Economics

v2 Economics is a big swing. We're all acutely aware of it. If you're one of the people that dozes off at the mention of Merchant, feel free to click out and find something more interesting to examine. We've gone to lengths to make sure the game is entire playable knowing exactly zero of what follows.

Some background

LARPs have wanted functioning economies since 1994. It adds some grounding and realism and also produces a relief valve for treasure - what good is rolling around in your piles of gold if you can't buy things? Maybe it also offers a path to riches that's a lot less dangerous than what amounts to armed robbery on a schedule. No one's ever succeeded, but I don't believe anyone's ever really given it a shot, either. Mostly, we decide how much we want a shield to cost and retrofit smithing to make it cost that much (for example). Then we decide what everything else should cost relative to a shield and adjust Production skills accordingly. (I'm using a shield as an example, and honestly it's not usually that clean - anyone writing rules has probably been doing this for some time and works from experience and feel to get that baseline). As a rules system, there's nothing wrong with it. It's performed satisfactorily since 1994. As an economy, it's doomed out of the gate.

(Very) loosely, a market relies on a couple of things:

• Input cost - the minimum materials and labor required to start with nothing and end with a shield.
• Production process - the means by which that first thing is rendered into that second thing
• Output product - the finished product available for market participation.
• Relative value - finished products vary in value from place to place and person to person.

Historically, we've blown right past all of those things.

• Input cost is static - a shield always requires 20 Ore and this is legislated by God. All shields, everywhere, require the exact same inputs, and the cost of that input is also fixed. One Ore is fixed by Heaven at 2cp. Every shield requires 40cp in input cost, regardless of who's making it out of what and where.
• Process is likewise identical. v1 made some strides here in charging time for process and providing some skills that allowed for acceleration of process, but process cost was glossed over or folded into input costs.
• Output product chokes when every smith in every forge in every city on every world produces exactly the same shield. You cannot, by mechanical definition, produce a shield that is any better or any worse than any other shield.
• Relative value vanishes when there's no differentiation in any of the first things. Shield costs 40cp, and always will, everywhere.

That hamstrings economic activity. Your smith can't compete on price; they are strapped to the same costs as every other smith and no amount of market research, supplier shopping, materials research or anything else will ever change that. Process is likewise fixed. You can't compete on price because of those two things. You can't compete on quality because you can't generate anything that's a stitch better or worse than the exact item your competitors make. (The presence of strictly-defined quality also preempts the dubious practice of brand differentiation, the thing that keeps a dozen chemically-identical toothpastes on the market). The introduction of the Merchant skill was a shot at manipulating... something, I never once understood any of those rules in any system... but by the time you're talking about profit margins on identical items with identical costs you've already lost.

So what do we do about it?

My initial suggestion was "nothing". What we have isn't an economy but it does keep adventurers equipped to do adventuring. You could buy up skill points, or replace equipment as Shatter and Destroy and breaches eroded it. I've always felt (I couldn't think because I didn't understand but I felt) like the Merchant skill either generated money at no risk (Plot teams hate this) or it didn't and what was even the point? I didn't love it but I have never loved merchanting in games. It's the monster that must be appeased to keep doing the fun stuff - armed robbery on a multiplanar scale. Addressing this is hard, time consuming, and Matthew Patel's email. I'm not managing it over time without a jury conviction and court sentence.

Unsurprisingly, this did not go over well. We're already taking a lot of big swings on balance and rules philosophy, and if there's a chance we can improve on economics, now is the time and we should. (I even (grudgingly) confess that it does open up story options that just aren't there when every product is identical in cost and performance.) Addressing the economy means some shifts in the static underpinnings, which automatically means some discomfort in the adjustment period. Players that have been able to rely on static values for years are not going to like "it depends" as an answer to "how much is a shield". Ultimately, I think it's worth it, and the uncertainty will fade into the background just like it does in the real world - without checking your phone, do you know down to the cent what a loaf of bread costs at Target, or Wal-Mart, or the difference between the two? - but man it's gonna hurt in the beginning.

Accordingly, the first thing we did here was create a post for an Econ Marshal. That guy's charged with updating market conditions on an out-of-game level to reflect environmental changes due to player or plot actions. If ore dries up in Anteris, Anteris will pay more to get it and the overall price increases (slightly, but noticeably). That change all by itself allows us to fluctuate input costs and starts breaking down the static chain. We're working on brand differentiators in outputs (a sword that detects orcs is slightly better than one that doesn't, for example), and Plot can influence relative value via environmental factors. An Econ Marshal means Plot can offload all of this nonsense and concentrate on story; some other sucker can ask for or reason out the impact of shifts in markets and keep things breathing.

That's the background and the why of it all. The what, exactly, does for insomnia what Stonehenge did for rocks, and I'm leaving it for the Econ Marshal to explain.

The Nuts and Bolts

Hello! Your friendly, if slightly unhinged, Econ Marshal here, I'm going to give a high level view of how our new Economy works! This will give you a place to start asking questions from and I'll update this over time. For ease of information digestion I'll present this in a Q&A format, let's get to it!

Q What are the building blocks of the game Economy?

A In a physical sense that would be Components. These "sticks" (which is our slang/common term for them) are what pretty much everything in game is made of! From the lowliest potion to the sharpest sword they're all made of Components.

Q Components? with an s? Does that mean there are many types?

A It does indeed! We have Ore, Herb, Residuum and Foodstuff. It's then broken down in to rarity: Common, Uncommon, Rare and Named. (Foodstuff stops at Rare currently just so ya know)

Q How do I get these Components?

A The most common ways are the age old adventurer traditions of looting your fallen foes and as rewards for quests! You may also get them via certain skills, the "Harvesting" skills allow you to find deposits, called Nodes, out in the wild and extract them. These Harvesting skills will also allow you to extract from Owned Nodes, these can be purchased with permission or obtained via Plot

Q Alright, I've got components, but I want money. How do I make that happen?

A You either sell them to another player OR take the Merchant (Skill) to allow you to sell to the NPC market.