Toori Aoi Wrote:

Dark Link Wrote:I will also add this. While it costs OM to move your HQ from one verse to another, there is technically nothing preventing you from relocating your base within the same verse if you desire. So if you wanted to, you could roleplay starting off as a small business in the lower Tiers, only to gradually move up as your business grows until you have a needlessly shiny Tier 1 skyscraper of your very own.

Hmm... really? Interesting.
So going by that logic; would it be possible to have a mobile base (though obviously it would still have to be too large to fit through a portal, so would need to be relocated to another verse via the usual method)? And if so, what limitations would there be on that kind of thing? Would it be restricted to something lame like a camper van, or could you have an epic, gigantic airship for a base?

Proto Man Wrote:http://omniverse-rpg.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1265&p=38375&hilit=gold+coins#p38375
^ From four pages ago.

That may work for gold coins (though even then, I'm not too sure), since gold is fairly valuable regardless of whether it's shaped like a disk or not; but modern-day or sci-fi currencies generally contain little-to-no precious metals (and that's before you even consider paper & plastic payments); those could be produced so effortlessly that actually trying to spend them would be much like trying to use Hyper-Inflated Currency. It just wouldn't work. At all.
One little ball of Raw Omnillium the size of a pebble might be just as valuable as a whole armful of paper notes, for example.

Modern currency is valuable solely because it is limited. That's why governments and bankers go to so much effort to prevent their notes from being easily forge-able. In the Omniverse, however, doing something like that is completely and utterly impossible, and as Nealaphh pointed out in his Monotruth (which, to the best of my knowledge is accurate... in this respect, at least); an object's value in Omnillium is determined solely by the value of its components as raw elements (i.e. the same amount of gold will always be valued the same, regardless of whose face is printed upon it); meaning that people can't just make their currencies more valuable by arbitrarily assigning values to them. Making a $100 note would be little (if at all) more demanding than making a $1 dollar note, for instance.

Plus, since Secondaries can't extract things themselves, not only would they have to pay a Prime to summon objects for them, but they'd also need to pay them to extract the OM in the first place... in somewhere like Minas Tirith, where they presumably have a lot of merchants/markets all over the place, selling all manner of goods, it might be easy enough to get away with spending gold, but in any place where resources are scarce, I honestly can't imagine that using anything other than OM would really be viable, since Primes would just be able to take advantage of the economy far too easily.

You're an admin, of course, so you're free to overrule Dark Link if you want... but if you actually think about it, what he said make a lot of sense, so I for one hope that you won't.

Sorry if my argument comes across as rude or anything, Proto, I really don't mean it that way. I just happen to take economics a little too seriously. :roll:

Thaal Sinestro Wrote:The fact is that ANY form of currency is only worth the Omnilium you put into it, so all that precious/not precious stuff doesn't matter. The only currency in the world is omnilium, and the different verses accept different forms of easily carried omnilium. There are no rules as to how much omnilium takes up how much space, so a currency with a 100 on it could very well be worth more than a currency with 10 on it.

Primes will eventually be the ones to convert the currency back into OM, but having a standardized or at least SEMI standardized system for currency would allow merchants to base their currency off of SOMETHING. Like, what the fuck did peasants do with gold? They gave it to people who did stuff with it in exchange for other goods. That's how money works.

Additionally, because OM only TRULY exists within the control of Primes, it has to be formed into SOMETHING in order to be GIVEN to a Secondary. If you make the physical form of OM a shimmering sphere of whateverthefuck, COOL, but that's not an inherently more "pure" form of OM, and it seems a hell of a lot harder to carry and count.

Also, a lot of motherfuckers are stupid. A shiny gold coin is probably a lot more alluring to a medieval peasant than some weird glowing glob of who the hell knows what.

Toori Aoi Wrote:@Thaal; I had a huge comment typed out to reply to you, attempting to refute what you'd said... but then I remembered the Shrink power.

It doesn't weaken people, so they must still have the same "value", despite being tiny. Logically, then, this principle ought to be able to apply to inanimate objects as well. In other words - you're right, and I was completely mistaken, in that regard.
Since OM can be compressed, it would be possible to differentiate between notes and coins. That's an awesome point, so thanks for making it.

