[Rq-rules] Re: increasing characteristics/Playing Using MRQRules/Coinage Exchange and Encumbrance

[Frank L Filz]

> In the old RQ 2nd ed. Copy I have, 10C = 1L and 20L = 1W. 100 
> coppers or silvers = 1 ENC, and 50 W = 1 ENC.
> 
> Also, 10 Bolgs=1Clack in non-troll areas, but trolls treat 
> Bolgs as Clacks in troll areas. 1Bolg has the same ENC as a 
> Clack/Lunar.

Hmm, according to both editions of Trollpak, at least in the Argan Argar
description, a bold is worth 1/10 of a clack to trolls, and worthless to
non-trolls.
  
> > Per page 18 of the Gamemaster Book, gems range from 5 
> pennies per gram
> > (turqoise) to 50 pennies per gram (diamond).
>  
> Yes, I never worked that one out, I don't normally value gems 
> by the gram but by individual value. So I'd have a diamond 
> worth 1000L, not a 20gram (everyone uses carats anyway) diamond.

It does give carats also. Personally, I never bother with the weight like
you. It's just a 1000L gem. I usually don't even specify the type. There was
a period in my life where I was all into super detail with rules and had
booklets of prices and values of gems by the carat and all. But to be
honest, such detail rarely ever saw play.

One of the few things I can remember where I did actually translate my
penchant for detail and research into play was when a party (not in an RQ
campaign) was going into the desert. I've also tried to use animal data from
books and other research (to set movement allowances and size - again not in
RQ though).
 
> > All prices in RQ3 are in silver pennies. The Glorantha book in the 
> > boxed set mentions lunars in the Ernalda writeup, but unless I'm 
> > missing something somewhere, it doesn't mention that a 
> lunar is a silver penny.
>  
> That's just a convention - Gloranthan prices are in Lunars, 
> RQ3 called them pennies to be able to use it in Alternate 
> Earth, but they didn't think about the massively confusing 
> and different real world currencies of even the medieval era.

My observation was that for the life of me, I could not find the 1 Lunar = 1
penny conversion. And from what I could tell, the only reference to Lunars
in the RQ3 boxed set was prices in the Ernalda writeup saying 500L for
example. For those of us who came up through RQ2, we knew what they were
talking about and automatically would have made the connection 1L = 1 Lunar
= 1 penny, but I could see some poor newbie wondering what the heck a L was,
perhaps eventually deciding since it sounded like a cost, it must be a
penny.

> Oh, 50L per guardsman or bandit soon adds up. If you find a 
> sword and sell it then you get quite a lot of money.

Yea, it's true, cash could pile up. Of course the amount of cash in RPG play
is way out of whack (though I would expect a significant percentage of the
population to have at least some coins, especially anyone in or near the
city, or living in a village along a travelled road).
  
> To be fair, we didn't bother counting gems or crystals, as 
> they each had 200 to the ENC and even at my worst, I didn't 
> have 200 POW crystals and gems to carry around. I never 
> bothered counting how many rings I had, either.
>
> For portability, we used to take gems, if we didn't mind 
> losing something when we cashed them in, or Wheels 
> (50W=1ENC=1000L) so, we had our saddlebags full of gold coin 
> when paying for Resurrections.

I tend to assume gems are cash equivalents, and that folks carrying large
amounts of money are doing so in gems. While money changer fees are
realistic, it's not worth the hassle to me other than perhaps thrown in as a
bit of color (or perhaps actually dealt with if a group of PCs wandered into
a town way out of their normal range and had to convert a lot of cash to
local coinage).

On the other hand, I love reading about and researching detail, so hearing
about and talking about all of this stuff is quite enjoyable. I just realize
these days that much of this kind of stuff will never make it into my play.

Frank