Basic Information
A miser is a character that hoards resources - predominately money to a degree which their culture finds noticeable and worthy of disapproval.
Key traits are that the miser is acquisitive - they continually seek to add to their store - and they are frugal: they resist expending resources whenever possible. Their acquisitiveness is not, traditionally, dishonest, although it may be callous or even brutal in its single-mindedness. Frugality, however, is their traditional defining trait. The miser lives well below his means, often to the point of self-neglect, maintains the minimum household possible and extends his lack of spending to their maintenance, although rarely to the degree that anything that belongs to him is actually (physically) diminished. Where the miser must pay, he is likely to haggle hard, seek the longest possible terms and demonstrate resentment, but is also likely to be as punctilious in avoiding the payment of interest or other penalties as he is on collecting any owed to him.
The miser is generally distinguished from the ascetic by his acquisitiveness, as the latter desires to neither expend nor acquire wealth. Various other forms of self-neglect, usually as a result of mental disorders can also give the appearance of miserliness.
Miserliness in a pre-money or low money culture is possible, but harder to achieve. Where performative giving is a feature, a person of high status who fails to give appropriately may attract similar stigma, as may the traditionally played PC who spends as little as possible on anything not directly combat related.
Sources
Charles Dickens's Ebeneezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol is probably the definitive miser in modern Western culture.
Game and Story Use
- An absolute nuisance as an employer or patron.
- A frequent target of robberies in any pre-banking era.