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Old 11-15-2019, 02:18 PM   #1
WaterAndWindSpirit
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Default Superbill questions

Hello everyone!

So, these are a few questions about Superbills.

According to the Basic set, a critical success on a a counterfeiting skill check produce a batch of counterfeit "as good as the real deal", which, while talking about money, is commonly referred to as a (batch of) Superbill.

Rules wise, would it break something if any critical success or success by more than 10 creates a Superbill, instead of only a critical success?

It is mentioned that rogue states may try their hands at making counterfeit money to destabilize their target's economy. Just how effective is it really? What would theoretically be the best Superbills to make if you were actively trying to destabilize the US/Euro/any other major states' economy, as opposed to a purely mercenary motive? How would a non-state actor with a lot of resources trying to covertly take over the world through getting their people in high places, blackmailing highly ranked state officials, and engaging in various deniable black ops to try to take over actual states could take advantage of tanking the economies in question?

Speaking of that whole "making Superbills with the express goal of destabilizing the target's economies", if actual paranormal powers including Psionics, Magery and Divine Investiture exists but aren't widely known or even believed in except for select agencies (CIA, NSA, and other similar No Such Agencies across the world), non-state actors that specialize in it, and conspiracy theorists who notice screwy stuff but don't really understand it to the point they blame every paranormal occurrences on "Project MKULTRA", KGB research, or any combination thereof, what sort of avenues does it open for the aforementioned non-state actor? What about mature Magitek TL 9 (technically TL 8+1), where the highest state actors have achieved is TL 8 with some emerging TL 9 tech?
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Old 11-15-2019, 02:28 PM   #2
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: Superbill questions

I would think that for a large modern economy, any remotely covert injection of currency isn't going to be an effective way to disrupt the economy. The money supply is really big and mostly not paper.

It might be a more interesting possibility for medieval-ish eras, where spiking a rival's money supply with counterfeits might detract from their ability to raise funds by a currency debasement, and would let you more or less collect seigniorage on minting without expanding your domestic money supply.
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Old 11-16-2019, 09:13 AM   #3
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Superbill questions

Quote:
Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit View Post
Rules wise, would it break something if any critical success or success by more than 10 creates a Superbill, instead of only a critical success?
It makes Superbill creation a bit more reliable, but probably not to the extent to break the game too much. Do note, however, that a character with really high skill and Luck may be able to make money become a non-issue for the characters.

Quote:
Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit View Post
It is mentioned that rogue states may try their hands at making counterfeit money to destabilize their target's economy. Just how effective is it really? What would theoretically be the best Superbills to make if you were actively trying to destabilize the US/Euro/any other major states' economy, as opposed to a purely mercenary motive? How would a non-state actor with a lot of resources trying to covertly take over the world through getting their people in high places, blackmailing highly ranked state officials, and engaging in various deniable black ops to try to take over actual states could take advantage of tanking the economies in question?
Your best bet would probably be to provide large quantities of superbills to criminals of various types. Basically, you're hiring them (with the fake bills that cost you little money to produce) to cause some type of chaos, and also injecting large amounts of fake bills into circulation, which is going to dilute the currency. You'll need to be throwing a huge amount of superbills to make much impact on that regard (but the chaos you've hired will also help destabilize the target country).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
It might be a more interesting possibility for medieval-ish eras, where spiking a rival's money supply with counterfeits might detract from their ability to raise funds by a currency debasement, and would let you more or less collect seigniorage on minting without expanding your domestic money supply.
A particularly nasty way to do this would be to have your merchants buy goods with the debased currency, sell those goods elsewhere, then bring the coins back to you. You melt them down and use them (along with whatever lower-cost metals you're throwing into the mix) to produce more debased currency, and send the merchants back to repeat the cycle. You'll need to be careful so people don't catch on that your merchants are the ones dealing in bad money, but over time you'll be enriching yourself while damaging the target economy. Spread a rumor (probably through other merchants) that the king of your target country is debasing his currency for whatever reason, and you can potentially drastically drop its worth (as people who test it will find your debased coins, and assume they're legit). Depending on how much you debase the currency, the merchants can still turn a profit even selling at a nominal loss (if they buy goods for 80 silver coins, spend 20 silver coins in transport, and sell them for 80 silver coins, that would be a loss of 20 silver - but if the debased coins they used for the purchase and transportation are only worth 70% of the ones they got from that sale, that's a net gain of 10 silver coins).
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Old 11-16-2019, 10:06 AM   #4
johndallman
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default Re: Superbill questions

Quote:
Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit View Post
Rules wise, would it break something if any critical success or success by more than 10 creates a Superbill, instead of only a critical success?
I think that's reasonable, because it allows it to be done reliably with sufficient bonuses. That is possible by sufficiently well-resourced groups, which have usually been backed by nation-states. Operation Bernhard is the best-documented example, and had the advantage of targeting notes that were essentially TL5.

