Re: Qualitytable

From: gamartin_at_...
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 08:24:57 -0000

> Bah. Look, cows may not be sufficient for effective wealth; they
may
> not be strictly _necessary_ for wealth. Nevertheless, they, and
come to
> that any obviously "materially valuable" quantity you come across in

And what constitutes "materially valuable"? This is easiuly challenged by the water-diamond paradox - a material object changes its "value" depending on the context in which it is being traded. There is no such thing as an abstractly tradable, and hence valuable, commodity (and in point of fact, anything you cannot trade does not constitute wealth, even if it raises your standard of living).

> game play are, in a reasonable set of circumstances, substantially
> likely to have an effect on your wealth. I'm proposing that it is a
> useful tool to quantify that "likely median effect", nothing more.
I'm
> relatively confident that a hard-line "Stuff that, it only matters
how
> many HPs you cough up" approach will simply further alienate the
many
> people who are _not_ greatly gripped by the wealth rules as they
> stand, and will return with great alacrity to the "I have X pennies;
> I want to buy something that costs Y pennies; I now have X-Y
> pennies" approach which I, like Julian, think really would be a
> retrograde step.

But your prposed solution is to take that retrogagrade steop, exchanging points of wealth rating instead of pennies. Which is no different.

> We were talking about wealth _ratings_, I seem to recall.

The point stands - his wealth rating has changed without conveting to you any information about the material objects that changed hands. You do not know the denomination of the coins or notes he has recieved - you merely know how much his wealth rating has changed.

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