virgileso wrote:
For the piggy-bank adventurer, how is he refusing adventures? The screen fades to black, white-text appears saying "twenty years later", and then the show begins with that much more money. You're the one that's describing a DM that apparently forces the player to RP his job in real-time or something, throwing plot hook after plot hook at him while he tills the field.
Well, because this is a living breathing world. Most of the time you just don't have 20 years before something interesting happens. By then the city or town you live in will be razed to the ground if you don't stop it. That means that there is shit going on in those 20 years that you're turning down.
You complain that I don't make the world interactive, but then you want the PCs to be able to sit on their asses for 20 years doing nothing and not have anything happen. In other words, the PCs have no noticeable effect on the world. Stop the villain, ignore the villain, it doens't matter.
No, my worlds aren't like static MMORPGs where nothing you do matters. Waterdeep may not be there in 20 years if you just ignore the evil plots going on. You're the heroes and it's your job to save it. If you don't... well, lets just say that your tavern business may get a few snags when the city is overrun by demons in 10 years, and all the money you saved up wont' do you any good because you're just a level 1 commoner.
Besides, you also blithely ignored the other options for even short-term money earning, off-handedly deciding that no activity can earn more than four times minimum wage without adventuring, advocating making the profitable skills a non-option (such as alchemy or spells-for-cash).
They're an option, they're just not as lucrative an option as people assume. A lot of players want to go with the most favorable assumption, namely that you can cast every spell slot you have for profit every day. That there's some "spell bank" that you go to and cast your spells into and you get cash back. But that's not economy works, and part of the reason I'd reckon that spells are so expensive is because there isn't much need for them. Aside from adventurers, not many people need spells. Perhaps a nobleman needs a regenerate on an eye that got poked out during a rapier duel or something, but that stuff is going to be rare.
Like I said, most of the people who might want magic, like a farmer who wants water for his crops or wants a disease cured, just can't afford it. Those that can afford it probably have someone they already rely on to do so. I mean really if you want someone resurrected, aren't you going to take it to the local temple that you trust, instead of some random adventurer cleric that is just passing through (and may be a total fraud for all you know).
Similarly alchemical supplies... who really buys much acid or alchemist's fire besides adventurers and people already capable of making it for themselves?
I mean like any job these sort of things require job openings. If the king's alchemist just died and you want to fill in for the position, thne sure that could work. But at the point you're getting a permanent position like that, you're basically retiring, since the king doesn't want his alchemist or court mage to go running off on adventures every few months.
If you want to go into business, you've got to sel something that there's a demand for. Selling adventurer services just isn't' that lucrative of a business, despite the expensive stuff involved, because the demand is pretty small.
