Costs in GURPS dollars

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by maximara

I love how DF claims that no one Filthy Rich would raid a dungeon. This ignores the Filthy Rich who would raid dungeons not for wealth but excitement or prestige.

Duty or Sense of Duty could also be a reason to hit the dungeon life-style. Like for Paladins, Clerics, Druids, Shamans but even Mages that have a sense of duty to protect their communities and other types. Even the rogue types may have it.

The other reason can also be for the power hungry. Particularly for Mages and such, even Alchemists.

I would say that this may be unusual, but definetely not impossible.

Originally Posted by maximara

As long as DF stays in its own little world its fine but if you want to go Ravenloft on it than knowing the TL becomes an issue. Gothic Earth is the latest (timewise) of the Ravenloft realities clocking in at TL6



Well AD&D1 had it where you were still dungeon delving even after you hit titled level (generally level 9). Heck, the fighter expressly got a freehold at level 9. And that is ignoring the 1,500 gp/week for 1-4 one had to pony up to the guild to get to the next level. To put that in prospective a rich meal was 1 gp; so to go up from level 1 to level 2 your character is dumping enough money to feed 1,500 rich people to their guild.

A titled level character has is a minimum 2,000 gp/level/week upkeep while a Blacksmith, an Average job (per Middle Ages I pg 63), is 30 gp/month as a hireling which per Basic Set is at least $700/month. To simplify things we will assume a Blacksmith is a freeman job with $600/month upkeep or ~25 gp/month upkeep.

Assuming level 10 (to make the math easier) some 86,667 gp/month is being spent minimum for upkeep or a staggering ~3,466.68x what the blacksmith cost of living is. We are somewhere between Great noble and Royal family with the $2,080,008 upkeep this all produces. Just to keep form going bankrupt at level 10 you are looking at likely Multimillionaire.

And if Multimillionaires are stumbling around in the underdark then certainly Filthy rich are. /s

Seriously the economics of your average sword of sorcery world is FUBARed up one side and down the other.


One problem when talking about "dungeons" is "Dungeon — A generic term for any castle, location, or ruin that serves as the site of an underground adventure" (DMGe1 pg 228)

So the Underdark is effectively one big dungeon. Much of the Queen of the Demonweb pits module (adventure) are dungeons and it starts at level 10.

AD&D/D&D (any edition) economy and prices have their own internal balances that dont match up with Gurps. You cant just freely interchange both for all the math.

Also, D&D char economy has always been recognized as flawed. It's way too easy to amass a fortune.

That been said yes, Dungeon dwellers do make good money (the ones that manage to survive of course).

Now, if you're good at something... You know...

Yes, a lvl 9 Warrior could basically retire. But then again, so too could a billionaire. So why do billionaires keep working?

So, a lvl 9 Warrior may just keep dungeoning, despite not needing, because it is what he does, it's what he's good at, and particularly, because after all the grinding to reach that lvl 9, that's what he likes to do.

Besides, it's not like he's good at anything else. Probably.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by maximara

Going back to costs before this goes even further off the rails. IIRC you can't have Vow of poverty and get points for having less than "normal" income.

I never understood why. A Dead Broke person can improve. However, someone with a poverty vow cannot - unless, not without breaking said vow.

Though in a "realistic" the vow of poverty may be a bad joke — if monk were really that poor Henry VIII wouldn't have gone around seizing their lands.

Yeah well, there certanly were some amount of corruption in the Catholic Church, and thus there were several priests that paid only lip service to the virtues they spouted.

On the other hand thou, there were some monastic orders that had many assets, but which their members lived without luxuries. The Templar knights are perhaps the best example. Their order had access to vast amounts of wealth, which they used to fuel their wars in the Holy Land, but their members were expected to live with the bare minimum.

So, I would say that this type of monk/priest/cleric whatever can have a Vow of poverty in an individual level, but have a powerful Patron in the form of a monastic order, that can provide them with anything they need for their job - like an expensive horse and body armor for a poor Templar for instance.

