Wish Economy

[K]

Actually, I ran the numbers for... K I think it was... whomever it was that ignored me... and they aren't really that spectacular (and here we are talking about actual Iron Balls, a 'real' commodity in D&D, not 'bricks'.

When you decided that spheres don't roll and were going to write pages and pages of rants, I realized that you were not a rational person who could usefully participate in a discussion.

I also realized quickly that all your "running of the numbers" involved the most inefficient and expensive methods humanly possible and refused to consider any other possibility.

PS. You really can sell bricks for a handy profit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/us/20 ... cks&st=cse

[MGuy]

Seriously it doesn't matter how much gold your character has because if something exists they can acquire it. Even if its just labor. There is nothing a character can purchase with gold that they can't acquire through other means. I seriously don't care about the Wish Economy because about all it does is lube up the process of characters acquiring X. If you want it to be more difficult for character's to acquire X then I'll assure you that all you'll be doing is dicking around with them. At the end of the day actual gold or hell how many souls you have doesn't really matter because all of it is just tossing around the method of acquisition.

[Fuchs]

That was one reason I dropped exact gold amounts from my game a decade ago. The PCs have some general level of wealth and lifestyle, and magic items are dealt out independently from that, in a variety of methods, the only criteria being some eyeballed checkl to keep the party's PCs balanced with each other.

All the "fluff" stuff - palaces, servants, minor trinkets, status etc - are not involved with getting magic stuff, and do not contribute to combat power.

[Spike]

When you decided that spheres don't roll and were going to write pages and pages of rants, I realized that you were not a rational person who could usefully participate in a discussion.

I also realized quickly that all your "running of the numbers" involved the most inefficient and expensive methods humanly possible and refused to consider any other possibility.

PS. You really can sell bricks for a handy profit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/us/20 ... cks&st=cse

I was pretty frustrated by that conversation because you appeared to, as you do here, take the least charitable reading of anything I said. I'm pretty sure that I never claimed iron balls didn't roll, in fact that was my problem with your dropping them into a warehouse via a gate: They'd roll through that fucker like cannon shot, ruining the warehouse.

Also: 20 cents a brick, not counting any costs. My point to you was, or should have been if we'd been communicating rather than arguing past each other is that the amount of effort the party has to expend to make this sort of 'profit', in a sensibly run game, should be faster, and actually easier, doing the sorts of shit that adventurers.... hell, just high powered mo-fos... could be doing in the same time span.

Greyhawking should be as unattractive to make money for adventurers as stealing St Louis bricks is to me as a person... not worth the fucking effort even if there is money to be had.




Total side note: something that I have been accused of here (this thread and the other one) is not allowing players to be creative. Burn the castle down so the fire department will wash away the mortar for you? I'd let that shit fly as far as making it easier to dismantle, certainly! You're still making twenty cents a brick, but outsourcing some of the labor.

[Prak]

And then you are counting on DM's at the table to be intimately familiar with WBL, and sit down and run the math on what they add. Because seriously, the second some DM thinks it would be cool to describe a diamond-studded chandelier for coolness factor, it will get fucking looted the second no one's looking and turned into better stabbing sticks.

TOO GOD DAMNED TRUE.
DM: "it's a giant mosaic of precious and semi precious stones displaying the history of (campaign important family)"
Vastly Experienced Player: "We bring in an appraiser"
Appraider NPC: "It's worth roughly (millions and millions of gold)"
VEP: "I use my ox talisman to punch all the stones out from the back."
Veteran Player: "I use prestidigitation and copious amounts of free time to paint the mosaic back on the wall"
DM (to himself): "Ok, I can deal with this... I can deal with this..."
Merchants in town: "Sorry, the town just doesn't have enough money to pay you for your piles of gems"
VEP: "Is there anyone who deals in planar markets?"
Planar Merchant Imp: "Um, that's great, I still don't have enough gold for you guys. I can give you souls?"
VEP: "What about credit that you then spend for us in planar markets for a fee?"
Imp: "Sure." (DM Inner Voice: "Damn you, I can't think of a reason that wouldn't work.")
VEP: "Ok, here's the first list of stuff we want, there's so much money I currently don't know what else to buy"
DM: *Sobs*

Another example. Assume our world, much as it is, except you come into possession of a Mirror of Mental Prowess. How much money would someone have to offer you for you to sell it to them? We can assume for the moment that your hypothetical buyer won't just have you killed and take it.