Do you really think that everyone would accept everyone else's currency here, though? Because if not then OM still trumps everything, regardless of whether or not people like the look of Omni's Balls. Just think; if you strolled into Camelot and tried to spend Imperial Credits, would that go down well with the locals? Even if it wasn't illegal to use the currency of a nation at war with theirs (and it might well be), it'd be certainly enough to get you looked at with suspicion.

That may not pose much of a problem to Primes, who can just spend a few minutes extracting and reformatting their currency... but Secondaries would be left at the mercy of money changers and unscrupulous Primes, who could charge whatever rates they wanted for money-changing services, knowing full well that the secondary might not even be able to buy food without their help.
It just doesn't seem convenient.

Of course, taking into account the point you raised about imbuing, things just become even worse. In fact, it's shocking that the Secondaries have any sort of functioning economy at all. Think about it; Primes may have ways of sensing the amount of OM, roughly, at least, within something (I don't know if they can actually do this, but it wouldn't surprise me if they could... even if it had to be purchased as a move, it's probably theoretically possible, at least), but Secondaries sure as hell don't - Primes could just hand them a coin and claim that it was worth ten times what it actually was!
The rich might have had Primes develop devices for them capable of testing things like that, but the average commoner most certainly wouldn't.

Honestly, in a scenario like this, anything other than just trading goods directly doesn't really seem viable to me. I no longer have any idea how anything in this reality could function as a currency. The only way to get things done would seem to be to bring your goods directly to a trustworthy Prime and have them transformed into whatever you needed... or whatever someone else wanted in exchange for doing some work for you - basically, a magically-enhanced barter system.

What do you think? Can you see any way out of this, or is it just a fact that Primes are free to scam Secondaries every time they make any sort of transaction at all?

Actual Omniverse God Wrote:It has been theorised that omnilium represents value itself. It can take many forms. When held by a Prime, it absorbs into their being and becomes a kind of essence that cannot be given or stolen, only used. It can take many physical forms, but the default is a kind of malleable sphere that can be split or combined at will, instantly reconfiguring itself to the same shape, size and weight but changing in 'density' depending on how much actual omnilium the orb represents. While anyone can split and recombine omnilium, secondaries cannot hold it within themselves as Primes can.

Thaal Sinestro Wrote:I think the vast number of the points you bring up are actually sort of reinforcing the concept of a standardized currency. The Empire sure as hell doesn't want people trading with Camelot and visa versa, so having forms of currency which are NOT accepted is actually advantageous to the powers that be in this situation.

Thaal Sinestro Wrote:Also, having a MORE trusted system of standardized currency for the Secondaries would give them a BETTER idea that they are getting what they are asking for, as opposed to not. Sure, barter is probably preferred in a lot of cases, but the reason we moved from barter to currency in almost every culture ever is that it's a pain in the ass to haul a bunch of chickens and bread around when you want to get a pint at the pub. It's not convenient and it's not quick. It's also much more difficult to determine value. Is it worth two chickens? Is it worth... a fucking landspeeder or whatever?

Thaal Sinestro Wrote:So, I mean yeah, Primes could probably make some pretty convincing counterfeits (that is if Secondaries can't determine the OM value of items by handling them, or that there isn't some unmistakable way to verify how much it is), but the alternatives are just untenable.

Thaal Sinestro Wrote:Also, let's remember the actual Rules post about Omnilium:

Actual Omniverse God Wrote:It has been theorised that omnilium represents value itself. It can take many forms. When held by a Prime, it absorbs into their being and becomes a kind of essence that cannot be given or stolen, only used. It can take many physical forms, but the default is a kind of malleable sphere that can be split or combined at will, instantly reconfiguring itself to the same shape, size and weight but changing in 'density' depending on how much actual omnilium the orb represents. While anyone can split and recombine omnilium, secondaries cannot hold it within themselves as Primes can.

