Dungeons & Dragons

[Slawbug]

There have been numerous major revisions of the D&D rules over the years. I noticed in the other thread that we had quite a spread of familiarity. Well, here we go: which version are you most familiar with?

 

If you're familiar with D&D in general but not with any of these in particular, feel free to check off the last option!

[Randomizer]

I played AD&D 1st edition mostly, but also some Unearthed Arcana (I didn't used it much) and 2nd edition the first two years it came out. I never got into 3rd edition past low level parties.

 

You left out Hackmaster 3.5 which was licensed using AD&D 1st edition and Unearthed Arcana with some additional features like Honor. Most of it was cut and pasted from TSR's books. The best part was they redid the best old modules and expanded them.

[Dintiradan]

Started out as a 3.0 player, currently play 4.0, and am vaguely familiar with 3.5. I put down 3.0, as that's the edition I've spent the most time in and, for better or worse, think in and rate other RPGs by.

 

Hate to nitpick the poll, but Essentials should have been an option. As of PHB3/DMG3/MM3, massive amounts of errata were released for PHB1/DMG1/MM1 and PHB2/DMG2/MM2. Once you apply all the errata, you get something very similar to the Essentials line, which was originally portrayed as a simplified version of D&D. Moving forward, WotC has really only been releasing new products for Essentials, and making the 4.0 line more like Essentials. I haven't actually played Essentials, but from this outsider's point of view, it's at least as much a version change as 3.0 to 3.5 was. For obvious reasons, WotC is very careful in its descriptions of Essentials. It is not a version change. Also, we have always been at war with Eurasia.

 

It seems the product has been going downhill since 3.5. I don't agree with the naysayers who state that 4.0 is too simplistic and videogame-y. On the other hand, 4.0 did away with the core distinction ("everything is core"). Then they introduced the Essentials split. Now the Fortune Cards are in vogue, and it looks like there'll be more integration with the Castle Ravenloft boardgame series. Take a step back, and the regression becomes clearer. We're back in the days of the D&D/AD&D split, and soon we'll be regressing into the Chainmail days.

 

Okay, maybe that's a mite alarmist, but still...

 

The changes really haven't affected my group, though. We play with PHB1/DMG1/MM1, PHB2/DMG2/MM2, the first two Adventurers' Vaults, ... and that's it. Rules As Written, no errata, and absolutely no DDI. Once you do away with the ridiculous "everything is core" mentality, 4.0 becomes relatively balanced again.

 

Meh. Don't want to start an edition war. At any rate, WotC can't take away my 3.0 and 4.0 rulebooks, nor revoke the OGL. So they can pretty much do what they want. If my group ever needs some more recent content, and WotC isn't able to provide, there's always Pathfinder.

 

EDIT: @Randomizer: If he had to include Hackmaster, then he'd have to include Pathfinder, and also...

 

EDIT: Blargh. Too many grammar/spelling mistakes. Time to go to bed.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

The changes really haven't affected my group, though. We play with PHB1/DMG1/MM1, PHB2/DMG2/MM2, the first two Adventurers' Vaults, ... and that's it. Rules As Written, no errata, and absolutely no DDI. Once you do away with the ridiculous "everything is core" mentality, 4.0 becomes relatively balanced again.

Meh. Don't want to start an edition war. At any rate, WotC can't take away my 3.0 and 4.0 rulebooks, nor revoke the OGL. So they can pretty much do what they want. If my group ever needs some more recent content, and WotC isn't able to provide, there's always Pathfinder.

I'm not 100% sold on the Essentials design philosophy either, and Essentials content doesn't always interact with pre-Essentials content as cleanly as it should, but can you talk a little more about what you feel is imbalanced about the newer content? There's certainly been some degree of power creep over time, but a lot of the standard powergaming options are equally available to a wide range of classes and races, so that doesn't exactly create an imbalance between classes. Besides, a PHB1-only two-weapon ranger is still one of the most powerful striker builds in the game...

[Enraged Slith]

I played the crap out of Icewind Dale 2, which was based on the 3.5 system. I haven't played much of DnD itself, though.

[Tyranicus]

Icewind Dale is 3.0, not 3.5. Granted there aren't really that many differences between the two. I started out on second edition, but at this point, I'm much more familiar with 3.5. It's what the group I'm in plays. I tried to play 4E once, and I really couldn't get into it.

