Improving Game Economy

Kregor · Post by **Kregor** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:05 pm

In faerun, as I gather, the "standard" currency in most nations is the silver piece. Not really a comparison to the dollar, or many contemporary currencies, as most currency today is soft soap money (ie, it's only worth anything on paper), as opposed to the mineral value coinage of olden times.

As far as FK economics go, I see what Hviti is saying about what gets sold to the merchants, vs. what gets bought. After the MUD has been running for a few days nonstop, the shops are filled with crude leather gobby armour (useless, even to a newb), rusted swords.... OH and now that the store bought hides are fixed, 6,399 suits of hide armour of a dragon

Here is one problem. Shops like Willie's and Bradigan's and etc. could, in theory, be carrying really good quality, and magical gear, that would then be spent on by mid-level and up chars with a bit a plat under their belt. But instead, the only thing they have is the crap, while people hold on to their magical and hi-quality gear to either give away, or sell for less than the non-magical items sell for in the shops.

While charity and barter are nice, they don't help an area economy squat, and don't do much for enticing chars out of their spare cash.

Then again, the drawbacks to the existing shop system are big when it comes to really high coin items. First, and worst, is that anything special in the inventory goes POOF when the game resets or there's a copyover. I can think of at least three instances where I've had a char see a nice item that they WOULD spend the cash for in a shop, only to miss it when the game reset. I am figuring that there are some players who hold on to the good stuff to sell themselves for that very reason.

Now there's one PC merchant I have seen in-game who is doing consignment for other char's special items, selling them for a decent price. This may be the closest to effective means for reselling items as I have seen. His wagon quits with him, so nothing goes poof, he marks up for his profit, so he makes coin, the consignee makes coin, and money comes OUT of another char's purse.

Having NPC shops with non-volatile storerooms might make them more conducive for selling off nice stuff that other chars would in turn spend more coin for. But maybe I'm wrong.

I've also been thinking... Instead of a 1500plat up-front expenditure for a dwelling, plus the hirelings to run it. What if some of these vacant shops in Waterdeep and other places had a rental system. Say you rent a "key" to the place for X number of plat a month that gets drawn out of your bank account. Each shop could have a dwelling-type storeroom that items don't go POOF in, and instead of being tied to the player, it is tied to the rental shop (so if you don't pay your rent one month, say, your stuff is locked up unless you pay your rent up.) Drawbacks from a dwelling, you can't "live" in it, and anything in the storeroom would be up for sale, so a player wouldn't use it just for safekeeping as they would a dwelling storeroom, so it would be a more affordable system foor allowing player-run shops by players that aren't wanting to invest in a dwelling, especially since dwellings are basically on hold for now.

Gwain · Post by **Gwain** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:15 pm

You cannot really compare Fk currency to current real world currency, because Fk is not dervived from a contemporary real world. However, if you wanted you could look at real world currency from seven hundred years ago during the middle ages. A three coins marked with silver were good enough to purchase a stew pot, but it would take an average peasant around three years to earn this amount. A copper was good enough for a pint of beer and three copper was enough for an inn room. Nowadays coin is derived as a mark of wealth, sort of a modernist I.O.U. meaning that this piece of paper money symbolises the wealth behind it. Coin was originally derived by the value within it like gold and silver and to lower extent copper. The less valuable the metal, the more worthless the coin. I can't see a direct modern transaltion of real coinage from Fk coin. In game we rely on barter, our coin cannot be invested in stock or business unless you open a shop or enter in trade with a merchant.

There are those that take the time to trade items of poor quality to certain mobs and pc's and those that trade to whomever they want to based on a need to need basis. The inportant thing to understand is, that you trade in all those breastplates for coin and don't bother to buy anything back, you are basically forcing the merchant to go broke, because no one is buying his wares but everyone is selling to him. Eventually the bank will run dry. In essence we are selling in the hopes of making coin, but what we sell is not being bought by others. In real life, most merchants do not by from us, but sell instead, they are stocked by industry. In Fk we are the industry. How you sell something and what you recieve for it relies on how damaged the item is, what quality it is and of course, the amount of coin that the merchant has left to purchase it. How can you avoid this? Well you need to do what suites your roleplay best, but you need to look at selling things from an in character perspective. That if you sell "Stinky beat up armour" there is a chance that no one will buy it. And that if everyone does the same that the next time you have to sell something you will either recieve half of the price of item or the shopkeeper will not be able to make a purchase at all.

