or three items should do it.

It's the equivalent of an adventurer who wants to buy a free sword buying a lamp and some rope first then selling them off again after he buys the sword.

This system also actively encourages you to sell everything of value you own at every opportunity then buy it back again in an optimal order.

[User]

It won't work. Try to construct an actual example, with a DM who combines bulk purchases, instead of vaguely gesturing and you will see why. Better yet, provide the actual example you think creates a problem and I'll show you where it falls apart.

[PhoneLobster]

Very well. The best example of all. Casual in game looting with no deliberate infinite loop attempts.

The entire point of your wealth system is supposedly to prevent people from caring about cheap items and looting fillings off corpses.

Yet it motivates me to take all the fillings off corpses even if I currently have the WL to buy infinite fillings because I can sell those fillings to regain my WL after expenditures.

If your WL system is operating in the fives and tens and twenties (and if it isn't then your numbers are BAD numbers) then that means it only takes 5 or 10 or 20 pairs of boots or gold fillings or rusty daggers to abuse it.

And if you demand that those sorts of TINY fucking numbers of items be bundled to large WL values to screw people on the purchasing front in the "my WL never goes down because I have 20 pairs of nail clippers in my back pack" scenario then you only further fuel the failure of the WL system to actually perform it's primary function as players reasonably demand that all their tedious corpse looting takings be similarly bundled into a wholesale lot for instant wealth thanks to your "replace WL with sale WL if it is >WL+2" rule.

And anyway whats with this "large numbers of items must be bundled!" rule applying to 5 or 6 items. That's seriously some characters fucking shaving kit where is the "any number of minor items" convenience this is supposed to be giving us when I can't fill my back pack with fucking crampons because you are afraid I'll resell them to offset the cost of a long sword?

And figuring exactly how many crampons you need to sell to maintain permanent free crampon WL is tricky because of the shitty math you inflict upon me with your weird base 8 and skipping numbers differently going down or up sysetm. But about 5 will damn well do it. If your WL drops you only need to sell FIVE previously free items to go back up so who the fuck are you fooling?

And it STILL encourages you to sell everything you can sell for a profit to raise your WL, then buy it back once your WL has been raised high enough to make it free. That's just plain weird accounting.

So WTF?

Why do you imagine this works?

[User]

It works fine, because in the normal case there is no incentive to stock up on cheap items. If you loot a huge amount of crap it makes more sense to make a bulk sale of it, and have a positive effect on your current WL, and thus letting you get more for "free", than to save it up for a rainy day when you might be poor. In fact it doesn't matter if you don't make a bulk sale of it, because if you save them up for your "i might be poor in the future scenario" you get poor faster, so it all evens out in the long run. There is nothing broken here.

[PhoneLobster]

It works fine, because in the normal case there is no incentive to stock up on cheap items.

I need 50+ damn crampons to climb a mountain. I need 5 or 10 daggers minimum JUST to be the guy who throws daggers at things. My camping gear alone consists of 10 or 20 cheap items.

I am already stocked up on cheap items enough by definition of being a damn fantasy character that I have more than enough available to sell to retain whatever level of wealth made those items just barely free.

I mean crap, five fucking daggers from dagger throwing guy to make his leather armor free and then he can buy back his daggers? Hell yeah that is a stupid system.

if you save them up for your "i might be poor in the future scenario" you get poor faster, so it all evens out in the long run. There is nothing broken here.

I don't think you followed. If you save them up you never ever get poor at all because as soon as you do you sell them at profit and buy them back for free.

So yeah. You DO try and bundle and sell everything right away for the biggest WL you can get. Then when you do you buy as much as you can of whatever you can get for free to ensure you never ever lose that WL ever again!

By the description of your wealth system the 5 previously free items it takes for me to restore 1 lost WL are worth nothing to me unless I DO lose that WL. But losing that WL buys me something else. So I profit.

And I haven't even started selling that something else I got for free that will raise my WP by an extra 2-4 points if I sell it (I'm already sick of this base 8 and skip a few shit)... and I only need to do that twice to go to a new WL and... oops infinite god damn loop again.

