Ducatto

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So, in case anyone is unaware, Profound Decisions have kindly donated the Ducatto from Maelstrom to CUTT. So we now have to decide what to do with them. There will be an EGM at the start of term to vote on this, but in the interest of doing LRP in our LRP sessions, let’s have most of the discussion on here.

All my opinions written here are as a person not a ref. Play nice. --Steph.

1 Silver Ducatto (888)
4 Silver Ducatto (587)
16 Silver Ducatto (520)
64 Silver Ducatto (468)
1 Gold Ducatto (128 SD to 1 GD) (272)
4 Gold Ducatto (673)

EGM

There is going to be an EGM on "what should we do with the Ducatto?" on the first week of term.

Thoughts on motions/approach to motions should go here, please.

Motion 1: The ducatto should be used as our primary currency.

I support this one: as essentially all specifics about the currency are within the remit of the refs to change, I'd rather just decide to change it and we decide based on the discussion that's happened on this and elsewhere. -- Salavant

Motion 2: 64 Sd to the Gd seems sensible, so we set the rate at that.

Motion 3: 16 Sd == 10 Sh

I have no real dog in this one - going to 16Sd = 10sh also seems reasonable, but I wanted to pick a number so that we could get a move on. --Tea
Me neither. We could do some sort of vote between the two? Or flip a coin! --ahdok
I think that 16 would be a much better number due to 10 shillings being the lowest practical amount that PC's care about, having it at 32 makes 1 ducatto effectively worthless and makes it harder to have epic loot hordes. Its also 1 coin for standard income --Drac
I think Drac makes a good point, and would like to subscribe to his newsletter. Ahdok - I've edited the motion text accordingly, if you object please take your name off. --Tea
Motion 4: After a plot to introduce the new currency and provide IC rationale for the change, we use all of the existing skills and prices, appropriately substituted.

General Discussion

So there are several things to discuss.

1. What to actually do with the coins?

Personally, I think it would be a huge waste of these coins to not use them as our day to day currency. They could instead be random old treasure or something, but it’s so cool we’ve been given these, let’s not leave them in a cupboard. --Steph

2. If we are using them instead of shillings, what should the exchange rate be?

I don’t have the numbers of coins to hand, but we aren’t going to run out of coins even if we use a silly exchange rate. There are loads. Instead, I’d like to use one that lets us use most of the coins without having to take a tonne to interactives. The main sensible two are therefore, in my opinion, 8 ducatto to a shilling or 16 ducatto to a shilling. I think 8 is better, because a) it means standard income of 10 shillings is only 2 coins, 64 ducatto and 16 ducatto, and is easy to break up, b) you only get gold if you take income skills, which seems nicely appropriate, c) a 4 gold ducatto piece instantly becomes a big deal to flash about. :) --Steph

I'm in favour of making the exchange rate 32 Ducatto to 10 shillings, because I think it's good to have all incomes possible with the fewest number of coins possible. The incomes this way are (32),(32+16),(64),(64+16) - which are easier to hand out, and give a reasonable spread of the middle value coins to people as their income. The smallest coin will be less than 1/30th of the base income, meaning that it's tiny compared to your weekly income - so chump change will be more of a thing than it was before, and the biggest coin is a lot bigger than a decent income, meaning it's a big deal. I'd err towards more space available at the top than the bottom - the 1sh note already feels fairly irrelevant, and having lots of coins worth 1/10th of that isn't going to add a lot to our economy.

I do think it's important to keep the default number of coins used as small as possible, we have about 50 characters, and if they all collected income for a few weeks, we'd make a huge dent in our supply. Currently, people think of shillings in terms of 5s and 10s (because these are the numbers that come out of our income system.) - We we want to get to the stage of thinking of money in powers of two (as the currency is all in powers of two) - and moving to a rate where people are thinking in blocks of 16 and 32 as the basic amounts is more helpful than moving to 80 and 40. -- Ahdok

As well as keeping the number of coins as small as possible, keeping the default income value as small as possible, because that is in practicality, the smallest denomination in use in the system. If a player thinks about money, they think in multiples of 10 shillings, co-coincidently that's also what the most basic adventure services cost (level 1 scrolls or potions), anything less is worthless. As a gut feeling I would aim for 10 shillings = 8 silver. That still gives us something below for peasants to have, but it can soon add up. I would personally combine this with 1GD = 64SD below, but this is gut feelings rather than sitting down with pen and paper and working it out. Annoyingly 8SD produces most coins for income 0 which is the most common. --Drac