[Dantius]

My favorite D&D edition

[Death Knight]

2nd edition is my fav. Any other edition would make bg1 and bg2 unsoloable.

[Student of Trinity]

I DMd for about ten years, into the mid-1980s, staring with doctrinaire AD&D and gradually corrupting it into something more workable for our group of players. For instance, as we grew older we could only manage to get together a few times a year, but then we would play all weekend. So we gradually adopted rules that tended to greatly increase a party's endurance, to avoid tedious interruptions for going back to town to rest up. I later ran a brief campaign for a couple of years in the 90s using my own heavily modified version of the 1st edition. It had already settled into a stable system that I liked, so I didn't change it or incorporate any 2E stuff.

 

In hindsight, the 1st edition sucked badly in just about every way. It's hard to think of a single important feature that wasn't seriously problematic in some way or other.

 

But it worked pretty well nonetheless, just by virtue of being the only game in town. Alternative RPG systems of the time were even worse, and there weren't even very many. AD&D was a system you could make work, and it held up (with a lot of goodwill) from low levels all the way up to pretty high. When this awkward system was just The Way Things Are, you accepted it, and worked within it, and had fun.

[Slawbug]

Dantius: It took me a while to realize that link was serious.

 

Dintiradan: As my own familiarity is mostly with 2E and to a lesser degree 1E, I relied on Wikipedia for the more recent version changes. Wikipedia said nothing about Essentials, and I'm still unclear on what exactly they are. Are you saying that Essentials : 4.0 :: D&D : AD&D 1E ? I'm also unclear on what you're saying about the errata.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Dantius: It took me a while to realize that link was serious.

Ain't nothing more serious than YOUR ETERNAL DAMNATION FOR PLAYING D&D.

Pretty much all Chick comics are SERIOUS BUSINESS, which is why they're always so funny. I find it hard to imagine they're taken seriously anywhere, but he's making a profit distributing them at 10 cents/50 tracts, so some people must buy them.

[Alorael at Large]

I've played a handful of AD&D and AD&D 2E games, some 3.0, quite a lot of 3.5, and one 4.0 campaign. I'd say I'm most familiar with 3.5, but I'm most fond of and proficient with the OGL offshoots of third edition, particularly Arcana Evolved and, now, Pathfinder.

 

4th edition has probably done the best job of making GMing fun and manageable, and it's made combat a very fun tactical game. Unfortunately, it did it at the expense of creating a world that can be described realistically and visually as well as mechanically. It's fun, but the design philosophy has moved away from my tastes.

 

—Alorael, whose current roleplaying tastes run more towards indie games and some World of Darkness. His current darling is Burning Wheel, the game in which there is a separate skill for such important abilities as digging ditches, being conspicuous, and wine tasting. No, overabundance of skills is not normally to his taste. Yes, he really likes how it works in practice.

[Randomizer]

Danitus - I remember reading that one back in the 80s in paper version. What I couldn't believe is that lots of people believed that was what really happened if you played those games. Anyone that read the books would know better, but there were lots of mentally disturbed people out there that would act that way whatever game they were playing.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

The changes really haven't affected my group, though. We play with PHB1/DMG1/MM1, PHB2/DMG2/MM2, the first two Adventurers' Vaults, ... and that's it. Rules As Written, no errata, and absolutely no DDI. Once you do away with the ridiculous "everything is core" mentality, 4.0 becomes relatively balanced again.

Meh. Don't want to start an edition war. At any rate, WotC can't take away my 3.0 and 4.0 rulebooks, nor revoke the OGL. So they can pretty much do what they want. If my group ever needs some more recent content, and WotC isn't able to provide, there's always Pathfinder.

I'm not 100% sold on the Essentials design philosophy either, and Essentials content doesn't always interact with pre-Essentials content as cleanly as it should, but can you talk a little more about what you feel is imbalanced about the newer content? There's certainly been some degree of power creep over time, but a lot of the standard powergaming options are equally available to a wide range of classes and races, so that doesn't exactly create an imbalance between classes. Besides, a PHB1-only two-weapon ranger is still one of the most powerful striker builds in the game...

