Settings that don't break when you enter a money loop.

[Lago PARANOIA]

A lot of discussion has been had lately about how a world where you can buy asskicking with actual money breaks down when players realize that they can trade their beds and books for money and come across a gold throne.

While there have been a lot of solutions proposed to prevent this from happening, are you aware that there are quite a few settings published right meow where the campaign doesn't break down even if you do have a money loop? It's twoo.

Forgotten Realms- Having a full suite of magical items way beyond your level doesn't really matter unless we're getting into epic stuff. All of the real power comes from artifacts (which you can't buy), being a part of super-secret organizations like the Red Wizards of Thay, and being a god's sex toy such as Bhaal or Mystra. Let's face it, the sword you get from Gruumsh from killing a bunch of elves is going to be better than anything you could buy even though there are seriously shops out there that sell +6 swords. You can't even buy the best spells, since in Forgotten Realms the best magic in the game either belongs to a secret council of High Elf Wizards or is researched personally.

Dark Sun- You could own all of the gold in the world and it wouldn't matter, because capital is practically useless in the setting. It's just a medium of exchange and it doesn't even have universal use in a setting with no unified economy. Showing your diamonds and rubies to 95% of people with stuff will get a response of 'sorry, can't eat or wear your shiny rock'. See, the reason why things like gold or silver are worth anything is because the elites of the world agreed on using gold as a universal measure of exchange; this is not the case in Dark Sun, where the economy is done almost entirely by barter. Even if you own all of the Hate Coins, the official currency of the Desert City of Hateville, the people will realize what's going on and declare a new form of currency. If you have a resource that people can't ignore, like water or oxen, you may as well just barter for it anyway. Regardless, even if you do own all of the water in the world it's still extremely hard to trade it for something good. The people who actually own the magical swords don't care about your filthy plebian baubles and the people who are interested in it can't really give you anything better than unskilled labor and pots.

World of Darkness- Even aside from the fact that there are DM-penis creatures like Cain who won't let you get too powerful for whatever reason, having an unlimited amount of wealth is actually not a big deal. For one, there is almost nothing in the world that sells things you want, aside from food and weapons--and you don't even have to go and buy it in this setting. As far as weapons go, you can pretty much get whatever you want without unlimited wealth, so what the hey?

Your money could theoretically buy some political power, important in a game filled with political intrigue, but not really. There's no way you can really appeal to a third party (humanity) to help you with problems going on in the WoD without breaking the masquerade. Send a team of assassins to the werewolf pack and you get a few gnawed-on bones back. Try to write anti-Gangrel legislation and you'll get laughed at. And your money won't actually do anything on the WoD side of things because 1) most factions don't even participate in the economy and 2) the ones that do already own everything important and 3) they can just send a team of supernatural ass-kickers to asskick your ass if you tick them off; which means that your money doesn't really change the outcome of how the game is supposed to be played.

Ravenloft- Ravenloft is an odd case. Having a generous amount of extra wealth breaks the game, but having a ridiculous amount does not. Ravenloft is built on the assumption that a secret council of 11th-level vampire lords rules the world, so having enough magical trinkets to make you fight as a level 13th character makes you a rockstar. But having enough magical trinkets to make you fight as a level 21st character ejects you from the setting and either you play 'Superman vs. the small time crooks' until you get bored or the DM introduces you into a new setting, which could be anything of the above.

Shadowrun- This is another odd case. Unlimited wealth breaks the game depending on what genre you want to play. If you want to play SimCity3000 then obviously owning all of the capital in the world makes you win the game. But if you want to actually play the game Shadowrun advertises (a small posse of badasses break into a fortified area and fuck shit up) then you don't even really care. As a mage or a gilette or whatever, you actually can buy nearly everything you would want to without too much trouble. Yes, a full suite of Xyberzetaware is really damn expensive, but there are people who can actually afford it in the game, perhaps even you.

And you know what? Actually having all of the goodies in the game doesn't get you anywhere. Shadowrun, unlike D&D, isn't a game you actually play for profit. If your ultimate goal was filthy lucre then you wouldn't actually be a Shadowrunner. The decker would be conducting fraud, the mage would go to work for a corporation, and the street samurai would just go to some third world country and violence their way into power. You play Shadowrun for the adrenaline rush and to prove that your cyber-fu is better than your friends', which means that you pick missions that conform to your Power Level. Getting every foci and bit of Xyberzetaware you want just means that you go on tougher runs. And since the point of doing these runs is to either make you more prepared for other runs or to have an adventure of Superfriends, who cares?.