That was 10 WL-3 and 2 same as WL items exchanging hands to perform one cycle and step up a WL. that's not bloody many[/b] for a "convient" "buy all the crap you like no problem" wealth system.

[User]

I don't think you followed. If you save them up you never ever get poor at all because as soon as you do you sell them at profit and buy them back for free.

But here's the problem. Let's say you sell 8 to get your WL up to the point where they are each free. Buying back 8 at once, however, should be treated as a bulk purchase, and hence won't be free. And thus this cycle won't work. But I explained that 2 posts ago.

By the description of your wealth system the 5 previously free items it takes for me to restore 1 lost WL are worth nothing to me unless I DO lose that WL. But losing that WL buys me something else. So I profit.

Or you could make a bulk sale of them earlier. Again, it's all the same in the long run whether you bulk sale them earlier or wait until you are poor. The only time it isn't the same is when you don't have enough to sell them in bulk, in which case it isn't a problem.

Here I'll do an actual example.

Let's say your WL 8 and 4 WPs and you have 4 WL 5 items. You can't make any money off selling them individually. Now you want to make a WL 8 purchase, which will currently cost you 4 WPs, dropping you to WL 7. You have two options. First option: make the purchase and then sell each of your cheap items for 1 WP each. This results in you having WL 8 with 2 WPs. Second option: make a bulk sale of the 4 items as a WL 7 item. This nets you 2 WPs. You then make your purchase. The end result: you are WL 8 with 2 WPs. As you can see the results are the same no matter whether you sell the cheap items first or last.

This shows that the problems you have been worried about don't actually arise when you use the system.

[User]

Variant: The second system probably has it's range of "caring" set too narrowly. That's what you get when you put something together in 5 minutes. To extend the "caring" range simply multiply all mentions of WPs by 4, and take sales/purchases of WL-3 to be +/- 2 WPs and WL-4 to be +/- 1 WP. WL-5 then becomes the "don't care" limit, like the first system presented, instead of WL-3.

[PhoneLobster]

This shows that the problems you have been worried about don't actually arise when you use the system.

That's not a fucking system

It isn't even in the rules you wrote describing your system.

In fact it is a direct contradiction of the entire supposed goal of your system.

If I can't actually buy 5 damn WL -3 items because you need to make that a bulk item to prevent me from getting free stuff then your system isn't actually doing the primary wealth abstraction thing it set out to do

You stated that WL-3 items were supposed to be FREE. If I can only buy 1 or 2 before they aren't free... that's not very bloody free now is it?

And I note that your example includes some errors.

1) The bulk item thing isn't in your rules at all.

2) Both "options" including the one which IS (vaguely) in the rules you presented don't include any actual use of "free" items which is where the system breaks. Also both options don't include a second cycle and resale of the 2 gained WL 8 items which would raise you to WL 9 without having done anything but hand goods backwards and forwards across the pawn shop counter.

You basically said "but if I instead pull some numbers out of my ass, forget all this shit I was talking about making cheap purchasing free and easy with abstraction, and then give you just a portion of basically the same infinite loop example, then tada! No loop!"

It doesn't work like that.

[PhoneLobster]

Variant

And god knows how that interacts with the "and skip to 4 going down and 2 going up" part of your wildly fluctuating system.

But it probably means that I now need 20 WL-5 items instead of 5 WL-3 items to permanently maintain my WL/Kick off my infinite wealth loop.

But how exactly is this an improvement? You were supposed to be making players care LESS about counting the boots they pull off the corpses of dead soldiers.

That change takes us from collecting 5 swords off dead soldiers to collecting 20 pairs of underpants. That's counter to the original mission statement.

It also means that there is a much larger range of shit on dead soldiers that players are going to care about looting on an individual item by item basis If 20 pairs of mook underwear is worth something to the players then basically everything else on the mook is even more worth itemizing and dragging to the pawn shop.

[User]

The bulk item thing isn't in the rules because I consider it to be a fringe case, which is only really needed to stop dickish players from trying to abuse the system. Most people "get" the idea of an abstracted system and are grateful to be able to ignore relatively cheap items rather than attempting to mass stockpile them in an attempt to break it. But I could edit it into the system if you so demand.