You're right, balanced was the wrong word, or at least I was very unclear. What I meant to say was that D&D-without-DDi seems more balanced than D&D-with-DDi. Moreover, whenever someone brings a character to our table with DDi content, it's noticeably more powerful than our vanilla creations. Whenever I read class build primers online, there's always some power from an issue of Dragon than you must include in order to make the build work. Again, this is just in my pre PHB3/DMG3/MM3 experience. Maybe a lot of things have been fixed after the massive retooling. I dunno.

Mostly, it's just that my group (and our DM in particular) wanted to do away with the rampant munchkinism of 3.0. You'd have some players who'd pour over half a dozen sourcebooks, and others who were new to the game and would just build a single-class character. Eventually, our DM introduced a house rule of "max two base classes, max one prestige class", which seemed to work a bit (but we only saw it in play for the latter half of a campaign, so the damage was done).

[Rowen]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

My favorite D&D edition

When I was little my mom told me that D&D was of the devil. >_>

[Harehunter]

[Skwish-E]

Dr Demento?

 

Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads ...

[Student of Trinity]

Eat them up, yum!

[Lazarus.]

I'm most familiar with 2e and 3e, mostly from Infinity engine games. In light of new systems 2e is a bit too user unfriendly what with THAC0 and 18/00 STR and all that weird stuff, but 4e looks a bit too dumbed down from what little I've seen. I guess that makes me a 3/3.5e fan.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Mostly, it's just that my group (and our DM in particular) wanted to do away with the rampant munchkinism of 3.0. You'd have some players who'd pour over half a dozen sourcebooks, and others who were new to the game and would just build a single-class character. Eventually, our DM introduced a house rule of "max two base classes, max one prestige class", which seemed to work a bit (but we only saw it in play for the latter half of a campaign, so the damage was done).

Eh, I see where you're coming from but I kind of feel like if you want a game where strategic character optimisation isn't a going concern, you're probably better off with some game other than D&D. In a Wicked Age and Legends of Anglerre are both pretty great, and easy to learn.

Originally Posted By: Lazarus.

I'm most familiar with 2e and 3e, mostly from Infinity engine games. In light of new systems 2e is a bit too user unfriendly what with THAC0 and 18/00 STR and all that weird stuff, but 4e looks a bit too dumbed down from what little I've seen. I guess that makes me a 3/3.5e fan.

I wouldn't say "dumbed down"; I'd say it's better at teaching beginners how to play it, which strikes me as basically a good thing. It's hard to make a completely worthless or game-dominating character in 4e, but there's still a lot of room for optimisation.

[Alorael at Large]

From a gameplay perspective, 4E is pretty good. Characters are fun, powers are cool, you can do things that are mechanically very interesting on the battlefield. It just breaks down if you want a clear picture of what's happening and want it to be at all realistic, not cinematic or wire-fu with fireballs. It's also missing everything that lets you really model a functional world with the rules in 2E and 3E. From a reading perspective it's a loss; from a gameplay perspective it depends on your table.

 

—Alorael, who has found that D&D in general is too happy to kill characters and too happy to bring them back for his tastes. It's built into the system like the christmas tree effect of many, many magic items. It also has very limited mechanisms for rewarding roleplaying, and using those will through party balance out of whack if you're not all roleplaying equally.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: @Delphi

From a gameplay perspective, 4E is pretty good. Characters are fun, powers are cool, you can do things that are mechanically very interesting on the battlefield. It just breaks down if you want a clear picture of what's happening and want it to be at all realistic, not cinematic or wire-fu with fireballs. It's also missing everything that lets you really model a functional world with the rules in 2E and 3E. From a reading perspective it's a loss; from a gameplay perspective it depends on your table.

To be honest, my feeling is that a lot of those world-building rules never worked out very well in actual play anyway, and that "modelling a functional world" is an unreasonable goal for a game. Professional economists and sociologists can't reliably model a functional world, and they have the advantage of an actual functional world to base their models on.

I also don't really care very much about RPG worlds in the first place except as a backdrop for interesting situations to put characters in. An RPG campaign is a story with the player characters as protagonists, so their qualities and decisions should be brought to the foreground, and the background should stay where it belongs: a tool to establish mood and expectations, filled in only where and when it becomes necessary.

In any case, if world-building is what floats your boat, Microscope is a better system for it than any edition of D&D ever could be.