In such a case, I believe such a Patron (monastic order) would expect that any amount of wealth amassed by a member be "donated" to the order. Such was the case of the Templars for instance. If they pillaged a city, the booty went to the order. The Templars had merchants and administrators, but their profits went to the order, not to themselves. And so on.

Speaking of Kings many of the Middles Ages had cast flow problems. Sure they were Filthy Rich, in theory, but much of that wealth was tied up in land and the fact that armies outside of the knights directly under the king were mercenaries.

I believe most of the Wealth of everybody is tied up in something. A Baron would have his wealth in chests of olive and pepper and sugar and lands and some gold in his treasure room. Likewise, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have their bank accounts to transit their expenses, but most of their wealth is tied up to the stocks of their companies; if Musk suddenly needs 50 billions all of a sudden, he's gonna have some trouble trying to sell some of his shares on Tesla and SpaceX.

Heck, I could see a Filthy Rich noble go into a dungeon for not only extra wealth but for man power. He could harass, via false flag operation, his neighbors with the creatures who figured working for him was better than dying. He wouldn't have to pay them as much as regular mercenaries and they could soften up his foes allowing the regular knights and mercenaries to move in.

There's one Pyramid article... "A rogue's life" I believe it was the issue... That talked about something so simple and logic, and that yet had never crossed my mind, which is to make some coin by capturing slaves among the monsters. So, instead of slaughtering them all, some can actually be captured and sold for the highest bid, something so obvious and that yet never crossed my mind before I read that article. Indeed, I wouldnt find it strange for entire kingdoms having raiding parties organized on regular bases to hunt slaves amongst inhuman races (mostly inhuman humanoids like Orcs, Kobolds, Goblins, Hobgoblins etc)

[dcarson]

In terms of seizing the monasteries. The vow of poverty means that the individual members don't own much because it is all provided by the order. That doesn't mean that the land isn't worth a lot or that the chapel doesn't have a small fortune in gold and silver altar goods. Some orders also treat the vow of poverty literally, the members don't own anything themselves but the monastery is a very luxurious place to live. Some orders also also take a vow of austerity and live very basically.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Yes, a lvl 9 Warrior could basically retire. But then again, so too could a billionaire. So why do billionaires keep working?

So, a lvl 9 Warrior may just keep dungeoning, despite not needing, because it is what he does, it's what he's good at, and particularly, because after all the grinding to reach that lvl 9, that's what he likes to do.

Besides, it's not like he's good at anything else. Probably.

This is why I go 'huh?' with DF's idea that someone Filthy Rich wouldn't go into dungeons. Heck, it could be a family tradition or the equivalent of a Crusade where instead of going off to far away lands and risk your power being usurped while you were away (King Richard I and King John case in point) you take control of the land of much closer foes.

Originally Posted by KarlKost

There's one Pyramid article... "A rogue's life" I believe it was the issue... That talked about something so simple and logic, and that yet had never crossed my mind, which is to make some coin by capturing slaves among the monsters. So, instead of slaughtering them all, some can actually be captured and sold for the highest bid, something so obvious and that yet never crossed my mind before I read that article. Indeed, I wouldnt find it strange for entire kingdoms having raiding parties organized on regular bases to hunt slaves amongst inhuman races (mostly inhuman humanoids like Orcs, Kobolds, Goblins, Hobgoblins etc)

The Sept 1985 Dragon article "For King and Country" suggested that Arthur could use the various Orc tribes in Scotland as mercenaries. "Once the conquest of Scotland is complete, Arthur has no further duty to the beasts." Their religion is pagan and they either leave, convert, or get wiped out. "If they had been smarter, they could have seen that they would have no place in a unified Britain, but they weren't smarter, and so they willingly captured their own homeland for pay."

