Shattered Kingdoms

The magical world of Pyrathia, as described through the game, has a capitalist system. Food, weapons and land, to name only a few of many wants and necessities, can all be exchanged for precious metal coins. The ability to acquire these things can likewise be consolidated into coinage. In this, the game attempts to resemble the real-world economy.

In the game of Shattered Kingdoms, however, there are plenty of things to be wanted that money will not buy. Player hours, not coinage, will find you powerful magical items. Player hours, as spent entering "c 'enchant item' item" into the console, will create powerful magical items.

The result of this is that coinage in SK does not act as currency. Instead of being a universal measurement of other values, currency in SK is something with only limited uses. Once a player has acquired enough of it to meet these limited uses, they have no incentive to acquire more.

Why this is a problem:

Wealth cannot be quantified. The "living" economy of SK, the one that exists as interactions between players, becomes a barter system, wherein players can exchange real things with circumstantial value, but have nothing to exchange that represents absolute value. This causes massive inefficiency in the living economy of SK for the same reason that the barter system causes massive inefficiency in real-world economies.

The solution:

Tie the currency to something of value to the players, such as NPC enchanting services. In a world where sorcerors get clothes, food and land by exchanging coin, the services of sorcerors will be exchangeable for coin.

The result:

Rather than spending hours typing "c 'enchant item' item", players will spend hours trying to raise money. As long as the powers that be make it so that the raising of money is balanced, creative and risky, gaining power will be fun. Typing "c 'enchant item' item" into the console is not fun, and the powers that be do not have the power to make it fun.

Every player that has coin will have something that has an inexhaustible use to other players, unlike now. This will create a natural incentive for players to interact with each other over their money, whether in trading it for goods and services or in trying to rob and scam each other. Either way, economic interaction will be driven by a natural force rather than an artificial force, such as the desire to roleplay a greedy, materialistic character within and in spite of a functionally moneyless world.

A short review:

1: More player interaction.
2: Gaining power becomes more fun.
3: Players who play greedy characters, especially the thief/merchant types do not have to constantly suffer from the OOC awareness that money is actually worthless.

Please fill the next two pages with highly emotional, phrase-length debates over the ethics of the capitalist system, mixed with negative comments about the author's face, personality and sexuality, as well as tigers. Once you get to page three, please start discussing a completely different topic until the thread is locked.

After this is done, change nothing.

How in the world does SK have a capitalist system? None of the kingdoms in SK are democracies to begin with, and the use of coin to trade for goods pre-dated the system of capitalism by a fair millennia.

Inflation is also not a capitalist problem. This happens when a country has too much material wealth.

I have a better idea. If a sorcerer wants to charge coin for his services then he charges coin. If he doesn't want to charge coin, he doesn't. None of this requires code.

Also, I take it that you don't utilize the economy much. There is use for coin.

Here's ten hurrahs for your idea of fun, grinding. I also wouldn't be surprised if you also entertain yourself by eating dirt.

Firstly, inflation actually happens when a country manufactures imaginary wealth, but that's a little beside the point.

Secondly, geophagia is a serious disorder, and you probably shouldn't make light of it. People die from that, you know.

Thirdly, I agree with most of the rest of what you said Ardith.

Fourthly, this game doesn't need to replace one type of grind with another (especially one that's already required for things like consumables and magical devices).

And finally, SK does already have a currency that's of absolute value: scripted items and consumables. Both of those serve as a viable bartering value to compliment the coded coin system, and are already used as such.

Inflation can happen with precious metal currency such as gold and silver as well, OA. This happened in the Spanish Empire when it was colonizing South America and exporting tremendous amounts of silver back to the home country of Spain.

I agree that grinding is lame, though. Anybody that suggests adding additional grinding to the game ought to be dragged out back and shot in the face.

I agree with most everything else that you said too.

The coin gathering system has been revamped already, and it's better now for it. In addition coin only becomes an afterthought for characters who have already leveled to GM, trained their skills and spells, bought consumables, and put a decent amount in their account, and even then it's important to ensure you still have some in your accounts so you can keep up those consumables or get a helpful energize every now and then. As for trib and cabal accounts, people need to refill those all the dang time.

If people want to charge coin for services, they should. Yet, people don't: And I think that's more to do with what's common practice in SK, rather than that said people just don't need the coin.

After all the work that already went into currency and the economic system, I'm wondering how much experience Anjin has with SK. I'd agree with most of what he said when it comes to a stock MUD. But these are issues that I have already tried to address on SK and I believe I have been successful. Although that's not to say it couldn't be better.

Capitalism and democracy are not synonyms. Capitalism is an economic system, democracy is a political system. You can have capitalism without democracy. The private sector in modern China is a good example. But the confusion is understandable, because capitalism's competitors (socialism and communism) tie politics and economics together.

I'm not confused Dulrik. I'm well aware of China and their Wu-mart, or whatever their copy of wal-mart is called. I think something got mixed in my message there, and that sentence probably should have been placed somewhere else.

Still stands that there are no democracies in SK.

Doesn't look like he got it confused. It looks like you got confused. Go back and look.

I don't have a problem with the economy though. It is capitalist. It should remain so. The goods are worth more than the money. Coins in SK are the standard, its just not used very much because of the more valuable phat loot is spread across a smaller player base. The only thing that makes the economy unrealistic, IMO, is the lack of population that is needed to sustain any kind of economy on a large scale. If we had 150+ players average online, the limited wealth of SK would be more noticeable and people would probably be using obsidian as a means to buy and sell loot.

As it is now, its not needed. People can just trade loot and the people swimming in it just pass it out to the allies. PK one person and often times you can equip two other people from the spoils.

In capitalism, those that prosper do so at the cost of others. This is true in SK, and is a good model for a fantasy world economy.

I agree that there are no democracies in SK. But by even bringing the word democracy into a discussion of capitalism, Ardith betrayed some confusion. This thread was not (and should not be) about the political systems of government in Pyrathia.