[Alorael at Large]

I'm not really talking about modeling a functional world. I'm talking about the assumptions of a world full of dungeons with devious traps, wandering monsters, and lost artifacts. In previous games, your wizard could conceivably gain levels and learn spells until he was creating powerful items, conjuring up a forbidding tower, and filling it with those horrible traps and enchanted monsters as guards and servitors. 4E gives you much less outside of combat. There are some utility spells, but they're virtually all temporary. There are rituals, but the list is still not up to the same level.

 

My basic problem is that I don't really like having things that are forever outside of the players' reach for mechanical reasons, not setting reasons. I don't like having NPCs play by rules that different. It definitely facilitates running enemies and allies in combat, but I think it has a cost as well.

 

—Alorael, who has already said that he's not much of a D&D player. His game of choice is Burning Wheel, which more or less mandates having the game revolve around the players' characters and their motivations. He does love world-building, but more in books than in games. For games he agrees: the world exists only as the stage upon which protagonists get to act. He just likes having the actors play by the same rules.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: @Delphi

I'm not really talking about modeling a functional world. I'm talking about the assumptions of a world full of dungeons with devious traps, wandering monsters, and lost artifacts. In previous games, your wizard could conceivably gain levels and learn spells until he was creating powerful items, conjuring up a forbidding tower, and filling it with those horrible traps and enchanted monsters as guards and servitors. 4E gives you much less outside of combat. There are some utility spells, but they're virtually all temporary. There are rituals, but the list is still not up to the same level.

My basic problem is that I don't really like having things that are forever outside of the players' reach for mechanical reasons, not setting reasons. I don't like having NPCs play by rules that different. It definitely facilitates running enemies and allies in combat, but I think it has a cost as well.

The idea that PCs and NPCs should in some sense play by the same rules was an experiment pretty much specific to 3rd edition. My personal opinion is that it wasn't an especially successful experiment. D&D as I see it is fundamentally an asymmetric game: PCs and NPCs are expected to be doing different things, and so the kinds of mechanical support they'll need to do those things will be different. You're looking at it from the wrong angle: things aren't out of the players' reach because of the mechanics, but rather the mechanics are that way because those things are supposed to be out of the players' reach for stylistic reasons. Look at the prohibitively expensive cost of poisons and the injunction against good-aligned characters using them in AD&D for a clear example -- that was the game telling you "PCs aren't supposed to be using poisons". Likewise, conjuring up a tower and spending one's time living in it is not conducive to being a member of an adventuring party, which is what D&D PCs are supposed to do: it's an appropriate thing for your PC to do post-retirement, once your PC becomes an NPC.

Now, you don't like that style of game, and fair enough. But that stylistic decision has been a part of D&D for as long as D&D has been around: 3rd edition and its attempt at describing both PCs and NPCs using the same paradigm is the exception, not the historical rule. I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't play, just setting the record straight.

[Alorael at Large]

Spells have included things that aren't really meant for the adventuring lifestyle from at least AD&D, and probably before. AD&D had rules (and tables and tables and tables) for all the things you probably wouldn't and certainly shouldn't be doing; I'd mark that as the beginning of the experiment in symmetry. 3rd edition extended to to "things characters can do, monsters can do too" and left the style boundary decisions to DMs.

 

—Alorael, who sees 4E as a reversal of a trend, not a return to form. D&D began as a game about killing monsters in dungeons to acquire loot and experience. It gradually took on more and more non-combat, non-dungeon trappings and rules, and more parity between players and non-players to make it work. This accompanied the gathering of more and more complexity, comprehensiveness, and ideally flexibility in the rules. 4E went from increasing emphasis on simulationism to de-emphasizing simulationism in favor of gamism. That made it in some ways more similar to early editions, but it doesn't fit on the trend line.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

To be honest, my feeling is that a lot of those world-building rules never worked out very well in actual play anyway, and that "modelling a functional world" is an unreasonable goal for a game. Professional economists and sociologists can't reliably model a functional world, and they have the advantage of an actual functional world to base their models on.

I think I've previously pointed out the stupidity of a fiat currency like gold as a means of economic exchange in a world where wizards can summon up anything they want with the snap of a finger and the use of a spell slot. Hyperinflation would set in faster than you could say "Weimar Republic".

[Dintiradan]

That's not the case in D&D, though. Item creation in D&D falls either under crafting (in which case the process takes a long period of time and there are material and XP costs to consider) or conjuration spells, the results of which are always temporary (at least in 3.0). There is potential for abuse, of course. A level 9 3.0 Wizard could cast Major Creation. After a ten minute casting time, he or she would have up to nine cubic feet of material. It could be something as mundane as clothing, in which case it would last for eighteen hours. Or it could be nine cubic feet of gemstones... that last for ninety minutes. You could pull off a pretty good scam with those kind of resources.

