From: Mark S. c/o Tom Yates (marks@slough.mit.edu)
Date: Tue 01 Feb 1994 - 04:57:29 EET
I wrote:
>>Coin prices are a useful convience for players and GM
>>alike. If a gamemaster is wants to put in the extra effort to
>>detail this part of the world,a price list is as useful a
>>place to start as a set of barter points. Most people will
>>find the effort required to model bartering a useless waste of
>>time at best, and an annoying distraction from storytelling
>>at worst.
John Medway replyed:
>Why would fixed cash prices -- and what I see with it: a
>register-tape from the checkout at Target -- seem to fit
>storytelling better? Neither are appropriate for a bronze age
>society, and neither fits the picture.
If the story the players are telling has more to do with
certain aspects of a character's moral development, for example,
then they might consider bartering a waste of time that didn't
advance the story. On the other hand, if one's main interest was
social realism, then bartering would add to one's suspension of
disbelief. R:AG needs some guidelines for the value of items.
Money is the abstraction that both Gloranthans and we use when
talking about the value of goods. A coin price list is as
useful to gamers who barter as a a list of abstract barter
points.
JM:
>Even *advanced* societies of antiquity, with coin and currency
>systems, conducted the bulk of trade, especially on a lower
>level, with barter. This is the way the people would think, buy
>and sell.
A price table that lists the usual relative value of items
is not incompatible with that fact.
I agree with you that the rules would be better if they offered
the GM more advice on the reasons why prices vary. Hard and
fast rules on mercantile activity might not, however, be
possible. Rough guidelines would be better than a Traveller
type system that the players could easily crock.
I wrote:
>>I would imagine that in Glorantha the value of the coin
>>would be based SOLELY on the value of it's metal.
Devin Cutler replyed:
>This is not so. The value of Gloranthan coins is roughly twice
>its metal value. This is borne out by the value of metal rules
>in Elder Secrets and by the Lokarnos Divine Magic Mint Coin.
If this is how RQIII treats money, then R:AG should change the
rules. The idea that people value metal twice as much because
it is shaped into coins is silly. I'm no economic historian,
but I doubt any Gloranthan society is complex enough to issue
fiat money.
Even if one accepted the idea that wheels are token coins, the
Coin Wheel spell is unreasonable. A divine magic spell that
creates a single wheel! The merchant cast the spell, makes a
profit of 10 lunars, and then has to spend an entire day
regaining the spell. As a merchant has a 16 lunars standard of
living; so he loses 6 lunars in the end.
Mark S.
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