I'm going to talk a bit about one aspect of my friend's game that I just don't get but since we really won't be discussing it with him, let's address it in a broader, more theoretical sense.

One of the things my friend has added to his fantasy game is a truly messed-up monetary system with two coins for each: gold, silver, copper.

In practice, the wife & I had found this more confusing and cumbersome than its worth, but my friend continues to say it adds flavor or color to the game.

So, I turn this idea over to the membership here. I'd rather not beat the particulars to death but I suppose some discussion is unavoidable. Is this detail really meaningless?

I think this can only boil down to personal preference. For some people, "one coinage the world over" just rubs 'em the wrong way, and every time someone says "gold piece" instead of drachma or centavo or whatever, it's like cold slime dripping on their neck. And if you have drachmas and centavos, there HAS to be an exchange rate . . .

Other folks just want to buy their supplies so they can get on with the rest of the game.

For ME, it's meaningless detail unless it ties into some fun n' freaky stuff about the PC's, or the game/gameworld. All the different coins in Talislanta were cool because they were tied to intersting places - skull coins from Khazad, how cool! I want one. Wait, that PC has one? How'd she get it? Let's talk . . . hey, I'm going to make my PC a coin collector! This is gonna be great! (yes, I had great fun with my coin-collecting gnomekin)

But that's just me. Other people think "because it's a little more realistic" is enough right there.

Gordon

Gordon C. Landis wrote: For ME, it's meaningless detail unless it ties into some fun n' freaky stuff about the PC's, or the game/gameworld.

Conflicting play styles? Sounds like Sim detail annoying a Narrativist to me. Any chance that's close?

Mike

Up until decimalisation, here in the UK we had a pretty bizarre monetary systems. Two farthings makes ha'penny, two ha'penny make a penny, twelve pennies make a shilling, two shillings sixpence make half a crown, two half a crowns make a crown, four crowns make a pound. One pound one shilling make a guinea. You then have slang terms for various monetary amounts (sixpence was a 'tanner', a shilling can also be called a 'bob', hence ten bob note, and so on).

So, he's not come up with an overly complex system from a historical point of view. I guess you have pretty straight forward sim or immersionist arguments about the money - particular the irregularity of the money - providing a feeling of being someplace else.

Further to that general point, I suppose you could raise the issue of how important is it to a game. Does the money get screen time - for example if merchants feature in the game, or there is a subplot about counterfeiting. If so the detail could add a great deal to the game. If it merely adds to bookkeeping, it might end up more trouble than it's worth.

I agree with Gordon that this is usually pointless, but let me take a counter-example just for the sake of argument.

Suppose I have a fantasy world with lots of countries and cultures and whatnot, and in the game I'm running the political machinations are a very big deal. Now one of the things about coinage is that a lot of its value has to do with who mints it, unless it's entirely locked to the local price of the metal. So suppose a Gold Piece from X'tio'mar'akkkh is smaller than a Gold Piece from Brancusiolorus, so it seems that the latter is going to be worth more. But the thing is, a big plot that's going on right now makes the government of Brancusiolorus hated and untrustworthy, because the PCs (agents from X'tio'mar'akkkh) have been exposing their evils. So people wonder if the gold in their coinage is actually mixed with something else (cupellation is pretty simple, after all, so it's easy to tell if you really want to), and besides lots of serious traders don't want to support these guys by relying on their mines, which after all get slaves by kidnapping traders from X'tio'mar'akkkh. So everybody starts using X'tio'mar'akkkh Gold Pieces as much as possible, and while their initial value is lower, this demand will drive it up. Now you've got a situation where the coinage is dependent on who mints it, rather than on the metal content per se; furthermore, the reason for this is something the PCs have done, not just background color.

I can see this mattering a whole hell of a lot in a certain kind of game, one I think might be lot of fun to play. But if it really makes no difference, if the coins are worth their metal and that's all, it does seem to me that this sort of color may be unnecessary detail. Of course, it is nice to know that the X'tio'mar'akkkh Gold Piece is actually called a Biscuit and the Brancusioloran Gold Piece is actually called a Severed Head.

OK, couple of replies as I see may be necessary:

Mike Holmes wrote: Conflicting play styles? Sounds like Sim detail annoying a Narrativist to me. Any chance that's close?

