[Gatejammer] Finality: Brainstorming

[Emerald]

The reality is that if you tried to do a cargo value percentage you'd have constant situations where a merchant would come in from some far distant world with a cargo full of Blue Ale or Harmony Stones and neither the customs inspector nor the merchant would have any real idea as to what that stuff would sell for in the markets. The only place a percentage take would or even could come in is the general rule that if you don't have precious metals or bank credits to pay your taxes in, the customs inspectors will take a percentage of your actual cargo and then try to get something for it on the back end.

What if there's a faction to take care of that? Sort of a stock-market-meets-adventurers-guild organization?

The Society for People Who Like Economics And Danger (catchier name required) is composed of explorers and traders who periodically go out to different worlds and contact local merchants to find out what the prices, scarcities, etc. of the trade goods are there, and they use this information to advise merchants, inspectors, and other interested parties regarding reasonable prices and tariffs.

Headquartered in the Financial District at the corner of Dow Street and Nasdaq Avenue, the SPWLEAD primarily attracts three kinds of people: retired merchants who want to put their knowledge and experience to good use without having to go out and do all the dirty work, adventurous types who want to explore the planes and are willing to bring back trading statistics if it means SPWLEAD will cover their bills, and inspectors and merchants who want to take advantage of insider trading ensure SPWLEAD stays honest out of the goodness of their hearts. Since the Society will usually give out small rewards or trading tips to anyone who brings back useful information or helps with number crunching or the like, though, there are plenty of "members" with them who work part-time or go on one-off missions for them.

The SPWLEAD's guiding philosophy is that leaving trade up to the merchants or tariffs up to the government leads to unfairness, and only by ensuring that all parties involved have accurate, up-to-date information can Finality ensure that people aren't getting screwed over. And if its members happen to benefit from having faster access to said information, well, it's only fair that they're rewarded for their hard work.

This philosophy causes occasional squabbles with other factions who think they're being lied to and/or fleeced, of course, so the Society frequently involves itself in policy debates over corporate transparency, magical privacy laws, and similar issues to protect its own interests. It also has strong opinions on the status quo--namely, keeping things the way they are means their models stay accurate means they stay influential--so they tend to push for regulations on newfangled vehicles or newly-discovered trade routes, unless they know about something before it becomes popular thanks to corporate espionage good predictions.

[fectin]

Seems to me that the most valuable resource has is gate-time. While modern nations generally charge based on the value of the goods, there is no actual reason that Finality has to. Charge by the mind, by the foot, and by the wheel, and be done with. Finality the state will get paid enough based on volume, and Finality the economic region will be enriched based on margins. Everyone wins if you make it simple. There are also probably bribes/fees to jump to the head of the line. Think turnpikes, not customs.
Perhaps most importantly, this lets you avoid playing IRS: The Auditing.

You probably actually have carnival-style ticket booths and lines outside each gate. That lets you do both Vogan Beaurocracy stories and completely handwave coming and going, depending on the needs of your game.

[Grek]

Gate Time is definitely the resource to be taxing. A typical merchant trip through a gate looks like this:

Step 1: Select a time (subject to availability), duration (in minutes) and gate suitable for your trip. Go to the local Inspector General's office and make an appointment for that date.
Step 2: Pay the Inspector General a per-minute fee based on the height, width and destination of the gate. Additional fees may be levied if you want to send something that is dangerous (like tigers), obnoxious (like elephant dung) or otherwise requires special care in shipping (like slaves). He gives you a ticket with your appointment info on it.
Step 3: On the day of your appointment, have all of your cargo at the Waiting Area. Give your ticket to the Gate Master. For the duration of the appointment, you and those you give authorization are the only people allowed in the Gate Areas on either side of the gate, and you can send as much cargo through the gate as you can in your allowed time.
Step 4: Clear the Gate Area. If you, your workers or your goods are still in the Gate Area when your time is up, you get slapped with a hefty fine that scales depending on how long it takes the Inspector General's office to clear the Gate Area for the next appointment.
Step 5: Continue on with your goods to your destination on this side of the gate.

For personal travel, you have travel agencies that will sell you a seat on a really cramped wagon that has a standing appointment to go through the gate once per planar day. You can bring as much as you could fit in an airplane carry on bag, plus some weight in luggage tied to the top of the wagon. It's not really comfortable, but it's much much cheaper.

[virgil]

From a practical standpoint, thus, the tariffs are going to look incredibly stupid and regressive to modern eyes. Cargo is probably assigned to extremely vague categories like "foodstuffs" and "textiles" and then fees are charged based on size or weight or something.

