Devaluing the Gold Bar

Dungeons & Dragons BRCS 3.0/3.5 Edition
21

On Sun, 20 Apr 2003, Airgedok wrote:

> Seeing as the GB is abstract there is therefore no reason NOT to times
> everything by 12 and make bookkeeping purely integer based. The value
> of the bar is of no consequence.

There is definitely something to this. Twelfths, sixteenths and such
are a nuisance to work with. Even the largely non-metric US has metric
money. =)

But note, just multiplying by twelve might not be enough! If the draft
revision uses several different fractions in different places (I havent read every single page yet), or even worse multiplies them, then to keep all those relative values the same but work only with integers, youd have
to multiply everything by the lowest common denominator of every fraction
in the whole thing, which could easily be 720 or more.

I personally use, and others have suggested, a slight variation of this
scheme, keeping GB as they are but retaining decimal fractions: 0.08 is
almost a twelfth, but more straightforward in computation. This approach
is also adopted by the Sierra computer game: since in the Move Troops
action, the rulebook says spending 1 GB allows you to move 10
unit-provinces (in your own domain), if you move 23 unit-provinces the
computer charges you 2.3 GB, not 3.

There is really no practical difference between these ideas – the only
question is an aesthetic one: whether you want regents` treasuries to be
usually hundreds and sometimes thousands, and usually spend money in
multiples of 10 or 12 (or 240!); or stay at apparently smaller numbers but
sometimes spend less than 1 GB in a way that maintains a constant, small
number of significant digits. In scientific notation, the two would look
identical, except for the exponent.

Ryan Caveney

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22

Why change this at all. It is not like it is harder to calculat frations like 1/3 than points like 0.333. In fact it is mutch easyer becouse the howl sistem is made up of the frations.
I like this way around things. It keeps the calculations simple for me, I don´t have to use a computer liek I would if I hade to do if I was working with alot of 0.25 +0.33 and so on.
In the case of the move army example that was used here abouw, to move one unit one province, you have to pay what 1/6? or some thing, then you just find out how many units you move how many provinces and ue that number alot simpler than calculating back and forth all night.
I was wery happy when I saw this modifacation, and I and me group use it with eas now, I will admit that we had some small dificultys at first becouse we were so out of proctice working with numbers like this but now after just 2 setions or some thing, things are happening mutch faster.

ANd if we would multyply every thing with 12 like posted, will not that bad an idea I think that we would get illutioned be the amout of gold we have and it would couse a big problem in it self. Jsut like when you have a realy big inflation maney tends to lose some of its value. So I think we sould lose some of the exitement doing that.