 

Of course, at the same level you could accomplish the same using illusions. Or a Dominate Person. Or a Cone of Cold, if you're so inclined.

 

In practice, when building a high fantasy setting for any RPG, you go down one of two routes. Either mages are rare enough that they don't have a high impact on the economy, or magic is common enough that countermeasures are available (high end shopkeepers have wards against conjured money and invisible shoplifters, golems protecting gem shops, politicians warded against mind control, etc.).

[Alorael at Large]

D&D has been relatively good about that. It's not at all easy to conjure money. Most spells that create something from nothing permanency themselves cost gold, experience, or both.

 

The most commonly cited exploit in 3rd edition, selling a wall of iron for scrap, requires an 11th level wizard using a pound of gold dust, or 50 gp, in components. The resulting wall will weigh just under one metric ton.

 

I can't recall any commodities price information from D&D, but one metric ton of iron ore currently sells for around $150 on the commodities market. One pound of gold goes for closer to $30,000. Obviously pseudo-medieval values will differ, particularly since 50 gp doesn't really work on commodities markets without fiat currencies given it's value of exactly 50 gp by definition. For comparison, if 1 gp is worth as little as $10, you still come out at a loss.

 

—Alorael, who also thinks that you're using fiat currency wrong. Gold wasn't a fiat currency in the real world and it isn't one in D&D, especially since gold is not only valuable per se but also now as a magical component.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: @Delphi

—Alorael, who also thinks that you're using fiat currency wrong. Gold wasn't a fiat currency in the real world and it isn't one in D&D, especially since gold is not only valuable per se but also now as a magical component.

Gah. This is one of my biggest pet peeves IRL. Gold is a fiat currency. Full stop. It has no more intrinsic value than that which is assigned to it by society, which makes it by definition, a fiat currency. Whether I'm walking around with a lump of gold in my pocket and walking around with a sheaf of banknotes bearing the words "Backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government", I'm still only getting stuff in exchange for them because other people agree to the value I and others assign to them. Gold has no more "intrinsic value" than said leaves of paper.

[Dintiradan]

While gold does not have intrinsic value, it does have intrinsic rarity. The US government can't just decide to print more gold. I assume that stops it from being fiat currency. Full disclosure: I'm no economist, so perhaps the definition of fiat currency is different from what I always thought it was. Or perhaps there are multiple definitions, and each camp in the gold standard debate picks their own.

[Randomizer]

What stops gold from being a fiat currency is cost to mine and extract versus current value. When you have a sharp price rise like you have now there is more incentive to increase production especially in places where the costs were high. It's the same for any other commodity like oil or grains.

 

For a long time most governments had agreements that their currencies were tied in fixed relations to gold and silver. You could exchange those pieces of paper for metals that the governments had stockpiled. When those agreements stopped prices for metals rose.

[Randomizer]

Buried in the 1st edition Dungeonmaster's Guide (DMG) were the spell component costs to cast spells and craft items. The DMG advised making players quest to get components to limit the casting of high powered spells and restrict high powered items.

 

One mage I played with was using limited wish spells to each night give a player a different colored permanent fairy fire so he would glow. This caused a hunt for pixies that normally would cast a temporary version. After a few game days when we found out the real cause, a player reminded the gamemaster about the aging cost for casting wishes which caused that prank to stop.

 

All you need is some rule enforcement to limit magic and restore the economy.

[VCH]

GURPS is way better!

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Buried in the 1st edition Dungeonmaster's Guide (DMG) were the spell component costs to cast spells and craft items. The DMG advised making players quest to get components to limit the casting of high powered spells and restrict high powered items.

One mage I played with was using limited wish spells to each night give a player a different colored permanent fairy fire so he would glow. This caused a hunt for pixies that normally would cast a temporary version. After a few game days when we found out the real cause, a player reminded the gamemaster about the aging cost for casting wishes which caused that prank to stop.

All you need is some rule enforcement to limit magic and restore the economy.

Exactly! Couldn't you just use a Wish spell to make, say, a ton of gold? If it alters reality without limits, then even jut a few wizards out spending that much gold could create inflation.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: VCH

GURPS is way better!

