Author Topic: More Realistic Gold Roleplay  (Read 1988 times)

Alverin

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More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« on: August 10, 2018, 09:38:52 AM »
Most RP that I've seen on my short time on the server revolving money has left me dis-immersed in the world, though not completely obliterating my verisimilitude. The reason being that most transactions are occurring strictly with wolf fangs (gold pieces), not taking into account all the other coins we have at our disposal! 

When characters make transactions of 1-5 thousand gold coins, I imagine they're handing them something like this-



Full of gold coins, either that or a coffer. When I feel like the reality could be something much less extravagant and more meager, thus adding to our grim setting.

Now I'd like to inform the readers that this is more of a personal suggestion to the player-base, an alternative to the currently dominating system of "counts out some gold coins" to add that extra dimension to value.

However, it could also be a suggestion to the developers to simply change the name of most of our currency, just as a way to remind our players of what they're really spending.

Currently, it's not that hard to have 1-2k gold in your bag at any time, however that's not really the case since 50 coins weigh one pound. 5000 coins weigh about 100. So it's much more likely that our coins are split up, it's also unlikely that all of these coins are GOLD especially since gold is fairly valuable in our DnD world.

I believe a good generalization for the value of gold, though not entirely accurate, is that 1 gold peice is similar to a $100 dollar bill in buying power. It works well with our core book statistics. As a result, our other coins gain relative values of:

1cp=$1 dollar
1sp=$10 dollars
1gp=$100 dollars
1pp=$1000 dollars

Here are some examples of how these value associations are useful.

According to 3.5, a full mug of ale can cost you about 4cp (or 4 bucks)

Bread costs 2cp (2 bucks)

Meals (per day)
Good    5 sp (50 bucks) - A really nice restaurant
Common    3 sp (30 bucks) - A restaurant you like
Poor     1 sp (10 bucks) - Carls Jr.

Inn stay (per day)
Good    2 gp    (200 bucks) - A nice hotel
Common    5 sp    (50 bucks) - Low end Hotel
Poor            2 sp  (20 bucks) - Motel

A heavy horse costs 200gp or $20,000. About the cost of a new Honda Civic.

However, my new Rogue of only a week has about 2000gp, or the PHB equivalent of 200,000 copper pieces. He could live in a common inn for 10 years as per the book.

My suggestion is to alter the perception of "Gold Pieces" and instead just assume they're copper pieces, or Rat-Teeth, it's an easy fix that makes more thematic sense.

It's also super easy to figure how much you're giving someone. Let's say you're buying herbs for 2,184gp. You hand them 2 platinum, 1 gold, 8 silver and 4 copper. That's a total of  15 coins, much more feasible than 2,184 gold pieces.

This adds value to our grim-dark gothic setting, instead of handing over chests and bags of gold, you're counting out coins of different colors, with their value determined by the counts themselves.

And for value purposes, my character now has 2,000 "dollars" or 2,000 Copper, or just 20 Gold Pieces. Which now means he can now only stay in that same Inn for about 4 ten-days (a month and ten days) before he's gotta figure out another way to make some money again.

Thanks for reading my suggestion and please feel free to share any and all thoughts associated with this idea. I'll be happy to respond to any questions or inquiries based around this superior system for economical immersion.
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People are not responsible for their actions as a result.

ladylena

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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #1 on: August 10, 2018, 10:13:48 AM »
I've always considered it that the character would have the highest available coin to them. So like someone who travels to port, would have access to platinum bits, but someone who remains in Barovia wouldn't.

I think we only have the gold as it's a system thing of nwn, but I could be wrong.
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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #2 on: August 10, 2018, 11:27:30 AM »
Gold in this game is much like the different passages of time.  Whereas the game does not go by 1 to 1 time in game, it 'does' in a story sense.  1 real life day is 1 day in game, regardless of nights and day cycles and month cycles in game.  Its for the same reason as this system of gold as we have exists - simple convenience.

Iridni Ren

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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #3 on: August 10, 2018, 11:33:45 AM »
The NPC prices for things are pretty inconsistent and strange, and it would be easy to list a hundred examples. The wealth of PCs, however, will inevitably vary wildly because of the necessity of making dungeoning at least somewhat worthwhile versus various players' willingness to grind them.

My main will generally have about 25K to her name. That's a fortune to most Barovians, but nothing compared to the wealth you will see on display at an auction for a highly valued item. I suspect some PCs are fang millionaires. See, for example, some of the recent bounties offered.

In terms of systems, however, this is not something I would like the Devs spending their time on. Going around trying to balance the prices for everything would be tedious and unlikely to result in anything everyone could agree on anyway. As long as PCs vary in their wealth so greatly, most prices have to be relatively low or shut out players from affording them. At the same time, to make prices at all meaningful to players means goods must be absurdly extravagant to the common folk (NPCs).