That sounds the easiest, charge a percentage of value off of the trade good chart. The inspectors won't care whether it's Torilian Sassafras or Ysgardian Ether Leaves, they'll look at a sample of the cargo and charge 2cp per pound under the category of 'tobacco'. People are 2sp apiece, essentially counting as a CR 1 soul at 90% reduction to promote travel.

Since there is actual banking, with bank notes and bearer contracts floating around, there's a bit of a question there. What are these contracts and notes going to look like? How powerful, and dangerous, is the Forgery skill?

[virgil]

This reminds me of another issue. The Bank of Finality is home to the war-mongering chaos-promoting banksters. In order for this to actually happen, we need to have loans available, an option I don't think I have EVER seen offered in D&D. Since this is a more primitive age, financially, I have no idea how loans would even work.

This is a setting with full-blown shapeshifters and mental domination, even aside from just forging bank notes. Defenses exist that can discourage fraud and identity theft, but I can't imagine it to be at all cheap to maintain in the kind of volume of activity Finality will see.

[Ancient History]

Well, assuming Finality is taking anything off of the the real world, loans and such are going to be done at various levels.

0: At your most basic, you ask your neighbor for some cash or seed or the use of a stud rothe - this is farmers-borrowing-off-farmers kind of deal, and you can expect repayment to be in kind, in labor, or more rarely in coin, and it'll be a matter of honor between two people that live in relatively close proximity and have known each other for ever. Also includes bar tabs.

1: One step up, you've got a local merchant, goldsmith, wealthy farmer or other patronus, and you need a loan of coin to get some shit done. In this case, you probably don't know the guy directly, so you'll have to secure an introduction or someone to vouch for you, and in any case you'll have to get an audience and make your case. Likely to be some level of legal contract, and you'll have to put up some collateral. In some cases, this involved a protracted relationship between the two parties. Depending on the society, this may or may not specifically include usury.

2: The pawn shop. This arose out of some needs to get around problems of converting assets to ready cash; a merchant or goldsmith will hold some material - usually the family silver, or some other precious metal item - in trust for a certain period of time in exchange for an amount of coin. Usually there are legal limits on the duration of how long the merchant can hang on to an item before it is considered theirs, and the reclaim fee that they can charge.

3: The modern bank or credit union - whereas before you were dealing with one guy and his money, here you're dealing with an organization whose money supply is the collective sum of monies deposited in the bank. The loans are more structured, and the bank has a stronger incentive to make loans because they are usually a primary source of income. As banks tend to have much more monies change hands, they also have heightened security. Deposit insurance is something invented much later. This is also where lines of credit come in, which is like a credit card but old-timey.

4: Stock market. Agents of various individuals and organizations borrow, loan, and bet against each other using various real and virtual assets. Most individuals don't get into loans at this level, because the deals tend to be very fast and the sums of money involved very high, and the assets are usually highly arcane to normal purposes.

So, all five are probably prevalent to some extant. The higher up you go, the more formal the agreement and the more security likely to be in place - including magical binding, depending on local laws. The stock market is fun because you can literally have people buy shares in your adventuring group's expedition to the Crypts of Chaos or whatever - you get the coin you need to equip yourself for the mission, and when you come back whatever you got out of the Crypt is sold and divvied out to the shareholders.

The pawn shop is probably the most important to the economy though, it remove excess non-fungible goods like +1 daggers in exchange for coin which can then be spent on other items. Banks are important because carrying a hundred thousand gold notes around is only slightly less inconvenient than carrying the same amount of physical gold around. It's much easier to write a cheque than to transport that much cash.

[Username17]

Ever played Starflight 2? I don't think you should do that to yourself if you haven't already, but for 1989 it had some rather neat innovations. The trading minigame was actually quite cool and gave the illusion of considerably more depth than it actually had.

The basic idea was that you have two kinds of goods: "Specialty Goods" (like Grow Goo or Singing Beetles) are only sold in specific places and only demanded in other specific places. They don't cost a lot of scratch to buy, but they sell for a lot. Meanwhile, "Standard Goods" (like molybdenum and shit) can be bought and sold pretty much anywhere, and their local price is determined by whether the local economy is depressed, normal, or overheated. Then there was a small randomized adjustment and a little barter minigame and it all felt like you were moving great levers in galactic arbitrage even though it was in essence very very simple.