Originial GURPS was seriously unbalanced since all you needed was to put all your build points to dexterity. Steve Jackson earlier games of Melee and Wizardry were better.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Gah. This is one of my biggest pet peeves IRL. Gold is a fiat currency. Full stop. It has no more intrinsic value than that which is assigned to it by society, which makes it by definition, a fiat currency.

Fiat currency has its value assigned to it by a government (or, in theory, some other institution such as a bank.) In a setting where gold is accepted as a medium of exchange even when not minted into coins, it is commodity money.

Furthermore, you have kind of an odd idea of "intrinsic value." Gold is pretty. That's value.

[Randomizer]

Gold has industrial value as a high conductance metal used in electronic circuits for connections.

 

Haven't you heard Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's motto:

 

Why use lead if gold will do.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Gah. This is one of my biggest pet peeves IRL. Gold is a fiat currency. Full stop. It has no more intrinsic value than that which is assigned to it by society, which makes it by definition, a fiat currency.

Fiat currency has its value assigned to it by a government (or, in theory, some other institution such as a bank.) In a setting where gold is accepted as a medium of exchange even when not minted into coins, it is commodity money.

Furthermore, you have kind of an odd idea of "intrinsic value." Gold is pretty. That's value.

I think paper money is pretty- it certainly has an intricate and precise design. It has as much industrial application as gold. That doesn't mean it has more or less intrinsic value than gold- it's only useful as a medium of exchange and for jewelry, which hardly counts.

As for intrinsic rarity, plenty of noble metals are rare, as rare, more rare, or less rare than gold, and would be just as functional as currency. Ye they don't get the same kind of worship as gold does- there's no such thing as a rhodiumbug, for instance. There's just this whole irrational institution built around gold being the be-all and end-all of financial stability that's frankly stupid.

EDIT: Randomizer, silver is actually a better electrical conductor than gold, and it can be plated in gold to make it even better, since gold doesn't tarnish. But so little gold is used in plating that it has practically no effect on the price- a few ounces of gold can make several hundred square meters of covering, and a few ounces of gold here and there hardly justify a price at over &$1750 an ounce.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Gah. This is one of my biggest pet peeves IRL. Gold is a fiat currency. Full stop. It has no more intrinsic value than that which is assigned to it by society, which makes it by definition, a fiat currency.

Fiat currency has its value assigned to it by a government (or, in theory, some other institution such as a bank.) In a setting where gold is accepted as a medium of exchange even when not minted into coins, it is commodity money.

Furthermore, you have kind of an odd idea of "intrinsic value." Gold is pretty. That's value.

I think paper money is pretty- it certainly has an intricate and precise design. It has as much industrial application as gold. That doesn't mean it has more or less intrinsic value than gold- it's only useful as a medium of exchange and for jewelry, which hardly counts.

Okay, fine, I'll clarify, you absurd pedant. Because most people think gold is pretty, it was and is frequently used for things other than money- jewelry, sculpture, etc. This gives it value. This value is no less "intrinsic" than that of any other commodity. Please stop treating economics as though it were engineering.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Okay, fine, I'll clarify, you absurd pedant. Because most people think gold is pretty, it was and is frequently used for things other than money- jewelry, sculpture, etc. This gives it value. This value is no less "intrinsic" than that of any other commodity. Please stop treating economics as though it were engineering.

But it lacks practical, industrial applications! Am I expected to just respect useless things because tradition dictates it?

I'll treat economics any way I please, since so many economic theories are demonstrably insane. Austrian economics literally defines itself as a pseudoscience, and yet Austrian policies somehow still are applied. What is this?

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Okay, fine, I'll clarify, you absurd pedant. Because most people think gold is pretty, it was and is frequently used for things other than money- jewelry, sculpture, etc. This gives it value. This value is no less "intrinsic" than that of any other commodity. Please stop treating economics as though it were engineering.

But it lacks practical, industrial applications! Am I expected to just respect useless things because tradition dictates it?

The market value of things with industrial applications is just as dependent on arbitrary consumer preferences. Steel, say, may have fixed physical properties, but the price of steel depends on the prices of all the things you can make with steel, which in turn depends on how much I'm willing to spend on a sports car. All economic value is "tradition," as you call it.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Okay, fine, I'll clarify, you absurd pedant. Because most people think gold is pretty, it was and is frequently used for things other than money- jewelry, sculpture, etc. This gives it value. This value is no less "intrinsic" than that of any other commodity. Please stop treating economics as though it were engineering.

