Tool usage, production and available materials

[sillysavage1]

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?

[Camino]

I don't agree with it at all because being given items from the start when you create a character is not the point because then you miss out on interaction between people, and the whole game is about society and developing it amongst us. Just having tools and food given to you at the start is taking a huge portion of the game away.

Still a nice thought to speed things up but perhaps you should look at how everything is player done in-game wise all the food,roads,tools,buildings all made or collected by people if they just had tools instantly it would mean the end of cooperation between people because why bother when you already got the tool to do the job.

[sillysavage1]

I will have to totally disagree with you Camino. You would interact even more with people because you have only one tool to do a certain job. For instance: You have a rubber tapping knife. That is all you have. You sure couldn't dig for food with that. You would be scraping the hell out of bark or whatever it is you do when getting rubber, to sell for some food to eat. You would be talking with everybody trying to sell that rubber! Lots of interaction going on there!
Again I disagree with taking away from the game as far as getting a few crumbs of food from the start. 400 grams does'nt go very far.
No it wouldn't end cooperation between people. It would make them think about who is the best person for the job. It would make them actually think about how best to go about building that road. obtaining enough food for the populace. Not being a mindless drone with a shovel, digging for spinach for days at a time just so he/she can horde it.
Maybe I'm seeing something in the future that you don't see. It's to simple to dig whatever you want and have it at no expense. To simple to say: Hey! I just dug up 5000 grams of spuds with my own hands and I didn't even have to break a sweat doing it! Oh never mind that it took 2 weeks to do it. And I'm still at 100 % strength. Were is the realism in that?
Ok, Camino doesn't like my idea. Thats fine everyone has there opinion on different matters. No hard feeling here Camino, thats why I posted this subject to get some feed back. But I will still push this issue.

[sillysavage1]

Another example on this and I will go at it from a reverse sort of angle. Lets say Jane (I'm sick of using Joe) has a dung-fork. She will never have to worry about going hungary. Jane can farm the He** out of crops. But that is all she can do. Can't go into those mountains to gather iron because (once again), Jane dosen't have the proper tool. And without that pickaxe, Jane will never be able to make her own tools. Well she could if she wanted to trade her precious foodstuffs for whatever it takes to build that special item she has wanted for so long. But who wants to trade there only tool ( That may mean life or death at the early stages of ones life on Cantr) for some food that will run out eventually. Then what....you die, or steal from someone...and if you get caught, you die anyway or get locked away. There in turn comes the gold issue. Now you can purchase that item you want. Economic growth....Capital funding.....dollars, pounds....coins....Buy my wares at this price, now go and use what you have bought.$$$

[Camino]

Again interesting point but then why bother have anything that players need to create and the game isn't about realism its a society simulator and what not read the blurb it isn't meant to be a one hundred percent realistic representation of life it just does everything as it needs to be and providing people with stuff at the start isn't part of it, because when you start a new character you are born you may be twenty but your still born which means you have nothing thats realism for ya' if you don't like that bit don't say you want realism then say except for this and this or and this and this.

[sillysavage1]

I'm finding it hard to follow you Camino. You are right about realism. I had chose the wrong word there. I should have said struggle...strife, conflict,...ummmm hard work? What is this " it just does everything as it needs to be" about? If it does everything it needs to then, why do we have this forum? Apparently it does not.
Its just that if it were to change ( the part about not being able to dig materials up with your bare hands) you would almost have to have some type of tool to get started with. As far as age is concerned...you can start at 40 makes no difference because I have yet to see someone die of old age. But maybe you are trying to talk with me about starting as an infant were there is nothing to do but wait? I heard about this on yahoo groups but took no interest.
Anyone else have an opinion?

[sillysavage1]

Ok, after thinking about this topic for a few minutes, lets take it in another direction. Forget about obtaining tools when you first create a character. Now what? Well now I have to drift back into the " realism" part of the game. You have to have a certain measure of it. Its just part of playing. How about you can't dig for "hard materials, ie: iron, stone,limestone, precious metals, that sort of thing) without some type of device (a.k.a. pickaxe) that can break through the crust. Once again I have never read anywhere or seen anyone chip granite with their bare hands. And I'm not talking about flint and steel here folks.
So now comes the part were you can only dig ( with your bare hands) in soft soils. Loam, silt, mud, peat, red clay, something like that. And the only thing that comes out of such material would be row crops. your potatoes, carrots, radish. Those are your below ground crops where you could dig ( I suppose) enough to sustain you. The above ground variety....corn, spinach, peas, cucumber, egg plant, asparagus,beans.
So now we have eliminated getting a tool during character creation. You can dig in soft soils to gather enough food to stay alive. But you can't dig with your hands in hard rock. And thats realism.

