It’s currently long enough to dissuade reopen voters from re-reading a niche question written about foreign (non-RPG domain) technical concepts. It’s also written at a much higher grade level than necessary, making it much more likely to exceed the recreational reading grade level of your desired audience (reopen voters with only passing interest in a niche question).
What would help is making it much more digestible. It doesn’t need an extensive explanation of what “reciprocal economies” means, it needs a short and clear description that voters can evaluate quickly, and trusts answerers to not need it explained in detail. Ideally, explaining it should be dispensed with in a single sentence.
It could also benefit from signposting: short, easily digested text that sets the reader up to anticipate and absorb later, less digestible text.
I’d rewrite the whole first section as something like this, with no header (my commentary in bold-italic parentheses):
I’m unsatisfied with how things like barter economies are usually handled in RPGs, and have come up with a homebrew mechanic that I’m trying to improve. (Problem statement. Signposts the entire body.)
Few RPGs give a way to handle “reciprocal economies” during play. Gift economies, barter economies, and reputation economies are usually boiled down to something tracked with points that end up making it work at the table little different from gold coins or dollars. Rubbing salt in the wound, they’re often overengineered for what little they do. (Both explains what “reciprocal economies” means, the distinction with market economies (without invoking the technical term), and explains how existing RPG mechanics fail you. Accessible language used.)
My homebrew is simpler while already delivering that same “only slightly different than a cash economy” that more complex mechanics offer. It works well enough in the two campaigns I’m using, but I want to improve it so it feels less like just another kind of market economy. (Bookends introduction by returning the reader’s focus to what the point is: a homebrew, and improving how it models reciprocal economies differently from market economies. The term “market economy” is added here at the end where experts will see it, without derailing readers early.)
I’m using this in Eclipse Phase and a far-future GURPs campaign. (Brief, necessary context for later.)
(Continue with existing text from “My Current Working Solution…”)
I think the later text could also be written in a more accessible style, but once the reader has got through the introduction, they’re more likely (if interested in answering) to read further, or (if considering a reopen vote) to have got a sufficient feel for the post to decide if they should vote now or read further to decide.