Honestly, that item's not much interest to me, I'd sell it for like, 50,000g and start improving my life.

wait, actually, first I'd test using photos reflected in it to read people's minds, and if that worked, I'd make a lucrative career of betting on politicians' coming decisions after getting a leg up by using it to win that "prove your psionic power" contest.

Without trying to look it up, because, seriously! I'd rate a brick at somewhere around 1 CP, and give it a ballpark weight of 1 lb. A peasant laborer carrying bricks to market can move, say, 50 lbs a trip (and unless your castle is IN TOWN, you are going to take more than one day of traveling, not several trips a day). Without any mark-down at all for used bricks if the trip takes more than a few days then no amount of labor will actually make you any money selling that castle. (The numbers for carts and horses is a bit sketchier to work out, but at least for iron balls it didn't work out for any real increase in profit, just time spent...handwaved, so who cares?)

Wait, it's obsidian, right? Fuck bricks, I start carving it into chunks of varying values and get my wizard friend to use shrink and permanency on it, and we go into business selling Animate Dead components to necromancers at warehouse prices.

[Swordslinger]

Assuming he even cares, the chances of you summoning an efreeti that the Sultan even hears about is so remote that you're well within rights to figure it will never happen. The Gygaxian dickery crops up when this astronomically long shot occurrence becomes an inevitable event. It's not like a gamble or risk is ever proposed ahead of time by the MC. "Look, every efreeti you summon I'm going to roll a d100. If I roll an 1, I'm going to fuck with you somehow related to all this efreeti binding. Deal?" No, it's usually just straight to monkey-wrenches and sodomy.

It's not just efreeti either, as you can apply this conflict to metal deposits on the plane of Earth, gem harvesting in Celestia (IIRC?), or any other resource gathering operation conducted on the planes. The characters can use their abilities to scout for gold deposits and avoid conflict for as long as they need to to find an unguarded vein. They get in, get the gold they're looking for, and get out. Probably to get back to the "real" adventuring you want them to do. Punishing the players by making them sit there and roll dice and listen to your umpteenth description of Dao soldiers until they give up and abandon the endeavor, or the game, is another Gygaxian dick move.

It's funny because these "dick moves" are as much a part of fairy tales as golden geese and spinning straw into gold. Really I can't fault a DM for wanting to have Efreeti twist around wishes like they totally do in myths.

It's funny how people here will apply a double standard when it comes to things like that. We're supposed to assume that Efreeti are rational reasonable people who make sound deals, totally against what myths would have us believe, so these infinite wish schemes can work. And you'll argue to the top of your lungs that spinning straw into gold has to exist for some arbitrary reason, but the GM starts to incorporate the idea that these faustian pacts end up fucking over the person involved, all of a sudden you're being a Gygaxian dick.

Finding out something seemingly foolproof is too good to be true is a trope of myths, like it or not.

Similarly if you want to discourage players from Greyhawking, just make them roleplay it out. Want to go sell furniture, okay you're now roleplaying a merchant. Your day consists of going from town to town trying to find buyers for your goods, fighting off bandits, and dealing with tax collectors wanting a share of your trades. There's a reason adventurers decided to become adventurers and not merchants. Being a merchant is boring.

[Chamomile]

D&D is a game. Legendary treasure is fun. Gygaxian genies are not fun.

[Leress]

It's funny because these "dick moves" are as much a part of fairy tales as golden geese and spinning straw into gold. Really I can't fault a DM for wanting to have Efreeti twist around wishes like they totally do in myths.

Which still can be circumvented with spells like charm monster and a diplomacy check to make them helpful.

But that isn't the only way to get masses amounts of wealth.

It's funny how people here will apply a double standard when it comes to things like that. We're supposed to assume that Efreeti are rational reasonable people who make sound deals, totally against what myths would have us believe, so these infinite wish schemes can work. And you'll argue to the top of your lungs that spinning straw into gold has to exist for some arbitrary reason, but the GM starts to incorporate the idea that these faustian pacts end up fucking over the person involved, all of a sudden you're being a Gygaxian dick.

