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Old 08-04-2022, 03:56 PM   #31
Pursuivant
 
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Default Re: Costs in GURPS dollars

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Sure, that's a good way to start things out. But if you decided to just start up the campaign using GURPS 4e books (which typically use GURPS $) and didn't do the work to convert everything to period dollars, find relevant period catalogs, etc, then when someone wants to buy something that doesn't have a price listed in any of your source books, you have the options of . . .
d) Only allow purchase of non-standard items at the beginning of game sessions (or at suitable break points during play) and make players do their own research. Tell your players what are acceptable period catalogs for oddball items. Then tell them to multiply the listed price by n to convert to GURPS $ when they buy the item for their character. Finally, require a page number in the catalog so you can check their math.
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Old 08-04-2022, 08:34 PM   #32
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Default Re: Costs in GURPS dollars

Boy, this is confusing.

I think it might be this (in 4e - 3e seems to be playing by different rules).

* G$ is defined as "one G$ will buy what a US dollar would buy in 2004".

* Therefore, a given item always costs the same number of G$ in any time period, possibly so you won't need different equipment lists for different eras.

* Rather than have different prices for the same item in different time periods/settings, goods getting "cheaper"/more abundant over time due to better production methods (furniture is easier to make with mass production, improved farming methods mean more food from the same area of land, and pretty well everything is easier to make with more plentiful supplies of energy) is handled by the increase in Starting Wealth at higher TLs - this doesn't say anything about "the value of money" in any particular currency, it means that the average person can afford more goods because the more advanced technology means there are more goods to go around.

I'm not sure, though. Can anyone confirm? The prices in some rulebooks seem to confirm this, with similar items in High-Tech and Low-Tech being the same price.

This also came up in the Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century thread, where we were trying to work out how you'd represent prices going up due to energy and resources being in much shorter supply than now. Not sure we came to any clear agreement about how it did work.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Donny Brook View Post
Is there a rule of thumb for figuring out what things that are not listed in a rule book should cost in GURPS dollars?

Like, what should furniture cost in a TL6 setting?
If it is like what I said above, then it would be like this.

* If you have a price in G$ for a different TL, maybe from a different rulebook, then the price at TL6 would be the same, no further adjustment needed, because G$ counts how much goods you get, not what that's worth in relation to a day's wages or to any particular real-world currency.
* If you have a real-world price that you want to convert into G$, then how that translates into G$ will depend on the time and place. You'd need to work out the "exchange rate" between G$ and the currency used in the place your game is set in at the time it's set in (or that used in whatever you're getting your prices from) and make a note of it.
So if your reference material is a catalogue from 1902 in the UK, work out roughly how many 2004 US dollars (i.e. G$) are equal to a 1902 UK pound, using a conversion site that goes by purchasing power rather than wages, because G$ go by purchasing power rather than wages. That's your "exchange rate", and you can use it to translate real-world prices from the catalogue into G$.
http://www.historicalstatistics.org/...converter.html is a useful site for that, it covers different countries as well as just US dollars.
It's a good demonstration of what a big difference going by purchasing power rather than wages makes, too - I tried out the example above and it said that 1 pound in 1902 was equal to about 120 US dollars in 2004 in terms of goods, but 1200 US dollars in 2004 in terms of wages!
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Last edited by Inky; 08-04-2022 at 08:42 PM.
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Old 08-04-2022, 09:28 PM   #33
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Costs in GURPS dollars

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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
Boy, this is confusing.

I think it might be this (in 4e - 3e seems to be playing by different rules).

* G$ is defined as "one G$ will buy what a US dollar would buy in 2004".

* Therefore, a given item always costs the same number of G$ in any time period, possibly so you won't need different equipment lists for different eras.

* Rather than have different prices for the same item in different time periods/settings, goods getting "cheaper"/more abundant over time due to better production methods (furniture is easier to make with mass production, improved farming methods mean more food from the same area of land, and pretty well everything is easier to make with more plentiful supplies of energy) is handled by the increase in Starting Wealth at higher TLs - this doesn't say anything about "the value of money" in any particular currency, it means that the average person can afford more goods because the more advanced technology means there are more goods to go around.

I'm not sure, though. Can anyone confirm? s!
This is what I believe to be true in 4e and 3e absolutely was playing by different rules.

The big equipment lists in Cliffhangers and WWII were created by researching period sources. They are not in anything like 4e's $ (Gurps dollar). The $ was probably used more as a typesetting convenience than anything else.

