Here on SOL there are many tales of an alternate reality where a financial system is described.
I'm thinking responsibility for your personal financial security. Invest in trade caravans, voyages and such.
What tale comes to your mind?
Here is 3 tales in a universe that fits…
https://storiesonline.net/universe/620/knights-and-commoners
What's yours?
Are you asking about stories of descriptions of banking systems or taking responsibility for personal financial security.
I ask because I have read the three stories and don't recall any banking systems being described in the stories. I also searched on 'bank' in one story and the word was not found.
As far as personal financial security goes, there are just too many stories where that is a topic and I can't recall all of those stories. If I had to pick something, I'd pick the heroes' use of the DID Universe's banking system on Chaos for its use of boxes to "deposit" and later "withdraw" personal property (e.g. money, weapons, equipment, etc.) from any bank on Chaos. That is unique in my opinion.
If you go back to the OP, you will find that this thread, which is what I was addressing, is about banking systems used in stories and descriptions of the means use by the characters to ensure their financial security.
I do not read GameLit and LitRPG stories. Do any of the stories address banking systems and descriptions used for personal financial security? If not, they are not relevant to this thread.
I do not read GameLit and LitRPG stories. Do any of the stories address banking systems and descriptions used for personal financial security? If not, they are not relevant to this thread.
Demigod of War is one of several GameLit and/or LitRPG stories that include Banking, and/or Financial Systems, and investments for financial security.
If you think about it many games require the accumulation of coins, treasure, or other items of value to pay for weapons, armor, equipment, magic, and other enhancements. Sometimes training, food, and other needs must be paid for too. Not to mention exotic ingredients for potions, spells, etc.
Often characters accumulate more loot/wealth, etc. than they can carry. Often the character(s) are able to increase wealth by investing, or speculation.
The Damsels in Distress universe has a banking system that is essential for the characters who transfer from our current word to a variety of other worlds and "way stations" as well as secretive banking and investing on Earth.
Sometimes getting access to such accounts/stashes are major plot points.
If you think about it ...
I can see that. I am already very familiar with the DID Universe.
Do any of the stories address banking systems and descriptions used for personal financial security?
Yes. I was listening to an audiobook LitRPG a few months ago in which the way that the banking system, and especially loans, was a significant element of the story. Also, the various exploits that the protagonist generated had the potential to both work with and destabilise the economy in some unexpected ways.
Discussing financial and trade systems is actually a significant part of many LitRPG books since the whole point of the genre is to break the world down into a set of rules which the protagonist can exploit.
For whatever reason, their own labor efforts, defeating brigands in the forest or a reward for service from the local gentry, the protagonist in the tale has extra money of that time and realm.
The protagonist uses that extra money to help themselves have a more secure future by directly investing some to improve their living or working conditions. They invest some to help others to be successful and they get a steady ROI. Or they know a trusted person that deals with lending money in larger quantities for bigger projects and the protagonist deposits any excess money to so the 'banker' can combine it with other small investors and earn a more robust ROI for both the banker and the various depositors.
Eventually, as the tale progresses, the protagonist owns a small percentage of several small businesses, either formal shops or just a cottage industry.
There are many tales here on SOL that have this sort of scenario as a sub-plot.
What are your favorites?
I have read many of the stories on SOL that have that subplot, but I don't consider them as my favorites. They all seem the same with very little making them stand out.
My favorite stories typically deal with human interaction and social values. Lazlo's Service Society is a good example.
Personal choices are just that.
Other folks might find that sort of sub plot to be a major part of many of their favorite stories.
That's why I ask for suggestions. Share the good ones that we like.
And yes, all of Lazlo's tales are good ones!
My favorite is The Archer, by Tony Spencer
https://storiesonline.net/s/24469/the-archer-by-tonyspencer
And the two sequels.
He squirrels away his archery contest winnings with a banker, not knowing where or how it is invested.
Noy quite on the subject, but... In one story (I think it was Mt Race is Royal by Scotland the Brave) the MC is trying to come up with how banks started.
Yes, that whole series by Scotland The Brave is about civilization building and the trials and tribulations needed for the simplest technologies, a financial system that gets away from direct barter is one of the hurdles.
Thanks for the reminder.
Two that come to mind for me are
FantasyLover's The Goatherd, not banks per se, but includes the handling of wealth at a personal, family, clan, town, even region and kingdom level.
Charlie Foxtrot's A New Past has towards the end, the setting up of a bank to deal with the generated funds (pun not intended)
There's a guy called Mackey Chandler. He's active at the periphery of the Baen authors' group, but AFAIK never published by them. Instead, he does his own thing on the Rainforest site and their Limitless Firewood program. He has two series, which he is in the process of merging together.