There were other examples: the British accidentally discovered during WWII that most of the large printing businesses in Germany had fonts of their own, and the Monotype versions of them had been made by the UK branch of the Monotype Corporation, which still had the masters. Coupling that with the ability to order paper made to precise specifications in secret meant that a wide variety of documents could be made to "superbill" standards, being actually as good as the originals.
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Old 11-16-2019, 01:03 PM   #5
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: Superbill questions

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
A particularly nasty way to do this would be to have your merchants buy goods with the debased currency, sell those goods elsewhere, then bring the coins back to you. You melt them down and use them (along with whatever lower-cost metals you're throwing into the mix) to produce more debased currency, and send the merchants back to repeat the cycle. You'll need to be careful so people don't catch on that your merchants are the ones dealing in bad money, but over time you'll be enriching yourself while damaging the target economy. Spread a rumor (probably through other merchants) that the king of your target country is debasing his currency for whatever reason, and you can potentially drastically drop its worth (as people who test it will find your debased coins, and assume they're legit). Depending on how much you debase the currency, the merchants can still turn a profit even selling at a nominal loss (if they buy goods for 80 silver coins, spend 20 silver coins in transport, and sell them for 80 silver coins, that would be a loss of 20 silver - but if the debased coins they used for the purchase and transportation are only worth 70% of the ones they got from that sale, that's a net gain of 10 silver coins).
I would think a true super-coin would necessarily be a metallurgical match to what it's counterfeiting. Which on the plus side means that your merchants aren't dealing in bad money. They're merely dealing in unlicensed money.
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Old 11-16-2019, 01:43 PM   #6
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: Superbill questions

Hypothetically, you are correct. In the case of a US $1 coin, it costs around $0.10 to make and, even if it cost twice as much for an unlicensed producer to make a perfect copy, it would represent a 400% profit. Even if you just exchanged them at a currency trader, you would still make a 300% profit.

Of course, bills represent a much larger markup, but they are much harder to copy (superbills require a massive criminal infrastructure to make cheaply enough to make even a 100% profit). No one uses a US $1 coin, so new looking ones would actually be less suspicious. They also do not have serial numbers, holograms, and other anti-counterfeit features that make superbills so expensive to make.
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Old 11-16-2019, 02:24 PM   #7
WingedKagouti
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default Re: Superbill questions

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
A particularly nasty way to do this would be to have your merchants buy goods with the debased currency, sell those goods elsewhere, then bring the coins back to you. You melt them down and use them (along with whatever lower-cost metals you're throwing into the mix) to produce more debased currency, and send the merchants back to repeat the cycle.
Keep in mind that after 2 or 3 cycles you will start to get some of your own counterfeit coins back as a noticable percentage, so the profits will decrease over time. You should also consider the time it takes to make the counterfeit coins as part of the costs of such an operation. To make a major impact you'll need to be prepared to spend money in the long run, it is not going to be a money making scheme if you want to keep it going for long.

A properly counterfeit coin will look and weigh the same as a properly minted one, so there's little your merchancts can do to filter out counterfeits they may receive as payment in the field.
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Old 11-16-2019, 02:46 PM   #8
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: Superbill questions

And the target government might start debasing their currency at a higher rate that the counterfeits from your government, so you might start exporting valuable metals rather than importing them. Ironically, they might even blame foreign merchants for the debasement, as the target government would probably want to shift blame.
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Old 11-16-2019, 03:35 PM   #9
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Superbill questions

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
I would think a true super-coin would necessarily be a metallurgical match to what it's counterfeiting. Which on the plus side means that your merchants aren't dealing in bad money. They're merely dealing in unlicensed money.
That's a slower inflation, but can be useful if it's cheaper for you to turn your precious metals into coins than it is to pay the fees they'd levy on you for exchanging your metals for their coins, if you want to trade with them anyway.

Quote:
Originally Posted by WingedKagouti View Post
Keep in mind that after 2 or 3 cycles you will start to get some of your own counterfeit coins back as a noticable percentage, so the profits will decrease over time. You should also consider the time it takes to make the counterfeit coins as part of the costs of such an operation. To make a major impact you'll need to be prepared to spend money in the long run, it is not going to be a money making scheme if you want to keep it going for long.

A properly counterfeit coin will look and weigh the same as a properly minted one, so there's little your merchancts can do to filter out counterfeits they may receive as payment in the field.
Yeah, it's probably eventually going to be a net loss, although what you gain by damaging the target economy may well be worth it. Testing random samplings of the coins the merchants bring back can be a useful way to determine how well your counterfeits have infiltrated the target economy; once the proportion is high enough, that's when you strike with spreading rumors that the crown is debasing their own currency.

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
And the target government might start debasing their currency at a higher rate that the counterfeits from your government, so you might start exporting valuable metals rather than importing them. Ironically, they might even blame foreign merchants for the debasement, as the target government would probably want to shift blame.
It seems unlikely that they would just so happen to start debasing their currency around the same time you start up your operation, but you should be able to catch this with your random samplings.
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Old 11-16-2019, 04:28 PM   #10
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: Superbill questions

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
That's a slower inflation, but can be useful if it's cheaper for you to turn your precious metals into coins than it is to pay the fees they'd levy on you for exchanging your metals for their coins, if you want to trade with them anyway.
Minting in the context I'm talking about is a for-profit activity for both the ruler and the mint operator. It's mainly limited by availability of bullion to mint.

The ideal time to make this play would be just as the target performs a debasement on their own currency. You get to leech their debasement profits while amplifying the economic disruption and inflation it causes for them.
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