[Meta thread] Iron's PokeRole Adventure: The Skull Ruins

[Lord Windos]

Spoiler

...and that's the million dollar reason why I'm tired of this 'who owes who' system we have in place.

(...)

And even as a group of people who have been traveling together for a couple months (or have happened to get along really well for one reason or another), we often times still don't seem to act like it.  It's just...*sigh*...

(...)

If the item in question were something that you might have a use for beyond selling it, I'd honestly think trading for it would be more appropriate/justified.

Well, it seems like a bit of drama cropped up while I was enjoying my Saturday with my dad. Not a particularly bad strain of it, but still notable.


Eh.....personally, I'm content with the current system of favors we have in place, as it does allow for more leeway with Encounters or Events with each other without either going for an XP War, bowing out of something to avoid trouble, or just avoiding lengthy discussion as to who gets what. That, and favors are always nice to have around, either as an easy form of 'currency' we can freely spend between ourselves or just stockpiling what we get as a 'rainy day' fund of sorts. Sure, favors and arrangements can cause problems (As typified by The Sword Bid War), but they can also enable spirited and nice discussions between ourselves that ultimately lead to greater player interaction and immersion/enjoyment of the experience. Heck, the outcome of favors OOC can and often are turned into great story moments, such Ven's Lilith Deals he made with Nathan, or Spirit helping me out with Sari, or or Terra feeling more willing to help out everyone after flaking on them during the Kadabra Fights, etc..

I'm not opposed to the idea of us just starting to give each other stuff freely, though, or creating an 'Open Inventory' for all our characters to pool our stuff in to share among ourselves. I just don't think such idea are going to be so easy to execute in practice on a general basis, and even if it is for the former the act of giving and receiving a gift sorta creates a unofficial favor dynamic between gifter and giftee regardless of the intent behind said gift giving (As both parties want to reward/give back to the other for the gift) .

The problem with only doing trades for Items a person might find useful is that in most cases said person wouldn't want to trade it in the first place unless they got an overwhelmingly good deal for their desired Item, and Items they don[t get use out of they would want to in some way profit off them, so they wouldn't want to freely give it away unless they felt either generous or indebted. Of course, exceptions do exist to this (Mega Stones and Fossil would probably be more suited to being freely given away to those than need/want them most, for example), and it's not like we can't make the conscientious decision to start freely donating Items around (no matter how hard doing so may be). 

Addressing our character's group dynamic.....that's a topic I feel that I'm under equipped to handle now. Maybe after I think more about it I can offer some valuable insight and critciism on the matter.