WL-3 items are free, in the sense that the purchase or sale of a single one is ignored. But the purchase of 2 of them is on the same magnitude as a WL-2 item, and thus shouldn't be ignored. Here's an analogy: the system works like the take a penny leave a penny jar. Taking a dollar out is not appropriate, even if you do so by taking 100 pennies. In other words, you can't buy a tank for free just because you buy every nut and bolt separately, nor should any system be designed to permit it, even if it ignores small purchases.

Again, give me an actual example with numbers where the system breaks, because so far I'm not seeing it. I tried to construct an example that to me sounded like what you were saying, but I guess you need to provide your own.

[User]

And god knows how that interacts with the "and skip to 4 going down and 2 going up" part of your wildly fluctuating system.

It interacts perfectly fine, thanks for asking. Those numbers, since they deal with WPs should also be multiplied by four. But since you don't seem to understand how the original version works yet let's stick with that in our discussion since it involves smaller numbers.

[PhoneLobster]

The bulk item thing isn't in the rules because I consider it to be a fringe case, which is only really needed to stop dickish players from trying to abuse the system.

So then your "system" designed to prevent people from caring about carting around large piles of crappy cheap loot works by... requiring the players to agree not to do that.

I can write that system too! And it requires no base 8 pseudo maths at all for me to do so.

Most people "get" the idea of an abstracted system and are grateful to be able to ignore relatively cheap items rather than attempting to mass stockpile them in an attempt to break it.

Wasn't the point of the whole abstracted wealth system the problem that really far too many players DO damn well do exactly that?

Because the system rewards it? Like yours does only in a complex and confusing way?

WL-3 items are free, in the sense that the purchase or sale of a single one is ignored. But the purchase of 2 of them

So then... not free at all. WL-3 items actually cost you your "one WL-3 item before I officially start counting" point. Then you start counting. Strangely.

In other words, you can't buy a tank for free just because you buy every nut and bolt separately, nor should any system be designed to permit it, even if it ignores small purchases.

Your system rather specifically was designed to permit it. More so it was designed such that you could sell all those little parts back and then just buy the whole tank for free.

What you are trying to describe now with the "one 'free' WL-3 then I start counting" isn't an abstracted anything goes wealth system where some things don't count in order to make everyones life easier. It's a weird sort of logarithmic wealth system where everything DOES count only instead of just adding numbers together on a clear linear scale of dollars we do so following strange arcane rules that might just contain loop holes and additional weirdness in their complexity.

Again, give me an actual example with numbers where the system breaks, because so far I'm not seeing it.

Er? Look again?

Before your "quick! Multiply everything by 4 and see if it fixes it!" post I gave you an example. Buy 5 WL-3 items. Buy something else that drops you one WL. Sell the five items. Do it 2-3 times, then sell the "something elses" you gained, gain WL+1 net.

Repeat forever.

Alternately. Start counting pairs of underpants pulled off dead soldiers. Cash enough of them in at the mook recycling center and you get ????? million buckaroos. And it is ???? because at this point with the arbitrary bulk sale/purchases your "system" basically is literally.

1) Collect Underpants.
2) ?????
3) Profit.

[K]

User,

Its a stupid system that requires a fair amount of recordingkeeping and math, DM adjudication, player restraint, and at the end of the day is actually worse than a non-abstract system of wealth because it has all the problems of an simulationist wealth system but with more problems...... what the hell?

Your system breaks the instant I buy my buddy a dagger and is such fail that we don't even need to address the easy infinite loops that can occur over the normal course of play. I don't know how to explain this to you if you can't see it. Here is the best I can do:

Welcome to Fail-town. You are the mayor.

And since the point to exit any thread is the point it gets jacked by pointlessness, I bid you goodbye.

[User]

Before your "quick! Multiply everything by 4 and see if it fixes it!" post I gave you an example. Buy 5 WL-3 items. Buy something else that drops you one WL. Sell the five items. Do it 2-3 times, then sell the "something elses" you gained, gain WL+1 net.

