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Feb. 9th, 2018 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI was wandering the GURPS forums looking to see if 'loaf of bread' is ever defined in terms of weight, rations, or GURPS meals. An adult human in this system needs three meals a day and while bread is clearly not a balanced meal you could get a start on $ to meal conversion rates if a loaf was say three meals. But there is no agreement on what loaf means in grams, and nobody mentioned it in game stat meals that I could find. I mean supermarkets here sell 400g or 800g, with some 750g just to confuse matters. But US forum posters get insistent on us measures and then convert them to say a loaf is 600g , or possibly nearer 680g. But the rule writer most likely to turn up on the forum refers to a baguette in answers about a loaf, which is not the same shape most people are thinking of, and in sainsburys weighs 400g again. So which loaf? large, small, medium? probably american, might be canadian?
the bit that boggled me though was people complaining that the rulebook says a gurps dollar can buy a loaf of bread, their bread costs two dollars, therefore gurps is wrong. er, no? a gurps dollar buys one loaf of bread, therefore you have figured out the conversion factor when you find the cost of a loaf of bread. it isn't wrong, it's one side of a maths ratio that goes 1:bread . same way you do dollars to pounds or yen or something, instead of tracking daily currency market prices, gurps picks a staple and says that's the reference value.
also anyone saying inflation can't have done x in y amount of time, especially when they're adding in costs of school, housing, and medical care, is pretty much wrong. those graphs are some funny shapes. especially since housing and bread havent been on the same line for a while now.
it's not that I care much about game abstractions for shiny shiny treasure values, it's just it kind of interests me how they put a lot of work into making magic more expensive and difficult than just growing a food. I mean, why? Especially if Summon spells can be adapted for edible creatures, and Plant Growth or Bless Plant being a thing, you've got a lot of labor saving shortcuts. it would bump the price and sources of food same like tech does. so trying to keep magic out of the food chain and make sure it cant make player characters fabulously wealthy does some weird things to the baseline assumptions of what magic is even good for.
I mean take the never ending pig. ... I'm sure the pig would rather you didn't, but. Get a food animal, slice a bit off, use Cure Light Wounds or nearest equivalent, have a sit down and breathe for a bit. You've now turned meat production into something more like egg collection or sheep shearing. If you're feeling particularly ethical you can make the animal sleep or feel no pain first. But you can absolutely definitely grow more pig immediately after cutting your food off the pig. So that changes the whole economics of food production. Steak for many more dinners. If you could get the hang of only cutting off suitable chunks.
and that's probably pretty disturbing, so I wont follow up with examining practicalities and ethics if the cure spells only work on people.
but the whole plant college should make spectacular differences to the yields. food production would be so different.
and then why make Create Food so difficult compared to the ability to get a whole fighting being out of thin air? well both ought to be complex, but still.
In Pathfinder, pretty simple. cast that couple times a day, you and your party never go hungry.
what does a world look like where the ability to never go hungry is a low level spell? or where it's possible at all? why farm when you can spellcast?
what kind of energy is thaumaturgy anyway? is magic a renewable or more like a fossil fuel? would they even know before it ran out?
... I am getting very sidetracked.
... not that I had a main track today.
... oh, yes I did, I put the shopping away but forgot to eat yet...
the bit that boggled me though was people complaining that the rulebook says a gurps dollar can buy a loaf of bread, their bread costs two dollars, therefore gurps is wrong. er, no? a gurps dollar buys one loaf of bread, therefore you have figured out the conversion factor when you find the cost of a loaf of bread. it isn't wrong, it's one side of a maths ratio that goes 1:bread . same way you do dollars to pounds or yen or something, instead of tracking daily currency market prices, gurps picks a staple and says that's the reference value.
also anyone saying inflation can't have done x in y amount of time, especially when they're adding in costs of school, housing, and medical care, is pretty much wrong. those graphs are some funny shapes. especially since housing and bread havent been on the same line for a while now.
it's not that I care much about game abstractions for shiny shiny treasure values, it's just it kind of interests me how they put a lot of work into making magic more expensive and difficult than just growing a food. I mean, why? Especially if Summon spells can be adapted for edible creatures, and Plant Growth or Bless Plant being a thing, you've got a lot of labor saving shortcuts. it would bump the price and sources of food same like tech does. so trying to keep magic out of the food chain and make sure it cant make player characters fabulously wealthy does some weird things to the baseline assumptions of what magic is even good for.
I mean take the never ending pig. ... I'm sure the pig would rather you didn't, but. Get a food animal, slice a bit off, use Cure Light Wounds or nearest equivalent, have a sit down and breathe for a bit. You've now turned meat production into something more like egg collection or sheep shearing. If you're feeling particularly ethical you can make the animal sleep or feel no pain first. But you can absolutely definitely grow more pig immediately after cutting your food off the pig. So that changes the whole economics of food production. Steak for many more dinners. If you could get the hang of only cutting off suitable chunks.
and that's probably pretty disturbing, so I wont follow up with examining practicalities and ethics if the cure spells only work on people.
but the whole plant college should make spectacular differences to the yields. food production would be so different.
and then why make Create Food so difficult compared to the ability to get a whole fighting being out of thin air? well both ought to be complex, but still.
In Pathfinder, pretty simple. cast that couple times a day, you and your party never go hungry.
what does a world look like where the ability to never go hungry is a low level spell? or where it's possible at all? why farm when you can spellcast?
what kind of energy is thaumaturgy anyway? is magic a renewable or more like a fossil fuel? would they even know before it ran out?
... I am getting very sidetracked.
... not that I had a main track today.
... oh, yes I did, I put the shopping away but forgot to eat yet...
no subject
Date: 2018-02-09 11:41 pm (UTC)Healing spells, any of them, absolutely warp the nature of "medieval-esque feudal society" that D&D (and spinoff) games take as their basis for fantasy settings. A few other spells do to - Apportation, Levitation, Seek Earth (the ability to ID silver and gold can change society), Continual Light (even the non-perm version; several days of light is worth it), and so on.
(Light and fluffy US bread is about 570g, often in 22-24 slice packs. Denser whole-wheat bread is about 680g, in 12-18 slice packs. Super-dense bread with extra seeds on top: 750+ g.)
I like the idea of farming as an elite luxury, something you do to get variety of flavors. (Although - the healing spell approach won't get you a broad array of nutrients, and I'm not sure it works on plants. So you may have to farm veggies, but otherwise, you have "the village pigs" in small communities - one pig per 4-7 adults - providing all the meat anyone eats.)
no subject
Date: 2018-02-11 12:34 am (UTC)