Layonara - A most sober world

[Nibor21]

For those who have PnP role-played and journeyed far and wide, there is inevitably one constant of every area of civilisation. It is the tavern/pub/inn/bar/boozer/gin joint etc.

A great deal of action seems to take place in these locations as well as some of the most important social and comical elements of the playing. There are always a wide variety of drinks on offer with varying costs and potencies. However the average pint is always cheap often cheaper than the cost of a meal.

In Layonara however the cost of alcoholic beverages is incredibly high especially when viewed in terms of the the Special of the day. From an RP perspective and an economic perspective this seems wrong.

It is more expensive to get drunk in Layonara than it is the scandinavian countries! (and that's saying something)

Shouldn't there be a 6gp Ale available in the taverns that has no special properties and is just RPing drinking, while still spending money?

[Harloff]

Nibor21 - 5/1/2006  12:43 PM

It is more expensive to get drunk in Layonara than it is the scandinavian countries! (and that's saying something)

*grins* It actually ain't that expensive to get drunk in Denmark, and last time i checked it was still a scandinavian country. For 100 kr (approx 10 £ or 17 $) you can get 2 crates of beer at standard discount, which is equal to 20 liters of beer (4.6 % vol. acl.) And I guess most people could get rather drunk drinking that quantity. But it is true that we can get 3 crates drinving across the border to Germany for 100 kr, but still...

I think you are refering to Norway and sweden *shakes his head* evethough they are our brother contries they took a wrong turn somewhere...

[Pen N Popper]

There is a certain tavern where the ale special is only 12gp and bartender/brewer is not adept at counting much beyond that.

Another option is to gather ingredients for said beverages and sell them to this same brewer.  Perhaps in exchange for ales instead of gold.

Seriously though, I too was shocked the first time to the Lleilon Arms' open Friday night and the cheapest ale was like 50gp.  I think you will discover that this does not seem such a burden as you gain levels.  

Best of luck in developing your PC's vices! :-)

[Blackguy]

Gotak always drinks one certain kind of beer, Dwarfs Head, and whiskey if he cant get it. But that ale ost around 100g or so a piece at the Arms, and its all about favorites. In layo I got the money to ber picky. IRL I cant, so I think its okay to have ales been more expensive and pretend the quality is higher on them aswell!

[Talan Va'lash]

the prices of ales are as they are to give something to the CNR craft of brewing.  It takes a lot of ingredients and quite a bit of work to make a batch.  Really, to balance the worth of product output to time input of brewing to anywhere near the other crafts, the prices would need to triple or more from what they currently are.  Obviously, that would be ludicrous IC, so the current prices are a compromise.  Its not tons of work for something thats utterly cheap at merchants, but its still pretty much completely an RP craft as one would have difficulty making money brewing (you could make money faster fighting redlight gobbos I'd wager counting up all the time gathering stuff for brewing and brewing it.)

Ideally, we would have silver pieces too, and we could scale the economy down by a factor of 10 (10 gold now, would equal 10 silver which equals 1 gp, so an ale would be like 3gp 4 silver) and then the amounts would -look- more realistic.

However, if we ever wanted ale to be as cheap as it should be (speaking from an IC/historical standpoint) brewing would cease to really be a relevant craft for PCs.. which kinda makes sense, since it wouldn't make as much $$$ as the stuff adventurers do, but makes enough for a commoner to make a pretty durned good living.  however, we want it to be a fun option for PCs to pursue, and even if there is no "real" gain from spending all that time to craft rare ales, it still devalues the experience of doing it if you can buy them cheaply from merchants.  

so yeah, its a CNR/Economy/fun-factor balancing act.
 

