Dark Sun economy

AbdulAlhazred · Jan 12, 2017

Tony Vargas said:
IDK, the non-metallic alternatives in Dark Sun seem adequate for survival purposes. Magic items get very expensive very fast for being only marginally better than ordinary weapons. You could certainly trade a +1 sword in the survival economy, but it probably wouldn't buy you many more survival-days than a regular sword (and it'd probably make you look pretty desperate).

In the 'separate economy' model, you could place gold (or platinum or astral diamonds or Spican flame gems or unicorn rainbows or whatever), it just wouldn't have the theoretical astronomical buying power in the more bartery survival economy, most of the time.

Of course, there could be a cross-over between the two economies in major centers of civilization where the very-rich-in-both-economies do business.

Its always possible to use an item from the 'magic economy' to cross over into the 'survival economy'. Will the water seller give you a large flask of water in trade for a Wand of Fire? Heck yeah! You better be pretty desperate to do this, and the deal may be surprisingly difficult as he may need proof that it is what you say it is. In fact, you're probably better off to go to a fence, etc and trade your magic for some coin, but you'll get FAR less than you'd get dealing in the 'magic economy'. I'd say, in general, you CAN unload anything for coin, but you probably cannot BUY just anything for coin. Most significant deals are going to be either covert, or regulated, and probably involve trades. You might trade a building for a magic item, but you won't get it for gold.

MostlyDm · Jan 13, 2017

Lots of great ideas already. Tony's ideas of separate economies seems really spot on.

Personally, I would say that if you want a really old-school Dark Sun experience the DM should toss most of the parcels out the window and make you scrape and struggle for every little scrap of decent equipment and loot. Finding an iron weapon or a trove of coins should feel like Christmas morning.

The Inherent Bonuses mean that encounter building won't get wonky even if you all lack decent magic items. When I played 4e, Inherent Bonuses meant that the Dark Sun supplement was a godsend, whether I ran the Dark Sun setting or not.

Dark Sun economy

AbdulAlhazred

Legend

MostlyDm

Explorer

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