[Basic] Skills of the week: Economics, Finance and Market Analysis

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If there were a single skill of Statecraft or Rulership, you'd expect members of modern governments to have it, to use it to understand what was practical, and the governments to function more smoothly and reliably.

Within the GURPS level of abstraction, it's perfectly possible to posit that there is a Statecraft or Rulership skill. The problem is that this skill is not the same one as rulers roll to keep their jobs in most forms of government.

There is an extremely limited incentive for elected officials to develop high Statecraft skill or to roll against it when doing so penalises their Politics skill.

[RogerBW]

The last campaign I ran that used these a lot was Tempt Not the Stars, a deliberately Traveller-esque space trader game. Finance was for making big decisions (off data generated by Accounting, and using Accounting for implementation): can we afford to keep doing this sort of thing? Market Analysis was (unofficially) for commodities and arbitrage: given that we only have historical market prices, which of the worlds round here will offer the highest premium on stuff we can buy locally? But it was only one of the players who was really interested in this stuff; the rest were happier with trading happening in the background as an excuse to put the ship and crew where adventure would happen.

[whswhs]

The other use I would suggest for Market Analysis is as a focus for divination.

[patchwork]

whs already mentioned it, but I feel the point deserves some elaboration: Economics is useful and interesting and important to anyone who hops into new world-societies regularly. It is the skill of figuring out from public and nonthreatening sources who is getting the best return on investment for their resources, who has the greatest freedom of action with their resources, what the optimum organizational scale is, and similar ideas; in simple and low-tech societies, military power and economic power may be vested in the same people, but in an industrialized or near-industrialized one, Economics is the skill of figuring out who's in charge here. When the answer doesn't match the Politics answer, that's interesting. It tells you where to insert yourself to be invisible yet comfortable if long term infiltration is your thing, it lets you know who to target if destruction or suborning is your objective, it lets you identify marginalized agencies that might be helpful to you, it lets you know what sort of backup/follow-on to call for. I and my players usually use Finance as a background skill - it doesn't do things we usually want to make central to the game - but an agent or infiltrator without Economics is not a very good agent or infiltrator.

[Devil_Dante]

i don t really know how rule this kind of skill.. i mean, if you have a big capital, and high skill, and you play at wallstreet, for example, i successful means what?
and it s a day-by-day check, or weekly??

[CoyoteGestalt]

Too, I've had Economics come up in an Infinite Worlds game... because it's also the skill of figuring out how to break economies, useful for ISWAT types trying to bring down interdimensional dictators and such.

[wellspring]

IMO, these three are good examples of skill bloat. They are subject to heavy overlap, and really they're all orbiting around a few distinct but latent skills.

A professional economist is trained in two key skills: Economics, Mathematics (Statistics), plus some Computer Operation. By economics, I mean "economic theory". Add public speaking, writing, teaching, and research, and you have a competent recent graduate of a doctoral program.

Financiers have some combination of Law (Financial), Current Events (Business), Mathematics (Statistics), Computer Operation, Administration, and Merchant, depending on their area of specialization. Some technical traders won't have the influence skills. Others are mostly deal-makers with no quant background. That's a function of the fact that "Financier" describes several very different professions in the same industry. Many have at least some Economics... but it's not a job requirement.

In lower-TL settings, drop Computer Operation and then if you go even earlier, Statistics. For a hard core data modeler, add in Computer Programming to use statistical packages like R. IMO the skill Mathematics (Statistics) at TL 8+ should either require or include the operation of basic statistical packages, just as most skills include the operation of the required tools.

Market Analysis and Finance should be dropped from the game as separate skills. The jobs of market analyst and financier should be templates or styles.

[wellspring]

Originally Posted by CoyoteGestalt

Too, I've had Economics come up in an Infinite Worlds game... because it's also the skill of figuring out how to break economies, useful for ISWAT types trying to bring down interdimensional dictators and such.

I would have thought that Accounting would be more useful here. The major challenge is in processing the intelligence you get, which IMO is more difficult than interpreting the data once you have it all collected and neatly laid out for you.

[CoyoteGestalt]

Originally Posted by wellspring

I would have thought that Accounting would be more useful here. The major challenge is in processing the intelligence you get, which IMO is more difficult than interpreting the data once you have it all collected and neatly laid out for you.

Up to a point, sure - but my thinking was that where Accounting lets you process the data, it's not really a predictive skill - Economics would let you know where to meddle and guess what the long-term results would be, including possible undesirable secondary consequences.

For that matter, it's a good skill in any number of situations where you need to guess what the long-term unintended effects of major events could be - eg "Blowing up the dam will drown the invading army today, but will the people we're trying to rescue starve next year anyway without its irrigation system?"

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by CoyoteGestalt

Up to a point, sure - but my thinking was that where Accounting lets you process the data, it's not really a predictive skill - Economics would let you know where to meddle and guess what the long-term results would be, including possible undesirable secondary consequences.

Accounting is predictive assuming the status quo continues. You predates on going trends. especial ones of dwindling returns or expanding costs. So Accounting can predict upcoming costs or changes needed to be made. Economics can predict how to make those needed changes.