About money and belongings

New players often type inventory after picking up coins and find their money missing. It isn't missing: the game keeps money and belongings in two different places, and inventory shows only one of them. This page explains why, and what follows from it.

Two kinds of wealth

Everything you own is either an object or money.

Objects are things: a sword, a key, a scroll, a suit of armor. Each one has a weight, may wear out with use, and can be dropped, traded, sold, stolen, or left behind. You carry them in a list, and inventory reads that list out.

Money is a single number, your shillings. It has no weight and no place in the list. Gold coins exist as objects only while they lie on the ground or in a chest; the moment you pick them up they melt into your purse:

> get gold from chest
Ok.
You now have 250 shillings in cash.

After that there is no "coins" object to find, which is why inventory doesn't show it.

Why the game works this way

Scepter of Goth was written in the 1980s, and Tsogira keeps its rules. The original stored a character as a record with a number for money and a linked list of objects, and its inventory command walked that list. The command that showed money was experience, probably because money and experience are what you spend together when you train: the line that tells you how far you are from the next level is followed by the one that tells you whether you can afford it.

That pairing still makes sense in play. You earn experience and money from the same fights, and you spend them together at the training hall.

A modern game would probably show your cash at the foot of your inventory, and Tsogira could. It doesn't, so that the game plays as the original did, but it is one of the original's habits most likely to surprise a newcomer.

Where to look

To see	Type	Shows
Your objects	`inventory`	The objects you carry, in one line.
Your money	`experience`	The experience you need for the next level, and your shillings.
Everything	`information`	Your whole character sheet: health, attributes, skills, experience, money, the weight you carry, and each object, with a `*` beside the ones in use.

information is the one to reach for when something seems wrong, since it shows money and objects together.

How money moves

Because money isn't an object, it can't be dropped or handed over like one. It changes only in a few ways, and almost all of them tell you so:

Earning: picking up coins, selling to the pawnshop, the money a trade brings you, and the small purse the temple gives you if you come back from death.
Spending: buying at shops and the bar, training, paying for a trade, and the dues of a thieves' or assassins' guild, taken the first time you play on a new day.
Losing: gremlins, if you are It ("Gremlins pick your pocket!"), and theft by another player.

Theft is the exception that can be silent. Another player in the same room, if it isn't a safe room like the village square or the temple, can try to steal from you. If you notice, you are told who did it; if you don't, your shillings simply drop. So a fall in your money with no message means one of two things: a thief shared a room with you, or something is wrong with the game. If nobody was near, tell an admin.

What happens to money at death

When you die, your money doesn't stay in your purse. It is left where you fell as a bag of gold, beside your body and your belongings. The bag is an object, not coins: picking it up doesn't add to anyone's purse. It is worth what you had, and the pawnshop will pay that for it. If you come back to life, you start again with only the temple's small purse, so the bag is worth going back for, before someone else finds it.

The limits on objects

Objects have limits that money doesn't:

Weight. You can carry ten pounds for each point of strength. Picking up more says "It's too much for you to carry!". Money weighs nothing, however much you have.
What is saved. Only the first ten objects you carry are saved when you leave the game. information warns you when you carry more. Money is always saved in full.

So a rich character travels light: turning loot into shillings at the pawnshop keeps it safe from both limits, though not from thieves.