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Old 03-13-2019, 07:46 PM   #10
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Worth of Programmable Matter

I've decided how I want Shardpurses to work. The basic model has a capacity of S1000 (I've opted to shorten the above "nominal value of $n" and "enough Shards to make $n of goods" to simply "Sn"), is $50, and weighs 1 lb. It's typically made from mundane cloth or leather, with a thin lining of copper foil, and is a bit smaller than a typical coinpurse. The high weight isn't due to the construction - once enchanted as a Shardpurse, it suddenly becomes a good deal heavier. Wealthy folks may make their Shardpurses of more exotic cloth/leather, and line it with silver or gold (platinum doesn't work; humorously, as magic items don't degrade/decay, you could safely line it with roentgenium, provided you had some). Optimistic adventurers who can't afford a larger capacity will also carry a dedicated mundane coin purse - whenever their Shardpurse reaches capacity, they pull out a blue Shard and put it in the mundane coin purse (less optimistic adventurers who find their Shardpurses overly full typically pull out a few green Shards to make room, and keep these in their normal coin purse or elsewhere).

Shardpurses with large capacity are x100 to cost and +2 SSR (x2, x5, x10, etc) to weight per x10 to capacity, but their physical construction is no different (it simply costs more time - or Shards - to enchant them).

I should note here I made an error when stating the weights of Shards, as I was going off of this for weights, but found a (highly-inaccurate) value for dice density elsewhere. After actually calculating the volume of a d8 (it appears to be just a bit over 1 mL) and multiplying by the density of gold, I've decided (after rounding up) there are 20 Shards to a pound. I will update the erroneous post after submitting this one.

As there don't seem to be any objections, I think I'll stick with S1=$2 on the open market. Just outside of the dungeon, merchants don't pay as well - I'm thinking somewhere around S1=$1.5. For Shard exchanges to make a profit, a strict S1=$2 may not be quite appropriate - I'm thinking this is the price for an adventurer to purchase Shards, but selling them has a tax of 5% of the sale price (so you sell S1000 for $2000, but have to pay $100 in taxes, for a net gain of $1900).

I'm also considering expanding Shards a bit. The first part of this would be to allow for an S1,000,000 color, which would be UV-A. Such would be called black Shards, and would simply look like clear crystals. While the light they emit is invisible to most humans*, they cause nearby UV-fluorescent materials to, well, fluoresce. You won't find a black Shard while delving, but they can be created using a Shardpurse. There is no corresponding IR Shard.

The second bit would be to make them usable as a power supply for magic items and, if I opt to include them in the setting (leaning toward yes), clockwork mechanisms. For magic items, a higher rate of consumption means the item itself costs less to create (and buy), but I haven't decided upon how the relationship would work (I do know it would require occasionally reloading the item with fresh Shards, rather than being able to be conveniently linked to one's Shardpurse; time between reloads may also influence cost). For clockwork mechanisms, and probably a few pieces of common magitech that don't really count as "magic items" (like flameless torches), every S0.1 (that is, every red shard) would provide 100 Watts for 5 minutes**. Higher quality Shards simply last longer - to get more power, you have to sacrifice efficiency (every doubling of power halves total Joules; the equation works out to time in minutes equals 0.05 divided by the square of power in kW). Magitech light sources are inefficient in terms of Watts to lumens, and aren't as good as lanterns, but readily outcompete torches - S0.1 will shed light as a torch for 30 minutes (this works out to S0.2 per hour, as opposed to a lantern's ~$0.083 per hour and a torch's $3 per hour). Brighter lights are possible, but you'll need to do some math***.

For Shard-powered magic items, they can hold a set value of Shards at a time and use up the provided energy as needed (and you can't pull "excess" Shards back out - once you use a Shard to recharge one, that Shard is gone). For mundane Shard-powered items, they can also hold a set value of Shards at a time, but once charged they will output energy until they run out. Some do have "off switches" or the like, but this doesn't conserve Shard energy.