Really, with the addition of an intermediate "trade hub" location for specialty goods, it could form the basis for the trade minigame. So your specialty goods now have places where they are produced (where they are cheap), places where they are exchanged (where they are intermediate in price), and places they are coveted (where they are high in price). This creates two Harmony Stones based trading routes. One is from Shr'Akt'Lor (where they are produced) to Finality, and the other is from Finality to the Dread Worlds (where people want them). And you can do either leg of that journey and make a decent profit. Alternately, you can haul cabbages or iron ore to Finality from wherever you happen to be and make something of a profit because Finality is an inflated economy and the cost of basic goods is high there.

If you had a secondary minigame of making Streetwise checks to find things to buy (and buyers for your stuff), then players would even voluntarily buy supplies in Finality even though the price was higher there because availability would also be higher.

I think such a system could present the appearance of a lot of depth without actually needing a lot of moving parts. Also "We're going to adventure in Svartalfheim, let's fill up our packs with Fungus Chews" is the kind of thing that adds verisimilitude to the setting and can probably scratch the Logistics and Dragons itch without having to bog things down too much.

-Username17

[virgil]

If you want to be a total rip-off from Starflight 2...buying & selling anything requires a [see page XX] check, the DC of which is modified by the item's scarcity modifier in the area and the area's economy modifier. The margin of failure and success modifies the market value of the item by X in the appropriate direction (failing a sell check means it sells for X less, while failing a buy check means it costs X more).

Rather than going OCD in the books, just have each community description include a table of stuff that actually has a scarcity modifier (by specific or categorical). Not everything will have a scarcity modifier, and in fact most things won't, defaulting to zero.

Not quite certain how to tie that in for wanting to buy stuff in a trade hub due to availability, other than inherently lowering the time frame to buy stuff based on the community size and item scarcity.

This also reminds me, is there any room for this?

Renown/Infamy: Every 'feat' performed applies to the community it was performed in, listed in your adventure logs for the location, and will indirectly add to the entire kingdom. Note, a Community can be a mud-farm and it can also be a neighborhood inside a larger city. Each community has two stats.

• Isolation: Modifies Renown gained before applied to the entire Kingdom (saving Mudkip means less to the kingdom than saving Urbania). Also works in reverse, because deeds performed far away don't mean much ("you may be a big shot in the city")
• Danger: Threshold, possibly as a negative modifier, to your deeds' Renown before it's added (beating the Joker earns little praise in Metropolis) to the Community

It's easy to add layers to this, so your Renown gets staged from Person->Monkeysphere->Community->Region->Kingdom->World->Multiverse. For a D&D-like situation, keeping it to Community->Kingdom is granular enough until you reach the next Tier, which could work as a replacement for the Danger stat.
Visibility: Every feat has a certain amount of visibility, which changes the Renown gained, and can be increased or decreased proactively. Kill witnesses, brag at the bar, throw the dragon's head on a pike in the center of town, etc.

Having Renown/Infamy tied to your image sounds like an easy thing. It might be necessary to have a Veracity check associated with your 'image', based on the sum of your Renown and Infamy (let them decide whether the bad outweighs the good). If you use or even have distinctive traits during the Visibility modifier, it's easier to show it's you, but that same bonus would apply to copy-cats who just wear a red coat, pick up a gun, and say they're Vash the Stampede.

[Username17]

You could certainly have essentially limitless granularity in the local demand charts. With enough granularity, you could abandon having base prices for things at all and just having a local demand value. Gold could just have a "Demand of 50" in Oerth and Eberron, meaning that it's worth 50 Bearer Contracts per pound in those places. Now there's an obvious problem with that, which is that even before we get to the weird specialty items, D&D has a lot of stuff:



And if the entire price list (or "demand list") has to get printed out each and every time, that's pretty fucked.

So honestly, I think that at the very least all the worked items (of which there are hundreds) should have an "intrinsic value", which is then modified by the local demand factor for the broad category of item that it is. So katanas and halberds are both "weapons" and their price is adjusted accordingly based on where you happen to be trying to buy or sell them. But the "Trade Goods" list is short enough that you could actually print local values for all of them in a little box for each trade region.

At the minimum, you'd have three basic levels of demand: high, medium, and low. Because that allows you to have two part trade routes: people bringing stuff they have excess of to Finality, and people buying up stuff in Finality to take to places it is scarce.