Ian Charvill wrote: If it merely adds to bookkeeping, it might end up more trouble than it's worth.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
I like Gordon and Chris's suggestions for making a monetary system important to what's going on beyond "I need to get five more Moranks to be able to buy that nifty weapon that does more damage." Detail is only meaningless if it's not used to some end, I guess, whatever the end may be.

1 Copper Phooka (P)
1 Copper Morank (M) = 2P
1 Silver Gryphon (G) = 50M = 100P
1 Silver Wyvern (W) = 2G = 100M = 200P
1 Gold Roc (R) = 10W = 20G = 1000M = 2000P
1 Gold Dragon (D) = 20R = 200W = 400G = 20,000M = 40,000P

Mike Holmes wrote: Conflicting play styles? Sounds like Sim detail annoying a Narrativist to me. Any chance that's close?

greyorm wrote: There seems to be this weird belief floating about that Narrativists are "fudgy," in that the world receives little detail, or that color/flavor is meaningless/unappreciated by/a bother to Narrativists.

For a viewpoint of playing in a world with that currency...
As a player, the first thing I would do on my sheet is drop off the words "copper", "silver", and "gold"...this leaves you with just a name and and an exchange rate.
not a Copper Phooka, just a Phooka...and so on

Just 6 types of currency (not that unlike the old D&D
Copper,Silver,Electrum,Gold,Platinum)

To me its the double use of the metal word that confuses things. Note it for Color if you want, but I would leave it off my character sheet.

Edited in: For ease of use, I would decide what the base money type is...like the "dollar" or the "pound". I would pick the Wyvern. This makes the Griffon a half Wyvern, the next lower a 'penny' and the lowest a 'half penny" etc with the Roc being a 'tenner' and the Dragon a "$200 dollar bill"

Hey, Bob. To be fair, in common usage the metals were dropped during play. A room would cost two Moranks, not two copper Moranks, for instance.

To be honest it didn't help. I got that silver was more valuable than copper and gold more valuable than silver. I had to learn what the hell Electrum and Platinum was and where they fit, but I learned this when I was like 12. I have no idea what a Phooka* is or a Morank and thus it's not as intuitive. I suppose it's just a matter of learning it, like anything else.



* Well, I know a phooka is a spirit of some kind. Harvey the rabbit from the Jimmy Stewart movie is a phooka.

Ah yes, Australian isn't it? And that reminds me - isn't Moranc/k" some sort of water critter?

FWIW

There are published roleplaying games with non-decimal currency systems. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay used 12 copper pennies = one silver shilling; twenty shillings = one gold crown. Runequest had a minor bit of funkyness with twenty lunars to the wheel. So there are precedents.

Too, Seventh Sea has various non-decimal rates of exchange among the various currencies, but in play everything comes down to Guilders.

Ian

What is meaningless detail. Its detail that isn't made to have meaning. Many would consider working out detailed languages complete with script to be a meaningless detail, yet when Tolkien did it he made it so meaningful thousands of people bothered to actually learn and write in his ficitional language.

Any detail in a character or world is meaningless unless it is made to have meaning in the game. Middle Earth has been notable for the details about it that are missing , like what was religion really like? They are missing because they didnt bear ont he themes and ideas he wanted to explore. The wonder of Tolkiens talent is that in spite of the amount of detail in Middle earth,practically all of it is made to have meaning, whole new generations find whole new meaning in those details.

In the example given on currency , there once was a time when I would have done something like this simply because I thought being creative in world design meant just piling on detail. Now I would ask what purpose It would serve in making stories. And there is plenty of potential, after all what has caused more conflict than money? (religion, probably) What more symbolizes human greed than money?
but adding currency beyond a cute local name for 'coin of little value' is meaningless detail if the only purpose is complicate the calculation for buying your 10 foot pole and 50' feet of rope.......

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: 1 Copper Phooka (P)
1 Copper Morank (M) = 2P
1 Silver Gryphon (G) = 50M = 100P
1 Silver Wyvern (W) = 2G = 100M = 200P
1 Gold Roc (R) = 10W = 20G = 1000M = 2000P
1 Gold Dragon (D) = 20R = 200W = 400G = 20,000M = 40,000P

M. J. Young wrote: There's too big a gap in two places, one of which can only be explained if value is based on weight, and the other only if it isn't.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:

greyorm wrote: There seems to be this weird belief floating about that Narrativists are "fudgy," in that the world receives little detail, or that color/flavor is meaningless/unappreciated by/a bother to Narrativists.

