Silly economics of DnD

[Xeriar]

Just think of the profound effect that something as simple as magical lighting offers. The everburning torch costs a wizard or sorcerer NOTHING to create and he can do it instantly. Every home in the land would have 24 hour lighting.

Err, no, it doesn't cost nothing, it costs 50 gp worth of ruby dust.

 

[Tarek]

Error in assumptions

Dragonblade, the key here is this:

A standard D&D fantasy world is still very much an agrarian society, NOT an industrial one.

The number of people who have the drive to become clerics is very small. Ditto Wizards, all of the other PC classes and the Adept class. Thus their skills are in high demand, which means that at best they save their abilities for emergencies and at worst they charge through the nose to cast spells.

This bears repeating: a standard D&D fantasy world is not an industrial society.

Simply being able to work during the night does not mean anything for the majority of the people. They already work from pre-dawn to dusk. Working at night just means they get less sleep. Being able to work "round the clock" is only a little bit more useful for craftsmen, but still, the effect of artificial lighting is minimal by itself; you need automation in order to take advantage of the extra time.

The real breakthrough that increased production came with automations like the printing press and the mechanical loom, and it wasn't until the invention of the combination harvester (VERY recent) that crop production ceased being a hand-labor affair.

(yes, this is a bit simplistic.)

Magic can do a lot of things, but it is no substitute for technology. Stop treating magic as a substitute for technology.

To create a "Harvester Golem", a wizard will spend a lot of money and a lot of experience, but no village will be able to afford one. Creating a mechanical device like a horse-drawn combination harvester would also be expensive, but it would be more affordable than any magical construct.

Tarek

 

[S'mon]

I think we all have different ideas on what kind of societies and wealth levels we want in our game, I think arguments that X is the "right" level of wages etc are silly. I know I start with the society I want, then tweak the prevalence of magic, cost of magic, wage levels etc to fit - I want a vaguely classical/medieval setting with high wealth disparities and relatively little magic, so that's what I implement.

I think the silliest argument though is to argue from the Commoner's skill list that eg they all have Profession (Farmer) or whatever therefore all Commoner's incomes MUST be determined by the PHB income formula, ie vastly higher than the DMG hireling costs. Does anyone really think that every Profession & Craft gives the same income? It's a simple abstraction for use _BY PCs_, nothing more.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Re: Error in assumptions

Dragonblade, the key here is this:

A standard D&D fantasy world is still very much an agrarian society, NOT an industrial one.

True, true... though I enjoy speculating what happens when a D&D fantasy society gets an "industrial" approach to magic...

What would happen when magic was used on a massive scale to ensure harvests similar to what can be achieved today, for example?

(shameless plug)

What came out of my speculations can be seen in my homebrew setting, which you can access through the link in my signature.

(/shameless plug)

 

[Col_Pladoh]

The social structure of a fantasy world need not be absoutely parallel to any historical example.

The examples given are from the early medieval period in England, some later. Free cities with charters didn't appear until later. Those cities forced and paid the soverign to gain their charters.

Anyway, as the setting is fantasy, alter the social and economic structures to suit the game system and the campaign

Gary

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Anyway, as the setting is fantasy, alter the social and economic structures to suit the game system and the campaign

Exactly. If you want, say, lots and lots of cities with hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people in them, you can do that with D&D, too...

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Exactly. If you want, say, lots and lots of cities with hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people in them, you can do that with D&D, too...

Indeed, and you don't need to stray far from an historical model to have a mix of developed states and barbarian lands, with plenty of wild places in there too.

As I noted, I prefer to have the major states more on a Renaissance socio-economic model, with relatiely wealthy populations. This gives both much for the criminals to steal and a great reason for invasions by the "have nots".

With technology advanced to the point where sailing ships are relatively safe and swift, land transport that's past crude wagons, and even canals for passagners and shipping, the potential for different sorts of adventures is much greater.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Mobius]

The social structure of a fantasy world need not be absoutely parallel to any historical example.

