Modern Economics & Create/Snatcher

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by DemiBenson

Someone mentioned the "buy a scrapyard" method, which I think would be the least questions-asked of all the ongoing methods. And your PC could use the treasure trove as the seed money to buy a scrapyard.

Yeah, or use a treasure trove to buy a small worked-out goldmine. Use your talent to fill the lower levels not with solid gold, but with high-grade ore. Hire some workers with little experience of gold deposits to mine it back out again and process it normally. Or similarly, buy the mullock-heap of some nineteenth-century or earlier mine, use your ability to salt the tailings with high-grade ore, and run them through modern processing. "Who would have thought the old methods were so inefficient?" Buy a small river, use your talent to fill the bed with gem gravels. Hire people to dredge the gravels out and pan out the sapphires or diamonds or whatever. Sneak back during the holidays to refill the riverbed as necessary.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

This is a supers campaign. Are there other known people who can create/snatch matter? Even if the volume isn't as much, I'm willing to bet that the powers that be have thought through the ramifications of this sort of thing.

There are five known individuals with permanent creation abilities. Of those five, he is one of the two adults; the other adult being his twin sister (both Canadian). The children are age 2 (French, female), age 8 (Chinese, female) and age 12 (Russian, male).

*repeats "known" ad infinitium*

Lots of things aren't known. Edward's ability to make larger amounts is something he's kept to himself (as its' a recent development). He is known to be able to make no more than fifty lbs worth of his sample and even then doing so exhausted him for weeks afterwards. He has improved dramatically since (and is torn about his continued faking of the weaker ability).

About half the people with powers are under the age of twelve; two-thirds of the remainder are teens and the remaining range from early adulthood to the seriously elderly. About one in every hundred thousand people have powers of some kind. Powers started showing up in 2014. The campaign's "Now" is July 5th of 2016; supers are still rather new and most of them are kids. Its' hard to do things like draft a bunch of four year olds ... who get rather upset when you take them away from mommy and may have the raw power to do something about it.

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

Does Captain Creation, or whatever his name, create matter with a unique energy signature?

His name is Edward. (Edward Samuel Deacon.) And no.

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

How are the isotope and impurity percentages?

Precisely the same as that of the sample used.

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

Is there any odd energies associated with the creation?

Nothing detectable to either instruments or other supers. Which is moderately disturbing to the other supers given that he doesn't register as a super to other supers and his abilities don't register as powers to other supers when used. It makes the scientists cranky too; but they're getting used to that.

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

And the government is the least worrisome of the organizations to avoid. What would the diamond cartels do to keep there monopoly if they thought there was somebody who even had the possibility of creating diamonds?

We've had the ability to mass produce diamonds for quite a while now. Industry loves using the things.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

The supers genre seems to be one of those where it's better just to put Wealth on the character sheet, explain that he's wealthy because of his economic skills and ability to create matter, and call it a day.

Possibly, but this campaign is less supers genre and more people with powers. People tend to care about stuff like that more than superheroes do.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Paying CP for Wealth also has the virtue of defusing munchkins trying to think of ways to use their powers to make money, rather than getting on with the game.

Wealth is going on the character sheet regardless. My question was more, "And what level of Wealth?" rather than "Does he get Wealth?"

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

If the game is about making money with your super powers, then there's some nice ideas on this thread. There are other powers as well; there have been past threads on several such, particularly for mentalists. There would be any number of adventures in setting up your cover organizations and maintaining them from external threats (like the IRS) or internal ones (embezzlers and whistleblowers).

The players may end up going that route.

Pregens are something I make for two reasons; one, it gives a number of worked example characters for the players to riff off even if they make their own characters and two, it allows me to flesh out the setting's differences from our own in an easily digested form.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

There are five known individuals with permanent creation abilities. Of those five, he is one of the two adults; the other adult being his twin sister (both Canadian).

Ah! He is known to have creation abilities! If any enterprise connected with him shows up with large quantities of anything from any source the smart money is going to bet at once that he has, and others soon will have, bulk creation abilities. Speculative values of all bulk commodities will plummet whether he creates them or not. And then whatever trick he plays he would be best to play with something that has an actual value in use, such as platinums (used as catalysts in chemical industry), rare-earth oxides (used in electronics), and stuff that is expensive to grow (spices) or synthesise (drugs, dyes, engineering plastics).

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

Edward's ability to make larger amounts is something he's kept to himself (as its' a recent development). He is known to be able to make no more than fifty lbs worth of his sample and even then doing so exhausted him for weeks afterwards.

Fifty pounds of gold is 730 ounces: about $900,000 worth. Everyone will already be used to the idea that he could do that two or three times in his long vacation without interrupting his studies, and such damage as doing it might do is already done. And there are probably drug companies and materials research outfits cued up with cash, willing to pay him $20,000 per pound or more to convert their tiny samples of new enzymes, antibiotics, vaccines, and other research materials into tens-of-pounds batches.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Brett

Ah! He is known to have creation abilities! If any enterprise connected with him shows up with large quantities of anything from any source.

Of course, he can just create 50 pounds of stuff; that's about a half million dollars worth of platinum. He doesn't even have to be particularly secret about it.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by gjc8

I think with a little creativity, he can make precious materials that are slightly less suspicious than unmarked geometric blocks.

For example, as dust or flakes, or very fine powder like that produced when refining gold by the cyanide process.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

I think that the various governmental departments concerned with such things would have a careful eye on every way to get things to market.

Indeed. For example, a strategic supply of rare-earth elements that made the American electronics industry independent of supplies from China would make the US government deliriously happy, and the supplier would become the beloved darling of six US senators and about a dozen US reps with electronics plants/companies in their states/districts, with approving choruses from unions, three or four of the world's biggest companies, and squads of economic isolationists.

And the government is the least worrisome of the organizations to avoid. What would the diamond cartels do to keep there monopoly if they thought there was somebody who even had the possibility of creating diamonds?

Collapse, probably. The international diamond cartel is stretched pretty much to the limit keeping the existing producers happy.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Of course, he can just create 50 pounds of stuff; that's about a half million dollars worth of platinum. He doesn't even have to be particularly secret about it.

Exactly so. Any catastrophic loss of confidence in the continued scarcity of gold, gemstones etc. that is going to happen has already happened. That leaves the platinums (platinum, palladium, iridium, rhodium etc.) with prices around $1,000 per troy ounce, supported by actual industrial use, and with thick-enough markets that 100–150 lb ($1.5 – $2.3 million worth) per year won't make a lot of difference to the price. And then there are drugs, vaccines, enzymes, research materials….

It simplifies things considerably not to have to keep creation a secret.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Brett

Indeed. For example, a strategic supply of rare-earth elements that made the American electronics industry independent of supplies from China would make the US government deliriously happy, and the supplier would become the beloved darling of six US senators and about a dozen US reps with electronics plants/companies in their states/districts, with approving choruses from unions, three or four of the world's biggest companies, and squads of economic isolationists.

... and become a juicy target for assassination or hostage-taking attempts.

Besides, he happens to be Canadian.

[LemmingLord]

Reenergizing an old mine seems like a fine idea... Or oil.... Something where he could "find" new deposits of x.

My snatcher character makes industrial diamonds.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

... and become a juicy target for assassination or hostage-taking attempts.

If there were a war on and touch-sensitive displays were strategically significant, yes. I haven't heard about the Chinese assassinating people in foreign countries to make a bit of money for state enterprises.

Besides, he happens to be Canadian.

Doesn't matter. Just so long as he isn't in China or North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, or Myanmar.