It's something I've wondered about sometimes when I played IRE games. In reality, credits are only objects in our minds, they have no physical form or substance. But what about here, in Lusternia (or any other IRE game for that matter)? How do we justify their existence, and in using them in our daily conversations, and even over public aethers. Perhaps they're the same as in real life, but I've always thought of them as an OOCish material. Or maybe they're one of those things that can't be helped and we'll just have to live with it. I know it's too late to do anything drastic about them at this point, but regardless, if someone asked IC, 'What are credits?', what would be a sensible answer?

Money without a physical form.

I've always thought of them as some form of the "credits" from the "Batman Beyond" series.

Credits are the Man's way of getting inside your mind.

Oh, and IC? They make no bloody sense, really, and talk about them should be corralled and confined to as few venues as possible.

This is an old, but perhaps interesting thread - Are credits IC?

Aah I remember that thread now. It seems a lot of people have different views on what credits are. I'm just going to sit on the fence for now.

And some will probably recognize this, the game Ilyrias by Persistent Realms (who had bought the Rapture license) used a credit system similar to ours too I believe, but called their credits 'angelstones', and were something you could also obtain from mining in game. Don't remember what the justification for buying them OOC was, but the idea that the credits took on an actual form was interesting. Perhaps we could... or not...

I always saw them as "stock certificates", etc. You can't steal them because they are investments from gnomish bankers and they control all of it through the mystical aetherweave. We can come up with our own individual ideas. Maybe this would make a great book subject.



A neat concept, but there are other ways to do IC justification of them. (And technically it didn't use a credit system, it was a proposed version so that's the wrong tense. The game never even approached alpha stage before being shut down, so it should be properly written as "proposed" rather than "used").

For that matter, are lessons really IC either? I've always hated having to tell novices "Learn 45 Planar" or similar, since it doesn't make much sense that they should have to put a number on their learning capacity.

ICly, I like to think of it like this: People with no credits and therefore few lessons are clearly more dim than those who have a greater capacity to learn.

Paradoxically, OOCly, People with more credits and therefore more lessons are clearly more dim than people without, because they've spent their own hard earned cash on a small bunch of nebulous pixels with little or no real value.

So Aiakon will acknowledge Raizan, for example, as his intellectual superior?

ew

I'm glad that you see the flaw in your approach now! I am sure that there is a better way of looking at it.

ICly, I think credits are like stocks or bonds. You can sell them for gold but, when you turn them into lessons, I always kind of imagine that instead of gold you've traded in your stocks for 'lesson vouchers' which you pay the tutors with. So, in my mind when Noola's learning 15 lessons of whatever, she's paying 15 lesson vouchers for what she's learning. The more 'lesson vouchers' you spend, the more the teacher will teach you.

Oh, and when you say "Learn 15 lessons in Planar" or whatever, it's cause it's become popular slang to refer to 'spending lesson vouchers on learning' as 'learning lessons.'

Also, when you buy credits OOCly, I always imagine that it's like a gift from a mysterious relative you haven't remembered yet. You know, you've got some rich great-uncle, and you haven't regained that memory from when you passed through the Portal of Fate, but he's remembered you so now and then, to help take care of you, he sends you some stocks or bonds.

And when you gain lessons and bound credits from leveling, I've always kind of equated that with like an allowance or reward from the same great-uncle. You know, like you do your chores, you get some money? Well in this case it's you do the work of getting stronger, you get an allowance from your rich great-uncle.

Of course, this is all just how I see it.

It wasn't a very seriously intended post. I mean.. heh.. like I'd ICly admit to Revan that he's more intelligent than me? I think not..

I can't remember it right now, but I am pretty sure that Credits and Lessons have IC explanations, however nobody really liked them and try to forget that they exist.

I know that lessons were expressions of your divine shard evolving or something like that.

I've always thought about them as store credits (some stores will give you store credit on a refund only usable there rather than refunding your money). They aren't real money because you can only spend them on things in the store (ie: artifacts, lessons, in game gold, etc). Not tangible, but definitely usable.

I actually liked Bauto's explanation when he bought a ton of credits, that the divine had bestowed a gift upon him. I mean, that's really the only IC explanation I could think of. Or, like Noola said, some relative transferred them to you.

The bonds/stocks explanation sounds pretty plausible, I had never thought of it that way to be honest. Oh, and it always amuses me how I can demonstrate to a novice the trans skill (or any higher-level skill for that matter) while training them, but I can't use the skill myself *pokes reality*