[Rob Maule]

Instead of limiting what someone can do by what tools they have, why not go to the source? Limit them to projects they can do. I doubt in the twenty years before they start 'living' that they've learned how to do and build everything. They'd be given specialties. Instead of a skill system where they are better at some tasks than others, they just wouldn't be able to do them. Though I'm leaning towards only applying that to building things. That way people wouldn't starve. Or maybe having food gathering the only thing they definitely know how to do. I dunno. Something like that. It would get people working together, which is the purpose of a society, and therefore a society simulator.

[Genevieve]

Why couldn't they learn it, though? That doesn't make sense to completely limit what they can do. It would make sense that they would have to learn it somehow, but you can learn to do just about anything.

[Rob Maule]

Then maybe they could learn a new skill. Possibly by helping someone that was already working on that project. But there would have to be a way for the skill not to be given to everyone so easily. Perhaps a limit on the numbers of skills a person can learn before the ones they already know begin to deminish (also eventually forgetting a skill entirely, requiring reteaching). Or only one person could be taught for each project the person with prior knowledge starts, with a minimum time of course. That way no one would be denied anything, only slowed down. Cantr people seem to be too perfect.

[Pirog]

I don't like any of the ideas so far

Starting equipment wouldn't work...what if I was spawned in an area where evetyone was killed or had left? Or perhaps where they were hostile to newcomers.
Then I would die if I didn't have a "food tool".

There is a suggestion in another topic that would work much better.
It was only suggested for food production, but could be implemented to oter resources to.

In short there would be "wild" food like berries and mushrooms (even hunting would be a part of this "wild" food) that people could feed on. This wouldn't be very effective...perhaps a whole day of picking these berries or hunting small animals would only result in two days worth of food.
Then there would be the effective way, harvesting resources, that would aquire tools and perhaps even special knowledge.

This way people would need to help each other to form a succesful community, while the lone wolfs could keep themselves alive but not much more.

[Pirog]

"Cultivation and Wild Food" is the name of the topic...

[Missy]

I don't see what the big deal with the current system we have is. Neither way it is done is going to be complete "Realism" and never will be. I think we've established this much so far. Especially seeing as how we have cars and bikes before we have outhouses and pots and pans to cook in.
This is the way characters are born currently. And it is real in side of the game. THATS just how its done. They are born, they farm for things.

I just don't see why it needs to be changed? Either way is wrong. If you're born with pick axes? Well thats not exactly what i'd call real...When I was born I didn't come out me ma' with a pickaxe in my hand? no i didn't.
And when I was born, I didn't know how to make one either. But i was also not born just this year at the age of twenty in the real world either.
There are going to be some weird things because it is a simulator, it can't be perfect. I think the current system is as real as it gets. I BELIEVE Chars are spawned at 20 because if you ran into someone who was twenty in the real world they'd have knowledge....So our chars are born at twenty so they can have knowledge too.
I see no reason to change the current system we are using. But thats just my opinion.

[sillysavage1]

These are all fine suggestions/opinions, and thats what I wanted to read when I put this post down. Perhaps I should have titled this as " Economy and better ways to go about getting it started" because thats what I think I'm trying to eventually get at here. I want to reply to these posts you have given but it will have to be later on this evening. In the mean time while I'm at work, I will think about this. There has to be a way in which precious metals can be used as the bargaining tool other than food or other building material sources.
Limiting ones way of obtaining materials with only a tool was the way I thought it could have been. Ah, good brainstormers on this subject.

[Camino]

I don't see why this desire to have precious metals as currency is so important and the whole getting stuff when you create I'm still against it as for the soil idea perhaps but remember that you can find gold, iron stone etc etc just lieing around normaly or at least you could maybe thats something that should be impletmented an initial abundance of non-food materials that slowly decline but eventaully every slowly get recycled back in.