Economy Discussion

Not sure where to put this, so I hope mods can figure it out and place it there.

Hi all! This is your freindly neighbor hood sometimes Merchant NPC. Playing Captain Morgan has gotten me an interesting perspective on our Economy in game. One thing I have observed off the bat, is that a very very few of you actually have Coin. I have also observed that Logistics usually has no coin either. Which means in the scant few years that James bought the new set of coins til now, some very few of you are sitting on a heap of gold the size of a swimming pool and doing nothing with it. This completely tanks our Economy, by the way, and makes alternative currency necessary. The bank allowed some commerce to continue through paper based bank transfers and ledger transfers. But, with very few exceptions, coin currency is really not trading hands.

If you have coin in amounts that rival Fort Knox, turn it in. You literally lose nothing by depositing it, and there is some percentage of gain through interest with the bank. If you really need to keep it on you, use trade currency. If you are afraid of having a bank transaction, just turn in the gold at logistics for a bag of gold item card. No IC records are kept on that. Alternatively melt the gold into gold bars, again turn the coin into logistics and get an item tag.

I may be not seeing the whole picture here, so please correct me or put your thoughts on this thread.

I am in somewhat agreement with you on the hoarding thing.... Its that way with gems too. I know since I have been here, the most I have had in my hands in terms of physical coin was 300.... and that was for all of twenty minutes (go from bank to players for dispersion)

Most I've had on my person was something around 50 and that was only because of a withdrawal. Most I usually have is about ten... if I have coin.

Coin and gem hoarding is a problem with the Economy at KR. And there have been players to admit that they need to start making deposits. Some characters, such as Dragoons, require a lot of gems in order to advance in their heroics, which can explain gem hoarding. But having a huge box full of coins, while the idea is awesome, really hurts everyone else. I have thousands of gold as Sebastien. But I only carry enough to buy breakfast. Back when I ran the BlackBird, I used to turn in chests full of gold after a good night, and the LMs would cry.

There are a lot of other ways to pay for things, and make exchanges between players. But if every player had the ability to carry at least 50 gold on them at a time, there would be less hoards of folks making bank transfers. It makes trading among each other much smoother, and regulates the economy of things such as essences, which pile up because it's hard to sell them to someone who doesn't have physical gold.

Bank your physrep coins, guys. The next time you need to make a big withdrawal of more than like, 30 gold, get it written on an item card.

((Off-Topic is definitely the place for this.))

I heard rumor of an inflation exploit people have found and abused using "Bag of Gold" cards.

Please do not make that your solution.

Unfortunately short of allowing marshals to sign off on bank transfers outside of logistics (which I do not think should be a thing because it's a system that could also be abused), there's not a good way to handle transactions besides coins or bags of gold. And as someone is is often first shift MM, there's so much gold that gets withdrawn first shift, especially by people doing guild kickups, that drains logistics for the weekend and makes it very difficult to loot our NPCs, which continues to make getting the gold out there to players via NPCs difficult.


Edit: and I'm curious what the inflation rumor is because this is the first I've heard of it.


I know a lot of people hate bags of gold because if you're hit by a pickpocket, one use of pickpocket gets you one coin or item card. One coin vs one bag of 100 gold is a very distinct difference.

I’m going to second Rachael’s statement(and inquiry about inflation). Without physical coin that’s the only option for Logistics to give gold to PCs. And often when we want “gold” as a money reward it has to be on item cards.

I'm going to take that one up with Steve, I think.

Could "Bag Of Gold" cards be limited to 10 gold or something, to limit that pain?

Maybe not 10 but a limit nonetheless is a good idea. And to go off of that, maybe have pre-written bags of gold cards to meet the demand for people who need to withdraw a few hundred gold at a time?

When Kr first started I heard that players would get about 10 gold from the start. Not sure if that happens anymore.

Then a couple years passed by and commodity cards came around, which wasn't a bad idea to get some build ( you had to get a collection though for it to work) or you pretty much gave a commodity card for a few silver or whatever the price of the card was.

Players usually had to loot npc's, usually killing a monster and do searches. That's where most of the spending money came from.

