Re: Wealth

From: gamartin_at_...
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 13:45:50 -0000

> Unimportant to the system, sure, but certain narrative events can
> surely do wonders for a character's Income. Are you suggesting (to
> borrow a cliché) that the brave Hero who marries the King's only
> daughter, meanwhile plundering the evil dragon's treasure, *
> shouldn't * be any Wealthier than his HP expenditure
> suggests ? That Narrators * shouldn't * be able to hand out
> whatever Wealth gains they like for 1 HP cost ?

Yes. If the entire dragon-slaying, lair-pillaging, princess-marrying saga earned the Hero 1 measly HP, then clearly they were never intended to be entrenched in the game world. Or if they were worth a lot of HP, but the hero was too cheap to spend them on cementing their gains, then the player is saying that they are not important. This is because...

> Are you in fact suggesting that the story should obey the rules and
> not vice-versa ?

In a sense. This is not a simulationist system where game-world cause (pile of gold) produces effect (increased wealth). It is a narrativist system in which decisions made by the participants authorially are the cause (expediture of HP) and produce a narrative effect (change in wealth).

Because this system is fuzzy and not model-driven, the mechanics are actually authoring mechanics; when the GM hands out HP, they are handing the player a lot of power to define the world. So, your relationship, who defines what, to what extent, is mediated mechanically by the system. The HP spent by players is a measure by which they can control the story that they experience. Their spending choices indicate a demand which the GM can fulfill, or may be in response to such a demand imposed by the GM.

Most RPG's have a modelling system that tries to manipulate worldfetaures  in as consistent a manner as they can. HW tries to manipulate the story as constistently as it can.

> But Gloranthan currency actually obeys bartering laws, not the
> strictly capitalist ones that "supply and demand" suggests.

One of capitalisms major premises is that such supply and demand occurred even in the barter system. It is entirely plausible to discuss these features in "primitive" economies, even though the specific transactions are likely to be in a different form.

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