PC Crafting Materials survey

Willem Rivet

Willem Rivet

Artisan
Hello!
I'm JT, and I play a merchant-minded Artisan up in Chicago. The local Merchant Guild was talking about the wider economy of Crafting Materials and how we value them vs. other chapters and I was wondering if I could poll each chapter and see directly from them how the implementation is going there. So here I am!

In Chicago, we value single Crafting Materials as a silver coin. There has been some grumbling about it from non-Artisan folk, and it definitely gets purchased for coin by the Merchants Guild when Town Auction happens so the split is primarily coin (unless the person would rather CM than coin.)

So my questions are:
How are Crafting Materials valued in your chapter? Does everyone agree on this assessment, or is there debate?
Does everyone engage with it, or is it ignored by some groups?
Thank you for taking time to reply. At the very least discuss this amongst yourselves if consensus hasn't been reached.

My DMs are open if you want to reply privately, but I think the public discussion is helpful.

Thanks again!
-JT
 
Hey JT,
I play a merchant-minded Quartermaster here.

Your prices are right on where they are valued here for the most part.
Most merchants engage in those prices as the general cost of the material.
The age of the chapter plays a bit into the overall value of items, the economy is not cash flush; so often they end up being less.

With only a year of time under the chapter belt, we have not established a formal Merchant Guild, and unless we see more folks (right now membership would be around 3 people from what I can see based on our notice board for the upcoming game)

As for the Town Auction/Loot Split - we value then at "cost" being 5 copper. This is to encourage crafters to buy them, and to make them accessible to the relatively new economy in chapter. This is also to keep the 1s price the "going rate" when buying then from folks in town. If we valued them at 1s from town loot - they would end up being valued higher if people are looking to move them. We have found outside of the heaviest of crafter - most of the adventurers in town would rather the coin for bidding power over the materials.

-Dennis (Ragnar)
 
I have a journeyman inscriber, but GB, especially after the sunset of HQ as a high level game, is top heavy.

When we are doing splits for major battles, all crafting materials have been valued as 1 silver per material. With the kind of experience we have, crafting adventuring equipment and superior equipment is common. Craftspeople often trade amongst themselves after individual splits since the splits are made disregarding what sort of material is there (for expediency).

I have personally heard no complaints from it, but our average level of experience and wealth is uncommonly high.

We also see a good deal of crafting material movement in treasure.
 
Do you think that if the game valued CM at 1 silver across the board, and allowed that as the value during Auction, there would be more incentive for people to use CM as coin? like if you had 5 gold and 10 CM and could say you bid 6 "gold" and pay that into the Auction?
 
Willem Rivet said:
Do you think that if the game valued CM at 1 silver across the board, and allowed that as the value during Auction, there would be more incentive for people to use CM as coin? like if you had 5 gold and 10 CM and could say you bid 6 "gold" and pay that into the Auction?
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Clarity: if all players at the game valued it the same as 1 silver coin, or the game overall changed the back end value to 1 silver = 1 CM?

I suppose at the moment it would be like offering up say, 1 gold worth adventuring equipment to offer 10CM. It would depend on if the people at the auction consent to using them as an alternate and equal currency to silver. The baseline expectation is for to auctions to be paid in coin, but I imagine if everyone was on the same page ahead of time, it might be doable.

As long as they aren't violating the established social more of using coin, and it's all talked about beforehand. It'd feel bad to get beaten out on something because you don't have the coin to put up or don't feel comfortable putting all your coin up for a high value item, then the person's paying with stacks of leather a la "Hey buddy, I had that too!"

Rambly, hope it makes sense!
 
Supplemental and further clarifying info:

Say we're doing a split for 18 people, we first divide out the coin and try to get it as equitable as possible, then fill in the rest of the stacks that are short on silver with CM, then go around putting out crafting materials. Folks who can make more use of crafting materials tend to preferentially ask for those stacks, and are handed them by the people who are taking care of the sort.
 
Jack Y. said:
Supplemental and further clarifying info:

Say we're doing a split for 18 people, we first divide out the coin and try to get it as equitable as possible, then fill in the rest of the stacks that are short on silver with CM, then go around putting out crafting materials. Folks who can make more use of crafting materials tend to preferentially ask for those stacks, and are handed them by the people who are taking care of the sort.
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I'm not understanding the dilemma.

I see how Production is *squiffy* when it comes to value, but if a Merchant sells a Production item back, they can choose to get coin, creating an equivalence in the back-end. If you math that one Production is one level of Crafted Production, and that the first 20 levels of the first Batch are free, then all CM are essentially 1 silver worth of materials. It isn't actually that *yet*, but a number of people can process that CM to a silver over time. Not all characters can, without having Merchant, but this is the basis of the conversion. That, and that for Professions, you can get CM or Silver at a 1:1, which implies the back-end treats them the same. It might not be. I'd need someone to weigh in on that for me.