Freedom City- You can have unlimited wealth in the game. Seriously, you can buy the trait 'can pull whatever deus ex machina (literally) out of your ass (also literally)' at character creation and have enough money to make Scrooge McDuck and Iron Man burst into tears and suck your cock. But it still doesn't matter, because actually buying things in this setting sucks at the PL you're supposed to start at. If you started the game at, say, PL 5 then it would be freakishly overpowered, but at PL 12 you sort of get people staring at you and going 'but what are you supposed to DO?'

[Gelare]

Commenting on Shadowrun - because that's one of the few games up there I've played - the most straightforward way for you to get near-infinite wealth is for your Hacker to commit bank fraud. Which is fine, but Big Brother is always watching, and eventually someone's going to notice that someone skimmed two billion nuyen from one of Ares' research budgets, and then, because this is just how the setting goes, you're gonna have a literal fucking army with air strikes and nuclear weapons bearing down on you - which makes it a darn good thing that you enhanced yourself with all that cash. Sounds fine to me.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But even if you do all of that and have your own Zanzibar Metal Gear style complete with walking battle tanks, then you're not playing Shadowrun anymore anyway; you're playing Civilization or SimCity3000.

[Thymos]

Are you talking about if having enough money breaks the setting or the party?

It sounds like having too much money does break Ravenloft (in that you can't play in the setting if you have too much).

Too much money always breaks dnd, the game not the setting, because it usually turns the players into glass jaws (in order to challenge their new wealth, you have to send beasts at them that will total their HP).

[Amra]

Hmmm... Ravenloft? As far as I'm aware, Ravenloft will only break if you *go in* with items way above your power level, and if the DM does that he's an asshole because the Dark Powers wouldn't let you in through the Mists if there was a reasonable chance of you knifecriming a Realm Lord *without* becoming a Realm Lord yourself.

Once you're inside, Ravenloft has enough arbitrary bullshit controls built in that having a literal planet made of gold that you carry around in a pocket dimension won't help you one bit most of the time. Shit, half the setting is like Dark Sun, inasmuch as you can't trade gold for anything you want. Most of the realms have inhabitants who live in such fear of the Realm Lord (or the creature they *believe* is the Realm Lord) that you'd actually have to kill them before they gave you anything good, even if they had it, which they don't. In the unlikely event that you find yourself in a part of the setting where the inhabitants have items worth a damn, you can be summarily dumped into a completely different realm whenever you next enter the Mists, which can frankly be at almost any time because "in Soviet Russia, Mist enters you!".

Of course, I could be talking completely through my hat here because although I have the 3.0 Ravenloft sourcebook - I bought the limited edition because I loved the setting in 2E and ran some of my best campaigns there - I haven't got anything *else* related to the setting. Most of the above is based on my memories of the one 3E sourcebook I have and how things were in 2E so apologies if my points were spurious!

[shau]

Shadowrun- This is another odd case. Unlimited wealth breaks the game depending on what genre you want to play. If you want to play SimCity3000 then obviously owning all of the capital in the world makes you win the game. But if you want to actually play the game Shadowrun advertises (a small posse of badasses break into a fortified area and fuck shit up) then you don't even really care. As a mage or a gilette or whatever, you actually can buy nearly everything you would want to without too much trouble. Yes, a full suite of Xyberzetaware is really damn expensive, but there are people who can actually afford it in the game, perhaps even you.

And you know what? Actually having all of the goodies in the game doesn't get you anywhere. Shadowrun, unlike D&D, isn't a game you actually play for profit. If your ultimate goal was filthy lucre then you wouldn't actually be a Shadowrunner. The decker would be conducting fraud, the mage would go to work for a corporation, and the street samurai would just go to some third world country and violence their way into power. You play Shadowrun for the adrenaline rush and to prove that your cyber-fu is better than your friends', which means that you pick missions that conform to your Power Level. Getting every foci and bit of Xyberzetaware you want just means that you go on tougher runs. And since the point of doing these runs is to either make you more prepared for other runs or to have an adventure of Superfriends, who cares?.

I disagree with this. Shadowrunners really are supposed to be doing their runs for cash. That why you negotiate with Mr. Johnson and agree to do runs in exchange for nuyen and don't agree to do them for the lulz. It's a fun job, but it's still a job.

Advancing the opposition does not work very well either since there really are only so many tricked out cyberzombies, lesbian elf stripper ninjas, and super mages to stand up to your team of delta grade everything cyborgs. Not to mention that you can just invest in an army of infinite drones and swarm everything into the ground.

[Murtak]

Shadowrun- This is another odd case. Unlimited wealth breaks the game depending on what genre you want to play. If you want to play SimCity3000 then obviously owning all of the capital in the world makes you win the game. But if you want to actually play the game Shadowrun advertises (a small posse of badasses break into a fortified area and fuck shit up) then you don't even really care. As a mage or a gilette or whatever, you actually can buy nearly everything you would want to without too much trouble. Yes, a full suite of Xyberzetaware is really damn expensive, but there are people who can actually afford it in the game, perhaps even you.