Ideas:
-Maybe after an event if a player has some commodity cards that aren't being used, they can be compensated with a small amount of gold/silver?? Then the next event, they can get a new set of cards?
-I know this sounds crazy, but maybe James can do a real life exchange of cash for in game gold (something reasonable) so a player doesn't feel too broke in game to survive?? (I know alot of video game consoles do this))
-Have the higher up folks make more quests with more loot?

I've resorted to store credit due to the lack of physical coin. The quests and things for new players to do are there, the rewards are not.

I personally am only sitting on about 20-30 gold in physical coin in between events. Ive known people in the past that have had stashed of 200+ gold for events at a time. Even the interest you recieve from banking it doesn't seem to be enough to entice players to use the bank.

James just made a large purchase of coins because of attrition. You may have seen them show up at the last event. Same for gems; you can recognize the new ones by the fact that they're still shiny. And yes, some players are sitting on hundreds of coins, either for character reasons or because they think it's funny. Seriously, some players get a kick out of keeping coins away from other people, but all it does is ruin our in-game economy because once James gets more physical coins, the number of people spending them will go up, and the value of coins goes down.

Sadly, very few people at this game understand that yes, economics matters even on the small game scale. Now that we have more coin, we can send out more NPCs with coin treasure, which means more players get it, which means more gets spent, which means the players who think it's funny to literally bury coins in the woods get more fodder for their private joke. That causes a market crash, which is what we've been experiencing; except that since many values are fixed by game rules, what results is a barter system.

And if players don't keep their coins buried and put them back in the game, we have sudden and wild inflation. Also bad.

Of course, doing things as-is right now causes other problems. That is, we now have coins and gems; awesome. We send those out with NPCs. The first time that NPC gets looted, he or she hands over all their treasure. Most NPCs have multiple respawns. They have no more treasure to give out. That means some players get it, others don't; but it's not an RNG, so the first player to bother looting is the one that gets everything. That's an imbalance in getting the coin and items out into the game world.

I have a proposal written down about a different way of handling NPC treasure that streamlines mod/encounter creation and keeps NPCs lootable through multiple respawns. It involves NPCs simply having cards on them that read something like "MINOR DEMON (FIRE)"; one card is given out per player per respawn, which can then be taken back to Logistics. When handed in, it is rolled on a table for loot. There are multiple benefits, including that the marshals don't have to come up with anything on the spot, nor delay NPCs going out as they write up all the cards, nor do they need to hand out everything to one player. One of the monster marshals said he tried to get the same thing implemented, but it was rejected.

On the general subject of economy, I also have another proposal about crowdfunding actually stamped Kormryian coins; it's expensive, because first we'd have to order custom casting dies, but it's doable. I did all the research and cost calculations needed a few weeks ago, and I'm quite certain that we could get a good chunk of the player base to back it; and with enough people backing it, we could also commission coins for Coast Haven, Londwyn, and even other nations, for an international feel. Unfortunately, when I approached James about it before Thanksgiving, he had just made the order for new coins. So that one is tabled for now, though I'd really like to see it happen sometime!

NPCs arent supposed to hand everything out at once. They are supposed to split it up between respawns, which is why unlimited respawns rarely have loot. If they are not doing this, we're going to have to remind people when they go out.

A reminder may be good, then. Based on what I'm hearing, a lot of players don't bother looting NPCs because they assume that the marshal either hasn't given them anything or another player got it first, and they don't want to go through the roleplay and time only to get nothing.

And I know a lot of marshals don't prep treasure, usually because (or at least that's what's told to players at mods) of time constraints and not wanting to delay things. A system where they just hand out basic type cards, like MINOR DEMON, COMMON PEASANT, MAJOR UNDEAD, etc., would simplify things. The marshal can just hand out stacks of those to the NPCs and not worry about it while they're also instructing them on special rules. And players are gamers -- there's something fun about an RNG every so often, especially if we're the ones rolling the dice.

However, the RNG adds a significant delay at Logistics. There is already a long line at times for all the other things that Logistics does. To add to that would make it so at times the wait for just 5 silver could take 20-30 minutes.

