12-31-2017, 01:34 AM | #31 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Salt
Well, bacon is more than 50% meat, so it seems inevitable that it's low on fat, right? ^_^
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12-31-2017, 02:21 AM | #32 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: New Orleans, LA
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Re: Salt
I follow a 18th century America, reenactment group on youtube. Here is the episode on salt pork, I only post it because he's going on 18th century cook books and he really works at doing things in period and we're discussing salting meat for preservation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdmPIpQZPRg |
12-31-2017, 06:03 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Salt
Quote:
There are also sometimes serious hidden assumptions. Gems are one of those - historically gem prices were independent of modern ideas of what "kind" of stone was involved - because none of the buyers or sellers had any idea what it was made of! We often can't tell in historical records - for example Pliny's discussion of gemstones are usually translated to refer to the most esteemed of gems as diamonds, which is the stone we use the descendent of the word he does to refer to, but many the properties he describes them as having better fit quartz than carbon crystals. Historical pieces of jewelry with stones of wildly different values set in equivalent positions, or centerpieces of stuff we'd consider vastly less precious than stuff used on the periphery are not uncommon. We laugh (or protest the injustice of) historical stories of people taken in by glass beads, but in fact those were just as fair deals as diamonds would have been - it was a trade based on how pretty they look, not what they are made of well into the 18th if not the 19th century.
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12-31-2017, 08:00 AM | #34 | |
Join Date: Jul 2013
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Re: Salt
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The price of salt was out of place for me, I don't want to have to do a reality check on every item. How bad is DF? Is it self-consistent? |
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12-31-2017, 08:07 AM | #35 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
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Re: Salt
The DF line is about 99.44% internally consistent (there will always be inconsistencies that crop up), but I find it only 85%-90% consistent with most other GURPS products. This conversation about salt and the tangent about gems highlights the cross-consistency, IMO.
Funny thing: some cultures historically valued colored gems (sapphires, rubies, topazes, emeralds, amethysts) and semi-precious stones (such as lapis lazuli and amber) over clear diamonds because they were more interested in the color rather than purity. I can somewhat relate; I personally find diamonds uninteresting to look at, preferring the colored "lesser" gems.
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12-31-2017, 08:50 AM | #36 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Salt
Quote:
Similar thing with platinum, which was considered a waste byproduct of silver since it couldn't be melted.
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
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12-31-2017, 09:22 AM | #37 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Salt
Quote:
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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12-31-2017, 09:56 AM | #38 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Salt
Quote:
The deal with diamonds is a near monopoly and a brilliant (pun not intended) marketing campaign - a thing that can happen to any luxury good. See also Venetian glass for glass geegaws that we still value extremely highly, even as we tend to sneer at "regular" glass beads. Glass beads, by the by, can be some rather elaborate things, not blobs of glass with holes in them.
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12-31-2017, 09:57 AM | #39 |
Aluminated
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: East of the moon, west of the stars, close to buses and shopping
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Re: Salt
It's self-consistent in that if there's a price for something in one place, that same price should be used in other places for the same item [1]. And prices for common and adventuring goods (basic clothing, cooking gear, etc.) are consistent with Basic. As for historically accurate prices...yeah, that's really, really complicated. malloyd already pointed out that historical prices and even current prices are wildly variable. On top of that, I'll add that prices exist in a context. There is no one historical price for, say, pepper. A pound of pepper in 11th century Malabar will cost you far less than that same pound of pepper in 11th century London. For a more detailed example, you can see the massive variability of silk prices laid out in Hot Spots: The Silk Road. Salt's a slightly odd case, but when it comes to spices, the numbers get crazy and very specific to a time and place.
That's why Low Tech doesn't even try to set prices for stuff like spices. Prices are influenced by technology, but ultimately they're a setting-specific feature which LT and the like can't cover. You, as the GM, have to make decisions for your setting using the Luxury Pricing rules on Low Tech. Since DF presents a specific gaming milieu, I was happy to set some prices in ways I didn't in that section of Low Tech. Treasure Tables sets prices fairly high by comparison to ranges of historical goods. The context is one which prizes, as I say, the specific and the exotic and is also packed with other valuable loot like magic items and fantasy-tech gadgets. It's the kind of place where spices are expensive. If you want historically accurate prices for your campaign, you have to get into what the circumstances that that history are. 1. As much as possible, I tried to make raw material prices, like fibers and fabrics, not entirely out of line with items made out of those materials. However, since I had to take as fixed precedent prices from Basic which were not themselves established on any consistent basis, there can be the occasional case of something seeming oddly too cheap or too expensive.
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12-31-2017, 03:07 PM | #40 | |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Salt
Quote:
But that could be apocryphal, or just my mangled memory.
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Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check. |
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