Current economic things are partly affected by the smallest denomination being a tenth of a Useful Thing. If I had the option to give trivial amounts of money for trivial tasks, I would, and I think it'd be Cool And Fun - tipping the urchin messenger, giving an insultingly small amount of money as an 'apology' for attacking someone, small bets... --MorkaisChosen

3. What to do about currency inflation?

So, with the shillings we’ve had with each reprint reducing the worth of those before to stop hording. We can’t reprint the ducatto. However, I feel the easiest thing is just to let this go. It was to stop money hording, but the people who want to horde money still do, and this doesn’t really unbalance the game in a noticeable way from what I’ve seen. We could up the conversion rate or something complicated like that each year, but that seems like a lot of effort for very minimal benefit to me. --Steph

4. Should there be an IC excuse for us all suddenly using Ducatto or should we pretend it's been like this all along --Joey

The refs are happy to run a plot for this and have vague ideas. --Steph

For what it's worth I personally would have no problem handwaving it all, but plots are interesting and fun. --Joey

I think it would be more fun to have a plot introducing it. Since the refs said they would be ok with it, I would like if we went with this option. --Shyndree

Surely the plot for this is fairly easy as a lightist ruler would be very interested in incorruptible and amagic metal currency. -Hark

5. Should elves be affected by carrying too much money?

Gut instinct says no, for <reasons> because otherwise it's a pain. I like it in principle for flavour but think in practise it will be tiresome. --Steph

Hm, initially I thought there could be some limitation, but then thinking about the enormous coin values, it could be really annoying if a mage or elemental elf got stuck with a lot of small coins, and couldn't easily convert them. So I guess not. I wonder how feasible it would be to make the coins very weakly magical objects. But I guess Children of the Light, etc. would go crazy on them... --Shyndree

We already assume that jewellery, metal belt buckles and etc. don't count towards metal limits. So I think it's quite reasonable for it not to do so. --Joey
On the other hand, it also makes perfect sense for our new lord protector to introduce a form of coinage that annoys elves... You'd need to be carrying a lot of coins before you got up to even half a dagger's worth though...--Ahdok
I like this as a "thing", but from a practicality PoV? think that "you would have to be carrying lots and lots before it makes a difference" to be the best option. --Drac
Precious metals didn't count towards metal limits last time I checked (which would've been a few AGMs back). I think there's even some metaphysics to it. Probably analogous with ferromagnetism. --NT
Correct. Basically any metal that isn't used for armour or weapons doesn't hurt elves so Elves can have nice things that aren't giving them a mechanical benefit. --dp