-Username17

[virgil]

Finality Economy

Trade Goods	Value Per
Wheat (1lb)	1cp
Flour (1lb)	2cp
Chicken (1ea)	2cp
Iron (1lb)	1sp
Tobacco (1lb)	5sp
Cinnamon (1lb)	1gp
Goat (1ea)	1gp
Ginger/Pepper (1lb)	2gp
Sheep (1ea)	2gp
Pig (1ea)	3gp
Linen (1sq.yd.)	4gp
Salt (1lb)	5gp
Silk (1sq.yd.)	10gp
Cow (1ea)	10gp
Saffron/Cloves (1lb)	15gp
Ox (1ea)	15gp
Human slave (1ea)	100gp
Finished Goods	Demand
Arms	Medium
Art	High
Magic Items	Medium
Clothing	High
Tools and Skill Kits	Medium
Adventuring Gear	High
Special Substances & Items	Low
Food, Drink, & Lodging	High

[virgil]

Is there any advantage to using the rules presented here for community statistics, since players are going to be traveling the planes for trade; even if violence is the only ware they provide?

[Username17]

Is there any advantage to using the rules presented here for community statistics, since players are going to be traveling the planes for trade; even if violence is the only ware they provide?

I could see inspiration being drawn from those, but those rules are fucked. Rolling on the magic item charts 3d4+1d6 times every time you get to a small town to find out what is for sale is way too much work. Those charts are nested tables, and actually take quite a while to generate results. It's like catalog shopping if you had to use a decoder ring to find out what each item on the page was one by one.

Fuck. That.

-Username17

[virgil]

Is there any advantage to using the rules presented here for community statistics, since players are going to be traveling the planes for trade; even if violence is the only ware they provide?

I could see inspiration being drawn from those, but those rules are fucked. Rolling on the magic item charts 3d4+1d6 times every time you get to a small town to find out what is for sale is way too much work. Those charts are nested tables, and actually take quite a while to generate results. It's like catalog shopping if you had to use a decoder ring to find out what each item on the page was one by one.

Much like the random treasure for a slain dragon, I would just use one of the available treasure generators to consolidate rolling for me. What would you propose then? Have the party make some kind of check for any specific item, the margin of success/failure determining the delivery/construction time?

[Josh_Kablack]

A bit late to point this out, but I just realized that the above proposal to have tariffs imposed by wheel or by leg provides an in-game incentive for gnomish unicycle couriers and war snails used as beasts of burden. However Tenser's Floating Disk and similar levitation effects are still the biggest win in such a system.

[Ancient History]

Ideally, magic item limits should be done somewhat DomIII style: what is available is a cross-reference between the know-how to make it (max level of local spellcaster) and the available materials/resources (purchase limit of the town).

So for the small gatethorp of Braineater, which is an unremarkable world known mainly for its exports of exotic headcheeses that are beloved by the Mindflayer faction in Finality, the local wizard might be 5th level and the purchase limit might be 5,000 gp - so theoretically the PCs should be able to find any item there that a 5th level caster can build with a cost of 5k or less. Doesn't mean they have one of anything hanging around, but presumably if they have the cash then it can be had or made to order relatively quickly.

[virgil]

A bit late to point this out, but I just realized that the above proposal to have tariffs imposed by wheel or by leg provides an in-game incentive for gnomish unicycle couriers and war snails used as beasts of burden. However Tenser's Floating Disk and similar levitation effects are still the biggest win in such a system.

I am certainly amused by that image, and encourage any DM to use that in their game. However the tariff system will work off of a customs-declaration where they take 2% of its value; but their 'value' is going arbitrarily placed in the short list of trade goods and approximate gear. Sigilian razorwine brewed eighty years ago? 2sp (2% of fine wine). A hundred bricks of lembas? 4cp (2% of 100 bread loaves). I am not certain how to handle weapons made of exotic materials, like adamantine swords and deep crystal maces, or magic items to a large extent.

There's a 90% discount on free men to encourage foot traffic, so it's only 2sp per person. Personal effects aren't subject to this taxation, since it's not really going to be traded. This somewhat handles magic items because a merchant could just go Mandarin with his rings. The profit margin is so high, that any attempt at magic item regulation is going to create smuggling with exceedingly powerful and violent individual on a scale that the city won't be able to contain.

As for the DomIII style; that's a good idea, and I think I was actually assuming that to be the case for getting magic items to order. The main question is any that are already made and can be had that day.