True enough, but the further you go from a historical example - our only closest reference to 'reality' - the harder it is to suspend disbelief and actually get into the game world to a significant degree. Those of us with a high level of ability in 'suspending disbelief' could likely have a great time with a very, very unrealistic system. I, unfortunately, am not one of those folks, and so I very nearly require a plausible social structure and economic system before I start having fun with a game world.

When I still played D&D on a regular basis (instead of semi-regularly like I do now), I had a four step process to get the economics back in line:

1. Reduce ready cash by an order of 100. Coinage in medieval life was actually pretty rare and tended to be accumulated in the hands of the nobility. It wasn't until the rise of the wool merchant middle class in England that most commoners had access to more than a few coins here and there. The 90% of the population that lived in the manorial villages held almost all of their cash in kind, which led me to my next step.

2. Remembering the total wealth of the person before step 1. I substituted wealth in kind. Wealthy farmers had land, chickens, pigs, a croft that produced vegetables and fruit, an ox, a couple of cows, a larger cottage, multiple sets of clothing, etc. Totaling this wealth made a successful farmer very comfortable indeed, but with almost no portable wealth other than the animals. IMC, city folk were much poorer, with unskilled labourers simply not making it by without steady work. They had more coinage, to be sure, but almost no food, did not own the roof over their heads, had one set of clothes, etc.

3. Reduce the number of magic practitioners. Everyday magic makes it all but impossible to balance the economy. IMC, most villages remembered stories about magic users, but most folks had never seen one with their own eyes and would likely have been very suspicious of one if they had - power is a very frightening thing to those without it. There were magical guilds in the larger cities, but they might only hold a couple of dozen practitioners and only a small handful of masters. Priests who could actually cast spells were really, really rare and were almost mythical in nature ... most priests couldn't work those kind of 'miracles' and were just commoners with a much better education.

4. Use the guild system. Guilds set prices and make the GM's work a zillion times easier by essentially limiting the price fluctuation of the most common goods. It is much easier for a GM to decide a supply and demand price for the luxuries and rarities when needed rather than to have to do so with every commodity in the market. Adjust down 10% for 'close to source', adjust up 10% for 'far from source' and adjust up 20% for 'really far from source' and the GM is essentially done as far as a commodity is concerned.

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Correct to a point. What I should have stressed was MIXING historical models so as to arrive at a new one that took its various parts from existing historical models.

I totally agree that creating something out of whole cloth demands a great deal of ability on the part of the one who devises the setting, cultures and sociaties, and then ample exposition of that work so as to enable the player participants to relate to the imagined world so different from the ones they have become accostomed to from school studies.

That Jack Vance can manage such settings in his stories is one of the things that so endears his writing to me--his actual style being the principal other factor in his being my favorite author in the genres of F & SF

Ciao,
Gary

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

As I noted, I prefer to have the major states more on a Renaissance socio-economic model, with relatiely wealthy populations. This gives both much for the criminals to steal and a great reason for invasions by the "have nots".

With technology advanced to the point where sailing ships are relatively safe and swift, land transport that's past crude wagons, and even canals for passagners and shipping, the potential for different sorts of adventures is much greater.

Same here. In fact, in my campaign there exists a valid reason for rulers to want to have cities filled with as many people as possible: They can drain a small part (OK, some rulers draw a rather large part...) of the life energy of a city's inhabitants. This energy can then be used to cast really powerful spells (essentially epic spells - without the aid of epic spellcasters!) or create magic items.

The end result is that magic is used to ensure very large harvests to feed lots of people. The poor are then encouraged to move to the city - but there is less manual labor to do than there are poor people. The end result is that you have large cities with a large underclass - which is what I was aiming for.

(Incidentally, I crunched the numbers one day, and I think quadrupedal, oversized stone golems would be great for moving primitive trains around...)