In 3e books (or at least the ones with researchable price lists) you were supposed to be doing everything like starting Wealth and current Jobs in local currency.
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Old 08-05-2022, 12:42 AM   #34
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Default Re: Costs in GURPS dollars

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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
* If you have a price in G$ for a different TL, maybe from a different rulebook, then the price at TL6 would be the same, no further adjustment needed, because G$ counts how much goods you get, not what that's worth in relation to a day's wages or to any particular real-world currency.
The problem is not all goods are created equal. Some goods have dramatically dropped in price even before you consider inflation while other have so out paced inflation to the point it isn't funny.

Take a 1940 (TL7) $2,938 house and look at one in 2000 which is $US 119,600 when by straight inflation it should be $US 36,256.17.

Personal Computers (base Complexity 3) have increased in power but dropped in price. A 2022 $US 1,000 computer (TL8-9) would be $651.05 in GURPS but by any metric — speed, power, or storage the 2004 computer at that price would be inferior.

You would have to throw in High-Capacity (x1.5 cost) and Fast (x20 cost) to even start matching the abilities of the 2022 computer but that would kick the price, in GURPS $, to a jaw dropping $19,531.50.

Houses by comparison have the opposite problem - their cost as way outpaced inflation to the point that a $100,000 house in 2004 (TL8) would be worth far less in 1950 (TL7) than the x 0.75 in income GURPS gives you.
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Old 08-05-2022, 01:52 AM   #35
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Default Re: Costs in GURPS dollars

Houses and computers are bad choices, house have been a speculative investment option since the 80's and pree-2000's computer prices are not good yardsticks to use, they only really saw mass adoption after that.
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Old 08-05-2022, 03:05 AM   #36
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Default Re: Costs in GURPS dollars

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Houses and computers are bad choices, house have been a speculative investment option since the 80's and pree-2000's computer prices are not good yardsticks to use, they only really saw mass adoption after that.
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.
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Old 08-05-2022, 03:51 AM   #37
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Default Re: Costs in GURPS dollars

Those aren't particularly good choices either. Cars are constantly having new features added as must have and College education doesn't responded well to surges in demand.
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Old 08-05-2022, 06:15 AM   #38
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Default Re: Costs in GURPS dollars

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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
Boy, this is confusing.

I think it might be this (in 4e - 3e seems to be playing by different rules).

* G$ is defined as "one G$ will buy what a US dollar would buy in 2004".

* Therefore, a given item always costs the same number of G$ in any time period, possibly so you won't need different equipment lists for different eras.

* Rather than have different prices for the same item in different time periods/settings, goods getting "cheaper"/more abundant over time due to better production methods (furniture is easier to make with mass production, improved farming methods mean more food from the same area of land, and pretty well everything is easier to make with more plentiful supplies of energy) is handled by the increase in Starting Wealth at higher TLs - this doesn't say anything about "the value of money" in any particular currency, it means that the average person can afford more goods because the more advanced technology means there are more goods to go around.
This seems largely correct. A complicating factor, however, is that there are some items where price does change with TL - or, rather, at higher TL's the default price corresponds to a better item, meaning getting the version from a lower TL is likely to be cheaper. Weapons get upgraded to Fine for free at TL 7. Computers in Ultra-Tech cost the same, but TL 10 computers have +2 Complexity (~x100 processing power) and 1000x the storage of TL 9 ones, and TL 11 and 12 models have +3 and +4 Complexity (x1000 and x10,000 processing power, respectively) and 1,000,000x and x1,000,000,000x the storage of TL 9 ones. And, realistically, a lot of other goods are going to experience similar shifts. Economics isn't something that you can model by just applying a single conversion factor... but honestly, doing it that way will probably get close enough for gaming purposes.
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Old 08-06-2022, 02:26 AM   #39
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Default Re: Costs in GURPS dollars

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Those aren't particularly good choices either. Cars are constantly having new features added as must have and College education doesn't responded well to surges in demand.
The "new features added" thing would apply to nearly all non food goods. Also what about food? Adam Smith said "From century to century, corn (any grain crop) is a better measure than silver, because, from century to century, equal quantities of corn will command the same quantity of labour more nearly than equal quantities of silver."

Of course that kind of went pear shaped with industrialization but it seems to be the best to work.
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Old 08-06-2022, 02:40 PM   #40
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Default Re: Costs in GURPS dollars

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Originally Posted by maximara View Post
The "new features added" thing would apply to nearly all non food goods. Also what about food? Adam Smith said "From century to century, corn (any grain crop) is a better measure than silver, because, from century to century, equal quantities of corn will command the same quantity of labour more nearly than equal quantities of silver."

Of course that kind of went pear shaped with industrialization but it seems to be the best to work.
Smith assumed that the supply of labour would be equilibrated to the supply of food by the starvation of the poor (which is why he was so keen on continual economic growth). It hasn’t happened. The combination of fertiliser, mechanised agriculture, pesticides, global shipping, and effective contraception has kept food cheap in terms of labour for quite a long time.
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