[Stranzini]

I think it's possible to price beer at 6 gp and still let the crafters have fun.  If brewing produced similar quantities to brewing in RL, that would address the problem...I don't think you brew four bottles of beer at a time in RL, you brew a keg which will give a whole bunch of bottles. You still only need a little bit of hops and yeast, but perhaps a little more barley.   If you brewed four bottles at a time in RL, we'd think the prices in Sweden and Norway were cheap.  Solution?  Have the brewing recipe produce a keg, which can then be tapped over time into bottles like the current pie slicing mechanism, giving oh 10 or 20 bottles for a keg. Brewing the keg will cost the crafter the same in time and effort as the current couple of bottles, he sells it for the same total amount of gold but now that makes a bunch of beer bottles priced at 5 or 6 gp instead of a couple of bottles priced at 50 or 100.  I think there is a good reason that the young characters hardly ever hang out in the Wild Surge for example...sure the rich higher level characters can afford to pay Derrick's prices to drink on Friday night, but 50 or 100 gold is a lot to the young characters. It's not normal that the Wild Surge is not used much at all for RP, and I think it might just come down to this.   A beer costs more than medium healing potions, and (level < 10) characters never have enough of those. At 5 gold, everybody could afford to drink beer.  Actually it's a classic price elasticity question.

[Nibor21]

That is an excellant suggestion, makes up the balance for crafters and yet still permits players to have enjoyable drinking. It is something i would really like to see implemented in Layonara.

PS I have written a merge of the CNR & HCR & WYSIWYG alcohol systems if anyone is interested. WYSIWYG's alcohol system makes drinking much more fun.....

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

To keep people from just getting really, really cheap Brewing Bottles, perhaps these el-cheapo ales shouldn't yield them.

[Pen N Popper]

Disagree. Food CNR is not a wealth generating craft, that's for sure. Lowering the price and raising the "uses" per batch, though, just means the food crafters would have to work that much harder to sell a batch. As I said, this is a non-issue with some exploration. You can buy an ale for 12gp should you choose to do so. If you're picky about your beverages, try to work something out with the bartender.
  While I agree whole heartedly about the lack of RP in the Wild Surge, I cannot place the blame on the prices. :-)
  Hope to see you thirsty adventurers soon!

[Stranzini]

We could muse about some more things alcoholic...

Its awfully common for governments to levy a tax on brewers - something about a product that everyone in the kingdom buys all the time that makes tax collectors mouths water. Perhaps the queen takes a tax on crafting of beer, wine, etc? This would be one logical occasion to actually take a small amount of gold on the crafting table.

Of course, this would then vary with jurisdiction - on Dregar or Rilara it won't be the queen and it could be at a different rate.

Hmmm...but maybe that's the reason bottles are so expensive, because the tax is built into the bottle as that is the easiest way for the queen's men to control things.

And maybe the cheap stuff is cheap because it does not pay this tax, making it bootleg - nobody is there in the kitchen of the Wild Surge to stop people from making bootleg or "for personal consumption" (or is that why Erag is always wandering in there?).

Perhaps it is not inspected and certified as to its purity either...homebrew really can make you sick or worse, a very big problem in bygone days and perhaps a problem on Layo due to cutrate beginner brewers...so there could be a slight chance of getting sick if you drink the cheap stuff, and none if you drink the better brands. Probably nothing too bad, about the same sick as what happens when you are poisoned by the bite of the beetles in Sielwood, say, or when you eat raw meat or fish. And not often, maybe only on a natural 20 and with a fortitude save...but enough to add a reason to go with higher grade stuff when you can afford it...

And to Steven's point...if the bartender takes the bottle back from you when you're done and reuses it, he can afford to sell the beer to you for less. So for 6 gp, maybe you don't get to keep the bottle. Which is implemented by what Steven says - they don't leave a bottle when you're done. Or they simply use a different, cheaper bottle that can't be used to make the better stuff. (I.E. - bottle without the tax stamp.)

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Or just RP it that you're buying a mug of ale, and you don't get to keep the mugs - the "House Ale" purchased from the taverns would look like a frosty mug of ale, and you wouldn't get a bottle out of it when you drank.