The only "true" form of OM is within the body of a Prime. Anything else is just a Prime's summoned representation of OM. Even a shiny sphere of whatever the shit isn't even the "true" form of OM, because OM is just a representation of "value." If a Secondary can't inherently determine the OM value of an object, then trading with shiny stuff wouldn't really work either, because something being the same size, shape, weight, etc but being of a variable visual density is a really hard thing to count beans with.

Thaal Sinestro Wrote:Even the most standard of visual representations are meaningless to people who can't absorb the shit, so having a standardized currency that is usually of the same value would be very useful for people, even if it could be counterfeited.

Deadpool Wrote:Whatever type of currency is used throughout the Omniverse is still, in essence, used OM. Even the precious metals of the Omniverse are made of used OM.

Deadpool Wrote:With that being said, currency should be up to the perspective of whoever is writing. Maybe there can be some sort of measurement (density, weight, etc), but I find it really hard to explain anything beyond that. Not unless the Empire and Kingdom stamp their faux-coins.

Deadpool Wrote:I know my opinion probably doesn't mean much here, but here's my perspective on the whole issue:

Whatever type of currency is used throughout the Omniverse is still, in essence, used OM. Even the precious metals of the Omniverse are made of used OM.

Quote:Secondaries are functionally independent of those who summoned them, but their existence benefits Primes because they harvest Omnilium, boosting the local 'economy'. This Omnilium ultimately finds its way to Primes when they are employed by (usually wealthy) secondaries.

Retane Wrote:http://omniverse-rpg.com/abouttheworld.php#About_The_World

Quote:Secondaries are functionally independent of those who summoned them, but their existence benefits Primes because they harvest Omnilium, boosting the local 'economy'. This Omnilium ultimately finds its way to Primes when they are employed by (usually wealthy) secondaries.

Our economy is our currency, yes or No? THink this should clear up drama

Magus Wrote:However the info you cited is what should have been referenced at the start of this whole conversation; the fact that secondaries can harvest Omnilium makes the ability to have a currency more realistic. I'd imagine if you're capable of harvesting Omnilium, you must therefore also be able to measure it - this implies that Magus churning out $10,000,000 Omnibucks that only turn out to be worth 1OM is therefore not possible (or at least, you'd have to find a really, really dumb secondary)

Toori Aoi Wrote:

Magus Wrote:However the info you cited is what should have been referenced at the start of this whole conversation; the fact that secondaries can harvest Omnilium makes the ability to have a currency more realistic. I'd imagine if you're capable of harvesting Omnilium, you must therefore also be able to measure it - this implies that Magus churning out $10,000,000 Omnibucks that only turn out to be worth 1OM is therefore not possible (or at least, you'd have to find a really, really dumb secondary)

Oooohhh... I was just taking "harvest Omnillium" to mean that they gathered wood and stuff; I assumed that because they couldn't summon things, that meant that they also wouldn't be able to extract things like Primes can. :roll:

That said, having the ability to extract something doesn't necessarily give people the ability to sense how much there is of it in an object, without actually having to extract it to check. It'd certainly make sense if it does turn out to work that way, but so far as I know, it's never been mentioned in the rules or anywhere else... hell, I don't even know if Primes can sense the amount of OM in something without actually extracting the OM from it.

Guilmon Wrote:Personally, if I were a Secondary, I'd probably keep a few of each type of coin (or some other counterweight) on me to measure their weights. If a customer pays in OM of any sort, just apply the price to one side of a balance and have them equalize it on the other. Now, this was a common practice back when they they measured coin value by its weight or whatever. I've seen in movies, at least. It's also common to see merchants fudge the values of their counterweights before, but those are the more unscrupulous ones.

Thaal Sinestro Wrote:Also, let's remember the actual Rules post about Omnilium:

Actual Omniverse God Wrote:It has been theorised that omnilium represents value itself. It can take many forms. When held by a Prime, it absorbs into their being and becomes a kind of essence that cannot be given or stolen, only used. It can take many physical forms, but the default is a kind of malleable sphere that can be split or combined at will, instantly reconfiguring itself to the same shape, size and weight but changing in 'density' depending on how much actual omnilium the orb represents. While anyone can split and recombine omnilium, secondaries cannot hold it within themselves as Primes can.