But it lacks practical, industrial applications! Am I expected to just respect useless things because tradition dictates it?

The market value of things with industrial applications is just as dependent on arbitrary consumer preferences. Steel, say, may have fixed physical properties, but the price of steel depends on the prices of all the things you can make with steel, which in turn depends on how much I'm willing to spend on a sports car. All economic value is "tradition," as you call it.

Yes, but a sports car has value in that it can do things in and of itself that a lump of shiny metal or sheaf of paper cannot- move you from Point A to Point B ten times faster than without, for instance. Likewise, manufactured goods almost universally have a positive impact on our standard of living, and thus have actual use where currency would not. It's disingenuous to compare the price of gold to a sports car simply because we're both only willing to pay the market price for them.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Originally Posted By: Dantius

But it lacks practical, industrial applications! Am I expected to just respect useless things because tradition dictates it?

The market value of things with industrial applications is just as dependent on arbitrary consumer preferences. Steel, say, may have fixed physical properties, but the price of steel depends on the prices of all the things you can make with steel, which in turn depends on how much I'm willing to spend on a sports car. All economic value is "tradition," as you call it.

Yes, but a sports car has value in that it can do things in and of itself that a lump of shiny metal or sheaf of paper cannot- move you from Point A to Point B ten times faster than without, for instance. Likewise, manufactured goods almost universally have a positive impact on our standard of living, and thus have actual use where currency would not. It's disingenuous to compare the price of gold to a sports car simply because we're both only willing to pay the market price for them.

How, exactly, is any of the above relevant to economics? You didn't address my point that the value of the car depends on how much value I attach to being able to travel 10x as fast, which is just as much the product of my imagination as the value I attach to gold earrings.

Even if I grant the metaphysical distinction you're drawing between intrinsic and "traditional" value (which I don't), that doesn't change the fact the value of gold is not the product of government fiat, but of market forces. The "fiat" in fiat money is the government's assignment of a face value to an object that is greater than the value of its components. The value of a gold coin, by contrast, is equal to the value of the weight of gold it contains

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Even if I grant the metaphysical distinction you're drawing between intrinsic and "traditional" value (which I don't), that doesn't change the fact the value of gold is not the product of government fiat, but of market forces. The "fiat" in fiat money is the government's assignment of a face value to an object that is greater than the value of its components. The value of a gold coin, by contrast, is equal to the value of the weight of gold it contains

But it's circular reasoning! You just said that the value of a coin is equal to the value of the metal it contains, which I agree with, but there's no reason why the metal should be valued so highly at all! That's like me saying that the twenty I have in my pocket is worth the faith in the US government that it's worth 20 dollars, but in both cases it's just faith that gold is valuable, or that the US government is creditworthy. There's no essential difference between the two at all- they're just objects that people have decided are worth believing they have value; hence, there's no reason to classify them differently, they're both just "fiat" in their own sense.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

Even if I grant the metaphysical distinction you're drawing between intrinsic and "traditional" value (which I don't), that doesn't change the fact the value of gold is not the product of government fiat, but of market forces. The "fiat" in fiat money is the government's assignment of a face value to an object that is greater than the value of its components. The value of a gold coin, by contrast, is equal to the value of the weight of gold it contains

But it's circular reasoning! You just said that the value of a coin is equal to the value of the metal it contains, which I agree with, but there's no reason why the metal should be valued so highly at all! That's like me saying that the twenty I have in my pocket is worth the faith in the US government that it's worth 20 dollars, but in both cases it's just faith that gold is valuable, or that the US government is creditworthy. There's no essential difference between the two at all- they're just objects that people have decided are worth believing they have value; hence, there's no reason to classify them differently, they're both just "fiat" in their own sense.

In the sense that all value is socially constructed, yes, the two are the same. The same would be true of steel. If everyone spontaneously decided, tomorrow, that they don't want to drive any more, my steel coins would plummet in value overnight, just as surely as the price of gold would plummet if everyone stopped thinking it was pretty.