Another reason that NPCs don’t have treasure goes back to the issue of not enough gold/gems to hand out. The more that is handed out to NPCs the less for players who need to withdraw it.

It takes me about a minute to a minute and a half to fill out one alchemy card. The reason it takes me so long is because of my arthritis. I've encountered logistics marshals that are even slower than that; that is to say, they write slower than the crippled guy who has to take a rest halfway through writing out the alphabet, and who had to invent a new and less painful script just to be able to take notes in college. (Seriously, I've had drawn-blood injuries on my hands from sparring that hurt less than writing out the alphabet.)

For that matter, I frequently see marshals sitting around doing nothing on their shifts except when someone comes in. Only once have I ever seen an LM doing inventory on item cards and filling out extras when they're low. Every time I sign in and get essences via fates, I have to wait while the marshal on duty writes down every single one, because there are none pre-written. Most of the time it would save time if I wrote them out myself and just had the marshal sign them. I was once in Logistics for an hour while my sign-in was completed, and no I'm not counting time spend in line. I'd arrived after midnight, and there WAS no line, unless you count the marshals chatting with each other and NPCs. Now, that time was an extreme outlier, but it's quite vivid and does not give me a great impression of how valuable logistics time is and how we shouldn't switch anything with the current system.

And again, I can write out an alchemy card in under a minute and a half, despite my pain. Let's round that waaaaay up and say it's two and a half. So someone comes in with five loot cards and the LM rolls for each, and surprise surprise there are no pre-written cards. So let's round up again and say it's a full fifteen minutes; a ridiculously long time, but fine. That's a far cry from the hyperbolic claim of twenty to thirty for five silver. And this is discounting the fact that the monster marshal on duty should also assist when his or her duties have a lull of their own.

This is not to say that all delays are on the part of the marshals. I've found the larger delay to be on the player side. When a player comes to the bank window, they invariably stop and chat as well. I've been guilty of it myself, but it has to stop. Once a line forms, that line stays for a while; and even when players notice someone else behind them, that's the point where we players realize "Oh, crap, I haven't actually done my business yet." And then there are more delays, as each player trickles in to do their business while the first is still settling accounts.

And then there's the second player delay: not knowing what we're doing. We need to begin, be brief, and begone. No more fumbling around, staring at our character cards as if we've never seen them before. If I do that (and I have), the LM should tell me to come back when I've figured out what I want to do, because there's a line behind me.

As to gold piece treasure, fine. Skip it. I don't know why a demon is carrying around gold anyway, and crafting items are so rare as to be nonexistent except through fates. If a player has more crafting items, even if he or she isn't a crafter, that can then be taken to an alchemist, smith, whatever, and traded for potions and weapons and the like. If we're going to have a barter economy because we've got jerk players, then let's just have a barter economy.

My point was not that it would be 30 minutes per person. My point was if there is a line of 4-5 people with 4-5 tickets that all show up at the same time because a mod/large encounter went out they would be waiting a long time for something that might not have been worth it. Even if we say from start to finish
: player enters, rolling, searching for prewritten cards, writing new ones, player leaving:
Let’s say it takes 5 minutes.
That last player is waiting 20-25 minutes for something that might not be worth that wait. And that’s the best case scenario.


As the marshal who usually does check-in allow me to make an attempt to explain the essence part in my opinion.

1: there are roughly 12 essences in the game, that’s 12 pre-printed cards if we get them ahead of time, 12 cards more to keep track of.
2: If you’re referring to them being handwritten ahead of time it is impossible to predict what players want ahead of time. I’ve had events where 90% of those asked were a single type of essence.
3: If Alchemists are using eccences they should go to Logistics and turn them in. That is the way we get prewritten cards. And usually they’re the ones people want, because they’re the ones people are using anyway.
4: Players writing cards doesn’t solve the line issue because the player is still in line, the difference is the marshal is now just sitting there waiting for the cards to be written.

These are the 3 things that I can think of now. I’m sure I’ll think of more.

Going off what Matt D. said about bank interest, what if the percentage were increased to something that would yield actual results?

