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Old 03-10-2019, 07:25 PM   #4
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Worth of Programmable Matter

Quote:
Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
That's one of the most DF things I've heard in a long time. It raises lots of unanswerable questions if put in a larger world, but for game mechanics, and in the genre it works great. Awesome.
Thanks. It's based largely on some of the DF manga I've been reading recently (where adventurers make a good deal of their money off of selling monster cores). There's also some influence from The Legend of Zelda (the Shardpurse-Shard relationship is more-or-less how I see the Wallet-Rupee relationship working, although Shards use the light spectrum to assign value).

Quote:
Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
Since the exchange rate up and down the spectrum is set in the pouches, only the time-money exchange rate is needed.
Already covered by the books. For example, a $600 Thrusting Broadsword is made from around $41.40 of materials (LTC3) and the remaining $558.60 covers the cost of labor (and overhead, but it's not like Shards give you a price break for using them near a forge). With Shards, you can either make the weapon ex nihilo with 6 green Shards, or you can gather the relevant materials together (here, roughly 3 lb of iron and a lot of charcoal) and only pay in Shards for labor.

I should note here I used swords as the example for a reason, which I didn't clearly indicate in the original post. Swords and the like include charcoal in their material costs, which Shards cannot make (as it is biologically derived). However, Shards can still create swords ex nihilo, or from iron ingots (or old nails, iron ore, etc), because carbon itself is not biologically derived, and incorporating it into iron via Shardcraft isn't reliant on using charcoal.

Quote:
Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
For use cost... I'd probably charge a base 10% but... +10% for someone with skill 15+ and another 10% at skill 18 and another 10% at skill 20. I'd also generally assign a rarity for skills. Drop those to 5% for common skills like blacksmith or carpenter, but raise to 15% or 20% for rare skills like jewelry or an exotic armory.
The way I have the Shards working, higher-paid professions (like jewelers and the like) automatically produce higher-value goods (as that's the way it works in GURPS), and with the cost in Shards being a function of what the goods cost, this ends up working itself out. The big issues I'm looking for advice on are a) Is it appropriate to set the cost of Shards as twice the value of what they can produce? and b) Is it appropriate for craftsmen to charge 10% of the worth of the materials/labor the Shard are substituting for as a commission cost? I've also since thought of a c) If someone wants to "borrow" something from someone else for the purposes of using Shards to learn how to produce it (meaning the borrower will destroy the object then rebuild it and give the owner the identical replica, using up Shards equal to twice the nominal value of the object), what is an appropriate charge to the borrower for this? For this last, assume things like craft secrets don't exist in this world (as literally anything you produce can be copied simply with the expenditure of enough Shards; this may be a good explanation for TL never advancing).

I'm also considering making precious gems be impossible to create with Shards (so that they can serve as heirlooms for royal/noble families), and possibly even give an expiration date for Shards. Any thoughts from the hive mind?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gef View Post
I'm one of those GMs who wrestles with the "unanswerable" questions, and the first one that pops to mind is supply. How common are these shards?
Monsters have a crystalline core, typically near where a mammal of comparable body type would have its sternum. Killing the monster then carving out this core will yield an item that, when carefully destroyed (there's a faultline in the crystal, placing an appropriate chisel and striking will produce the desired results), will produce a goodly number of Shards, the quality of which will depend on the power of the monster. Less-carefully destroying the core will yield similar results, but with fewer Shards (some adventurers prefer this method, however, as a) it's a good deal faster and b) with sufficient skill, you can pull it off while the monster is still alive, and destroying the core kills the monster). All dungeons (which constantly expand and produce monsters) have their own core, and destroying this yields similar results, albeit to a much greater degree (all but the most desperate or foolish adventurers take their time to destroy the Dungeon Core properly, as there's rarely a rush to destroy it and the sheer quantity of resulting Shards means losing a lot of wealth by botching it).

New dungeons pop up all the time, and while their cores become more valuable (that is, generate more and higher-quality Shards) as the dungeons themselves grow, larger dungeons produce more powerful monsters, and monsters raid nearby towns from time to time. Leaving a dungeon core be in order to make some sort of monster farm is rarely a good idea, so there are usually calls to subjugate dungeons as soon as they are discovered. As the forces of the various kingdoms are often busy doing other things (and most sane folk don't want to risk getting terminally corrupted by a dungeon), subjugation is the purview of murder-hobos adventurers.

That's the answer of where they come from. As to how common they are? Common enough a PC can expect to be able to buy enough (provided he has the funds) to make whatever gear he needs immediately, provided he's in a good-sized town (or a smaller one that's conveniently close to a dungeon), but rare enough it's still worthwhile to do things the old-fashioned way (because the Shards cost more than the goods they can produce).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gef View Post
Are MOST fine things made with blue-shifted shards?
No, because anything that can be made from Shards can be made more slowly - but much more cheaply - through more traditional means. Wealthy nobles and royals may pride themselves on having new items frequently made via Shardcraft as a form of conspicuous consumption, but those who can manage to have such items made more traditionally but make it seem as though they have commissioned them via Shardcraft will have a leg up, being able to have their conspicuous consumption at a fraction of the cost.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gef View Post
Red shards are more interesting, because they make the cheap stuff. If they're vanishingly rare, then that doesn't matter. If they're common, then you get an anachronism, something comparable to modern cheap manufactured goods, not the best but available to people who otherwise couldn't afford those kinds of goods at all. Can you make pencils and post-it notes from red shards? Disposable lighters? Flashlight-keychains? Fashionable sandals that only have to last until fashions change? A red shard mine could make you rich.
Anything you can make given the appropriate materials and workspace can be made with Shards, with a caveat that you'll need to provide any biologically-derived materials required. As the Shards to expend to produce the goods will cost twice as much as the resulting goods would cost using more traditional means to produce them, the only case where you'd turn a profit is when people are willing to spend a great deal more to have those hot sandals, like, omg RITE NAO!
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