Regarding your own RP and what you personally enjoy, you can make transactions as elaborate as you like. A balance between realism/detail and tediousness, however, is much individual taste and a decision of where one wants to put her energy. (A Dev likewise might decide a more complex money system would help immersion and want to work on it.) This is something I don't have trouble "imagining" for the sake of simplicity.

ETA: Nem's comparison about time is apt.  The contradictory way time functions is terribly immersion breaking, but it sort of works and is necessary.

You know what they say: "Time is money."  :mrgreen:

« Last Edit: August 10, 2018, 11:54:47 AM by Iridni Ren »

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Jeebs

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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #4 on: August 10, 2018, 12:55:22 PM »
While I agree that it's a bit ridiculous that you can have a king's ransom on your person and it literally weighs nothing, I'm not sure there needs to be mechanical changes to fix the issue. Assuming it's even possible, because the only currency NWN recognizes is gold pieces and that's likely hard-coded, there's likely all kinds of other things the developers should prioritize.

However, one thing you can do is RP it as something else. I have a wild elf character who would never carry gold since to him it's something that is practically worthless, not to mention that a bag of coins would probably clink together as you walk and hamper your ability to be stealthy. What I do in his case is RP any gold he carries or occasionally pays other players for w/e reason as gems. When I have a transaction with another player, even though I'm giving them gold pieces, I emote it as "hands over a few gems" that one can simply assume is worth approximately the same value as the gold pieces I give them. I even go so far as to usually give them a slight bit more (an odd number too) to simulate that I'm not handing out a specific amount of gold. It's not perfect, but if that helps you with immersion, by all means use it.
« Last Edit: August 10, 2018, 12:57:28 PM by Jeebs »

Alverin

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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #5 on: August 13, 2018, 03:50:05 PM »
The NPC prices for things are pretty inconsistent and strange, and it would be easy to list a hundred examples. The wealth of PCs, however, will inevitably vary wildly because of the necessity of making dungeoning at least somewhat worthwhile versus various players' willingness to grind them.

My main will generally have about 25K to her name. That's a fortune to most Barovians, but nothing compared to the wealth you will see on display at an auction for a highly valued item. I suspect some PCs are fang millionaires. See, for example, some of the recent bounties offered.

In terms of systems, however, this is not something I would like the Devs spending their time on. Going around trying to balance the prices for everything would be tedious and unlikely to result in anything everyone could agree on anyway. As long as PCs vary in their wealth so greatly, most prices have to be relatively low or shut out players from affording them. At the same time, to make prices at all meaningful to players means goods must be absurdly extravagant to the common folk (NPCs).

Regarding your own RP and what you personally enjoy, you can make transactions as elaborate as you like. A balance between realism/detail and tediousness, however, is much individual taste and a decision of where one wants to put her energy. (A Dev likewise might decide a more complex money system would help immersion and want to work on it.) This is something I don't have trouble "imagining" for the sake of simplicity.

ETA: Nem's comparison about time is apt.  The contradictory way time functions is terribly immersion breaking, but it sort of works and is necessary.

You know what they say: "Time is money."  :mrgreen:

I'll address you since you seem to present the other commenters arguments in the most apt fashion, however I am indeed replying to everyone elses points here as well.

To address the varying amounts of gold players have, that's an issue entirely separate, though I'm not sure I personally consider it to be a problem in any way that players gold amount fluctuates highly, such as 25k-1mil. Those numbers seem to be fair given the time the server has existed, and as long as there's never a lack of money-sinks, all will be spent well. I don't think, as of now, the costs of things need to be balanced.

I'd like to point out, this is less about making a complex change to the system, and more about spreading awareness of a very simple way to swap up your typing style that can present a more intriguing role play experience to others observing. It does eventually come down to a balance between realism/detail and tediousness, as you pointed out. We know this, so what I'm presenting is a method that I believe is a superior opinion. You can easily glance at 4578 gp and know you have 4plat 5 gold 7 silv and 8 copper, for any transaction. You will usually be dealing in coins, for the most part, trade bars for higher transactions, such as 20k^.  So that makes it easy.

This is more realistic and detailed than [Counts out some coins to him] For newer players everything kinda just molds together and they never really experience the depth of the world.

If what type of currency we use didn't matter so much, what's the point of the "Currency of the Core" page? I feel like you have to introduce people to the idea of detailed currency before they know it exists and want to use it. It's much easier to introduce this way. And it's a good thing to introduce, for the same reason we play in this theme and people learn all the different languages of Ravenloft, and we spend so much time dressing up our characters in a certain way. Let's dress up our roleplay too so it comes out just as nice and fancy as everything else.
We live in a deterministic world. Everything that will happen is measurable, though not by humans. We cannot truly control anything we do, therefor freewill doesn't actually exist.