Finding out something seemingly foolproof is too good to be true is a trope of myths, like it or not.

I'm fine with that happening, but the GM better not get mad when players get around that as well. By either doing another method or writing detailed contracts with the aid of spells.

Similarly if you want to discourage players from Greyhawking, just make them roleplay it out. Want to go sell furniture, okay you're now roleplaying a merchant. Your day consists of going from town to town trying to find buyers for your goods, fighting off bandits, and dealing with tax collectors wanting a share of your trades. There's a reason adventurers decided to become adventurers and not merchants. Being a merchant is boring.

So would one do this if they were just trying to sell a single magic sword, how about two? Now since we are most likely are going to be going to different towns anyway and fighting people you really haven't discourage anything. You just turn the game into Recttear but without the debt to pay back. Also travel will be easy since there are teleport spells and the like.

*tangent*
Also since now I'm fighting bandits I am making the road for trade safer and probably gaining a good reputation for it (also I'm taking the bandit gear and selling that too) so I could set up my own business and still adventure.

[Spike]

Wait, it's obsidian, right? Fuck bricks, I start carving it into chunks of varying values and get my wizard friend to use shrink and permanency on it, and we go into business selling Animate Dead components to necromancers at warehouse prices.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think we are talking about two different castles. One of bricks, being sold for coppers, and one of Obsidian. Either way, the Castle is worth more intact... if you can actually sell it.

The only reason to dismantle a castle to sell off the construction materials is, like the St Louis Brick story, you can't actually sell the castle for some reason (cost, lack of clear ownership, location, location, location...whatever) but you CAN sell the shit its made of... its only profitable because it is, essentially, stolen... and it gets less and less profitable the harder you have to work to get the materials. Stealing brick (again!) works because a: Fire don't burn brick gud. B: apparently St Louis house construction is such that your average firehose will wash away all the mortar but not knock down the walls and C: St Louis brick is in higher demand than ordinary bricks, thus there is a market for These Bricks.

Remove any one of those three factors and suddenly people will be stealing and selling a lot less bricks.


The point of argument here appears to be that some people (me) seem to think its not only fair, but necessary, to make players not only come up with creative A, B, and C conditions to make brick stealing worth it, but also to put A, B and C into action, rather than just hand waving them away in the name of 'Fun'.
Fun is stabbing orcs in the face and taking their shit, not shifting tonnes of marginal commodities in the least labor efficent method possible.

Other people seem to think that not only is demanding a coherent A, B, and C, without critical analysis is proper, but actually making people DO A, B, and C, rather than just having the ability to do them... and putting in ANY form of obstacles is the height of un-fun Dickery, and is therefore wrongbad.
But since players getting millions of gold from reselling used castle building materials is broken, and stopping them from reselling used castle materials is Dickery, a new economic model is necessary.

[Kaelik]

The point of an Obsidian castle is that it is worth an absurd amount of money, even if it might technically be worth more intact.

Necromancers like Obsidian. It is awesome, as such, a Castle of Obsidian, is worth billions of GP, when stripped down and sold, and there is an infinite market for it, because more zombies is always better than less zombies.

So if you make a Castle of Obsidian, the possible results are:

1) Your PCs have billions of GP and break the game by buying absurdly out of WBL items.

2) Your PCs have billions of GP, and because of the Gold economy vs Wish Economy, they can't use it to break the game, but they can do other stuff with it, or if they are Necromancers, they can use the Obsidian, and sell some for more stuff.

3) You Gygaxian cock block your PCs for no reason.

4) You can't have a Castle made of Obsidian.

That's the entire list. We people choose 2. No one wants to choose 1. In practice, you are advocating 3, and standard 3.5 requires 4.

[fectin]

Assuming he even cares, the It's funny because these "dick moves" are as much a part of fairy tales as golden geese and spinning straw into gold. Really I can't fault a DM for wanting to have Efreeti twist around wishes like they totally do in myths.

It's funny how people here will apply a double standard when it comes to things like that. We're supposed to assume that Efreeti are rational reasonable people who make sound deals, totally against what myths would have us believe

Source, please? I can't find an example. Here, I'll get you started:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Book_ ... nd_a_Night

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Butte ... at_Stamped

[fectin]

The point of an Obsidian Black Onyx castle is that...