6. How can we make use of the full huge range of coins? The biggest coin value is 512 times the smallest coin value.

I believe this goes under question 2, what should the exchange rate be. --Steph

But we could use the silver ducatto for currency and the gold ducatto for a different currency or treasure or something else --Joey
Or, we could make 1GD equivalent to 64 SD rather than 128SD. This increases the number of coins we have around the 64SD range, which I believe we're most short on... --Ahdok
This is an excellent idea, given that the value of gold/silver coins is what we set it to be, set them to be whatever makes most sense.
On a factual point: we have least of the 1 GD. - Salavant
I am very tempted by 1Gd = 64Sd. If we do change this, it still needs to be a power of 2 because that's what the coin denominations are set up for, so any other number would lead to the "has to use masses of coins" issue mentioned above. --Pufferfish
There's also the idea of allowing a greater range of money in uptime than usually happens. If we expand the income skill so that there can be greater inequality between PCs, being rich actually means more than "I can buy 2 more cheap potions a week than that person". It becomes less a case of PCs sacrificing their 10 sh a week because they are a skint student wizard and more that the basic income is not much in real terms. Yes, a PC with Income 6 could bankroll a linear. No, I don't see a problem with that any more than I see one with an Alchemist handing them 3 ingredient potions, a Wizard passing scrolls, a Priest Blessing them etc. I'd intend being rich to be a costly skill line because of that. Because Double-buying is annoying and confusing, I'd suggest an "Efficient Income Skill" and an "Inefficient Income Skill" in the same way as for Spiritual Power/Spiritual? Blessing
NOTE: The numbers on this are not balanced, someone else can work out some sensible costs if they like this idea
''Income 1-3' (10XP)': You gain 16 Ducatto a week in extra Income for each rank of Income. There is no double-buying penalty for this skill.
"Wealth 1-3) (15XP)": You gain 16 Ducatto a week in extra Income for each rank of Wealth. There is no double-buying penalty for this skill.
Income is a way for PCs to gain a modest income. Wealth is inefficient and allows you to be actually rich IC but at a notable cost. It wouldn't be tied to levels because what you can do with money is restricted by what's available without special arrangement (2 ingredient potions, L3 scrolls and whatever a PC can make or refs send in for sale). It doesn't give you better stuff so much as more stuff. Also that since there are only optional expenses, a PC with a couple of income ranks can hoard for plots. --Jim
I think this would want very careful consideration, and one should think about just *how much* transferable power availablity that opens up. One objection that immediately occurs is that it's no longer useful to play an occasionally linearing character with an alchemist splash, because the same XP invested into income and wealth gives you *more* potions. This is Quite Broken. --Tea
I did say at the top that the above example makes no claims to be mechanically balanced. It would need to be fitted to new potion/scroll costs and I din't want to speculate. Providing actually buying Alchemist is always considerably more efficient per week, I don't see a problem with occasionally being able to buy a large number of pre-selected elixirs, scrolls, or hired goons/ PCs sometimes do anyway by hoarding, it's not broken anything much so far.
I don't actually think that case would be a problem solved by limiting PC wealth so much as one to be solved by limiting the supply of consumables from NPCs in Downtime. PCs having lots of money is interesting and provides game by paying other PCs/getting stolen from etc. Currently there's relatively little difference economically between 3 Income and 0 Income. If your PC has a lot of money and another does not and wants therefore to earn some, hiring them makes more IC sense to both PCs. Buying a ton of stuff should be a valid way to linear for a rich PC IMO, but it shouldn't be more efficient or flexible than actual skills. Bear in mind that Income wouldn't give you Detect/Rec? Alchemical, or exotics etc. Also that you could stack this on top of alchemy. --Jim
There's also the option of 32 silver to 1 gold - if the shillings exchange rate is 10 shillings to 32 silver, that makes for an easy conversion from shillings to gold which stays "decimalised" - 10sh = 1Gd. It also means the 64Sd & 1Gd coins have different values, making better use of the different coins --Keeper

---

Suggestion from Drac to avoid having to write this into IRC:

Income levels go:

Costs in the city for potions / scrolls go (based on scroll level / ingredients)

  1. : 16
  2. : 32
  3. : 48
  4. : 64

Income has just become twice as powerful a skill in real terms, so the cost of the income skill is doubled to 10XP. All people with income may restat (which can coincidently be half you level of income skill, and have 5xp if you had an odd level).

You have 16 ducatto a week to spend on pies. Much like shillings there is nothing stopping you taking 1 weeks income in small change. --Drac
Pies work better if there's essentially trivial change, so buying pies doesn't feel like buying less potions. --MorkaisChosen
Income 0 potentially = 16 pies, however, there is I think a good reason why pie related stuff is rare now, when it is exponentially easier to do (seeing as it requires the players/monsters to have their small change in notes, rather than coins. Paper money is essentially free in terms of weight/space for transport to interactives and linears when compared with coins). The reason pies aren't popular in TT is small things people want are either free, or unwanted. E.g: Interactive are usually just after dinner, so most players don't want to eat. Drinks are provided for free. Equipment is free, nice things are also free (given nice things requires the player to buy/make a nice pysrep). The main pie use has been bribing urchins or getting a feelgood factor by paying for some medical treatment for the linear recruiting injured peasant of the week, which do not happen especially often. Thus while it would be nice, I don't consider pies to be important for the currency. --Drac

Here's a thought on how to make pies actually work. Reset the basic costs of things to "10sh ea, or near offer", so that if you only have 9sh / 15Sd, you can still get a potion. Or just directly set costs in the city to multiples of 15 - this only provides a new potion very rarely over the current arrangement. What it does do, however, is mean that spending a coin on the side no longer decrements your potion count. --Tea

Thought's behind this, aka economy for cutt:

This proposition may utterly mess up builds that used Income to finish off a level, so a reasonable amount of flexibility in the restat would be necessary. --MorkaisChosen
I consider that implicit in any restat. --Drac
Cheap skills are good to fill up levels. There's the option of making it a 5 XP skill that pays out for every 2 ranks. More complicated, but better filler. THe same argument as for Health and DAC skills not being 20/24 point blocks. _-Jim
I don't see why not just have the 10 schilling income replaced with 16 Silver ducatto, with the Income skill remaining the same and granting an extra 8 SD/level. For game balance it is fairly useful to cap the amount of buying power a single character can easily achieve as it stands. --TimB
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Last edited January 14, 2013 11:43 am by Tim (diff)
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