Costs in GURPS dollars

[Inky]

Originally Posted by maximara

Those were just the easiest examples. Cars and College education are other examples of where the correlation between GUPRS $ and real world value is wonked.

Take a 1 lb of bread $US 0.12 in 1940 but $US 1.50 in 2004 (if you went for the no name cheap stuff)

Gallon of Milk in 2005 it was $3.20 but was 52 US¢ per gallon in 1940. By the 3/4 ratio ($15,000/$20,000) that 1940 gallon of milk should be $GURPS $1.125 but if we plug that into an inflation calculator we get $US 0.08. And you can't say it was due to rationing as that gallon was 83 US¢ in 1950 which translates into $6.32.

The abstract wealth IMHO is a better mechanic with rough bench marks so you can compare goods.

I don't understand what you're saying here.

Why is 1 lb of cheap bread being US$0.12 in 1940 but US$ 1.50 in 2004 a problem?

What do you mean "by the 3/4 ratio"? If a gallon of milk was US$3.20 in 2005 (near enough to 2004), it should be G$3.20 both in 2005 and in 1940. Not sure where that $1.125 is coming from.
http://www.historicalstatistics.org/...converter.html says that US$3.20 in 2004 is equal to US$0.26 in 1940 and US$0.29 in 1950, which is not at all what you got for the actual prices of milk, so that does indicate that not all prices vary at anything like the same rate, if that's what you were getting at.

I'm not sure I've ever tried the Abstract Wealth rules, so I couldn't say.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Inky

I don't understand what you're saying here.

Why is 1 lb of cheap bread being US$0.12 in 1940 but US$ 1.50 in 2004 a problem?

What do you mean "by the 3/4 ratio"? If a gallon of milk was US$3.20 in 2005 (near enough to 2004), it should be G$3.20 both in 2005 and in 1940. Not sure where that $1.125 is coming from.
http://www.historicalstatistics.org/...converter.html says that US$3.20 in 2004 is equal to US$0.26 in 1940 and US$0.29 in 1950, which is not at all what you got for the actual prices of milk, so that does indicate that not all prices vary at anything like the same rate, if that's what you were getting at.

I'm not sure I've ever tried the Abstract Wealth rules, so I couldn't say.

I was working off the claim "GURPS works under the assumption that people at higher TL's can afford more stuff than those at lower TL's." — Varyon

I thought "By the 3/4 ratio" was made clear with the ($15,000/$20,000) ie (TL7 (1940)/TL8 (2004) average wealth) note.

If Varyon's claim is valid than if we take an item in 2004 $US and do the conversion we should get a value at least the same as was it was historically which since income between TL7 and TL8 increases 4/3 would mean the good would cost more proportionally.

If we plug $3.20 (2004) into a CGI calculator we get $US 0.24 not the historical 52 US¢ (pulled from "Here’s the Price of Milk the Year You Were Born" at Taste of Home) So by doing the conversion GURPS allows you to buy more "stuff" at the lower TLs as it lowballs the prices from what they were historically.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

If we plug $3.20 (2004) into a CGI calculator we get $US 0.24 not the historical 52 US¢ (pulled from "Here’s the Price of Milk the Year You Were Born" at Taste of Home) So by doing the conversion GURPS allows you to buy more "stuff" at the lower TLs as it lowballs the prices from what they were historically.

It's a game, not an economic simulator.

If you care a lot about what things cost—and I confess that I sometimes do—you need to do some analysis and/or some research. Don't just come up with something on the fly; think about costs of production and transport and estimate prices of representative goods.

If that's too much bother, then you can just accept the prices in GURPS books, especially 4/e, which at least is consistent, and handwave what things cost when you go further. If it's not central to your plot, just make it up.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It's a game, not an economic simulator.

If you care a lot about what things cost—and I confess that I sometimes do—you need to do some analysis and/or some research. Don't just come up with something on the fly; think about costs of production and transport and estimate prices of representative goods.

If that's too much bother, then you can just accept the prices in GURPS books, especially 4/e, which at least is consistent, and handwave what things cost when you go further. If it's not central to your plot, just make it up.

This is why I like the Abstract Wealth - it gets rid of all this fiddly stuff. Set a Item Value and roll to see if they get the item.

[Arcanjo7Sagi]

Originally Posted by maximara

This is why I like the Abstract Wealth - it gets rid of all this fiddly stuff. Set a Item Value and roll to see if they get the item.

That is my problem with Abstract Wealth. Unless you're going to buy something trivial, you'll have to roll for everything you want to buy. In a game that already has a reputation for having too many rolls.

I would have preferred that they had opted for a solution that simplified the rules for wealth, without this additional rolls.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by maximara

I was working off the claim "GURPS works under the assumption that people at higher TL's can afford more stuff than those at lower TL's." — Varyon

I thought "By the 3/4 ratio" was made clear with the ($15,000/$20,000) ie (TL7 (1940)/TL8 (2004) average wealth) note.