[virgil]

What flaws are there in these settlement rules? The extra rolling for the available magic items is flaw already pointed out by Frank. Judging by how Base Value works, I honestly think that sufficiently covers our needs and we can just excise the Available Magic Items section. Purchase Limit should work both ways and also represent the limit in money the settlement can take in from the PCs on any single category of finished goods; so a village can't sell any more than 2500gp worth of weapons and armor to the PCs. I don't know the appropriate refresh rate on this, but I think a week is too short...so, a month? Custom-made magic items also work by just making sure there's a spellcaster capable of handling it and the settlement can afford to sell enough magic item components (unless the group brings their own supply).

The settlement qualities are compared to feats, and reading them shows the comparison to be apt. Good Roads makes me fall asleep, while Desecrate/Hallow can cock-slap all who don't follow Bane with a constant silence. A big question is whether this actually matters, because balanced outputs is not the goal with settlements.

On a related note, we really do need good random encounter tables/generators.

ADDENDUM
One problem is the spellcasting line. The moment a town has more than 2000 people, you can get fabricate cast for you, which presumes a density of magic that makes the nominal D&D setting unsustainable. That's about as many demi-gods who can act as factories, iron mines, & quarries as there are doctors. Setting stability needs this to be addressed, and I can only hope setting the spellcasting line to be caster level instead of spell level is enough to handle it; as that makes 8th level casters only found in a metropolis, and anyone higher than that is will automatically have a name.

[Username17]

The Pathfinder settlement rules are a series of poorly considered additions and alterations to the already half-assed "community" rules in the 3e DMG. I imagine the primary reason it isn't pure copypasta is that technically the DMG's rules for communities aren't in the SRD (unless I missed it somewhere, which is possible). This is not a case of Paizo deciding they needed to fix the settlement rules, this is just a matter of Paizo being contractually obligated to alter the rules enough that they could stand up in court and say it wasn't copypasta (starting with renaming the rules for "communities" into "settlements").

The outputs of the community generation rules are 1) Boring and 2) Stupid. The "Power Centers" chart doesn't actually give you any information. A "Standard" power center includes an elected mayorship, a council, and a hereditary barony, while a "Nonstandard" power center includes an aristocrat council, a merchant republic, and big man governance. Those are such widely cast nets that they overlap entirely, so the entire multi-roll chart gives essentially no information at all.

Alignments are stupid, and generalizations of society into alignments is even more stupid.

The residents of a community with a chaotic evil power center live in abject fear because of the unpredictable and horrific situations continually placed upon them.

The class demographics generators give answers that are frankly insane, and no one knows how the bloody fuck they are supposed to fit together with expansion classes or wilderness areas.

And finally, the economics "system" for communities is crap.

So that's what Paizo had to work with. And they decided to arm themselves with a thesaurus and a night of drunken changes and half baked ideas to cover their ass from a lawsuit standpoint. They elected to:

• Make it more explicit that the rules for buying spellcasting services were completely fucked, making it way too hard to get shit you actually need like stone to flesh but trivially easy to break the world's economy by any of a number of means.
• Add a bunch of fiddly details to the government section without actually making anything make any sense.
• Attempt to give teeth to the insane community government alignment chart, making it even more insane by causing it to have poorly thought out game effects.
• Gives out numbers for a bunch of modifiers that don't make any sense. Isolated settlement filled with illiterate peasants? That sounds like you should get a penalty to your diplomacy score if you want the residents to tell you about the weaknesses of the demon emperor from the other side of the world that they logically would never have even heard of! Problem solved!
• Attempts to address the magic item purchasing system with a system so irritating that I've never heard anyone praise it and I've heard to damned several times.

I think that's about it. Aside from the fact that the PFSRD includes stuff from 4th party furry porn (that literally tell you what the modifiers are supposed to be if the local prostitutes are bird ladies and cat girls), the material is only interesting as an object lesson in not doing the thing they did.

It's rather too bad, because at first glance it looks like maybe they tried to flesh out the community rules into something less useless. There are lists of actual government types instead of them trying to tell you that one kind of council is "conventional" while another kind of council is "nonstandard". But ultimately all of the numbers are meaningless or stupid or both. Having a corrupt government makes it... easier to hide in crowds? WTF?

Yes, it would be nice to have some sort of Law Rating. But a raw number that adjusts what kind of diplomacy check you need to get to convince the city guard to go check something out is fucking stupid. That is an example of a number that is not worth caring about in the slightest. A Law rating should tell you something about how laws are actually practiced. Possibly having a series of law types, and then each community would have one. "Menzoberranzanian Law" would be an interesting and useful thing to check on something, "Law +2" is neither useful nor interesting.