I remember when my bank had Certificates of Deposit (CDs) with a 5% yield, so it was worth getting one and leaving that money in for 8-12 months at a time. When the percentage dropped, there was less of a reason.. The prospect of making money is a strong incentive.

Hi all,

One of the things I have noticed is no one really gets excited over a gold coin, yes it is spendable, but the treasure people like to talk about are things like a twitching zombie hand, paintings, a very ugly statue of a goblin king and a leather vest called Brazen's tears just to name a few. If logistics needs people to help make up interesting treasure ask for volunteers before lay on. I know I would make time to help and I bet a lot of other people would too.

Gems on the other hand will always be horded because they are used in crafting items. Until there is a jewelry exchange every gem is held on too until it passes into an artificer's hand.

Berek

The weird stuff is what I have and trade for as my NPC. Most of the stuff you mentioned passed through my hands first. But I cant get coin for them anymore, everyone has to do a bank transfer which makes the reason my NPC exists a moot point. People complain about Morgan not coming out alot, this is the reason. Coin hoarding has to stop. It is killing the economy and there is no point having Morgan come out.

Loot distribution is one way to deal with things, but honestly its a player decision to hoard gold. We need those guys to stop sitting on gold and cough it up. It does not help them, it hurts everyone else, and ultimately makes the coin they hoard devalue. Awareness of the issue might help more than anything if we show the players why what they are doing is not only harmful but personally dumb.

There was a time when un-cut/refined gems were a treasure type. They were worth only a few silver to a gold or two... but they were a treasure type.

There was a time when materials other than Steel were rare. Hell... when I started 4 years ago, Mythral was still kinda rare. Now, one cannot throw a rock without hitting a player with a mythral *something*.... and oft times, they have something more exotic than that.

I've talked to many an veteran player and the common refrain besides a lack of treasure now is the overall inflation of the game... When the most common material out there in use is something that comes in 20gold value bars, small amounts or non-expensive items don't mean as much.

As someone pointed out above, getting a simple gold as treasure.... or a few silver.... doesn't mean all that much to most players as there is almost NOTHING other than an ale at the Claw that one can get for a gold.

Commodity cards are a good way to get more "money" into player hands for barter purposes... but event THEY have started to lose value for anything other than attempting to get a lifestyle build. At 9 gold value for 15 and under/18 gold value for over 15, it might seem like alot but when compared to the IC costs of breakfast (3 to 4 gold) or drinks at the Claw (1-5 gold) or the Blackbird (5 gold minimum as I recall), one starts needing quite a few of these commodity cards in order to simply get food or an IC drink.

Inflation hit this game HARD, especially in the availability of materials.... and the corresponding rise in prices versus available funds for PC's.

No coin in PC pockets = no collection for the Good Merchants sent out by Logistics to get neat items into play and coin back into Logistics.

The Solution of James ordering more coin really isn't a solution.... its adding to the available pool sure but when there is thousands of coins already out in circulation, adding another few thousand might result in the same situation a year or two from now.

I know I have a single gold and I think three silver (I need to check my car) that I will gladly hand in. I know its barely a drop in the bucket but at least its *something*... The 12 gods know I do not have a single Gem anymore; given to help the Dragoons.

One thought that might really help would be to make depositing something that doesn't have to happen only at logistics while as your pc. If it were possible to drop coins off at the end of the event and pick some coinage up before lay on OR make deposits with a bank rep at the Inn on Sunday morning, it might help encourage people to not head home with pouches full of coin. I know my son had a number of events with a pouch of coins and just kept not being able to go deposit before logistics closed.

Caldor Eirson wrote: One thought that might really help would be to make depositing something that doesn't have to happen only at logistics while as your pc. If it were possible to drop coins off at the end of the event and pick some coinage up before lay on OR make deposits with a bank rep at the Inn on Sunday morning, it might help encourage people to not head home with pouches full of coin. I know my son had a number of events with a pouch of coins and just kept not being able to go deposit before logistics closed.

I have a number of things to say about this entire thread, but haven't had the time to put them together into a coherent post. This part, however, I can respond to quickly.

