[MH] Creating gold with RPM

[Christopher R. Rice]

That's the thing Ritual Path Magic is inherently meta. Every time a mage casts a spell - even if it's one the GM has approved - he can say "No, change it." This is something that doesn't click with most GMs. Took me a while. So sure, they can make money with it, but the GM has to allow that to begin with. It's really that simple. Either the GM wants it to happen or he doesn't.

[PK]

This isn't an RPM problem, it's really a problem with any magic system that allows people to conjure stuff. In the standard GURPS Magic system, Earth to Stone (to create metal) can be a never-ending source of cash, even if the GM restricts it to "boring metals" like iron. Dungeon Fantasy tackled that issue by ruling that it and similar spells have a maximum duration of one day and cannot be maintained. You may want to consider doing the same thing with RPM spells. Remember, as the GM, you have the last word on whether a spell is legal.

Though as Ghostdancer notes, I don't see a problem with this. I see a ton of plot hooks and angry foes that they're creating for you. Also, if people know about magic in your setting, I'd imagine some vendors will cast a Detect Magic ritual on their tills at regular intervals; once they know something's up, it will be easy for them to figure out where all of this fool's gold is coming from. Enjoy the "free Wealth" for now kids, because it's going to more than pay for itself with all of the "free Enemies" on your tail . . .

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by PK

This isn't an RPM problem, it's really a problem with any magic system that allows people to conjure stuff. In the standard GURPS Magic system, Earth to Stone (to create metal) can be a never-ending source of cash, even if the GM restricts it to "boring metals" like iron. Dungeon Fantasy tackled that issue by ruling that it and similar spells have a maximum duration of one day and cannot be maintained. You may want to consider doing the same thing with RPM spells. Remember, as the GM, you have the last word on whether a spell is legal.

Though as Ghostdancer notes, I don't see a problem with this. I see a ton of plot hooks and angry foes that they're creating for you. Also, if people know about magic in your setting, I'd imagine some vendors will cast a Detect Magic ritual on their tills at regular intervals; once they know something's up, it will be easy for them to figure out where all of this fool's gold is coming from. Enjoy the "free Wealth" for now kids, because it's going to more than pay for itself with all of the "free Enemies" on your tail . . .

Id paraphrase (or completely misquote and misuse) your advice from the Psionics books. Special powers are meant to break the plot.

Creating gold is the least of problems when you can read minds to get pass codes, mindcontrol celebrities to fall in love with you etc
Many of these things can be achieved with much less than 50 points.

I'm sure there's a most efficient way to get money from spells with almost zero risk. If gold doesn't work then sell teleportation. If that doesn't work sell magic bullets. If that doesn't work sell attribute boosting potions as workout or smart juice (In the real world an undetectable attribute booster would be potentially worth millions and even in a detectable world your profit is your degree of monopoly (Many would still pay hundreds of thousands just to give +5 a go)

At the end of the day of the day its a pact between the players and GM about what sort of game they want to play. The universe cancels out everything I do is not fun. I don't have to worry about money can be very fun and is in fact the baseline of a MH game. A GM could say yep you sell magic gold on the black marker between sessions, but after fences, cuts and payoffs you only get $X and that's Y points on your character sheet or you have to play it out and it will take dozens of sessions (and we are here to hunt monsters not run a merchant empire)

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

That's the thing Ritual Path Magic is inherently meta... Either the GM wants it to happen or he doesn't.

Which ironically is the exact opposite of the thing that tends to immediately appeal to a lot of people -- the existence of an apparently objective design system to determine costs given desired spell effects. On the surface, it looks like you can just turn a crank and have the game stats drop out of the tables. But even the number of kind of spell effects that are required components of the spell are subjective (see any past thread on "how to build X in RPM"). So that objectivity is really something of an illusion.

Mostly, I just find that creating blocks of gold is simply out of genre for Monster Hunters. Okay, so you can make money if you focus on that. But it's not D&D, so who cares? That's not part of the score. Your characters get a nice liberation from the mundane grind, so they can focus on their real job, which is preventing horrible monstrous supernatural things from overrunning the oblivious and incapable rest of humanity. Wasting time and energy on personal enrichment just means that somebody, somewhere, got overrun and consumed while you were wasting time conjuring your temporary shiny metal instead of kicking their monstrous butts. If the GM puts that cost in play, then the players will be much less inclined to run up their bank balance by selling Pocatello to the minions of Hell because they'd rather count the gold pieces stacked up in their basement. (Or else you've discovered you're playing quite a different game indeed.) Personal wealth goes in the "don't care" column for RPM mages. Otherwise, you can just nod and say "sure, you win; make up another character when you want to join the game with everyone else, and let me know how rich the new NPC got".

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Which ironically is the exact opposite of the thing that tends to immediately appeal to a lot of people -- the existence of an apparently objective design system to determine costs given desired spell effects. On the surface, it looks like you can just turn a crank and have the game stats drop out of the tables. But even the number of kind of spell effects that are required components of the spell are subjective (see any past thread on "how to build X in RPM"). So that objectivity is really something of an illusion.

I agree, but I also disagree. It's perfectly possible to posit a production of probable prestidigitations if you have a set of expectations laid out. That is, you could take the GM mostly out of the equation, but you'd need to build an overlay framework that says what is and isn't possible in no uncertain terms. "You can't make wealth with RPM without spending 1 unspent character point per 10% of wealth permanently created." "Unless a critical success is made gold and similiar valuable materials always LOOK good on the surface, but are low-quality when inspected. Detection spells automatically reveal how they were created except in the case of a critical success." And so on. If you do it that way. If you create a framework of what can and cannot be accomplished then GM oversight becomes minimized because the GM has put down in the rules how he sees magic working. When an edge case comes up then Rule Zero comes back to life and oversight is required.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Which ironically is the exact opposite of the thing that tends to immediately appeal to a lot of people -- the existence of an apparently objective design system to determine costs given desired spell effects. On the surface, it looks like you can just turn a crank and have the game stats drop out of the tables. But even the number of kind of spell effects that are required components of the spell are subjective (see any past thread on "how to build X in RPM"). So that objectivity is really something of an illusion.

Mostly, I just find that creating blocks of gold is simply out of genre for Monster Hunters. Okay, so you can make money if you focus on that. But it's not D&D, so who cares? That's not part of the score. Your characters get a nice liberation from the mundane grind, so they can focus on their real job, which is preventing horrible monstrous supernatural things from overrunning the oblivious and incapable rest of humanity. Wasting time and energy on personal enrichment just means that somebody, somewhere, got overrun and consumed while you were wasting time conjuring your temporary shiny metal instead of kicking their monstrous butts. If the GM puts that cost in play, then the players will be much less inclined to run up their bank balance by selling Pocatello to the minions of Hell because they'd rather count the gold pieces stacked up in their basement. (Or else you've discovered you're playing quite a different game indeed.) Personal wealth goes in the "don't care" column for RPM mages. Otherwise, you can just nod and say "sure, you win; make up another character when you want to join the game with everyone else, and let me know how rich the new NPC got".

Thing is, wealth can be of great use to a monster hunter, whether you're Bruce Wayne or X-Com. Spending some time getting wealth is quite likely to produce a net improvement in monster-hunting ability.