Regarding raiding parties for inhuman humanoids slaves that makes sense especially when magic can be used to keep them in line. Of course if you do this too long you can get the equivalent of the Truul (GURPS Aliens) who can't function without orders from a 'master' and if your culture becomes enlightened to 'slavery wrong' it has a new problem - what to do with a race whose self will has for all practical level been destroyed.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by maximara

This is why I go 'huh?' with DF's idea that someone Filthy Rich wouldn't go into dungeons. Heck, it could be a family tradition or the equivalent of a Crusade where instead of going off to far away lands and risk your power being usurped while you were away (King Richard I and King John case in point) you take control of the land of much closer foes.

I understand why. It's the same mentality of video games RPGs. Accumulating coin is just as important as XP, because it's how you improve your gear, which is just as important as buying new spells and increasing the strenght and amount of attacks per turn with each "lvl up".

So, the intention was to not allow players to buy the "Vorpal Blabe +5" with a "lvl 1" char.

It should be mentioned thou that STARTING PLAYERS cannot have Wealth above that level, not that it isnt completely nonexistant.

Originally Posted by maximara

The Sept 1985 Dragon article "For King and Country" suggested that Arthur could use the various Orc tribes in Scotland as mercenaries. "Once the conquest of Scotland is complete, Arthur has no further duty to the beasts." Their religion is pagan and they either leave, convert, or get wiped out. "If they had been smarter, they could have seen that they would have no place in a unified Britain, but they weren't smarter, and so they willingly captured their own homeland for pay."

Regarding raiding parties for inhuman humanoids slaves that makes sense especially when magic can be used to keep them in line. Of course if you do this too long you can get the equivalent of the Truul (GURPS Aliens) who can't function without orders from a 'master' and if your culture becomes enlightened to 'slavery wrong' it has a new problem - what to do with a race whose self will has for all practical level been destroyed.

The way I see it, for the act of slavery to be conducted, there's always a process of dehumanization.

The latest one we are more familiar with was a racial thing, upon which africans, or in the case of the spanish Americas, natives, were regarded as less than humans.

For the "civilized", like romans or chinese or arabs or any other, it were done on the "barbarians", primitives upon which those would sometimes even consider slavery to be an "improvement" to their condition.

And when you consider the other to be less than human well, it's far easier to justify anything.

Thus, for fantasy societies which have fictious inhuman humanoid races like orcs, it is all too easy to justify that - particularly when said races return the favor (or worse) on regular basis. So, even for a society that considers enslaving the "clean folks" (elves, dwarves, humans etc) to be abominable, they may still be totally fine about enslaving "those other guys".

[maximara]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

I understand why. It's the same mentality of video games RPGs. Accumulating coin is just as important as XP, because it's how you improve your gear, which is just as important as buying new spells and increasing the strenght and amount of attacks per turn with each "lvl up".

So, the intention was to not allow players to buy the "Vorpal Blabe +5" with a "lvl 1" char.

Except I can't see how anyone can argue 250 points (Larger-than-Life) is "lvl 1". Heck, DF 1 expressly stated that point total is for "right in the middle for the leading roles in fantasy novels" Perhaps "most munchkins see" that as a starting point but it is not "lvl 1" even by post Cataclysm WoW standards.

Heck, in AD&D1-2 an Average character (25-50 points) would totally trash 1st level characters. Murphy Rules even had a cartoon about how an ordinary house cat could kill a "lvl 1" magic user.

Take Classic Dai Blackthorn who is 163 in 4e for example:

Dia's Traps skill (62.5%) is on par with a 8th level Thief and in the areas of Pickpocket (83.8%), Lockpicking (90.7%), and Stealth (Move Silently and Hide in Shadows; 95.4%) Dia is slightly better than a 10th level thief for Pickpocket, a 14th level thief for Lockpicking, and a 16th level thief for the last two combined.

Since technically there were complex modifier that should have been used (but no one actually used) with regards to AC and the differences in combat a reasonable comparison of fighting ability cannot be made.