This. Does. Not. Work. In. The. System. As. Written. But thank you for showing me to my satisfaction that the system isn't broken, by trying to find places where it is.

You know who you are? You are the guy who insists that fighters are just as powerful as wizards, but refuses to show any of the actual numbers that led them to that conclusion. You are the guy who insists that every fight should have a high degree of lethality but that the campaign should be survivable without providing any clue of how that could be possible. Please, prove me wrong, show me the numbers.

[User]

Here's some more detail as to why, since at least one of us should actually provide numbers:

Your "broken situation"

Buy 5 WL-3 items. Buy something else that drops you one WL. Sell the five items. Do it 2-3 times, then sell the "something elses" you gained, gain WL+1 net.

Lets have WL 5 and 4 WPs. We buy 5 WL 2 items, which is 1 WL 4 item (rounded down for charity). That costs 2 WPs. Result: WL 5 and 2 WPs. Purchase a WL 4 item. Result: WL 4 and 4 WPs. Sell each of the 5 WL 1 items for 1 WP each. This puts us at WL 5 with 2 WPs. (Why? Selling them 1 at a time: 1st -> WL 4, 5 WPs; 2nd -> WL 4, 6 Wps; 3rd -> WL 4, 7 Wps; 4th -> WL 5, 2 WPs; 5th -> too cheap, no change, WL 5, 2 WPs) Sell purchased item for 2 WPs. This puts us at WL 5 with 4 WPs. EXACTLY WHERE WE STARTED. NO FREE LUNCH HERE.

[PhoneLobster]

Once again that relies on you not following your own rules about WL-3 items you stupid fuck!

[User]

Which rules aren't I following? (you stupid fuck, is that required in these parts?)

[PhoneLobster]

One last time and if you don't get it then I'm putting you on ignore for the good of the thread and the forum.

This is the routine.

1) People keep looting corpses for insignificant shit to sell it for real wealth.

2) You invent a system that "solves" this with complex maths, but most importantly with the rule that insignificant shit (WL-3) is free/worthless. As that is the only part of the system that actually addresses the stated problem in any way.

3) It is pointed out that you can still collect, or "buy" free items and sell them once they aren't free because your system has discrete points at which formerly free stuff suddenly becomes valuable.

edit: actually more like a weird pseudo base 9/33 AAAAGH what made you EVER think that was a good idea?

4) Rather than fixing those discrete points you declare that those items aren't free even though your rules say they are. That you are introducing "bulk purchase/sale" rules that cover a mere 2 items or more, but which you can't or won't describe.

5) We return to one because the only thing your stupid system ever did for the problem was make WL-3 items free and you've officially declared that undone. Only now it's worse because we have NO fucking clue as to the formal rules for bulk buys, and instead of counting dollars and cents we have a STUPID fucking "base 8/32 and skip to the 4s/16s going down and the 2s/4s going up".

So yeah. Put up, shut up or get ignored.

[PoliteNewb]

Which rules aren't I following? (you stupid fuck, is that required in these parts?)

It's only required when someone is being a stupid fuck. Like you, when you can't understand that if the rules YOU WROTE say "you can buy a WL-3 item for free", it means you can get one FOR FREE. And then wait a week and get another FOR FREE. And so on. None of this "bulk purchase" crap.

Unless "every spoon you buy ever" has to be one purchase, your rules don't work.

[User]

Ok, let me illustrate what you are apparently not getting with an analogy. One inch is less than a foot. Twelve inches is not. One WL-3 item is below the value that we care about. However, a multiple of them is not. If a combat system said you could move your figure an inch for free it is not logical to then insist that you can move your figure for 1 ft for free, even though that move is 12 moves of 1 inch.

Also the system is based on a simple powers of two exponential scale. And if you can't figure out how to combine the values of items into one price given that then you need to take a refresher course of some kind, since this is algebra 1 level math. Here's a hint. Two items of WL n = one item of WL n+1.

Oops, I almost forgot.