People are not responsible for their actions as a result.

Iridni Ren

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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #6 on: August 13, 2018, 04:14:15 PM »
I'd like to point out, this is less about making a complex change to the system, and more about spreading awareness of a very simple way to swap up your typing style that can present a more intriguing role play experience to others observing. It does eventually come down to a balance between realism/detail and tediousness, as you pointed out. We know this, so what I'm presenting is a method that I believe is a superior opinion. You can easily glance at 4578 gp and know you have 4plat 5 gold 7 silv and 8 copper, for any transaction. You will usually be dealing in coins, for the most part, trade bars for higher transactions, such as 20k^.  So that makes it easy.

This is more realistic and detailed than [Counts out some coins to him] For newer players everything kinda just molds together and they never really experience the depth of the world.

If what type of currency we use didn't matter so much, what's the point of the "Currency of the Core" page? I feel like you have to introduce people to the idea of detailed currency before they know it exists and want to use it. It's much easier to introduce this way. And it's a good thing to introduce, for the same reason we play in this theme and people learn all the different languages of Ravenloft, and we spend so much time dressing up our characters in a certain way. Let's dress up our roleplay too so it comes out just as nice and fancy as everything else.

An expression that you're likely to see a lot if you hang around is "be the change you want to be"--and I don't mean that flippantly. Because actually I do tend to model my RP on that of those I'm interacting with at the time. If I were to interact with your character and you began RPing the financial exchange in a creative and engaging way, I hope I would try to do the same. (Admittedly, I have  my better and worse days, depending on how tired I am or or much I need to get to something else.)

Moreover, any behavior I see in game and think "Wow, that's cool!" I will try to incorporate (steal) for later! The more I see it reinforced and adopted, the more likely that I'll get good at it and not fall back on my default.

My own style is to rely a lot on what my PC is saying, how she says it, and the expression she makes. I'm weaker at prop-oriented or otherwise more physical RP.

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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #7 on: August 13, 2018, 09:32:44 PM »
I agree with what you're saying, but since we cant mechanically fix it all the way my head canon rolls with it is that if say a PC buys 2000gp item they really only give a few gold/silver/copper in bags plus then off screen do simple trade or item good exchanges/work to make up the difference

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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #8 on: August 16, 2018, 02:13:26 AM »
The general store could sell coin pouches of holding only to be used for gems and RP-purpose coins. Doesn't have to actually have any magic properties on the item itself either.

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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #9 on: August 16, 2018, 03:06:41 AM »
I agree with this. I have often role played going back to someplace to retrieve a small chest of coins that was left off my person, or used actual gems, RP'd platinum pieces and rolled coins, and gold bars that would represent a value of 10k. It's easier to assume you can carry a gold bar or two rather than a chest of ten thousand to twenty thousand loose coins, and I have even made a point to RP exchanging them for "change" lol.

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Alverin

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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #10 on: August 17, 2018, 03:58:47 PM »
I agree with this. I have often role played going back to someplace to retrieve a small chest of coins that was left off my person, or used actual gems, RP'd platinum pieces and rolled coins, and gold bars that would represent a value of 10k. It's easier to assume you can carry a gold bar or two rather than a chest of ten thousand to twenty thousand loose coins, and I have even made a point to RP exchanging them for "change" lol.

The best you can do is lead by example and with group think and being inspired by seeing the RP, others will eventually follow suit.

I think something neat that could set us apart from other servers would be experimenting with a system that actually uses Plat/Gold/Silver/Copper as small stackable items in your inventory. It would be neat to see how people adapt around the economy, though this would be near impossible to implement for NPC shops, so it's just a moot desire at this point.
We live in a deterministic world. Everything that will happen is measurable, though not by humans. We cannot truly control anything we do, therefor freewill doesn't actually exist.

People are not responsible for their actions as a result.

zDark Shadowz

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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #11 on: August 19, 2018, 09:09:22 PM »
(deleted)
« Last Edit: August 19, 2018, 10:17:52 PM by zDark Shadowz »

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Re: More Realistic Gold Roleplay
« Reply #12 on: August 20, 2018, 05:42:34 AM »
It is possible, but it's a huge thing actually because the systems that puts in place does things like add weight to the gold you carry in the form of weighted items to account for the amount of gold/silver/copper you have, so it will weigh down your character and take up inventory slots to account for the wight. It also makes store transactions more complicated, and would be a lot of work for the devs to implement correctly because they would have to re work all the stores. It's also resource heavy on the module so has the potential to increase latency, for these reasons I doubt they would consider using it. It would also be a major change and quite often adding things like this usually ends up  of causing more negative consequences than positive, which could lead to a drop in popularity in the module.