The third bit is an expansion of the idea that you can break down items to learn how to make them. All**** spells in the setting (which are built as Powers) come from the dungeons, specifically from special books - Grimoires - that can be found there. Once studied, a Grimoire can be used as a magical tool to cast a spell, but this can become quite cumbersome if you want to be able to quickly switch between spells, need something else in your offhand (Grimoires are fairly large), etc. Using Shards to unmake a Grimoire doesn't only teach you how to make more of such books - it also grants you the ability to use the spell without a Grimoire. And while Grimoires found in the dungeon are always for spells, it's possible to create them for many other things - more mundane Advantages (like Combat Reflexes), Skills, and Techniques. For leveled traits (like skills), Grimoires provide a number of character points toward such and have a maximum level they can raise a character to (representing the level of the creator). Such Grimoires are sometimes instead called Treatises.

This represents the most potentially problematic use of Shards, as it allows characters to spend Shards to gain character points, and may discourage niche protection (as characters can quickly - albeit expensively - teach each other their abilities). Having it require exotic ingredients that cannot be duplicated with Shardcraft (such as requiring the pages be made of vellum from the Dire Sheep of D'Irelund) might be a good way to prevent this, although depending on how much I have the Grimoires cost (in general, I intend to use a scheme similar to Christopher Rice’s Metatronic Generators to price most magic items, including Grimoires, but scale it so that the more character points the item is worth at the end, the more it costs per character point), this may be a non-issue.

*"Human" is a term applied to every non-monster sapient race, of which there are 6 (and none of them correspond to Earth humans). Elves, Dwarves, Giants, and Halflings simply see a clear crystal, so long as there isn't anything UV-fluorescent within range of the Shard. Catfolk see a faint glow, often imperceptible in bright light, while to Pixies, UV-A is just another color (which probably needs a name).

**This is based on a laborer making ~$300 per month (Average TL3 income under my own Wealth houserules). I assume a worker can generate roughly 5xBL Watts at a cost of 1 FP per hour, so if we assume 8 hours of work per day (probably 4 hours work, 1 hour rest, then another 4 hours of work, for a 9 hour workday), that's 20000 Watt-hours per month, or $0.015 per Watt-hour (over 100 times the modern US average of $0.12 per kiloWatt-hour of electricity). So, 100 Watts would cost $1.5 per hour. S1.5 per hour would correspond to S0.1 per 4 minutes. I opted to round this up to 5 minutes thanks to GURPS' rampant pentaphilia.

***At and below +0, every +1 to light level is +4 SSR (x5, x20, x100, x500, etc) to lux, which is +4SSR to lumens and thus +4 SSR to power. A typical torch is around 200 lumens and gets you to +0 light at 0.5 yards and is -1 to light per +2 SSR. One that gives +0 light at 2 yards (-1 at 5, -2 at 10, etc) is going to be around 4000 lumens (+8 SSR, or x20).
S0.1 lasting 30 minutes indicates the torch-like light source uses 40W. We need 800W for our super-torch, so each S0.1 lasts a little less than 5 seconds (I'm getting 4.6875s). If you're fine with lumens scaling a little bit differently from Watts, you can treat it as -8 SSR to endurance per +1 light level (or +8 SSR to endurance per +1 light level). So, a torch-equivalent lasts 30 minutes, a +1 torch (comparable to a good flashlight) lasts 1.5 minutes, +2 lasts 0.07 minutes (4.2 seconds), a -1 torch (comparable to a cell phone screen) would last 700 minutes (just shy of 12 hours), a -2 torch (comparable to a candle) would last 15000 minutes (250 hours, just shy of 10.5 days), etc. Do note that, if you're ok with red light, you'd be better off just using a red Shard (which produces 1 candela of light indefinitely) than a -2 flameless torch. I suspect Shards and flameless torches have replaced more traditional lighting means in most cases.

****Well, not quite. It's technically possible to create novel spells via research, but most mages don't bother. About the only known spells to have been created in this way are variants on interdimensional storage spells (the originals are from the dungeons), primarily utilized by Pixies.
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Last edited by Varyon; 03-13-2019 at 07:53 PM.
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