It's completely up to you what you do with your items though in my opinion as long as it is ic to sell them in the first place. Sometimes you need money and do not have time to conduct a trade with another pc or pc merchant. You just have to be flexible and try to maintain that this a game. No one should feel threatened ooc by the wealth of other players, if it is in your rp to gain wealth as readily as possible then there are lots of ways to do so that are both fun and engaging if you feel the need.
Thank you.

Isolrem · Post by **Isolrem** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:18 pm

Just because in the game no body wants crude armor doesn't mean nobody really wants them (now goblin manufactured items is not the best specific example here, but hear me out). In reality, these would be the armor used for training, and would be wholesaled at hundreds a time to the watch trainees, among other people. If some adventurer is willing to sell them from his loot, who would bother to make the ineffective cheap armor that's hardly worth the leather.
In other words, someone always has use for something, so maybe a system where cheap and untouched items would gradually clear out of a shop because mobs have purchased them (whether that actually happens is irrelevant) which seems to solve the problem of people getting annoyed with the spam of bad items. I'm sure plenty of us here are willing to complain about copyovers and reboots, but they happen. And if you have your eyes set on something good than don't think the other million potential buyers will let it slip away. In real life, popular shop keepers such as Bradigan will have trouble keeping his good items past the first visit by one of the legendary mobs, nobles, and secret lords.

Hviti · Post by **Hviti** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:46 pm

Just because in the game no body wants crude armor doesn't mean nobody really wants them

Could you clarify on which kinds of armour you are talking about? I'm pretty sure no self respecting watch soldier would be caught in smelly/tattered/rusty/broken armour, which is a large percentage of what may be seen in the shops. I don't really see why a watch trainee would want armor of that kind, and I'm fairly sure the majority of mobs don't give fairly nice and/or usable by mobs armor (at least none that seem to have had their belongings distributed among the WD merchants in great quantities)

IMO, training was fairly important. You got to make mistakes without dieing. Therefore, IMO a trainee would want to have as close to an actual combat experience as possible, complete with his regular armor, and often heavier weapons to get himself used to his actual fighting gear's weight, not some beaten up things from ye olde pawn shop. Maybe he might like some for light sparring, but probably not enough to balance the dozens of suits dumped on merchants.

No watch guys want to get hurt while training 'cause they bought armor in bad repair.

Edit:

Adressing Gwain, yes I agree with,

I can't see a direct modern transaltion of real coinage from Fk coin.

.

We have a fiduciary system, they had far fewer stable governements to back such a system (and fewer financial minds who could plan one).
I was just wondering if our system could compare (and if so if that could be used to address this issue), and evidently the answer is no. Thanks for clearing that up.

Isolrem · Post by **Isolrem** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 2:12 am

Actually, almost all self respecting soldier encounters a stage at which time he has to accept the torment of smelly, tattered, rusty, and broken armor. Every minor noble might have 20 or so servants and will outfit them for a small level of marital justice in his estate, but will not spend money on any decent ornaments.

Hviti · Post by **Hviti** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 2:38 am

What self respecting noble would have his guards (who stand outside/follow him around, therefore being a way to show off his wealth-or at least not show of his poverty) dressed in smelly, tattered, rusty, or broken armor? Sure, if studded leather ala the plain Berdusk stuff was on the merchants, that could happen, but I can't anyone buying smelly hill giant armor, then having it resized and patched. Even with import fees and time, Berdusk armor would probably take just about as much effort.

Perhaps starting soldiers/adventurers might not be able to afford good arms, but even if they started with such armor, they ought to a. earn money from their adventurers to get better armor b. give up and sell the armor back or c. die and have their possessions sold back by families who just don't get why people would want to be adventurers anyway

In other words, they would in some way eventually return the armor to the pool of objects to be sold, one way or another. And I doubt that there are enough up and coming adventurers to keep all the smelly/tattered/broken/rusted armor in circulation, especially with all the new input by PCs

Telk · Post by **Telk** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:08 am

I posted up the currency because you can see platinum is more than twice the amount of gold nowadays. And gold was quite a commodity and kings had various things made of pure gold to show their grandness. So I posted it as a example to compare crudely to modern days to middle age times. Hope that's clear, and that it may have actually helped somewhat

Upon the training armour. A training soldier isn't going to want to wear the heavy platemail that will exhaust him and make him hot. Most of the soldiers -did- wear leather training armour that wasn't in the best repair during training.

