Wulf Corbett:
> What bothers me is not so much what Wealth represents, as how it
> relates to increases and decreases.
But if we know what it represents, we have _a means of_ relating it to increases and decreases. (If it's ever necessary to puzzle it out in detail.)
> why shouldn't we be playing a bloodline, just like KoDP plays a clan?)
I'd prefer to say "stead" (when John Hughes says "bloodline", often he really means "stead", IMO, and it's a better candidate for "operational economic unit", I think...). But yes, no reason at all why not.
> For instance, a character has
> 'Wealth 15', he [...] is given 4 cows by the chief
> as his part of the take from a raid. Now, a cow is 'worth' 20 Wealth.
> But how does 'Wealth' 15 relate to 'worth' 20? Clearly the two are on
> different scales, or else 'Wealth' 15 wouldn't even represent a
> single whole cow!
Yes, the 20 in the rulebook represents the "difficulty" of buying a cow (i.e., pretty hard, for an average person: they may have a "net worth" of several cows, but it isn't "liquid"... Not so much tied up in stocks and shares as in livestock and ploughshares).
I think one can finesse this buy saying: You're "worth" wealth 15, and the cow is worth wealth 10 (or whatever), but you get a -10 to represent being unable (or unwilling) to sell _everything_ you own to buy it.).
> But, how do I add those 4 cows
> to the Wealth 15? Is that a lot, or a little? How about 2, or 40?
Somewhere in between... (I'm guessing maybe about a +5, in this case.)
> Just some simple guidelines on adding 'worth' together (2 cows =??,
> 10 =??? etc), and how to add them to Wealth, is all that's really
> needed. With the guidelines in ST (or was it TR?) about coinage
> (can't remember the value, 1 cow = 40 Lunars, or something) would
> then allow us to expand the idea to put an approximate number of
> coins to a 'worth', and then estimate how it added to a 'Wealth'.
Julian suggested a table for how to add wealth together, and that might be a useful shortcut, but it all rests or trying to work out what actual "total worth" a given Wealth score really does represent. And if we could do that, we could present that in a table directly. ("Ah, Prosperous, wealth 5W. I'm worth in the ballpark of twenty cows (let's suppose).") Which could _also_ be used to do the "adding". ("Another 4 cows. That'd put me on Wealth 7W." _Not_ that I'm advocating sticking to such a table slavishly (doing so would defeat the purpose of a HW-type wealth system), just by way of "a procedure to follow when you're stuck").
> The old 'each doubling = +10' works adequately, but is a bit crude,
> especially at the bottom end of the scale. "I'm a poor stickpicker
> with Wealth 5. I find a torq worth 5, and suddenly I have Wealth 15!
> Whoopee!"
That sounds about right. 15 is only "average" wealth, a torc could fund that (at least for a while). Doubling every 5, or somewhere in between, might be closer to the mark, though. (I'm attempting to crunch the numbers in the book, but really they're too screwy to make much sense of.)
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