If Varyon's claim is valid than if we take an item in 2004 $US and do the conversion we should get a value at least the same as was it was historically which since income between TL7 and TL8 increases 4/3 would mean the good would cost more proportionally..

that doesn't follow from Varyon's claim at all. That higher TL people can afford more than lower TL people (because they get a higher base income and a higher starting money) in no way implies that the margin will be as much as it was historically (and what's more, that the ratio will hold true for every TL advancement). Obviously that won't be the case. The steps in starting wealth advancement are too even to represent history specifically even ignoring the fact that at any given moment in history the purchasing power of a dollar varies considerably depending on geographic location.

It's actually fine to set prices and incomes at whatever you want for your setting. It's just a hell of a lot of work for not much reward. It's just fine, if the price lists and incomes in setting books are different from what the default rules suggest. They probably are more accurate than the default. That's why they're there.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Arcanjo7Sagi

That is my problem with Abstract Wealth. Unless you're going to buy something trivial, you'll have to roll for everything you want to buy. In a game that already has a reputation for having too many rolls.

I would have preferred that they had opted for a solution that simplified the rules for wealth, without this additional rolls.

GURPS also has a reputation for begin too complex — doesn't mean it actually is. As someone who comes from AD&D1 though D&D4e I can tell you D&D is more roll dice happy than GURPS was...or is. The is a reason people talk about "roll playing" D&D.

Sure in campaigns where loot and other cash infusions are 'oh it's Tuesday' Abstract Wealth doesn't work but if that is happening in anything like a "realistic" campaign then hyperinflation will kick in.

Given the range GURPS covers I don't know if simplification of the rules for wealth was really practical.

GURPS Classic tried to have a "floating" value for the $GURPS but that resulted in a bigger mess where TL1 Greece had $5,000 while TL2 was a hodgepodge of $500 (Egypt) and $1,000 (Aztecs, Celtic Myth, and Russia) and TL5-6 was even more a mess going from $750 (Age of Napoleon and Cliffhangers) to $200 or $1000 in mining town (Old West 2e) to $1,500 (WWII)

Cliffhangers and WWII were particularly problematic in Classic because the Cliffhanger genre set in the "present" actually went through WWII clear into the early 1950s: Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941); Batman (1943) and Captain America (1944) being examples of Super cliffhangers with King of the Carnival (1955) being the last serial set in the then present time.

[Stormcrow]

GURPS 4th edition money is not complicated. It's not a mess. It's fairly simple.

All published items are assigned a static value in units marked "$". "$" doesn't mean "dollars" here; it's just being used as a generic money symbol. The exact amount of actual currency that "$" equals in any game world must be set by the game master.

Characters are given more starting $ and get paid more $ in any given TL by default, to represent the idea that people in societies with higher technologies have more stuff. This is completely independent of the amount of actual currency any given society is using.

And that's pretty much it. The system wasn't set up to accurately reflect real-world economics. It is set up to give authors a single standard against which prices can be set, which will work across any setting in any TL. One price list is all you need.

Much confusion comes in when you think that "$" equals "dollars." Yes, you can sometimes squint and see 2004 US dollars in "$" listings, but that's just the starting point from which the standard was built and isn't really applicable anymore. Converting real-world currencies to 2004 dollars won't guarantee you'll end up with published "$" prices, and that doesn't mean the published prices are wrong.

More confusion comes in when you think the GURPS wealth system is anything more than a way to give players things to buy and sell. There is no economy behind it.

So you can buy things, you can sell things, you pay a cost of living and other expenses, you can earn a salary, and you can loot things. That's pretty much all GURPS "$" is designed to do. Wealth levels can do a bit more, like get you memberships and credit and so on, things that don't directly have to do with paying money. Other than that, there is absolutely no realism in "$". Characters don't walk around with "$" in their pockets or in their bank accounts; they have their local currencies.

There are some games where the exchange of money isn't important enough to actually keep track of how much cash you really have, and it's for games like this that abstract wealth systems make sense. But in any game players actually want to know how much money their characters have, "$" is perfectly acceptable and uncomplicated.

[KarlKost]

Gurps "prices" reflect just increased productivity due to TL advancement; if you are in North Korea you're still dirty poor despite being TL 8. Also, the Wealth trait is individual, not a measure of society. So, even if the quality of life for the AVERAGE person was better in 1950 than today (TL 7 to TL 8), a Wealth person is wealthier today than in those times, by game design. It's just that society overall had MORE people with a better rating of wealth than today - that's it.

[Arcanjo7Sagi]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

"$" doesn't mean "dollars" here; it's just being used as a generic money symbol.

I think many who live in the US forget that $ is not a universal synonym for the dollar, and that other countries use the symbol on their currencies. Since I live in Brazil (which uses R$ as currency) $ for me has always been a generic financial symbol, applicable to any currency, real or fictitious.

Originally Posted by maximara

Given the range GURPS covers I don't know if simplification of the rules for wealth was really practical.

What I was trying to say was that I kind of like the idea behind the Abstract Wealth rules, just not the execution. At least related to extra rolls.