...though it's still true either way.

[talozin]

I actually don't give a shit whether you can realistically (in the context of a fantasy game) strip mine an obsidian castle for vast, mind blowing wealth. The answer to that question, while interesting in an abstract way, is largely irrelevant to the larger issue of whether having gold be directly convertible to character power is a good idea. The more important question is, "Do I think I might ever want characters to obtain vast, mind blowing wealth, through whatever means, without having it necessarily correspond to game-breaking character power?"

[fectin]

For example, look at Mage: obscene wealth is somethnig you can just plain buy at chargen. It's a good tool, but it's not an "I win" button. You can seriously just have enough money to buy a seaside castle in southern California, and it's a character trait.

Or better yet, look at Batman. He has access to anythnig mundane that he wants, from superballs to experimental helicopters, basically without any limitation. He never gets to buy a Green Lantern ring.

[MGuy]

And there's the heart of the problem right there. Wealth should not equal power.

[Spike]

The point of an Obsidian castle is that it is worth an absurd amount of money, even if it might technically be worth more intact.

Necromancers like Obsidian. It is awesome, as such, a Castle of Obsidian, is worth billions of GP, when stripped down and sold, and there is an infinite market for it, because more zombies is always better than less zombies.

So if you make a Castle of Obsidian, the possible results are:

1) Your PCs have billions of GP and break the game by buying absurdly out of WBL items.

2) Your PCs have billions of GP, and because of the Gold economy vs Wish Economy, they can't use it to break the game, but they can do other stuff with it, or if they are Necromancers, they can use the Obsidian, and sell some for more stuff.

3) You Gygaxian cock block your PCs for no reason.

4) You can't have a Castle made of Obsidian.

That's the entire list. We people choose 2. No one wants to choose 1. In practice, you are advocating 3, and standard 3.5 requires 4.

First, I advocate 5) you decouple wealth (of ANY sort) from power all together... at least above a certain threshold.

Second, I still disagree that making the players overcome obstacles is at all cockblocking of any sort. Handwaving away obstacles because they are unfun, creating a different unfun situation, is not particularly gygaxian, dickery, or cockblockish.

Seriously: Allowing players to handwave away any amount of time or labor involved with dismantling and selling a castle (of any sort or value) in return for gold for power is pointless, because then you can just have the next player down the pipe take a profession skill and 'handwave' away an arbitrarily long number of years of performing profession X until he's made enough money to buy the world.

Seriously: You can makea 'wealth generating character' with 4 ranks in profession, an 18 wisdom, and nothing more and make (on a take ten, since we're hand waving time away, lets not bother with rolling) 9 gold a week, or 468 gold a year. Make him an elf and let him churn away for a thousand years and just buy a couple +10 items before you start adventuring. Why the fuck not? I mean... making him PLAY OUT those thousand years is boring, right?

We won't even talk about how stupid you can get with this if you optimize for 'gold per week' and intend to 'retire' the character, leaving all the accumulated gold to your 'real' character after X number of generations.


Yes, its balls stupid.

I think letting players get away with hand waving years of 'time' and the difficulties of acquiring ten thousand peasants, not to mention the unloading of bricks, or obsidian sheets, or plates of pure awesome (or whatever other idiotic shit you make your castles out of), to produce the exact same result is no.less.stupid.

[Kaelik]

First, I advocate 5) you decouple wealth (of ANY sort) from power all together... at least above a certain threshold.

You are fucking retarded. 5 is just 2, That's exactly what 2 is, it decouples gold wealth from power. That's the only goddam purpose of the Wish economy. The thing you are railing against is the thing you are supporting.

Stop being so stupid.

Second, I still disagree that making the players overcome obstacles is at all cockblocking of any sort. Handwaving away obstacles because they are unfun, creating a different unfun situation, is not particularly gygaxian, dickery, or cockblockish.

The point of a Black Onyx Castle is precisely that the absurd wealth you gain from it is worth the very small amount of work, You break it into 50lb chunks and have your outsiders teleport it to different markets, and sell it for huge chunks of cash, and it takes a few days at worst, and you get a few million gp, and if you spend a few more days, you get a few more million gp. Even if the DM tries to make you play out the medium, you can actually just do it, and it takes 30 minutes, and then you have a few million gp.