Hear Noises (a perception roll in GURPS) is so pathetic that a 25pt GURPS character with an IQ 11 is better than a 17th level thief which of course puts Dia with an IQ 12 right off the AD&D1 thief table. Interestingly this 160 pt character is not even to 1st level Thief standards in his climbing ability (83.8% vs 85%).

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by maximara

This is why I go 'huh?' with DF's idea that someone Filthy Rich wouldn't go into dungeons.

They're trying to enforce a particular trope of characters who go down into dungeons, not simulate the economics of dungeon expeditions. "In our dungeon fantasy game, dungeon adventurers are the sorts who blow their money quickly and go down into dungeons to get more." It doesn't matter whether there are other types of characters with their own reasons for going into dungeons; they're not the subjects of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.

And you can still be Very Wealthy and be a dungeon-delver. You start with $20,000! That's an amazing amount of wealth already. People who are Filthy Rich or more have better ways to accumulate more money than going down into darksome holes filled with monsters. That's what the world of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is like.

[maximara]

[QUOTE=Stormcrow;2447165]They're trying to enforce a particular trope of characters who go down into dungeons, not simulate the economics of dungeon expeditions. "In our dungeon fantasy game, dungeon adventurers are the sorts who blow their money quickly and go down into dungeons to get more." It doesn't matter whether there are other types of characters with their own reasons for going into dungeons; they're not the subjects of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.

That "blow their money quickly" sounds more like what character with less than the wealth expected for their Status but must (for various reasons) maintain "appearances".

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

And you can still be Very Wealthy and be a dungeon-delver. You start with $20,000! That's an amazing amount of wealth already. People who are Filthy Rich or more have better ways to accumulate more money than going down into darksome holes filled with monsters. That's what the world of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is like.

As I mentioned before there are more reasons besides money to go "down into darksome holes filled with monsters": prestige, maintaining a family tradition, getting (likely cheaper) mercenaries, becoming the lord of the "darksome hole" and using the creatures within as a stalking horse against neighbors (clearly my neighbors can't handle a rabble that I have kept in check in my lands, your majesty. I can promise that under my rule such annoyances would end.)

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by maximara

As I mentioned before there are more reasons besides money to go "down into darksome holes filled with monsters"

And as I mentioned before, the answer to your problem is that that's the reason given in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, whether or not you can think of another one. They declare it to be so because that is the kind of universe they have constructed. You need no longer ask "Huh?" because you now understand why it is that way.

Does this have anything to do with "costs in GURPS dollars"?

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

And as I mentioned before, the answer to your problem is that that's the reason given in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, whether or not you can think of another one. They declare it to be so because that is the kind of universe they have constructed. You need no longer ask "Huh?" because you now understand why it is that way.

Does this have anything to do with "costs in GURPS dollars"?

DF also has "A traditionalist GM can require heroes to spend $40+ per point for “guild training” before they can “level up” and gain new abilities." (DF1 pg 4) which has the same problem as the old 1500 gp/level/week D&D did — it will start warping the the local economy causing local inflation increasing the cost in GURPS $.

If you read that "$40+ per point" as "$40+ per total point" (which is how 'traditional' D&D worked) things get ridiculous. Even if you don't do that reading of DF's text if you assume that at one time these were Novice (Competent) [62] then each [250] character has seen $7,520 pass through their fingers. It is what the Dragon #97 (May 1985) article "Only Train When You Gain" warned against — excessive money sinks result in GMs letting wealth flow more freely and you are on the express train to Monty Haul station.

In fact, I am surprised with the emulation of that part of D&D especially as we have seen the very thing "Only Train When You Gain" warned against in WoW. Classic WoW was very stingy with gold and had a lot of gold sinks but beginning with Burning Crusade not only did the gold start flowing more freely but many of the gold sinks were scaled back. Today the amount of gold a character can get and keep is totally insane and some gold generators had to be nuked from orbit because they were too good (Garrisons in Warlords).