This week I did some real gloves-off editing on chapter one. It got pretty red, but most edits were minor. As I was pressing Agamemnon to rubber stamp chapter two for final editing, we ran into some weirdness with monetary system. Who saw that one coming, right?
In any case, it is now abundantly clear for us why most games either make the economy thing completely up, or abstract it all into Resources or something other equally vague. I sincerely hope we can wrap that issue up this evening as Agamemnon wakes up (and yes, this latter can only make sense in our timezone-lagged partnership).
"You can never have too many knives."
- Logen Ninefingers, The Blade Itself
I can hardly imagine how game designers even manage to create those monetary systems! How do you know how much should this or that particular item cost?! How to make a decent list of useful items that characters would wish to buy?.. In certain fantasy roleplaying game (OK, I'm talking about Warhammer as I usually do) when I look at the inventory page I see that the prices don't make any sense whatsoever. This is a fantasy world indeed if even the lowliest peasant carries a couple o' gold pieces in his pocket!
In that regard TRoS items list had much more realistic prices. Wish you luck, guys, in this important task! In such setting as "Bastards' everything concerning money is important. You got to make the money 'tangible' somehow.
I think in reality, it has been a highly flexible system with everchanging values and the church trying to regulate as much as possible (standard prices for standard wares on the markets).
Should be no easy task But "the more enemies, the more honor".
Siggi wrote:How do you know how much should this or that particular item cost?! How to make a decent list of useful items that characters would wish to buy?
Well, luckily there are surviving sources, but these tend to have quite random items in them. Frankly, we guesstimate quite a bit, but with the historical sources as a frame of reference. Being quotable in a textbook is nice, but in the end, we're building a game after all.
P.S.
Don't tell Agamemnon, but I snuck away from the keyboard to a quick tourney while he was asleep.
"You can never have too many knives."
- Logen Ninefingers, The Blade Itself
Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife — chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: "Now it’s complete because it’s ended here."
Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib, the Princess Irulan
No new final-edited chapters this week, but we've done so much reviewing that I can almost feel a chapter or two chapter ending up in the editing room quite soon. Agamemnon has the better overview on the overall progress, but it hasn't been a bad week at all. I'm quite pleased with the amount of work we got done.
As far as the wealth system is concerned, I'm frustrated to say that we're still tackling it. The existing system is consistent, flavorful and works, except for one detail -- it's ridiculously easy to exploit. And the flaw can't really be written out since, it's basically the whole premise of it. We may or may not go into further detail about all that, but right now we're seriously considering a narrative money solution.
"You can never have too many knives."
- Logen Ninefingers, The Blade Itself
higgins wrote:No new final-edited chapters this week, but we've done so much reviewing that I can almost feel a chapter or two chapter ending up in the editing room quite soon.
Nice. Thanks for the update!
higgins wrote:As far as the wealth system is concerned, I'm frustrated to say that we're still tackling it. The existing system is consistent, flavorful and works, except for one detail -- it's ridiculously easy to exploit. And the flaw can't really be written out since, it's basically the whole premise of it. We may or may not go into further detail about all that, but right now we're seriously considering a narrative money solution.
I know there are other points of view round here but I just want to say for the record... I'm more than happy with a narrative solution for money. The other rulesets I'm currently playing have all gone down that route to one degree or another (Blade, Cortex Plus) and I personally find it elegant and liberating. I suspect I may be in the minority though.
Abstract system for wealth handling works sometimes and sometimes can cause problems.
If you just want to buy food and lodging, even for buying "adventuring" gear it works fine. It can work fine when you get steady income from a job or other source. But if you make a heist or find treasure, how can you handle that? I stumbled upon that when I was reading Burning Wheel some years ago.
I understood that your system was less abstract and I hope you can make it work as it looked promising.
Sorry for the lack of activity this week. It was kind of busy for both of us, but we managed to clean up the Flaws section. Might not sound too impressive feat, but we DO have a LOT of them.
As for making our money system problems public... I'll float that idea to Agamemnon and we'll see.
"You can never have too many knives."
- Logen Ninefingers, The Blade Itself
Sorry for the late update. I fell asleep last night while working on the NPC section slash bestiary. Also we've decided upon abstract coinage to smooth things out.
"You can never have too many knives."
- Logen Ninefingers, The Blade Itself
But "the more enemies, the more honor".
