Bay 12 Games Forum

Start helping people!

Oh dear.

I used to do that all the time. I kinda stopped after I challenged someone to a trope-off with a fully trope-linked paragraph...and botched the link on every one. (This is because I typically type in the url rather than find the page and copy/paste it, but I simply copy/pasted the parts that were the same from the first link. Which was messed up.)

So...no hard feelings from me.

Tin the Beardogs.

"It couldn't hurt to try something else first..."

Try using Guided Mutation to make Rik's leg less mangled.

I vote Lord.

Why do you always preface your comments with GM Note?

Yup, that's the machine!

I'm not sure what it was about it that kept it undermed so long.

Not always literally, but "derming" something typically means ruining everything.

The Art of Minimalism has been dermed four times and is almost through with the fifth. The first was caused by everything turning into 5, the second by Exterminatus, the third by a huge cave-in, the fourth by Azathoth and the Snarl eating everything, and the fifth was dermed by dermonster himself.

I'm kinda impressed by myself. We've just broken into the second page and there's been discussion not only of the original topic, but of how "natural" it is to develop currency and computers without written language.

Anyways...I think that I really don't have much to add, except skepticism about if currency really is such a "logical" thing to develop. To address some concerns brought up early on:
I understand that a society with video games but no currency is improbable. The level of sophistication required for computing is much more difficult to reach without something that's a standard of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value, and that such a concept would be come upon much more easily than computers. I also understand that a society without currency would be harder-pressed to develop many people who had disposeable income (or even the concept of disposeable income) to spend on video games.
Ignore all that for a sec and enjoy an interesting thought experiment.

I'm kind of interested that some people think that the numbers required for video games would lead to the concept of money. I'm not sure if it's true, but it's a neat idea.

A lot of people seem to agree with the hypothesis that a sort of "tier system" of item value would be used (e.g, a flaming sword is worth less than a diamond chalice but more than a steel axe), or a more story-based idea of exchange would occur, if trade even existed in those games. Assuming the tier system for a moment, how would such a system allow one to purchase, say, multiple Light Healing Potions by giving the shopkeep a single diamond chalice?