Silly economics of DnD

[Storminator]

Note that the price of a "Poor Meal" is (I'd imagine) a meal sold at an inn or tavern, where you are paying for service, land, and protection of that inn. Considering a chicken is worth 2 copper (page 96, Tabe 7-3: Trade Goods) I think he'd be able to feed himself just fine.

In a recent dungeon crawl we priced out rations needed at nearly 200 gp (lots of us, long time).

Instead we bought a cow, some goats, some chickens, and bags of flour and vegetables, and spent more like 50 gp. If you make your own meals you save a lot of money.

PS

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I know that I am probably the ony person in the world who is bothered by the things like this

First, yeah, the prices bug me too.

And no, I don't think this kind of thing is stupid. If we find flaw with the setting we should change it. Saying "it's a fantasy game!" every five minutes makes for sloppy settings.

If you ever really want a chuckle over game economics, try Shadowrun's "Tir Nan Og". According to the book, 75% of the country's revenue is supposed to be generated by farming. But when you look at the powerbrokers, you know how many of them have even a toehold in farming? None. It doesn't even get a casual mention or a footnote. So 75% of Tir Nan Og's economy is up for grabs. Oops.

 

[drnuncheon]

So poor that it takes them 20 days of work to buy an empty barell ?

Barrels, especially watertight ones, require a significant amount of work by a well-trained craftsman called a cooper. The barrel staves are sometimes aged for years and then have to be carefully shaped and fitted.

There is no reason to expect a dirt-poor starvation-wage laborer to be able to afford one easily. Remember they don't have mass production, so making that single barrel has to pay the craftsman for not only materials but his time in making it.

So, yes, "so poor it takes them 20 days of work to buy an empty barrel." That's probably pretty generous, in fact.

J

 

[Simon Magalis]

Simple Solution

I too have been bothered by this inconsistency. Its the monsters like Goblins and Kobolds, who are not all that powerful, but are usually carrying 2d10 Gold (or something like that) that really gets me. Anyhow, I just keep the standard peasant pay at 1 silver per day and then I change the names of the coins that adventurers get in a session. If its normally called gold, I call it a silver piece. This does nothing to upset game balance since you are just changing the names of things, but it helps to shorten the gap between everyday folk and the PCs for those of us who want to do that. The complete coversion looks like this

If it is called Platinum, I call it Gold (plat doenst exist for coins)
" " Gold " " Silver
" " Silver " " Copper
" " Copper " Electrum
" " Electrum " Same (or why even bother)

99% of everything you run into will turn from gold into silver, which is how I think it should be anyway. The other conversions are rarely used and when they are its usually copper pieces from silver. I managed to make this sound complicated somehow. Sigh

 

[EOL]

It is really my fault...

The original systems in D&D and AD&D were developed for the PC adventurer, done without reference to the economics of the various societies.

Of course the chaps redesigning 2E should have picked that up and solved the problem--done rather easily. I've mentioned it before, but in the LA game system I've fixed gold at $500 per o8unce, silver at $10, and copper at $1. Basically, wages and prices are assumed to be those comprable to the US in c. 2000, save for the special items listed on price lists--mainly swords, war horses and the like. Anyway, with relatively current standards to serve as a guide, managing wages and prices and wealth/treasure is pretty easy.

Cheerio,
Gary

I assume that when you're designing a game the primary point is the subjects of the game the adventurers themselves and making things reasonabily logical and consistent for them, so I can completely understand that some things are going to be out of wack. However, by the time we reached 3e you would have thought that it would be better than this.

As to the question of whether anyone else is bothered, back on Eric Noah's boards there was a HUGE discussion about this which seemed to devolve into the premise that every first level adventuring party would be dogpiled and mugged in every village they came to, because their wealth was hundreds of times greater than all the peasents put together.

 

[Garmorn]

Of all the Fantasy RPG that I have used/seen Harn has the most accurate price list. The author is a medivial historian and simply took the prices from England for the 3100 hundres. They then did minor price changes to allow for the differences in resources and distances between trading centers.

If I could figure out how to convert the cost of D&D magic with out distorting things I would be using it my self.

 

[Henry]

Quoth EOL:

I assume that when you're designing a game the primary point is the subjects of the game the adventurers themselves and making things reasonabily logical and consistent for them, so I can completely understand that some things are going to be out of wack. However, by the time we reached 3e you would have thought that it would be better than this.

First of all, I have never assumed that the native populace had to pay the list prices in the PHB for goods - these are, after all, the prices that the "tourists" and the "nobles" (The PC's) have to pay. You see the same thing all over the world today. On the Old boards last year, one board member (former army member) posted his experiences in Australia and (I think) Indonesia - after he became friends with the locals, his prices dropped to half of what they used to be. So Bob the adventurer pays 1 sp for his meal, Pete the cobbler pays either 1 cp for his, or promises Joe the Tavernkeep a good pair of shoes in his business.

Second of all, I do agree the prices may need work, I don't believe they are unplayable. Most of my group doesn't really care what the average farmer's wage is - they just know it's poor.

quoth Simon Magelis:

99% of everything you run into will turn from gold into silver, which is how I think it should be anyway. The other conversions are rarely used and when they are its usually copper pieces from silver. I managed to make this sound complicated somehow. Sigh

No need to worry - you just devalued all currency listed to 10% of its normal value - easier way to describe it. However, isn't electrum an amalgam of gold and silver, and therefore worth more than copper? Your idea seems to have it worth less than copper.

quoth Storminator:

Instead we bought a cow, some goats, some chickens, and bags of flour and vegetables, and spent more like 50 gp. If you make your own meals you save a lot of money.

I bet your DM had fun having you make a couple dozen Craft (Cooking) checks to prepare all that stuff. Did you carry it in live, and butcher and make it on the spot, or did you cook it up and preserve it in town?

 

[Vaxalon]

Well, a craft (cooking) check ought to be a DC 10 task, at worst, at least to produce palatable food. Producing food that would keep for more than a day, such as jerky or waybread, might be DC 15.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

This topic never crossed my mind, and now that it has I realize I could care less how realistic the economy of Oerth may be.

 

[nameless]

To clarify on the buying a country thing IMC.

The local ruler was bankrupt and had an army marching on him to reclaim his trade debt and raze as much of the kingdom as they needed to. Rather than die, he sold us his near-worthless (but large) country and we repaid the mercenary army, plus some extra for their trouble. Because of the despondent king, most of the peasantry had fled the country in search of better places. So we had lots of empty land with nobody to work it.

As the new rulers with world domination in mind, we had to raise an army. Our current population couldn't support one of any measurable size, so we first set about increasing population and agricultural base to get the raw materials for training an army. We eliminated taxes completely for the first year, which caused a massive influx. We then added comparatively lower taxes than other countries, and allowed farmers to farmstead empty land. All of this time, the treasury was dwindling, but the PC group would occasionally go out and open up some buried treasure to replenish it. Over the course of time, we made deals for large amounts of arms and armor to "defend" our nation (again, not my fault that the DM made poor decisions). Between the low taxes and ability to become landowners, peasants came in droves, and wealthy merchants followed. All of the formerly empty countryside became farms and towns.

Just for reference, our capital city began at a population of 1000 and increased to over 50,000 by the end of the campaign.