In any event, I'd say that the CM in the example of Auctions would have to be in 10 increments, to easily identify as a Gold for split purposes. At least locally we only do gold increments in auctions, so that's where that comes from.
 
Willem Rivet said:
I'm not understanding the dilemma.

I see how Production is *squiffy* when it comes to value, but if a Merchant sells a Production item back, they can choose to get coin, creating an equivalence in the back-end. If you math that one Production is one level of Crafted Production, and that the first 20 levels of the first Batch are free, then all CM are essentially 1 silver worth of materials. It isn't actually that *yet*, but a number of people can process that CM to a silver over time. Not all characters can, without having Merchant, but this is the basis of the conversion. That, and that for Professions, you can get CM or Silver at a 1:1, which implies the back-end treats them the same. It might not be. I'd need someone to weigh in on that for me.

In any event, I'd say that the CM in the example of Auctions would have to be in 10 increments, to easily identify as a Gold for split purposes. At least locally we only do gold increments in auctions, so that's where that comes from.
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The basis for the thought of one crafting material isn't always one silver straight up (why I was wondering if you meant adjusting the internals) is that for starting equipment, a crafting material's worth adventuring equipment = 5 points/5 copper. Same with toolkit giving you 20CM use-or-lose for the batch for the price of 1 gold.

Hope that clarifies!
 
“You could always just pocket what you find and take a share of town treasure anyways”
 
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A CM is only worth 1 silver if you are selling it to make a 5cp profit. Chicago and affiliates is the only alliance chapter where i've seen 1 silver CM'S.
ARC tried to insert a artificial inflation by writing the profession skill and merchant poorly, but don't be fooled.
Treasure policy hasn't changed
A purify potion cost 4 silver to make and 8 if you sell it, period!
At 1silver CM', its 8 to make 1.6G to sell for profit.
Would any of you buy a purify for 1.6gold? I didn't think so.
That's the way it was , and that's the way it is.
Take the coin, stay away from merchant.
 
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Mcal said:
A CM is only worth 1 silver if you are selling it to make a 5cp profit. Chicago and affiliates is the only alliance chapter where i've seen 1 silver CM'S.
ARC tried to insert a artificial inflation by writing the profession skill and merchant poorly, but don't be fooled.
Treasure policy hasn't changed
A purify potion cost 4 silver to make and 8 if you sell it, period!
At 1silver CM', its 8 to make 1.6G to sell for profit.
Would any of you buy a purify for 1.6gold? I didn't think so.
That's the way it was , and that's the way it is.
Take the coin, stay away from merchant.
Click to expand...
Ok, let's tackle this.
So far in this survey, every chapter surveyed that has responded says they predominantly valued CM as 1 silver. I only surveyed Wisconsin in the "Chicago and affiliates" group because I haven't been there. Chicago and Minnesota both do the 1 CM=1 Silver thing. I should mention that the "affiliates" thing is also pretty unfair. They are very different games with different themes hours away from each other. Midwesterners are just weird people who don't mind driving it.

There are outliers in some other chapters that value CM at 5 copper, and it has become a sore spot for some. That's kinda the entire point of the survey. Just get everyone's thoughts on it, make informed choices.

Treasure policy has changed pretty radically over the 20+ years since the split. And it's a hidden adjudication, so I can only guess at how the CM is actually weighted. I think it would help the discussion if someone from Rules actually said how it was weighted (and this would be the second time asking during the survey.)"

As for the "it's always been this way" comment. Part of this survey is understanding how each chapter handles it. While each method sort of rhymes, it is different in different chapters, and those differences through us into the bad kind of conflict. Hopefully, we'll come away from this with an increased understanding of how each chapter does it and minimize bad interactions when visiting other games.
 
Tigaris said:
“You could always just pocket what you find and take a share of town treasure anyways”
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I understand it's a pretty meta topic, but we're out of game, bud. Gonna assume the quotes indicate you thought we were in game. I understand the hazy line of thought we're in, discussing town splits and pricing of stuff. No worries.
 
Willem Rivet said:
I understand it's a pretty meta topic, but we're out of game, bud. Gonna assume the quotes indicate you thought we were in game. I understand the hazy line of thought we're in, discussing town splits and pricing of stuff. No worries.
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No no, that’s what the majority of the people would actually do. I’m gonna add my actual two sense here. It seems to me what your actually trying to do sounds like IG talk and doing it OOG kills the spirit of the system. And even if you done it IG it’s a flawed attempt of inflating or deflating Crafting materials on a national scale. You can’t compare chapters Crafting mats the same way with others. Some places have both a higher APL then others and actual number of players. I said my piece, make what you will with it.
 
Willem Rivet said:
I think it would help the discussion if someone from Rules actually said how it was weighted
Click to expand...
Treasure Policy is intentionally not a player-facing policy.

If your intent is to establish a national value for them within the game, I agree with some of the other comments that have been raised, here and elsewhere, that it’s really more of an in game conversation.
 
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