Episode 543: Obliviously wealthy.

[rogonandi]

Here's the next comic. Julie's squaring everything up with the front desk of the hotel they were staying in. Apparently there were a couple of other things her sister and Rocky did, but they didn't turn out to amount to too much extra cost...well, to a group of rich, seasoned adventurers anyway.



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[memnarch]

Obliviously wealthy indeed. I somewhat expect the desk worker to ask why wouldn't everyone go adventuring and learn about the downsides.

[Nothing important.]

Hi,

Maybe it is not the appropriate place for this, but there is a typo in the 9th panel: "because" is written "becauase".

[rogonandi]

Apr 1, 2014 15:18:34 GMT Nothing important. said:

Hi,

Maybe it is not the appropriate place for this, but there is a typo in the 9th panel: "because" is written "becauase".

It's the perfect place to tell me of such things. Thanks for telling me though, and I have fixed it.

[Honest Mistake]

This strip is just confusing me.

First:
The maths, why would you make a system of like this?
(I promise my I don't normally write my maths with messy)
400*g aprox= 2100*s
g aprox= 5.25*s
assuming Julie’s over paying, that means 1 gold probably equals 6 silver. Why? I mean if you're going to make a monetary system, it makes sense to keep it aligned with your base system. You want to make transactions quick and simple, money is a catalyst for the exchange of goods and services after all.

Second:
Didn't Julie grow up working in a pub/inn of some form? Furthermore, due to the existence of teleportation and/or other magic’s, (especially after the description of the stalemate between the elves and empire) I assume travel times/information is low/generalised enough that the prices set should pretty similar across the globe. For her character it doesn't really make sense that she would expect the bill to be in gold if the above is true.

Regardless aside from those personal little question, fun little scene.

[frankomancer]

The sad thing is he didnt make the system that way; the genre did.
I actually just ran into this problem (?) at my last Pathfinder meeting I DM. My players had just gone to town (in a longship that they stole from a different town), and wanted to get some supplies and armor. While I had left some silver and a few copper pieces for them to grab in past adventures, they rarely bothered taking it, and just focused on gold. It was simpler to calculate and write down, and anything worth buying would cost only gold anyway.
Unfortunately, the townsfolk made about 100 gold a year, ( a suggestion given in both my Pathfinder and DnD books,) but the cost of armor and such was in silver. The Pathfinder book lists the prices in gold, but if I followed that then the average NPC could either buy one sword or one wagon a year... so I switched it to silver. It took my players a while to find somewhere that had enough silver to give them in exchange for their gold.
Is it just me, or does the economy of the typical fantasy world become a total mess under close inspection? I get the fact that an economy based on currency people can literally WISH for will be a bit shaky, but come on.

TL;DR: The money system basically guarantees the only way to get any money is to become an adventurer.

[Naomi Li]

Note: There are 10 silver pieces to the gold piece, so she was giving an almost 100% tip.

A lot of the assumptions made don't make any sense... under the common interpretations.

For example, obviously an average person makes far more WEALTH than is assumed, but that could very readily be their available spending money after normal expenses (feeding everyone, medical care, entertainment, equipment repairs, protection money etc).
In addition, they probably make most of what they're going to need or trade for it at far better prices than adventurers get. Adventurers get gouged because they're rich and they're outsiders (generally), two massive strikes against them. They don't have the local goodwill to get "market" prices.


Assuming everyone uses the same profession/crafting rules, that is actually a very reliable way of getting a good income in. Provided expenses aren't too high (like getting gouged for all magic in a way that REALLY doesn't make any sense unless the supply of magic is being kept artificially low or there's extensive price-fixing) then it wouldn't be unreasonable for a family to get some decent magical items over the decades. Maybe even spring for sufficient reincarnations to stick around indefinitely.


Though yes, I think a lot of the fluff is just plain silly and casually ignore a great deal of it, myself.

[rogonandi]

Apr 1, 2014 23:12:01 GMT Honest Mistake said:

This strip is just confusing me.

First:
The maths, why would you make a system of like this?
(I promise my I don't normally write my maths with messy)
400*g aprox= 2100*s
g aprox= 5.25*s
assuming Julie’s over paying, that means 1 gold probably equals 6 silver. Why? I mean if you're going to make a monetary system, it makes sense to keep it aligned with your base system. You want to make transactions quick and simple, money is a catalyst for the exchange of goods and services after all.

Second:
Didn't Julie grow up working in a pub/inn of some form? Furthermore, due to the existence of teleportation and/or other magic’s, (especially after the description of the stalemate between the elves and empire) I assume travel times/information is low/generalised enough that the prices set should pretty similar across the globe. For her character it doesn't really make sense that she would expect the bill to be in gold if the above is true.

