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Old 03-10-2019, 03:51 PM   #1
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Worth of Programmable Matter

Something I've been considering for a DF-like setting is having some of the loot in the form of what we'll call Shards - crystals of varying color that can be used in place of materials, facilities, and/or labor (time) for crafting items. They can't make anything biologically-derived (but can modify such, so they can turn a dead dragon into dragonscale armor and a delicious stew), and you can't use them to make anything you yourself couldn't make given the appropriate materials, facilities, and time*, but they're great for being able to make whatever you need (within those constraints) right away. They can also be used to enhance existing items, such as turning your favorite Fine Thrusting Broadsword into, say, a Very Fine Balanced Thrusting Broadsword. For our purposes we will consider Shards usable only in Town (and you'll typically want to take them to a craftsman to have him/her make what you need), not in the dungeon**.

Shards have a nominal value they can be used to create, ranging from $0.10 per red Shard to $100,000 per violet Shard (they follow ROYGBIV, with a x10 to value for each step along the spectrum). Creating something worth less than the crystal(s) used gives you the appropriate change. They are functionally weightless***. My question, however, is how much should such Shards be worth on the open market? The setting is basically the standard static "TL DF" (call it TL 4), and the value the Shards place on materials and labor are objective and unchanging for a given material/finished product and correspond to the "typical" value of the material. I'm thinking twice the nominal value, does that sound appropriate?

Additionally, how much should a craftsman charge to turn a fistful of Shards (provided by the client) into a finished product? It costs the craftsman functionally no time, so basically whatever they charge comes to them as profit. I'm thinking 10% of the worth of the item (plus the cost of any materials the craftsman provides). Does that sound appropriate?

As an example, lets say you want Prince Boris' Very Fine Balanced Ornate (+3) Thrusting Broadsword (LT59), worth $19,800. Creating this ex nihilo would require 1 indigo Shard, 9 blue Shards, and 8 green Shards, but we'll do it with 2 indigoes instead. Provided the armourer has the skills needed to produce such a piece, we can hand him the 2 indigo Shards and another $1,980 for the commission, and he'll hand us back 2 green Shards (which we can sell for $400, assuming we go with the "twice nominal value" price, for an end net cost of 2 indigo Shards +$1,580) and the sword. If the Prince already had a Fine Ornate (+2) Thrusting Broadsword, worth $4,800, enhancing it would only cost 1 indigo Shard and 5 blue Shards, plus a commission of $1,500. In fact, we may want to commission the armourer to enhance the balance and general quality (so adding Balanced and Very Fine), adding $12,000 to the weapon's worth (and thus costing 1 indigo, 2 blue, and a $1,200 commission), then take it to a jeweler to enhance its appearance (further +1 to Ornate), adding the final $3,000 to the weapon's worth (and costing 3 blue Shards and a $300 commission).

Were you instead willing to wait long enough for the armourer to make your fancy sword normally (or purchase one on the market), you could sell those two indigo shards for $40,000 (assuming we go with twice nominal value) and pay the normal price of $19,800, putting you $20,200 ahead after the transaction, rather than $1,580 in the hole as we were from having him create it ex nihilo.

*This is generally defined as "I have made this item before." You can use Familiarities for this if desired. Additionally, so long as the character has a base skill of 12 or higher in the relevant manufacturing skill, it's also possible to use Shards to learn how to make something - take the item, Shards equal to 100% of its value, and unmake the item. This consumes the item and Shards, but means you are now considered as having made the item before.
**Dungeons have a reversible corrupting effect that make it harder to leave if you've suffered enough of it, and can eventually kill you (or worse). Using Shards will corrupt you even faster, but the corruption doesn't have any real effect once you're far enough away from the dungeon. So, adventurers usually acquire Shards, take them to town, and either sell them or have craftsmen there use them so they only need to rest long enough for what corruption they suffered while delving fades before venturing back in.
***They're actually quite heavy for their size. Each is a crystal that looks just like a standard d8 (sans numbers, and transparent and glowing with ~1 candela of light of the appropriate color), but weighing far more - Shards have a density comparable to gold, and each weighs 0.05 lb. However, anyone transporting such will invariably have a Shardpurse, a small pouch that can only hold Shards, but does so in a extradimensional storage, negating their weight and volume. Conveniently, one can pull out any Shard - or combination of Shards that fit in the hand - that is of equal or lesser value than the total in the bag. For example, you could put 100 red Shards into the bag, and later take them out as a single yellow Shard.
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Last edited by Varyon; 03-14-2019 at 10:22 AM.
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Old 03-10-2019, 05:34 PM   #2
khorboth
 
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Default Re: Worth of Programmable Matter

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.

Since the exchange rate up and down the spectrum is set in the pouches, only the time-money exchange rate is needed.

I'd peg it at the rate necessary for Comfortable wealth. Something like what a good craftsman would expect to earn from the time.

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.
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Old 03-10-2019, 05:58 PM   #3
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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
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? Are MOST fine things made with blue-shifted shards?

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.
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Old 03-10-2019, 07:25 PM   #4
Varyon
 
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Default Re: Worth of Programmable Matter

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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).

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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.

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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?

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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).

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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.

