I could spend way too much of the evening responding in detail to Gareth Martin on this topic, but it'd be hard to innovative in my comments, and even harder to provoke an original response, it would seem -- which isn't to say there aren't actual issues remaining, but the chances of them being come to grips with seems increasingly slight. So I'll confine myself to just this message...
> > > Wealth was treated as a special case for "cementing"
> > > in 1st ed. I'm suggesting not doing so.
> >
> > If you're saying it's in principle impossible to "cement" wealth at
> > all, that's rather making it a special case in the other direction.
> > (Making an example of it?)
>
> No; the error was probably to try to give Wealth more "sophisticated"
> rules for cemewnting, instead of just using the standard system of
> spend 1 HP for related, 2 for not.
There are several cases where it's at least implied you can cement abilities at > starting level, so you may have to widen the scope of the "error" you're attempting to eliminate from HW, in the cause of "defending the status quo". (In order to preserve HW, it became necessary...)
> > And then he asks what the problem is...
> >
> > I dislike this because it exalts the "game mechanic" currency above
> > (almost 'instead of') the game-world notion of the thing being
> > measured.
>
> Exactly so. And that is what makes HW so interesting, and why I
> bought it, and why I am so enamoured of it that I am converting other
> settings to it.
I can refer you to several other systems that do this far more "cleanly" than HW as written does (some a couple of decades ago), if you're determined to deal with wealth _totally_ abstractly.
> > (At this point people leap from the bushes to cry "simulationist!",
> > conveniently ignoring the skads of "worse" simulationism all through
> > the rules.)
>
> The question you are asking is indeed simulationist.
> This is not a simultationist system. There is no "worse
> simulationism" in the rest of the rules becuase the rules make no
> claim to simulate anything. How can a system which relies on
> ambiguous references like "six cuts silk" or whatever it was -
> without the PLAYER even knowing what it was - possibly attempt to
> simulate anything?
I suggest you actually read the game sometime, if you imagine this to be the case. It is not.
Of course, one can declare any part of game-play to be a key part of the narrative, and hence by choice that a detailed description of same isn't "simultationist" at all, but "narrative". Which is part of the perversity of the jargon in the first place, when really all that's going on is "more or less abstraction".
> > > Let me see if I can state your point:
> > > Your point seems to be "We need to know exactly how much an
> Wealth Rating
> > > increase x Loot provides if cemented".
> >
> > Except without the "exactly", the "provides", or the "if
> cemented". Or
>
> And the answer is: as many as the HP you spend.
Except this is neither the HW rule (look it up), or one with any narrative consitency (see what Julian and I have been attempting to propose, in between various howls of outrage).
> > > 3. Acquiring Loot (any amount) gives the player an reason to pay
> a "related"
> > > HP cost to increase his Wealth rating.
> >
> > Which clearly trivialises any consideration of how much it actually
> > was, something you think the characters certainly, and the players
> > intuitively, might care about...
>
> Yes, but that is both deliberate and a Good Thing. I cannot express
> how happy I am to excape the unbearable counting of gold coins,
> silver coins, copper coins, platinum coins, electrum coins...
It seems odd to "abstract away from" the number of cows in your herd, however, if one is playing the "Sartarite Farmer Game". In your haste to rid yourself of The Dreaded Coins (which at no point have I advocated returning to, to parry the straw man by insinuation), you seem determined to sabotage _any_ usable measure of wealth in game world terms, _even if those game world terms are meaningful in and useful to the narrative_.
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