-Username17

[virgil]

If you could provide us with something better, that'd be great. I keep getting busy with RL crap and haven't had a chance to come up with something due to the sheer scope of addressing all of those points for settlements.

---

White Spider

Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses.
He Said/She Said: A lie told often enough becomes the truth

Throughout life, there is sacrifice, and someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. Both the individual and the group have consented their submission to an authority, both explicitly and tacitly. It is your duty to obtain social capital, for even tacit approval of leadership is as valid as any constitution. The proletariat is strong, and you must ensure that their strength is against yours.

The White Spider is an order of totalitarian democrats, trendsetters, and propaganda artists. More than a few members of the faction are from the Mad Wizard's Guild, especially those trying to break away from the odoriferous associations; but is also very popular with those with a presence in the public eye, such as gladiator champions, fashionistas, etc.

The White Spider's goal is that of empowering the residents to choose their leaders via collective approval, and in so doing so surrender all authority to the chosen leader. Education is something they feel to be counterproductive, encouraging a social class that places itself above the decisions of the common man and their important economic and social endeavors. They also hold a mistrust of the gods and their followers' inherently conflicted loyalty for reasons much the same. Unions are fiercely supported, as they better represent their constituents' approval and therefore have more legitimate authority than those who 'purchase' their services. Any who climbs the social ladder with popularity deserves their authority, which gives them a strong sense of self-sufficiency. As attitude and public perception is important to the existence of social order, "fake it 'til you make it" is a way of life.

The Finality's Dispatch was formerly the newspaper of prestige until many journalist members of the White Spider reached editorial positions. Readership is higher than ever, at the expense of professional respect. When unsourced allegations in garish font aren't enough, monster journalism & extravagant publicity stunts (thanks to the literally arcane research of the aptly titled Mad Wizards' Guild) are called upon. In addition, the White Spider heavily sponsors the Poise, Finality's eminent fashion headquarters.

The White Spider's headquarters is the Flaxen Spire, the second tallest building (restricted by legal decree) in the city, and easily the most extravagant. This is where non-governmental (but still ostentatious) public ceremonies are performed.

[fectin]

I buy it.

[Username17]

If you could provide us with something better, that'd be great.

OK, it's still a work in progress of course, but I'm thinking that your rules for Territories need the following:

• Demographics
  Legal Systems
  Government
  Economy

So those four things are each going to have a couple of subunits. Demographics is just a raw number of how many people, but also has a couple of attributes to indicate what kind of people. 10,000 Giants is not the same as 10,000 Kobolds. The Legal System is a framework for settling things, and the Runic Law of the Dwarves is not the same as Baatorian Law. Also, you need a Corruption number, which determines how much gets solved through the legal framework and how much is who you know and how much jingles in your coin purse. Governments are power structures generally, and they are more numerous in more populated territories. Each government has a power source (Traditional, Plutocratic, Representative, Coercive, or Delegated), which determines how they can be undermined or replaced (and by implication, what you could do to piss them off). Economy is a couple of modifiers that allows you to derive numbers from the Demographics for Maximum Transaction Value, Trade Capacity, and Fencing Modifiers.

Territories with High Inequality have higher Maximum Transaction Value and lower Trade Capacity. Territories with Low Inequality have lower Maximum Transaction Value and higher Trade Capacity. So you want to try to sell your magic jewel in a highly unequal area, while you want to sell a caravan full of silks in a low inequality area.

-Username17

[virgil]

As a functional question, would the tariffs apply to actual currency, such as a party bringing a literal tonne of copper pieces from their recent dungeon crawl? Would their be a fee for turning your gold into bank notes, or vice versa? How would they encourage people to use notes instead of normal money?

Heck, should the Bank of Finality have and issue notes for souls, liquid hope, and other valuables from the Wish Economy? Even without Wish Notes, answering forgery sounds like a rather high concern, and I'd be fascinated to see what a mass-marketed version would look like. At the minimum, even the gold-backed notes will have to be made of metal thanks to Rust Town.

[virgil]

I'm thinking that the bank notes might do well as incredibly detailed coins the size of with a clockwork element to them, the end result being something resistant to fire and either really difficult to make by hand or really expensive to make at all, but easily produced in bulk through magic that's either not hindered by value (fabricate) or by difficulty (wish).

[fectin]

How is that different from gold?

[virgil]

Gold's value is based on mass. The obsidian coin clock value is whatever is embossed on the top, and is only really duplicated by someone who doesn't care about money.