However, "fiat" doesn't mean that the value of something is a social construct. Its meaning is much more specific: fiat currency derives its value from the institution that issues it (and, as you noted, people's faith in that institution.) As a corollary, fiat currency can't be used for anything else, because its face value is greater than its material value. Commodity money, on the other hand, can be taken out of circulation and repurposed as something else.

For example, cigarettes have been used as commodity money in prisons and in Russia shortly after the fall of Communism. They're commodity money because you can do two things with them, smoke them or buy things, and they're equally valuable either way. Sure, it's theoretically possible that everyone in your cell block could give up smoking at once, triggering a financial crisis, but that's pretty unlikely. It's definitely a fundamentally different source of value than the government's fiat.

[Alorael at Large]

You're confusing two issues. Fiat currency means some ruling force has declared the currency to have value that it would otherwise lack. Paper is cheap, ink is cheap, even the design on dollar bills are cheap, but the government says they're worth a dollar and so they are.

 

Gold currency is rarely declared to have a value. One gold coin is worth the value of the gold in the coin. What's the value of that? However much people want gold. In times of hardship, coins can become almost worthless as staples become all-important.

 

In a barter economy, you can use food as currency. Carrying around lots of food is cumbersome, so people started carrying around other things with value, like gold. Why gold? Because it's worth a lot. Why? Because people would exchange a lot of food for it. It's just a simple substitute for barter based on the fact that where gold was used, gold was valued. In other places, gold wasn't valued as highly, and it wasn't used as such a powerful bargaining tool.

 

Going back to D&D, in 3rd edition Wish is limited to creating 25,000 gp in value. It costs 5000 experience to cast. A wizard could wreck the economy with diligent casting, but he'd need so much free experience to do it that it's unlikely. Add to that the fact that most settings don't have very many high level wizards running around, and the economy is safe. And if there are, they rarely feel the need to start conjuring huge piles of wealth. Why bother? They can just conjure the things they would buy with the wealth.

 

—Alorael, who thinks you're missing some very basic economics here. Economics models are controversial and often wrong. Economic understanding of currency is not controversial. Market value is so basic it's hard to believe you're not deliberately rejecting the consensus just to see what responses you get.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: @Delphi

In a barter economy, you can use food as currency. Carrying around lots of food is cumbersome, so people started carrying around other things with value, like gold. Why gold? Because it's worth a lot. Why? Because people would exchange a lot of food for it. It's just a simple substitute for barter based on the fact that where gold was used, gold was valued. In other places, gold wasn't valued as highly, and it wasn't used as such a powerful bargaining tool.

[snip]

—Alorael, who thinks you're missing some very basic economics here. Economics models are controversial and often wrong. Economic understanding of currency is not controversial. Market value is so basic it's hard to believe you're not deliberately rejecting the consensus just to see what responses you get.

I'm not saying that gold is worthless or that market value is wrong or anything like that. I'm simply saying that it's ridiculous that gold be afforded some kind of special position in financial markets, despite it not really being needed anymore (there's now way more money than gold to back it), and why it's treated with such special reverence when it's simply another commodity that should be determined by market value instead of being treated as a currency. To quote the Economist:

Quote:

Gold is not like other commodities. The demand for iron ore depends on down-to-earth things, such as how many steel girders Chinese builders are using. The demand for gold depends on airier considerations, such as whether you think Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ.

[snip]

If the world goes to hell, gold bugs will say: “I told you so.” But if investors ever wake up and notice that the yellow metal is little more useful than tulips, the gold bugs will be burned.

[Slawbug]

Also, RPGs rarely have realistic economies to begin with.

[Alorael at Large]

Market value doesn't have to be rational. Yes, gold is valued because it has a history of being valuable (and of being currency). Yes, the value of gold goes up because people buy it because they think the value will go up. None of that makes it fiat currency, just a possibly overvalued commodity.

 

—Alorael, who has seen plenty of ads for buying gold. They're pretty convincing! On the strength of their marketing, he decided to buy shares in companies that sell gold.

[Lilith]

oh my god i leave this thread alone for two hours and you guys manage to find something even more embarrassing to argue about than D&D

 

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

The market value of things with industrial applications is just as dependent on arbitrary consumer preferences. Steel, say, may have fixed physical properties, but the price of steel depends on the prices of all the things you can make with steel, which in turn depends on how much I'm willing to spend on a sports car. All economic value is "tradition," as you call it.

 

money you use to buy a sports car isn't fiat money, it's Fiat money