frzntundra4 wrote:
If making 3 less gold than some (few) other players is such a horrible thing, then I propose that you play this campaign for the wrong reason(s).
If someone is enjoying themselves in the campaign and are not detracting from the enjoyment of others I am not going to throw stones.
I agree with the underlying assumption of Wilcox that we want the campaign to be fair to all players in reality and also in perception. So I'm not totally going to dismiss his concern. At the same time, as has been pointed out from other people there competing (IMO dominant) interests in this calculation (clarity and simplicity of implementation being paramount). And at the end of the day perfect fairness, if such a thing exists, still might not be good for the campaign.
This is not the first time the campaign has grappled with potential differences between new players and old players. The last row I remember that got heated was the issue of time units. In the old campaign characters were given 365 TUs per year and each adventure generally cost 10 TUs (the time of an Arcanis week). Crafting and making money could also eat up TUs. For people who were with the campaign from the beginning TUs were rarely an issue. But as newer players cam in and worked through older modules they discovered that you could eat up all a characters TUs and never get to the new mods. Newer players asked for some latitude and older players were somewhat offended by the request for "special treatment."
I remember arguing on the side that since we had all been using TUs the new players should deal with it. It was a "high-faluting" problem that there were "too many" modules for them to play. Long term players had gone through plenty of droughts of modules along the way. Was it fair to us that "newbies" could glut themselves in ways we could not? There was also the fear that easing time units would result in an even bigger "bloom" of player created magic items which was something of a concern at the time. We kept TUs. It was certainly the "fair" thing in that the system was equally applied to all.
But now a few years later I'm not sure it was the best call we could have made. Because players in different circumstances may be best served by different things. And its not necessarily about being equal but IMO is about being fulfilled. I don't know if the TUs should have been lidted but perhaps we could have done something a little differently to encourage newer players like exempting year 1 & 2 modules from TU costs.
So back to the case at hand, I think the real question is: even if not perfectly equal does the new rule about earning an income create any barriers to new players coming in and enjoying the campaign? And I think the answer has to be no. But if you have a serious argument about why this position is wrong in practical application then I am willing to read it.