Regardless aside from those personal little question, fun little scene.

Naomi Li's correct in that 1 gold is equal to 10 silver, and Naomi Li's also correct in that Julie gave them a massive gratuity for what the bill was. Julie was being very, very kind here...but she's usually a very kind person anyway.

Julie didn't grow up working at a Pub/Inn and actually led a rich and somewhat spoiled lifestyle. In reality she has only really been working at The Wayside (Patterson's Bar) for less than a year before she got that fateful dream telling her of the Magicant Quest. Perhaps the bill she received didn't specify the type of currency she needed to use and she assumed gold out of the habits of adventuring.

[Crystalwind]

Wow. This strip may be the most obvious demonstration of the character's wealth and power yet. Rocky stole stuff from all the other rooms even though beer is so cheap in D&D because it improved the taste. Angelika got food for everyone else in the entire inn simply because she didn't want to leave her room. Julie assumes that beer and food would cost more than a 200-person banquet because she's so used to dealing in more valuable currencies... And then gives almost twice the needed amount.
As near as I can tell, the only reason adventurers don't own 99% of the money in the world is the fact that merchants make 100% off of every single one of their sales. Come to think of it, D&D economies are pretty screwed up.

[Honest Mistake]

So from what I understand then, Adventure's both make, and need the most money. I'd be willing to accept this except of the imbalance that would be caused by the multiplier effect any time an adventures spent money. What this means that for every additional dollar earned by an individual, they will save/taxed/import goods and the rest they will spend back into the economy. Ergo why building architecture is such a stimulant for an economy. So any time an adventurer like ju lie did something like that, the ramifications, on a small enough scale would be easily observed. Furthermore, say back when Julie gave a donation to the temple, if they normally only receive donations from citizens (been reading some of the owner series, terminology affecting my brain) then they should have a huge economic effect.

I really should just let it this all drop, I mean I’m happy to play games where physics is all screwy, but as soon as someone starts making shonky economic models. !HERESY! I feel it may have something to do with how economics is in large that mathematics of predicting and analysing human behaviour on a species scale (hence why it isn't a subset of psychology). Actually, perfect simile economics is to psychology what engineering is to physics.

[Crystalwind]

Apr 3, 2014 15:39:32 GMT Honest Mistake said:

So from what I understand then, Adventure's both make, and need the most money. I'd be willing to accept this except of the imbalance that would be caused by the multiplier effect any time an adventures spent money. What this means that for every additional dollar earned by an individual, they will save/taxed/import goods and the rest they will spend back into the economy. Ergo why building architecture is such a stimulant for an economy. So any time an adventurer like ju lie did something like that, the ramifications, on a small enough scale would be easily observed. Furthermore, say back when Julie gave a donation to the temple, if they normally only receive donations from citizens (been reading some of the owner series, terminology affecting my brain) then they should have a huge economic effect.

I really should just let it this all drop, I mean I’m happy to play games where physics is all screwy, but as soon as someone starts making shonky economic models. !HERESY! I feel it may have something to do with how economics is in large that mathematics of predicting and analysing human behaviour on a species scale (hence why it isn't a subset of psychology). Actually, perfect simile economics is to psychology what engineering is to physics.

Actually, this really wouldn't raise that many issues aside from the ones we have nowadays, considering that we have ridiculously rich people here, too. Sure moderate-level adventurers by more stuff from small towns, but I imagine they usually start to favour bigger cities later on in their careers and, in many cases, retire as soon as they're set for life. Hell, after 9th/10th level, it may be most efficient to just head to some fabulously wealthy coastal city to sleep the night and get equipment, then head back to your adventure in the morning... And by 14th level, literally going to heaven every night is an option. Simply put, after a certain point, there's just no reason for adventurers to go anywhere less than magnificent.
Also, this isn't taking into account the number of adventurers. For all we know, most families could have at least one 8th-level adventurer in them.

[Naomi Li]

Also remember that most adventurers do almost nothing to produce wealth. The biggest effect they typically have on an economy is dumping huge quantities of previously-lost-coinage back into it. Granted, there's also occasionally saving the lives of the people and preventing damage, but the murderhobos rarely even return wealth to the populace. (Well, aside from when people destroy the coins and make use of the metals for something genuinely useful).

So, except for dealing with economic inefficiencies (possibly, and they're definitely present) the average standard of living would not actually increase. There's still the same amount of food, weapons, armour, magical items, etc. Almost all of the actual wealth creation is done by the general populace.