Hviti wrote:What self respecting noble would have his guards (who stand outside/follow him around, therefore being a way to show off his wealth-or at least not show of his poverty) dressed in smelly, tattered, rusty, or broken armor? Sure, if studded leather ala the plain Berdusk stuff was on the merchants, that could happen, but I can't anyone buying smelly hill giant armor, then having it resized and patched. Even with import fees and time, Berdusk armor would probably take just about as much effort.

Some guard wore regular leather armours on a 'normal' day, not necessarily crude patched leathers when ON guard. But those guards were not outfitted with quite expensive (which the studded leathers are IC) when they were/are training. Training does not mean standing out in the courtyard and jousting/swordfighting. On 'special' days the guards were more often than not fitted with decorative leathers or silks. Depending on how wealthy the noble was.

Hviti · Post by **Hviti** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 1:22 pm

Still, why would a noble go to the trouble of buying awful armor from merchants? Couldn't they just get rejects from tailors/armor makers? I just can't see a massive demand for all the bad armor out there. Even if nobles' guards used them, how many of those are there? Enough to balance out the massive number dumped on merchants?

Nearraba · Post by **Nearraba** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 3:50 pm

Hviti wrote: Still, why would a noble go to the trouble of buying awful armor from merchants? Couldn't they just get rejects from tailors/armor makers? I just can't see a massive demand for all the bad armor out there.

All right, I cannot necessarily see a 'noble' going through trouble to buy awful armor from merchants at all. There are some of those few role-plays though, that people wish to have armor like that for reasons of there own.

Though I do agree with Gwain's former post…

Gwain wrote: It's completely up to you what you do with your items though in my opinion as long as it is ic to sell them in the first place. Sometimes you need money and do not have time to conduct a trade with another pc or pc merchant. You just have to be flexible and try to maintain that this a game.

Hviti · Post by **Hviti** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 3:59 pm

However, getting that sort of armor from mobs would be just about as easy for a character as getting it from the merchants (though I guess probably not as easy IC). Coupled with the dearth of people who want to dress like that, I don't think there is would be enough demand for the armor from PCs -or- NPCs to balance the amount sold.

Isolrem · Post by **Isolrem** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 5:52 pm

I'm talking minor nobles

In truth, the majority of these in the city would be facing some level of financial troubles. Having servants-at-arms is somewhat of a status demand that they must meet... at least these is what I can gather of many circumstances that does occur in feudal and imperial civilizations. Even the lords and families in favor would have a number of ill-equipped soldiers at the bottom of their ranks. The same armor might be issued to militia-ranking watchmen after slight modifications.

Hviti · Post by **Hviti** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:27 pm

Hm. I have to check up on prices...a suit of this bad stuff costs less at a merchant for a character than a. killing the goblins/hillgiants (or getting someone to kill them) or b. buying full nice-but-not-pricey armor (plain or studded leathers, or player made ones, seem to retail at about the same prices)?

Isolrem, I don't dispute the fact that there are minor nobles. However, I'm not sure that there are enough to buy -everything- the merchants have. When every merchant has full suits of tattered/rusty/broken/smelly armor, ya kinda wonder about who buys all of it. Maybe a few merchants could be 'cleaned', but I'm not sure how that would happen.

Also, how would this work anyway? Would mobs just randomly buy items of merchants, or would there be new mobs created for this, or would the items just vanish after, say, a week IRL, or something entirely different?

Hviti · Post by **Hviti** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 2:09 am

Something I'd like to add, about making platemail and magical (metal) armour damage more often... If that is done (and I still think it is a good idea to do so), it should be made possible to repair them at mobs. Maybe not all repairers, but at least several of them. (Dwarven) smiths are not so common that it is possible to find one to have something repaired.

I might be completely wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure there are repairers out there for everything magical except type energy and type unknown items.