And the other side of that coin is that Simulationist are anal with every minute detail spelled out, no matter how small or inconsequential it may seem.

That's a bloody good point, Raven. Much better discussion has arisen from this than I had expected. My hat goes off.

I suggest we drop the "meaningless detail" and use a word that has long been used in the field of criticism and literary theory. The "meaningless detail" has been labelled "effet de reel" or "reality effect". (Was it Barthes who came up with the term?)

It stands for a detail in narration that is there beacuse "it's there". Reality effect is a detail added to perfect the illusion of the "reality" of the narrated. I guess the idea is to give the reader the feeling that he's just voyering and eavesdropping real events rather than reading an artificial fictional story. Reality effect is one of the basic stylistic techniques of realist fiction (I mean Balzac, Dostoyevski and the like). How meaningless the reality effect is depends on how much the audience (the gaming group) values the illusion of reality.

Reality effect might be important to narrativists as well as simists or even gamists. However I can most easily see the importance of reality effect in a "anti-narrative" simist play which wants its narrated to be a dream, a virtual reality rather than a verbal construct and plotted artifact (which it always is). This is of course an illusion but for many (myself included) it's a pleasurable illusion. Reality effect helps to forget the real life concerns behind the game.

I'll later relate this thing to immersion but since it will be a long post and a bit off topic I will not do it here. And yes - I know that immersion is a problematic word so don't tell it to me.

I think "meaningless" is appropriate in that case.

What's the point of detailing a complex, multi-metallic system if you're going to have fixed exchange rates anyway ?

M. J. Young wrote: ..., the Dragon must way greater than half a pound. It's an absurd coin; it must be near the size of a saucer.

I like that term, Johannes. Reality Effect does convey exactly what I'm trying to get at. The question is, given players that prefer certain styles, who prefers lots of Reality Effects; enough so that some of them do not ever become actiely involved in the action? I think that's what Jack seems to be against. The idea that a detail would be introduced despite the fact that it seems to have nothing to do with the current conflicts of the characters, for example. This seems to be unique to RPGs, and Herman Melville (one might well ask, "What's with the whole chapter on knots in MOby Dick?")

FWIW, the most complicated monetary system I've ever played with was playing GURPS Swashbucklers. Using real world data, there are charts in the book detailing all the sorts of money being used by each nation, and the weights of each. To make an exchange you have to consider a whole host of factors. One has to look at the weight, and purity of the metals at the time. Then one has to consider the issuing government, and what's allowed to be used by whom. The Spanish, for example, had all sorts of rules on the use of different currencies, and these tended to change when wars were declared. Which happened almost constantly in the 17th century. Add to that the location of the exchange and the scarcity of coinage, and other factors, and currency became a whole subset of play.

"OK, we've got a mountain of doubloons, but we can't take our English crew to port in a Spanish town or they'll know it's stolen. So, lets sail for Tortuga, and hope that the buccanneer merchants there don't rake us over the coals trying to purchase cannon, shot, and powder with our newfound Spanish booty." (As a town run by pirates for the most part, one could usually pay in whatever sort of coin in Tortuga. Still, you had to figure out what the cost for things would be in doubloons or whatever.)

I got way into it. At one point we realized that, after a fight with lots of casualties, that nobody on the ship had anything resembling advanced math skills*. In order to make an exchange at the next port (English for Spanish, at Port Royale, IIRC), we abducted an educated merchant and forced him to give us a fair estimate of what the exchange we wanted to perform should entail before letting him go. So currency detail here drove play.

Interesting how the real world ends up being way more complicated in detail than any fantasy world system. For those sorts of players who like to have things be as close as possible to being as detailed as the real world, this sort of thing is crucial. Far from meaningless, detail like this becomes the point of play.

Mike

*It's interesting in playing "Pirates" games, that the whole crew becomes a skill set. You're always looking to bring in people with new skills so that you can handle whatever you come up against. I think it was our carpenter or cooper or someone who had had the math skills. When we replaced that position, the new guy didn't have math. So we hired an ex-tobacco farmer at one point because he knew tobacco, of course, but also because he knew math (apparently it's somehow important to tobacco farming or something).

Heeding D&D tradition, most fantasy currencies are vastly devalued from their real world counterparts. This is so that players can find chests full of gold, and still not have so much wealth that any same person would retire.

So one assumes that he hockey-puck sized Dragon was very valuable, but perhaps not moreso than real world gold coins. Perhaps less. What can you buy with, say, a Phooka? If it takes 10 Phooka to buy a loaf of bread, then the Dragon is not ridiculously valuable.

