The magical world of Pyrathia, as described through the game, has a capitalist system. Food, weapons and land, to name only a few of many wants and necessities, can all be exchanged for precious metal coins. The ability to acquire these things can likewise be consolidated into coinage. In this, the game attempts to resemble the real-world economy.
In the game of Shattered Kingdoms, however, there are plenty of things to be wanted that money will not buy. Player hours, not coinage, will find you powerful magical items. Player hours, as spent entering "c 'enchant item' item" into the console, will create powerful magical items.
The result of this is that coinage in SK does not act as currency. Instead of being a universal measurement of other values, currency in SK is something with only limited uses. Once a player has acquired enough of it to meet these limited uses, they have no incentive to acquire more.
Why this is a problem:
Wealth cannot be quantified. The "living" economy of SK, the one that exists as interactions between players, becomes a barter system, wherein players can exchange real things with circumstantial value, but have nothing to exchange that represents absolute value. This causes massive inefficiency in the living economy of SK for the same reason that the barter system causes massive inefficiency in real-world economies.
The solution:
Tie the currency to something of value to the players, such as NPC enchanting services. In a world where sorcerors get clothes, food and land by exchanging coin, the services of sorcerors will be exchangeable for coin.
The result:
Rather than spending hours typing "c 'enchant item' item", players will spend hours trying to raise money. As long as the powers that be make it so that the raising of money is balanced, creative and risky, gaining power will be fun. Typing "c 'enchant item' item" into the console is not fun, and the powers that be do not have the power to make it fun.
Every player that has coin will have something that has an inexhaustible use to other players, unlike now. This will create a natural incentive for players to interact with each other over their money, whether in trading it for goods and services or in trying to rob and scam each other. Either way, economic interaction will be driven by a natural force rather than an artificial force, such as the desire to roleplay a greedy, materialistic character within and in spite of a functionally moneyless world.
A short review:
1: More player interaction. 2: Gaining power becomes more fun. 3: Players who play greedy characters, especially the thief/merchant types do not have to constantly suffer from the OOC awareness that money is actually worthless.
Please fill the next two pages with highly emotional, phrase-length debates over the ethics of the capitalist system, mixed with negative comments about the author's face, personality and sexuality, as well as tigers. Once you get to page three, please start discussing a completely different topic until the thread is locked.
After this is done, change nothing.
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