We have recently (last 3 or 4 events or so) added a second Sunday shift for LMs. There is now an LM on shift until at minimum 2:30PM - after the hold is called - for gold deposits, lifestyle turn-ins, etc.. Whoever is managing logi cleanup may choose to take in deposits after that time as well (I know I do).

That has been immensely helpful and demonstrably effective, Cassie, thank you for trying that policy out. Purely anecdotal, but it seems people have been really benefiting from that on Sundays, and at least in my groups' case, has allowed us a little more time for RP and cleanup.

Would it help to put item cards for bags of gold in the New Player packets, and keep hold of coin for mods/random encounters?

There are really 2 issues here.

1. The lack of actual, physical coins.

2. The economy/inflation of treasure.

The first 1 is easy. At the beginning of each event, the Logistics person should count how many physical coins there are. Then the game goes on, treasure gets doled out, etc. On Sunday, at the end of the event, the same number of physical coins should come back to Logistics. All players should be automatically banking their coin into the character's account and no one should be taking any physical coins home. If the amount of coins that came back is less than what started, some kind of action needs to happen. It's everyone's responsibility to make sure things that belong to Logistics get returned. Weapons. Armor. Makeup, Costumes. Coins and Treasure should be no different. This should stop the lack of actual treasure that can be handed out per event and save Staff and James from ordering coins every few months.

As for the economy... that's been a long standing issue at the game. If you wish to get the economy back to normal, you need to make the super-rich find stuff to spend their money on. Not just gear or other stuff... you need to make those characters who have a lot of coin need something that is valuable to them and have them perform a bank transaction that makes them spend that money.

Operational Costs: When Travance is at War (or some big game event occurs), any businesses a player owns is now Under Attack. During their Land Action or something... the Business loses money. A wagon train is hit. Bandits. Merchant strikes. Now instead of getting a bunch of coin, the player lost coin. A lot of coin. The amount automatically comes out of their account. That should definitely drive some of the players to take a vested interest in ending the war or seeking some sort of resolution.

Commodities and Futures: Commodity Cards were a great way to get coin for some and try to balance out, but they have started to slide. Commodity Cards either gave you coin or helped you get build. Both have become limited. Either you can increase the amount of commodities a High Lvl player needs to get build (ergo forcing them to spend more money to get more commodities.. making commodities more valuable) or add expiration dates to commodities. The commodities a player can get is limited and only good for a very short amount of time. No more hoarding them. If they don't use them, they lose them.

Black Market & the KR Silk Road: Rogue Plot and the Fence have their own Black Market last I recalled. Let non-rogue characters buy stuff. They have to pay a crap ton more than those who have Fence skill.

These are just a few half-formed ideas in my head. These are also based on old game experiences that may no longer be viable in today's KR. IT's been a while for me and I'm sure many things have changed.

Unfortunately the fence skill does not exist anymore, so that's hard to enforce.

I'm going to weigh in on the whole gem hording argument, because I know people think it's a dragoon thing. When higher lists came out I turned in my whole horde of gems, and then promptly had to start hording them again for the skills on smith. Unfortunately now saying that people are hording gems is like saying people are hording mithril. Wether or not its true, you can't blame them.

Every Event I deposit the money from two breakfasts and the lunch I prepare, around 300+ in coin & gems. I know not what happens to it, nor do I care. I will accept nothing besides coin, unless it is something I can readily get rid of IG.

Due to the shortage of specie, I introduced trade bars. They vary in denomination from 20 Gold (200 silver) to 500 gold, denominated in 50, 100, 200, and 500 gold. They too, are being hoarded - over 5,000 gold worth as of today. i have no doubt that people are hoarding the trade bars for whatever foolish reason. I plan on depositing more of them, to try to put an end to such foolishness, but no one ever lost money underestimating the wisdom of certain actions.


I keep 500 gold on hand, in drawing accounts which have been given to me by people who want easy access to coin.
I also keep around 200 gold in gems, as there are many who need such for sockets.

I keep a hundred gold for personal use and some gold bars for IG reasons, but they are not hoarded.

I only accept specie for payment, in order to be able to recirculate such.