02-17-2020, 04:21 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: UK
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Re: Cost of clothing in Low-Tech Loadouts
First, very useful and interesting information about the high (labour) cost of clothes in actual history. Thanks for that.
Second, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, might Abstract Wealth from Pyramid #3/44 fix the disposable income problem for you? It has its own problems, but is (IMO) far more conducive to gameplay than actual bookkeeping for every character. |
02-17-2020, 06:55 PM | #22 | ||
Join Date: Apr 2019
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Re: Cost of clothing in Low-Tech Loadouts
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Scale that to your $2600 a month thats $1560 for monthly expenses and $1040 for disposable income, or $540 (if you pay $500 for taxes). Consider who your status zero person is, $2600 is $16.25 an hour before taxes... Im thinking that might be darn generous for status 0 TL8. This is the Manager of a mid scale restaurant, the branch manager of a bank, the guy who keeps books for 4-5 mom and pop stores, a self employed starting plumber, a paramedic, a hair stylist, a mechanic. All of these jobs are worthwhile and necessary for society to function, but there is no "Status" in them. They are good jobs, just not anything "special". A house heavily mortgaged, or a large apartment, with a car. To Bring it back on topic direct from B266 Quote:
I have to switch back to TL8 to do this comparison, but its something we can all relate to. In a TL8 world a full wardrobe (work and play) for our Bank Branch Manager $2600, this seems legit to me. Slacks and shirts for work, probably a blazer of some kind, a suit for weddings and interviews, a couple ties, couple pairs of jeans, t-shirts, shorts, winter coat, pair of boots, a few pairs of footwear, undergarments, couple hats, watch, basic stuff like a necklace, ring, belt, etc. I dont completely agree with the other percentage breakdowns as written. I find them a little high for status0 (frankly I think everything but a full wardrobe should be halved but that might just be TL8 talking). However, if you consider that a Uniform could well mean having 3 copies in order to always have a clean one to wear. Then the percentages make more sense. I think part of that is because today in TL8 we have a lot more sets of cheaper clothing as opposed to having just a few sets of more difficult to acquire clothing, you cant go out of the house in dirty clothes. I couldn't live on "one to four sets of ordinary clothes" as my wardrobe. I have 8 pairs of jeans, and probably 25 shirts/tshirts that I rotate through and while I could cut that some I couldn't do less than 3 pairs of jeans and 10 shirts/t-shirts. None of those jeans and a shirt outfits cost me $520, On the other hand my ordinary clothes minimum could be replaced for around $520, not because of extraordinary cost of the garments but what I consider the appropriate amount of options. |
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02-17-2020, 08:25 PM | #23 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Cost of clothing in Low-Tech Loadouts
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If you're a PC in a situation like AD 1100, and you can't afford to be a knight (or huscarl) being light cavalry is much cheaper than being unmounted heavy infantry. If you're a PC in a situation like the early fifteenth century, and you can't afford to be a mounted man-at-arms, being heavy infantry is much cheaper than being light cavalry. To take another example, the price of antimatter in GURPS Spaceships seems to be based on Robert L Forward's estimate of what it would cost to make using 1990s methods, if those were applied on a commercial basis. In GURPS, very much unlike reality, prices do not change as technology advances. The result is that travel and military operations in high-ultratech antimatter-powered spaceships are astronomically expensive, basically unaffordable even to high-tech rich travellers and militaries. But historically, each new energy technology has got cheaper by a factor of eight to ten in the century following its commercial introduction, and its far from clear that the outrageously inefficient methods CERN uses to produce unbelievably tiny amounts of antimatter can ever be commercial.
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02-17-2020, 08:30 PM | #24 | |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Cost of clothing in Low-Tech Loadouts
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. |
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02-17-2020, 08:43 PM | #25 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Cost of clothing in Low-Tech Loadouts
Oh, quite. The system is terrible, but you can throw it out and write your own.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
02-18-2020, 06:00 AM | #26 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Re: Cost of clothing in Low-Tech Loadouts
The $3500 Shirt - A History Lesson in Economics
The pre-industrial shirt: Quote:
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02-18-2020, 06:11 AM | #27 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Re: Cost of clothing in Low-Tech Loadouts
In annals of economic illiteracy, I've actually heard someone say we were wealthier in the Middle Ages because everyone could afford handmade, custom-fit clothes.
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02-18-2020, 06:59 PM | #28 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Cost of clothing in Low-Tech Loadouts
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." Last edited by Rupert; 02-18-2020 at 07:05 PM. |
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02-19-2020, 09:34 AM | #29 | |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: Cost of clothing in Low-Tech Loadouts
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02-19-2020, 11:29 AM | #30 | |
Join Date: Apr 2019
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Re: Cost of clothing in Low-Tech Loadouts
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My over arching point in all that post was to show that I think the idea that Status0 income level, and the chart (B265) showing monthly living expenses of $600 was not intended to be used as being $600 regardless of TL, but $600 relative to a base number that seems to be $1000 or 60% of income regardless of TL. Since TL3 comes out to Status0 $1000 I have always just used that as the rule of thumb for dealing with economics, doesn't hurt that most of my games since they are generally TL3-4 so there may be complications that I don't know at higher TLs. The numbers make sense from a TL7-8 life experience perspective and game play. So that's how I use them. Which comes back to the cost of clothing that started this thread. The Status 2 clothing represents a higher quality and more attention to prevailing fashion and it just has to be more expensive and exclusive and obvious... to impart Status. I have also allowed multiple sets of clothing at a lesser (not lower) status for the same thing to take into account the need to be clean and presentable more than a lower status person. |
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