Further, in fantasy one wants often to surpass the real world in the magnitude of certain things. Perhaps the world is quite grandiose, and Dragons are used to purchase nations regularly. Jack?

Or, perhaps the GM just hasn't thought all this out. Nobody's perfect.

Mike

Well, whatever you ment to say, Mike, didn't come through -- and as you know, what you mean to say doesn't count. You said Narrativist with a big N, and no qualifiers following, hence I responded to the statement that Narrativists would find such an item.

And given your own logic, it has nothing to do with being a Narrativist anyways, only (perhaps) a subset of such, but since we have no shared defined subsets to discuss the issue around...

Jack's response was the same: mentioning the flip-side of the bad stereotype coin to uphold my point about the inaccuracy of stereotypes. "Yep, coinage is a Simulationist thing" is a statement that if anyone makes I also say bah!

My main problem: GNS gets thrown around way too much as the be-all-end-all in the discussion of problem issues; unfortunately, half-the-time GNS does't make a whit of difference to the problem being discussed, at least top-level GNS, and certainly doesn't solve the problem.
This IMO is one of those cases.

Rather than waving hands and invoking the grand triad as the meaningless answer, the actual reason why the coinage issue was so distrubing, and what specifically about it was so disturbing, should be explored -- in plain English. GNS can be fitted in after this if necessary.

greyorm wrote: Well, whatever you ment to say, Mike, didn't come through -- and as you know, what you mean to say doesn't count. You said Narrativist with a big N, and no qualifiers following, hence I responded to the statement that Narrativists would find such an item.

Conflicting play styles? Sounds like Sim detail annoying a Narrativist to me. Any chance that's close?

And given your own logic, it has nothing to do with being a Narrativist anyways, only (perhaps) a subset of such, but since we have no shared defined subsets to discuss the issue around...

Jack's response was the same: mentioning the flip-side of the bad stereotype coin to uphold my point about the inaccuracy of stereotypes. "Yep, coinage is a Simulationist thing" is a statement that if anyone makes I also say bah!

Maybe, maybe not.

My main problem: GNS gets thrown around way too much as the be-all-end-all in the discussion of problem issues; unfortunately, half-the-time GNS does't make a whit of difference to the problem being discussed, at least top-level GNS, and certainly doesn't solve the problem.
This IMO is one of those cases.

Rather than waving hands and invoking the grand triad as the meaningless answer, the actual reason why the coinage issue was so distrubing, and what specifically about it was so disturbing, should be explored -- in plain English. GNS can be fitted in after this if necessary.

Mike Holmes wrote: That indicates that the player prefers some styple of Narrativist play. And it's this preference that causes the dislike of Sim detail.

greyorm wrote:

Mike Holmes wrote: That indicates that the player prefers some styple of Narrativist play. And it's this preference that causes the dislike of Sim detail.

Exactly! This is precisely the problem with your statement: as I pointed out, this is not necessarily a "Simulationist detail." And hence why Jack's dislike of it is not necessarily a GNS issue.

Mike, I saw what I saw, I read what I read. You don't agree. End of story. You're not under investigation here, and your defense and detailed explanations of your posts is unnecessary.

Let's get back to discussing Jack's problem, shall we? And whether meaningless detail is really meaningless? Let's define that word, however: "meaningless." Because, ironically, its meaningless to me how it stands.

Jack?

Okay, hang on a minute.

Seems to me that what's happening here is a kind of mirroring effect, with a lot lying just below the surface (behind the tain, technically).

Here's the setup:

1. As far as coinage per se, it appears that most agree it can be plot-driving and constructively useful.

2. Most also agree that it usually is not; it's pure color. Which is not to say it's a bad thing as color --- only that it does not drive plot.

3. Most also agree that this particular instance seems annoying.

4. Note: As far as I can tell, Jack has not yet specified whether "meaningless" means (A) not constitutive of stories/plots/etc.; (B) color; (C) obstructive color; (D) otherwise annoying.

On one side, my sense is that Mike has some of the following concerns:

1. Many Sim games do make extensive use of fine detail, often for reasons of color.

2. Some (or many) Nar-preference folks disdain such use of color, on some grounds or other.

3. Therefore, Mike is worried about whether this question of "meaningless detail" masks yet another GNS-stereotyping attack by Nar-preference players against Sim-preference players.

