
All right lets think about this scheme. I’ve been jogging this idea around for some time now.
Character creation:
When characters are made they should have (3) items in their inventory.
-A tool (selected randomly)
-Enough food that could have been harvested for one days work (there are several varieties) (Also selected randomly)
-Gold (depending on the factors of how much gold you can dig in a day, or other factors in which I haven’t come up with yet) Perhaps 50-100 grams to start?
I will break this down a bit further for you.
Why a tool?
Well my thinking on this would be…. If Jos. would cancel out being able to dig for items, ( Carrots, potatoes, spinach, asparagus,etc,etc….and on to iron, gold, limestone,stone, coal, wood, rubber, etc, etc….) just with your bare hands, and instead have to use tools of a certain type for a certain type of food or mineral, I believe that a flourish of economic proportions would happen.
An example:
Joe was just born. Joe has a pickaxe in his inventory along with 400 grams of carrots (Forget the carrots, I will get to that later. Let’s concentrate on the pickaxe for now.) And 50 grams of gold. Again I’ll talk about that later. With the pickaxe, Joe has the ability to dig for stone, limestone, iron, and whatever else you can do with a pickaxe. But that’s all he can do. Joe can’t harvest carrots, dig for spinach or potatoes. Joe can’t get food period! He just doesn’t have the proper tool to use for this line of work.
Why Food?
Ok now we get to the carrots (or whatever other food selected randomly) that he has in his inventory when Joe was first made. 400 grams will keep him alive for a couple of weeks but, not forever. Joe knows this. So in his great intellect, Joe decides that if he hangs around town long enough (buts not to long) he can dig for limestone, stone, or other resource you can dig up with a pickaxe. With enough limestone Joe can perhaps sell what he has dug for more food to stay alive another day. If Joe gets lucky enough he might even have enough left over to purchase some other tool that may be for sale. (Like a dung fork) So Joe doesn’t have to depend on just his pickaxe for survival.
Why Gold?
Now about the gold. Let’s say Joe is not too bright. He didn’t think about using his pickaxe to acquire a source of food, he thought more on building a home. So Joe spent all his time in gathering stone for his house and then one-day, BAM! Joe ran out of food. What to do? Joe could sell his pickaxe for gold or trade his pickaxe for food. Ok, Joe has the intelligence to figure out that if he sold his pickaxe that would probably be the end for him. Without a tool you can’t dig for recourses. You become a beggar and eventually die of alcoholism…. Err, starvation. Luckily for Joe he had 50 grams of gold when he first started out. Whew, lifesaver! Joe now has a second chance. He can go buy some more food with his gold or perhaps buy that dung fork Joe knew he should have bought when the merchant came to town peddling such items.
Recap:
You can’t gather resources with your bare hands. You must have the right tool for the right job. This in turn sets the character that was made to do only one thing. Either harvest food or dig for minerals. Later on down the road when the character has traded, sold or bargained his way to a better life, the character has more freedom in choosing what they want to do. This basically turns out to be a skill at first and then on to level advancement without really calling it so. Perhaps ability and experience. Kind’a goes along with the age thing.
Of course people could trade their tools to each other. That’s one way to break up the boredom of having to dig carrots or flail rice all day. Or talk to those pesky merchants about buying other tools so you can go dig up some iron. But I think what I’m trying to get at here is the gold issue. I suppose you could give the merchant 1000’s of grams of food to get that rubber-tapping knife you always wanted. But, you would spend a lot of time trying to gather enough rice to buy that expensive little sucker!
This is what I’m trying to accomplish with my characters. It’s just that being able to dig up or harvest items without any tools makes it doubly difficult to get any kind of economy going in the way of valuable rocks…err, gold, silver, copper, that sort of thing. Plus it takes quite awhile to gather the recourses to make these tools. And then awhile longer to put them together. The price for such items should be high. But in turn it stimulates economic growth.
Ok, lets here it! I know all of you are just waiting to jump on this idea! Pro’s and Con’s anyone?