[MUD-Dev] Re:(fwd) Re: Multiple currencies

[J C Lawrence]

On Fri, 05 Jun 1998 20:10:18 -0700 
Mike Sellers<mike at bignetwork.com> wrote:

> At 04:39 PM 6/5/98 -0500, Michael.Willey at abnamro.com wrote:

>> Here's a question: What collective feature of these examples
>> engages the player imagination and inspires this status game?  I
>> could just as easily see an attempt at creating a player currency
>> flop spectacularly.  What does it take for a simple perpetual prop
>> to become a player currency, and how can we incorporate these ideas
>> into our own MUDs?

> Excellent question.  I can think of a few examples of "true" if
> offbeat player-currency -- the great "gold pants" fever in The Realm
> a couple of years ago comes to mind. 

I'm not familiar with that one.  Care to expound?  Similar to UOL's
black clothes deal?

> Guild halls and guild rank in M59 had some of the feel of currency
> too, except that they were about as mobile as the coins on the
> island of Yap. :-/

Hey!  At least Yap coins could be rolled, well sorta.

> Three requirements that come to mind are scarcity, visibility, and
> mobility.  

Bingo, but might add, "desirability".  VD may also be scarce, visible
(in some forms), and mobile (communicable).

> FWIW, in worlds where the PCs are assumed to be a small part of a
> larger civilization, I don't see anything wrong with the
> "faucet-drain" simulation of an economy, so long as the drain and
> the faucet are affectable and/or tied together in some way.  That
> is, the faucet should not have infinite original capacity, and the
> amount of money drained out of the PC economy (presumably soaked up
> by the thousands of NPCs we don't bother showing) should affect how
> much money comes back into circulation.  Hoarding or loss of
> materials should reduce currency, as should hoarding or loss of the
> currency itself (consider the havoc a tribe of orcs could wreak by
> capturing the only mine that supplies gold for coinage).

Inflation economics.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
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