[fectin]

First, I advocate 5) you decouple wealth (of ANY sort) from power all together... at least above a certain threshold.

That's impossible and unrealistic. If nothing else, people eventually start trading/hoarding favors. However, assuming you found a way around this, that still leaves you with the wish economy as the best wy of implementing your utopia.

Seriously: Allowing players to handwave away any amount of time or labor involved with dismantling and selling a castle (of any sort or value) in return for gold for power finding dinner is pointless, because then you can just have the next player down the pipe take a profession skill and 'handwave' away an arbitrarily long number of years of performing profession X until he's made enough money to buy the world trail rations to last him the rest of his life.

Seriously: You can makea 'wealth food generating character' with 4 ranks in profession, an 18 wisdom, and nothing more and make (on a take ten, since we're hand waving time away, lets not bother with rolling) 9 gold 18 trail rations a week, or 468 gold 936 trail rations a year. Make him an elf and let him churn away for a thousand years and just buy a couple +10 items before you start adventuring never buy food again. Why the fuck not? I mean... making him PLAY OUT those thousand years is boring, right?

We won't even talk about how stupid you can get with this if you optimize for 'gold food per week' and intend to 'retire' the character, leaving all the accumulated gold food to your 'real' character after X number of generations.

Found you a nice equivalent there.

Yes, its balls stupid.

Agreed.

[Prak]

To be realistic, wealth will never become decoupled from power. The relation may become exceedingly lengthy, but if I can convice a dragon to let me have a few +4 swords from his hoard in exchange for 20 virgin elf maidens and a cask of barbecue sauce, then I take some money, go talk to the orcs say "Hey guys, hold on, I'm not here to genocide you. Got any virgin elf maidens? No? Well, not surprising, really, but how about I give you guys 300 gold to go raid [nearish elven population center] and capture 20 of them? What? Why? Oh, it's for a ritual, just remember, they have to be virgins! That means don't put your dicks in them. No, not anywhere in them? What? Well... ok, no penetration... and don't tell me that shit!" then I take the 20 terrified elf girls, stop by Town and buy a cask of barbecue sauce, give them to the dragon, and get a few +4 swords.

You can always find someone who has more use for something they are too lazy to acquire than something they already have.

[fectin]

errands

That's not trading gold for the swords though, that's running errands for them. That works the same whether you pay off the orcs, threaten them, or just have them due to leadership.
The same reasoning says you can turn turnips into anything, because you can find hungry orcs.

[Prak]

errands

That's not trading gold for the swords though, that's running errands for them. That works the same whether you pay off the orcs, threaten them, or just have them due to leadership.
The same reasoning says you can turn turnips into anything, because you can find hungry orcs.

That's my point, you can always turn wealth into power, sure the transaction might take the form of an adventure, but you can.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Adventuring is a perfectly acceptable way to gain power in D&D.

[DSMatticus]

few +4 swords from his hoard in exchange for 20 virgin elf maidens

Unfair example. Virgin elf maidens are clearly in the gold economy; +4 swords are not.

Or more seriously, that is you ripping off a very dumb dragon. The dragon would not make that offer in a wish economy, because +4 swords have values measured in Something Awesome, not gold. Elf maidens, on the other hand, not so much. He would make that trade for +2 swords, because +2 swords are in the gold economy, but dealing with dragons and orcs is probably a worthwhile challenge for anyone who cares about +2 swords.

5) you decouple wealth (of ANY sort) from power all together... at least above a certain threshold.

This means you believe that high-level people have no economy. There is literally nothing you can provide a level 20 wizard to get a +10 sword on request. Absolutely nothing in the entire universe at all whatsoever. Even if that something is "the souls of a thousand virgins."

This is incredibly silly and dumb. Once you realize high-level people do trade powerful magic items back and forth rarely, you realize you need a way of measuring the relative value of such items, and voila, value indices and probably a currency.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Virgin succubus sacrifices, on the other hand, would definitely be in the wish economy.

[DSMatticus]

Virgin succubus sacrifices, on the other hand, would definitely be in the wish economy.

The universe would asploded [sic].