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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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Old 03-10-2019, 08:17 PM   #5
Gef
 
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Default Re: Worth of Programmable Matter

Thanks for the reply. Sounds like you've set it up where it won't have too much weird effects on the economy, but time is money and "right now" is a thing people do pay extra for. If a valuable shard can be used to make most anything fast, people will hoard them for emergencies - I can see them used as currency. Also I can see making a weapon from a shard as a rite of passage for a warrior. -GEF
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Old 03-11-2019, 12:09 PM   #6
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Default Re: Worth of Programmable Matter

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Originally Posted by Gef View Post
Thanks for the reply. Sounds like you've set it up where it won't have too much weird effects on the economy, but time is money and "right now" is a thing people do pay extra for. If a valuable shard can be used to make most anything fast, people will hoard them for emergencies - I can see them used as currency. Also I can see making a weapon from a shard as a rite of passage for a warrior. -GEF
Yeah, ideally the Shards won't damage to economy too much. Disallowing the Shards from being used to create biological products was partially for this (I wanted there to still be a trade in expensive spices, silk, etc), partially to make monster loot (spider silk, dragon scales, etc) more special, and partially so warfare doesn't get a massive boost (food at twice the normal price is a steal for an army, as it means the bulk of the military is involved in combat and similar, rather than just the logistics of moving food around).

Hoarding is one of the reasons I considered giving Shards something of an expiration date, but I'm not certain that's really necessary. As for currency, this iteration of the idea (I've had variants of it a few times, but this is the most complete) actually started with the concept of Dungeon Coins that functioned the same way and were found in hoards within dungeons, but I feel making them basically shattered monster cores works better. As it stands, there are merchants that set up shop dangerously close to dungeons (typically with retired adventurers as guards) and accept Shards as currency for much-needed supplies, and will also purchase (or barter for) unneeded magic items and the like (dungeons also produce magic items, either wielded by sapient monsters or hidden away in chests). The exchange rate is worse than if the adventurer were to return to town, sell the Shards, and use the resulting money to purchase what he/she needs, but you can't beat the convenience.

As for rituals, creating something through Shardcraft is incredibly easy (provided you could make the item already), but it could be used to prove you know how to make something. Unmaking something through Shardcraft also teaches you how to make it using more traditional means, so some craftsmen will expand their repertoire in this way. I should also note that being able to create matter via Shardcraft requires you to have unmade it before, so most people who expect to frequently encounter Shards will use red ones to unmake a small quantity of a wide variety of materials to allow them to make it on-demand when needed.

I currently debating if Shardpurses should have a limit as to the worth of Shards they can hold (much like the Wallets in The Legend of Zelda), and if so how the cost-to-capacity relationship should work, and how much "starter" Shardpurses (which are quite cheap, so that every adventurer can be expected to have one) should hold. If I do go with this option, each person would be limited to a single Shardpurse due to some mystical mumbo-jumbo or another.
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Old 03-11-2019, 03:12 PM   #7
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Default Re: Worth of Programmable Matter

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
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 misunderstood. I thought you were talking about 10% of the value of the crystals, not of the finished good. Yes, this neatly fixes the problem I was aiming at.

I'd still look at Comfortable labor costs for the value if they're fairly common or at Wealthy labor costs if they're not. The value of goods is too variable since material v. labor is all over the board.
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Old 03-11-2019, 03:34 PM   #8
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Default Re: Worth of Programmable Matter

You can essentially view this as a special type of currency: from the point of view of a customer, giving a craftsman a bunch of shards and getting back a finished item is no different from giving a craftsman a bunch of silver and getting back a finished item, so the real benefit is that it lets you do production much faster. A 100% 'rush job' surcharge isn't horrible as an approximation (note that, if you gave a craftsman shards to produce an item he already has in inventory, he probably pockets the shards and gives you the item from inventory).
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Old 03-11-2019, 04:26 PM   #9
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Default Re: Worth of Programmable Matter

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Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
I misunderstood. I thought you were talking about 10% of the value of the crystals, not of the finished good.
Well, they're sort of the same thing. That $19,800 sword requires Shards with a nominal value of $19,800 after all (although buying said Shards on the market, you'd spend roughly twice that).

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Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
The value of goods is too variable since material v. labor is all over the board.
I'm basically working under the assumption that the generic prices in GURPS Low Tech and its companions (and other places) are correct. I'm debating having the Shards treat certain materials as being worth more or less than you could typically purchase them for - for example, water might be treated as more expensive than it usually is in town, while platinum and aluminum are treated as cheaper than they would be for a TL4 society to produce. Anybody have any advice on other materials this treatment might be appropriate for?

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
You can essentially view this as a special type of currency: from the point of view of a customer, giving a craftsman a bunch of shards and getting back a finished item is no different from giving a craftsman a bunch of silver and getting back a finished item, so the real benefit is that it lets you do production much faster.
Indeed, that is part of the idea. There's also the benefit that it allows you to upgrade existing items (in theory, you could have a character start with a Cheap weapon and keep upgrading it via Shards until it's some Very Fine Balanced Ornate powerhouse with a slew of enchantments thrown on).

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A 100% 'rush job' surcharge isn't horrible as an approximation (note that, if you gave a craftsman shards to produce an item he already has in inventory, he probably pockets the shards and gives you the item from inventory).
That would require some rather impressive slight of hand, as the normal custom with Shardcrafting is for the craftsman to produce the desired product right there in front of the client. If all you have to pay with are Shards, he'd probably sell you the item at a slight markup to account for him needing to go (or send an assistant) elsewhere to sell them for actual money (most craftsmen don't keep Shards around, as they're too tempting for thieves).
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