> Well the OED is hardly a garden word quality of word source. I had to check
> five non-business dictionaries before I found any definition of the term and
> it did agree with the OED as far as the two separate definitions go.
I'd have said the OED (just the concise, mind you, in case you had visions of me under dozen-tome mega-volumes) is a quality source of garden words, if that amounts to the same thing... (Dictionaries are often patchy on multi-word phrases, it must be said.)
> The point is though that the definition of wealth given in HW is broader
> than just cows :
>
> "The wealth rating represents not only the cash (or goods) on hand, but also
> the ability to borrow small sums of money, ease of getting credit,
> reputation for honest dealing, and other nontangible sources of wealth." HW
> pg 36
I take that point (again), but as I said before, specifically in relation to that quote, that that's _precisely_ purchasing power, in the above sense...
> But they're part of the definition from the rules. It's supposed to account
> for all these intangibles. It's fine to ignore them if you want but don't
> equate accounting for them the same as ditching the wealth mechanic. I
> don't think the wealth mechanic is meant to ignore that kind of stuff it's
> just meant to avoid bookkeeping. How can you play a crafty merchant whose
> word is his bond if you can't make money? Frankly at this point my head
> hurts from thinking about how to account for them IF you wanted to which
> seems pretty cool to me.
To abstract something isn't necessarily to ignore it. HW abstracts a lot of things about say, combat, but the point is you're supposed to "add back in" what's significant in any given fight in the descriptions (and sit-mods, etc), rather than having to have a "system" to account for them all, under every possible circumstance. Same with wealth. You don't have to audit a character to find out that so many "wealth points" or lunars or cows "worth" of each of these things to understand that such factors play a part in their purchasing power, and can be teased out as such as part of a narrative description.
It comes down to this: do you want to track these factors precisely and individually, or not?
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