On the opposite side, I think greyorm has some of the following concerns:

1. There have in the past been dismissals of valid general theory questions on pseudo-GNS grounds, the claimed argument being, "this is just a GNS preference so shut up (you annoying people of X GNS preference)."

2. Mike has made his own preferences fairly clear, and appears (to greyorm) to be preparing to draw yet another line in the sand between Nar and Sim.

3. Therefore, greyorm is worried that Mike's remarks about Sim vs. Nar are a misuse of GNS in order to seal off debate.

Okay, now it seems to me that you basically agree in the abstract. Both of you are concerned about the misuse of GNS as a system of stereotyping and labeling, especially with pejorative (or downright insulting) intent or effect. Both of you recognize that, to the extent that this question of "meaning" is a question of GNS, this thread may mask or prompt typical annoying inter-preference bashing.

So to clarify and re-orient greyorm's last question:

Jack:
What exactly do you mean by "meaningless"? Granting that this system does indeed seem annoying, what in particular is it that you consider symptomatic, and of what is it a symptom?

clehrich wrote: Jack:
What exactly do you mean by "meaningless"? Granting that this system does indeed seem annoying, what in particular is it that you consider symptomatic, and of what is it a symptom?

Good; thanks, Jack. Let's move past the money issue, at least in this particular game.

I think it's meaningless because it is just color but color that requires effort out of proportion to the effort it requires. The wife has complained to me about how difficult it is to use the monetary system. She would forget what coin was more valuable than what if it wasn't written on her character sheet. AFAIK there is not the at least interesting monetary system Mike outlined above. In effect, this system is pretty much the same as the typical coinage from D&D, only made more complicated for no particularly good reason other than to make the money not just the typical gold, silver, etc.

This has me wondering, is Color more effective when it requires less effort to ingest. Things like art or music or whatever that comes readily to people. Does the amount of effort required decrease Color's effectiveness?

This has me wondering, is Color more effective when it requires less effort to ingest. Things like art or music or whatever that comes readily to people. Does the amount of effort required decrease Color's effectiveness?

clehrich wrote: If you mean that Color should be able to be appreciated entirely as background material, requiring minimal effort, I think that's one side of it. ...(snip)... But if the players decide to foreground it, there should be some support for it, making it add actual depth to the world.

To my mind, Color is an in-play definition, but it relates back to design. Color is constructed (by GM or players or whatever) to be background. When (if) the players decide to foreground it, it stops being Color.

My point is just that color can be evaluated in terms of

(1) aesthetics: it's pretty, it really makes the place seem a certain way, etc. A Call of Cthulhu campaign with detailed and Lovecraftian descriptions, people with names like Esdras Whipple and Philomenia Stahl, houses with creaky old gambrel roofs, and so forth, really conjures up the right mood quickly;

(2) requisite time: the players and/or GM must put in X amount of time to make the aesthetic part function well. If it is necessary that all the players read the complete works of Thomas Hardy to get the right feel, this takes time; similarly a mechanical system takes up play time;

(3) potential utility: the thing we're talking about here. Some things just don't lend themselves to being useful, but a lot do. Suppose in a CoC campaign we all have complicated New England genealogies worked out for us, that's ordinarily going to be color, just as having a Dwarf character be named Khaz-ro't the Bearded is just color. But if we decide to investigate how Phil over there is actually quite closely related to the Whateley family, or we use some sort of Author-stance thing to announce that Khaz-ro't is actually an ancient phrase that really means "Orc-Lover" (rather than "Nice Axe," as previously thought), then suddenly it's going to matter.

What I'm saying is that the perfect piece of Color is very evocative, takes only one word to express, and could turn into a great plot hook very easily. Such a thing doesn't exist, but that's surely the ideal.

Color is constructed (by GM or players or whatever) to be background. When (if) the players decide to foreground it, it stops being Color.

Johannes,

I was only trying to say that if we want to call "color" the sort of detail that is usually only incidentally relevant, then that definition breaks down when exploration of color becomes focal. I was trying to defend the stance that sometimes apparently "meaningless" detail can become meaningful. I suppose my definition does tend to factor out exploration of color as a deliberate focus, because it says that as soon as you start exploring it it stops being color, but that wasn't really what I was getting at. I'm not trying to propose a general theory of color; my only concern here is to redirect the discourse on incidental detail into a potential profitable (and not controversial) area.