RPG Hunting!

In my travels I have hunted many animals, both dangerous and benign. I don't see any reason why I should take the time now to get into the various interesting hunts I have undertaken or the varying countries and environments in which such hunts have taken place. This post is more the effect of my observation that hunted animals rarely seem to yield gold, armor, or weapons when killed.

As a hunter, I do not find this surprising; but as an individual who has played his share of video games on various platforms, I find this a bit confusing. Take Super Mario 64 as a well-rounded example. The enemies in this game can be taken out in all sorts of entertaining ways, after which they vanish, yielding their worth in Mushroom Kingdom tender. Now, is this inside them or what? Take your pick of early RPG games and you'll see the same: "Evil Monster takes hit; loses 2500 HP. (victory music) You gained 25,000 EXP; you got 130 Gold!" That manner occurrence is so far removed from anything remotely 'real-life' that I can't imagine that it was just developed as a simple way for the characters to earn the money necessary for game progression, thus alleviating the need for long term in-game career plans. Although one doesn't have to spend much time with certain game-philes to detect a certain fear of the concept of 'job'.

Of course, I have taken the time to reason that this is actually representative of the value harvested from the creature's carcass - assuming that the characters broke the monster down into profitable parts and the value thereof was equal to 130 gold - making the assumption that such transactions take place in the next town 'off camera' as it were. That seems well enough - but that's assuming that mercenary Mario's lucrative kills are a phenomenon that only occurs in the the parallel dimension of the Mushroom World(s). I won't bother to touch the relationship between the coin in Mario's pocket and the level of health he maintains; but I'm sure I would feel better each time I encountered an frizbee sized gold coin too. I think he learned this pecuniary healing technique from Sonic the Hedgehog during the Nintendo vs. Sega arms race, but I digress.

Anyway, it would seem that Square caught this confusion recently, since I noted that you actually have to find someone with gold before you can get any in Final Fantasy 12. Monsters only have pelts, teeth, horns, etc. You have to find somebody dealing in the loot trade to actually make any money off a kill. This is much more realistic and brings back memories of hunting bounty varmints in Texas. I used to get $0.50 for every dead crow and a bit more for a rabbit in a farmer's field - though it would have been much more fun if the animals just dissolved into their average cash value.

I also thought during even those days, that it would be much nicer to be able to just sell off something like a rattlesnake or a winter jackrabbit whole without having to first divvy-up its anatomy into usable parts. Both animals are technically edible, but not meant for gourmet cooking - most people only care to lay down a dime for the skin. This takes time to remove and cure, and they are not really worth a whole lot as a single item, so I couldn't see a smart fellow wasting time or energy on them unless he had an empty stomach, an interested buyer, or a bounty ticket from a farmer citing and open season notice. Why would I take note of this fact? Because I see a lot of the gaming community's younger generation bartering conjecture as to how profitable and fun it would be to do the RPG-style hunting ala EXP grinding in real life. I can't really see that as being viable.

However, I recently saw a recording in which a certain fisherman had made a bit of money off the stuff he had found inside a shark. I'll have to take a moment to find the video, but the contents of certain sea animals has been documented to include such things as treasure, furniture, booze, and apparently even a suit of armor. Now that's a monster right out of video game fare. "Player kills greatwhite! You got steel armor!" or "Player slays tigershark! You got severed hand with gold wedding ring!" (Victory music and heroic poses all around!).

So, the those RPG fantasy buffs who want to hunt deadly high-level monsters for the treasure: toss out the replica landskneckt two-hander and pick up your harpoon gun! There's a new frontier out at sea and rumor has it the quarry love meeting novices up close. The EXP you gain depends on what you learn and your level at the time (an issue for another day).

Level 75 Great White Attacks!