In the earlier of the two series, "April", he describes setting up banks and working with the terrestrial banking system (from the POV of people living on a space station). His first system involves a commodity money coinage, which eventually gets extended to a representative money system due to the need for small fractions.
At some point, he adds in characters from the far east, and introduces some of the concepts of eastern banking - Hawala. This gets explored in terms of there being an extant, non-western banking system, and what services and expectations there are.
(The April series is very much a libertarian-struggle story. There are even points where the characters acknowledge some of the holes. So if you are into e.g. Michael Z Williamson, you might like the story. Or, if you can't handle that kind of thing, you know to stay away.)
Interestingly, I read the April series and then I was able to recognize that one of the Incomplete stories here on SOL, involving Genies, was hinting around at Hawala banking. I don't believe it was ever spelled out, but looking back it seems obvious. Here we go: https://storiesonline.net/s/45518/the-djinni-and-the-lamps "The Djinni and the Lamps" by exalphageek.
IIRC, the author announced they were not going to be able to finish the story, because ... reasons. ISTR is was because the story was a favorable story about the middle east, and 9/11 had happened, or something. I pinged them a few years later and got the impression they were no longer in a place where they could continue the story. It's a shame, since the story seemed *really* promising. I wish they had gone ahead and finished the story - maybe it would have been flamed, but it might have shortened the whole sandbox thing by a picosecond or two.
Also, "Nick, High School" by SmokinDriver features a kid that invents automated trading as part of his side hustle: https://storiesonline.net/s/76726/nick-high-school ; and "Climbing the Ladder" (https://storiesonline.net/s/25751/climbing-the-ladder) by Michael Loucks features a kid who starts working at an investment firm. And "A Fresh Start" (https://storiesonline.net/s/68384/a-fresh-start) by rlfj features both a magic lamp and venture capital (but not very much of either one).
Finally, there once was an author called ... gwresearch, I think. They had a story called "K2" which I think was posted to SOL. Gone now, but available from author "Geoff Wolak" on the Rainforest site. The story involves a fellow who "inherits" a controlling interest in a bank. It quickly stops being about banking and starts being a Nazi-gold "men's adventure" thriller with WWII bunkers and stuff. But they do spend at least one day visiting a bank!
On the assumption that this is legitimate and not subtle sarcasm (because it easily could be!), consider the rainforest home of the longest river in the world (located in South America) and its resemblance to a certain website that started off selling books before it started selling everything else (and kept selling books, as well as subscriptions to 'unlimited' numbers of books and devices on which to read books).
SOL's management has gone to great lengths to force us into this walled garden, specifically so they could prohibit recommendations of, and links to, other sites.
But yeah, as GreyWolf suggests, I meant the bald billionaire bookselling site.
specifically so they could prohibit recommendations of, and links to, other sites.
Lazeez has said he doesn't want us linking to competing story sites. But AFIK, he as never said we can't mention them.
Lazeez has said he doesn't want us linking to competing story sites. But AFIK, he as never said we can't mention them.
It's a bit more nuanced than that.
Being a webmaster for over 25 years now, I've seen a lot of tactics, especially in forums, that are far from innocent but seem so to the average user.
There is something called SEO links, which other sites try to put into anywhere on the site, and the easiest is the forum, to boost their own site's ranking in search engines.
There is also subtle advertising. Where someone posts a question about a story, soon to be followed by a reply pointing the story on another site with a link or simply a story title and author name.
Users don't see most of what goes on behind the scenes in running a website like SOL. From DOS attacks, to advertising requests, to link exchange requests, to attempts at taking authors away, to attempts at chasing authors away from the site, to attempts at taking users/readers away to other story sites, etc...
To keep SOL alive and vibrant enough to keep the traffic coming, I must fight all of that.
So whenever a forum post smells like one of these attempts, I would either delete the post or the whole thread.
For honest replies that involve other sites, one can easily send the user asking a private message. Whenever in doubt, send your reply to the one asking via private message instead of posting digs about the site's policies.
Mackey writes what I think of as 'positive near future' space tales. Libertarian leaning? Hmmm... Ok, I'll concede that in a broad definition if you mean the bad guys get warned and then hammered when they continue to do bad stuff.
His tales, like all that use FTL in their plots, lack specificity on how FTL is accomplished. A special lack is navigation from A to B. That's because the story uses light to locate the route. We know that the light we see now is 'old' by however far away the light emitting star is. The star has moved in some direction and without really good tracking data, where the heck is it now?
Geoff Wolak's tales... Good to great but very 007-ish sorta stuff, if you like action adventure spy stories. But for me, that constant go-go-go wears thin quickly.
The other stories you referenced that are here on SOL are in my reading queue and I'll get to those anon. Thanks for those as I would not have sought them out.