We have to remember though that this is a game, and though I would welcome some more economy changes, I do dred the day where you need to take a course in college to understand how the economy of Lusternia works.

Hey, I'd absolutely -love- that.... Makes it more realistic.

There's one inherent flaw in that arguement.

People play games to -escape- reality. If I wanted to deal with the crap of a realistic economy...well...I'd be out doing something, instead of sitting on my ass in front of a computer.

I would....though I am too young...

I like that currency idea. One day Magnagora gets tired of killing Celest, so they instead just take all their money, convert it to Celest dollars, and crash the currency. Hooray!

Yeah, thats what we really need. If we had inflation, banks would have to start giving interest to make up for it, instead of taking it.

The reason we don't harvest our trees is this.

We say cities worry solely about their own needs - they would level a forest or wipe out an entire breed of animal, if they wanted a certain type of wood or fur. We hunt and mulch for what WE need, not what CITIES need.

If we were to level the entire northern, southern (or both) Wilde solely to get us more wood cheaper, we'd be no better than a city - at least in most Druid's eyes.

This is, of course, excluding those who believe we should be the protectorates of all life.

I wouldn't mind a realistic system, but I've always loved the "easy control, complex insides" mentality. Let the whole commodity/currency/economic system go hypercomplex so long as the average person doesn't have to do more than think "Village gets stronger + City gets village = I get more comms". Keep the whole matter of shortages, and transportation/storage costs and what not hidden and only important for the coders, the folks who want to know EVERY detail, and the poor sob hired for the Ministry of Commerse.

What Cwin said.

A more realistic economy would be like a more sophisticated operating system for your computer. If it's done right, it'll do more for you, rather than force you to figure out more things in order to interact with your computer.

Windows XP is waaaaaaay more complex the DOS, but which one would your average user rather interface with?

Say what?

If you cut down a tree, does it turn the forest environment into something else? I haven't tested it, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say "not on your life".

We're talking about one tree. One in each room that represents an area miles and miles across, when you work out the scale of what everything should be. For role-play purposes, there are thousands of trees in every room of the the Serenwilde, yet for the sake of that same role-play you refuse to fell even one of those thousands?

Do the druids go around eating rocks or something, and wearing robes only woven out of purest gold thread? Even if they did, the mine that gold was taken out of was shored up with *gasp* timbers!

Predation is part of nature. It's a huge part. And unless I'm sadly mistaken, the current rules don't make overharvesting of trees remotely possible.

If you're really worried about it, why not set up a "crop rotation" system, where certain rooms are harvested and replanted at certain times?

We will pick cotton if we need cotton. We will kill animals and pick fruit if we need to eat. We won't hundreds of trees in the Wilde just so you all can make books a bit cheaper.

I'm a bookbinder, I afford making books, I live with it. You all can, too.

Poor forest, tries to give its people wood, but they don't even want it! Ungrateful bunch!

I wish our territory would produce free commodities.

We'll collect it when they die naturally. 10 wood per room.

Kalodan, you're kidding, right? They produce wood from deadfall, and as much as when harvested?

Well, no wonder people reacted the way they did. Now I wish I'd stayed one week longer than I did. And that I'd stuck with my original ideas.

Trees produce 1/2 their normal wood if they die naturally rather than harvested.

Really? Interesting.

What I originally wanted to see, but didn't dare ask for, for fear I'd lose it all if I asked for too much, was this: Each tree would have three stages (sapling, mature, and aged). The amount of wood produced by a mature tree would be proportionate to its weight (and therefore age), but when it got to a certain weight/age, it'd become aged. The description would make clear that it was straining under its own weight, drawing life from other trees, and unhealthy, and as it gained in weight/age from there, it would produce less and less wood, until it finally died, yielding nothing but a loud noise. Also, towards the end of the "aged" stage, it would slightly reduce the amount of power produced by totems in the same room, to show it making the forest around it less healthy.

Net result: the forest doesn't need us, it's a self-correcting system. But just as people can make it worse and harm it, so too can they make it better and help it, and in turn be helped by that. Something for druids to do, but not makework they have to do or everything falls apart. A reason for them to look at the trees. A good druid might eventually figure out the patterns by which the trees grow (it wasn't linear, it depended on time and circumstance). And solving the wood shortage and the realitycheck disparity along the way, that was just gravy.

Now I wish I'd stuck to my guns and proposed the whole shebang just for my own sake.