buying titles with gold, and taking it that next step.
- open guilds, where members pay a fee to be a part, but get a cut of treasure from the dungeon taken by other members, get to pull items from a general treasure hoard, and get to be a part of an elite group.
I see the membership angle, but not the treasure angle. That is, it seems like you're creating an insurance pool or something like it? Wouldn't that take some of the thrill of discovery out of things?
Still, I do like the idea of using social identification as something to support the value of gold.
- buying castles and other properties. of course, there probably aren't enough gold pieces in print right now to do this, but it is for the future.
True, I suppose - so you start with steads and mannor houses, generally with cheaper properties. In fact, set up a whole feudal thing, where the properties generate income themselves, meaning that you have to attract people to your fief in order to be able to do things like wage war on your neighbor.
- paying to have spells cast on you before you enter the dungeon. drop 500 gold, you can have a Mage Armor cast on you that lasts the whole dungeon. or Strength. or whatever.
Right, at the adventurer's guild, or mage's guild, or whatever. Don't need tokens on the supply side then, which devalues magic (and puts a hard cap on the price of a magic item).
having a non-TA party determine prices for items.
- TA cannot set the prices for their items, because that is price fixing. since they have intimate knowledge of the market, any changes that they would make to the prices would be akin to insider trading... they are using private knowledge not available to everyone to make decisions that would help them over the populace.
See, insider trading doesn't assume that nobody should have insider information, it assumes that this information has to exist. The illegality only occurs when you manipulate a price, and then profit from it. Martha Stewart's pal isn't in jail because his company did something that altered a price, but because he benefitted from knowing about it in terms of the commodity in question.
Now, if the assumption is that it's problematic because it would be next to impossible to monitor sales (unless tokens went up on the CBT or NYSE or something), then I might see the point. OTOH, I'm also willing to admit that it might be something else entirely that I'm not seeing. I'll have to ask my lawyer friends (for I too do not make my living that way).
- Raven's numbers look good to me. Thanks, Raven, for being so insane about this.
Indeed. Where would we be without the manic fan like this.
the idea of a staff store.
- anything outside of the actual game that is sanctioned to buy / sell items is cool.
- of course, buy / sell would be with Gold tokens only, or in exchange for other Treasure tokens.
- Magic should not be sold. However, it could be traded for gold and other items. only players should sell magic to one another. i know in my D&D games, i never have a magic shop, except under extreme circumstances (high level players, or very large city.)
I'm not getting you here. What do you mean by "outside the game"? Done outside the perimiters of the dungeon itself, or by non-staff members? No cash I get, but then you say that the staff store should not sell magic? Indicating that they would only issue gold for magic items? The problem there is that, again until there's a value for gold, why do this? Why not trade directly with other players for the magic that you want? I'm not seeing people using the service.
- having gems be rare. if they are rare, make them REALLY valuable... 500 gp or more. or, make them named... give them a background (crown jewels, sceptre head, brooch of WHATEVER)
Again, this is a problem with the current exchange rates that have been established. Interestingly, given that it's less liquid, a big gem is actually worth less than a number of smaller denominations with equal value in GP.
But, again, the internal game market could be manipulated in such a way as to raise the value of gold again. But it would require what you don't want to see. Selling magic for low prices.
- taking gold out of the economy. there is no extra gold in the economy. if you take out gold (the basis of the economy), then everything gets really crazy. you can't base on economy on items without a tradable currency. if you do, your prices will vary wildly with perceived availability.
That's what I'm seeing already. While I trust Raven's list, I think in a month or two it'll be radically different. In any case, again, it'd be the shop selling magic that would need to exist to create stable prices.
- price list to sellers. you know, let the sellers find out on their own what the value of something. if they are too high, no one will buy from them. if they are too low, they will run out of stock quickly, and have little to show for it. supply and demand should determine the prices of the items.
I agree. That is, you can't set up a price list without actually selling at that rate. If you don't, then prices will do what they like anyhow, and the list will become innacurate instantly.
Mike