You stupid fuck! You are so mathematically illiterate that you must have never made it to high school, and worse you can't just admit that you are mathematically illiterate and ask for help. My cat probably knows more about logarithms than you. Also you are a horrible horrible excuse for a human being and I don't even know why I am bothering to respond to anything you write. Do yourself a favor: get some exercise, move out of your mother's basement, and get laid for the first time.

There, I that covers everything insulting I could think of. It's nice not being constrained by the conventions of adult conversation once in a while.

[Roog]

You are so mathematically illiterate that you must have never made it to high school, and worse you can't just admit that you are mathematically illiterate and ask for help. My cat probably knows more about logarithms than you.

So, what advantages does your suggested system have over linear wealth?
(Besides being inacessable to people who don't want to make logarithmic calculations)

[PoliteNewb]

I think PL is probably done with you; I'm not sure why I'm not (maybe I'm a masochist).

Ok, let me illustrate what you are apparently not getting with an analogy. One inch is less than a foot. Twelve inches is not. One WL-3 item is below the value that we care about. However, a multiple of them is not. If a combat system said you could move your figure an inch for free it is not logical to then insist that you can move your figure for 1 ft for free, even though that move is 12 moves of 1 inch.

Actually, yes...given enough time, you CAN totally move your figure 1 foot for free! Because--this may come as a surprise--you can move OVER AND OVER, given enough time! So using your analogy, you can never move more than one inch, EVER?

Moving is about what you can do in a fixed amount of time. Is your "buying things" rules about what you can purchase in a fixed amount of time? Because unlike movement in combat, where time is very important, when it comes to buying things, you generally have as long as you want. We care about what you can do in the campaign, not what you can do in one round (or even one day).

I'm going to make this easy for you. You seem to be claiming that PL's example of "I buy 5 items for free" doesn't work, because any time you get 5 items, you pay the price for 5 items.
Is this the case even if you buy the 5 items from different stores, in different towns, in different weeks? Do the new shopkeepers somehow check to see if you bought another WL-3 knife last week, so they say "whoops, you have to pay the price for 2 knives"? WTF?

You stupid fuck! You are so mathematically illiterate that you must have never made it to high school, and worse you can't just admit that you are mathematically illiterate and ask for help. My cat probably knows more about logarithms than you. Also you are a horrible horrible excuse for a human being and I don't even know why I am bothering to respond to anything you write. Do yourself a favor: get some exercise, move out of your mother's basement, and get laid for the first time.

That was actually moderately amusing. Because it had nothing to do with anything.

There, I that covers everything insulting I could think of. It's nice not being constrained by the conventions of adult conversation once in a while.

Adult conversation involves trying to understand the other side's point of view. You seem unwilling (or unable) to understand the criticisms being leveled against your system, or to recognize glaring flaws in it even when they are pointed out to you. I think you should keep struggling for adult conversation.

[MGuy]

Moving back within the range of the original topic...

How should large but largely useless purchases, acquisitions be handled. A ship (be it a sailing ship or a flying one) and all of its little upgrades/pieces costs a massive amount of money/gold/gil but is by far and large a useless investment. However there are times when its just fucking cool to have one. The tax on party funds vs its usefulness however is disproportionate. How should a problem like this be approached?

[PhoneLobster]

Moving back within the range of the original topic...

The thing is as far as I could see it the original topic wasn't how you should buy what but rather what you should buy it with.

Ks proposal seemed to be that you should offer a form of currency that is in fact based on cool deeds and good reputation instead of actual cash.

I like that, that could work.

It doesn't stop people trying to get every currency award they can, but then if "coolness" is a currency award to obsessively collect then that is OK. Characters can seriously say "No villagers, keep your money, the smiles on your childrens faces are enough" because those smiles are actual currency you can spend on shit.

Or alternately you can be the dick who says "screw the kids give me the cash" and it's currency of the same value and a different flavor.

It doesn't actually do anything about problems with what you should buy and it's relative value to buying real combat power instead. So the pimped sea ship/real power choice isn't really helped and without purchasable lifestyle packages it also doesn't help the whole niggling accounting to purchase individual candles thing. But it's not a bad idea in itself because it lets you play an altruist without being screwed on rewards you can cash in for you know, whatever it is you can get with that.