And you know what? Actually having all of the goodies in the game doesn't get you anywhere. Shadowrun, unlike D&D, isn't a game you actually play for profit. If your ultimate goal was filthy lucre then you wouldn't actually be a Shadowrunner. The decker would be conducting fraud, the mage would go to work for a corporation, and the street samurai would just go to some third world country and violence their way into power. You play Shadowrun for the adrenaline rush and to prove that your cyber-fu is better than your friends', which means that you pick missions that conform to your Power Level. Getting every foci and bit of Xyberzetaware you want just means that you go on tougher runs. And since the point of doing these runs is to either make you more prepared for other runs or to have an adventure of Superfriends, who cares?.

I disagree with this. Shadowrunners really are supposed to be doing their runs for cash. That why you negotiate with Mr. Johnson and agree to do runs in exchange for nuyen and don't agree to do them for the lulz. It's a fun job, but it's still a job.

Advancing the opposition does not work very well either since there really are only so many tricked out cyberzombies, lesbian elf stripper ninjas, and super mages to stand up to your team of delta grade everything cyborgs. Not to mention that you can just invest in an army of infinite drones and swarm everything into the ground.

Then the players may feel free to retire.

But really, even infinite money does not buy you infinite drones. Infinite money causes a market crash. And arbitrarily-large-but-below-market-warping amounts of money will not let you take over the world, or even duke it out with a single A corp. I can near-infinite-money plus some high-impact runs netting the players their own corporation, but I can't see them running out of meaningful challenges even then (or ever).

[Voss]

On a related concept, there is one setting where the economy explodes at first level:

Dragonlance.

Daggers cost two steel pieces. But they weigh 1 pound and are mostly steel. There are 50 coins to a pound, so even being generous and saying there is only half a pound of steel in a dagger you're making an eleven-fold profit just buying daggers with the simple ability to melt weapons down and funnel the steel into molds.

Buy 75 daggers with your starting cash and make a good 1875 steel pieces instead.

[MartinHarper]

You're making an eleven-fold profit just buying daggers with the simple ability to melt weapons down and funnel the steel into moulds.

Modern currency is also worth more than its materials, with the exception of the US penny. Is Dragonlance different?

[Gelare]

You're making an eleven-fold profit just buying daggers with the simple ability to melt weapons down and funnel the steel into moulds.

Modern currency is also worth more than its materials, with the exception of the US penny. Is Dragonlance different?

The penny used to be worth more when you melted it down than the actual face value, but they changed the materials it was made of so that it was no longer the case.

[Voss]

You're making an eleven-fold profit just buying daggers with the simple ability to melt weapons down and funnel the steel into moulds.

Modern currency is also worth more than its materials, with the exception of the US penny. Is Dragonlance different?

Yes. Because the explicit reason they're using steel is because gold has no practical function (which is pretty much true for any pre-industrial society), and the demand for weapons-grade metal is so high (because the world post god-fucking is just so terrible) that they decided to actually take a huge chunk of it out of the very industry which is causing the demand and turn it into coinage. And that makes no sense. Especially since all steel coins are cast post-Cataclysm. They're actually melting down weapons or mining (and refining) new ore to make coins when they supposedly really need weapons.

Given what the background material says, it would make more sense to pay people in actual weapons. If the economy is fucked that badly, you barter. You don't rape important industries. You also can't establish a continent wide value for your coinage if things are that bad. An elf is going to look at your Solace-minted steel piece and mutter something about fucking insane humans.

Modern currency is also rather different. Its real, material value isn't actually relevant to its functional value. The government backing and the market situation is what affects that, coupled with the social acceptance that the hunk of shit (and it could literally be a dried piece of shit) called a dollar can actually buy bread and homes.

Its also a matter of degree. A the materials that make up a penny are slightly more than the value of a penny. Depending on the percentage of steel in a dagger, its somewhere between a 1000-2000% increase in value if you turn it into coins. Thats just fucking insane.

[Gelare]

Its also a matter of degree. A the materials that make up a penny are slightly more than the value of a penny.

No.

$0.0036933 is the melt value for the 1982-2009 zinc cent on April 30, 2009.

More behind the link.

[violence in the media]

Voss might have been thinking about the total cost of production.

[Josh_Kablack]

IIRC (which is a big if) The US changed the penny composition in 1982 to primarily zinc because of price spikes in precious metals that made it seem like the copper in a penny would shortly become more valuable than the penny. But after the Reagan recession "ended" precious metal prices dropped, and to the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge the copper even in pre-1982 pennies has never been worth a full penny.