Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The economics of Continual flame
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Stalker0" data-source="post: 8422091" data-attributes="member: 5889"><p>Ah yes, always a fun subject! I think one of the economic issues here is we need a REAL DEEP look at what the "costs" of CF actually are.</p><p></p><p>50 GP of ruby dust. Now 50 GP is an economic term not a "quantity", which is not how we in the real world would define the formula for making something. For example you would never see a cookbook say "add $5 of flour". So in terms of what this means for the spell there are a few possibilities:</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The setting is an absolute planned economy for all time. Gold is set at a certain value because some entity said so (governmental body, the gods themselves, etc). Therefore, ruby dust has a set economy standard, and the price of CF has a set standard, absolute and unchangeable. This is technically how it is if you take the mechanics literally and ignore any setting considerations. If this is true, than all discussions of market economics and supply and demand go out the window..... as a market driven economy does not exist.<br /> <br /> </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Prices are a current snapshot of a market driven economy. Prices can change over time with market forces, so a CF spell could cost 50, 60, 100, 10 gp worth of ruby dust.... its just it costs 50 gp because of the market forces on price <em>at this moment in history</em>. In this model, we can explain CF's high or low availability with any explanation of historic market forces. "Yes under current prices CF is becoming more available, but 50 years ago it costs 150 GP of ruby dust so very few had it until the ruby mining expansion lowered prices". This explanation holds unless your setting goes over a long history of time in which case you need to get a bit more creative to explain it.<br /> <br /> </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The amount of ruby dust required by CF is decreasing over time. In this model, CF does not actually require a SET amount of dust, but some set X% of the world's total ruby amount (or heck maybe even the multiverse!). Therefore, the more ruby dust that is consumed, the less actual quantity of ruby dust is needed by the spell. This is a very weird concept that has no place in our reality.... chemistry does not change if one of the chemicals suddenly became rarer in the world. However, this is magic, the rules of standard reality need not apply.... perhaps the "magic" within the dust is concentrated to the remaining ruby in the world as its consumed in the spell.... and so the remaining world's ruby becomes more "concentrated with magic" over time.<br /> <br /> Now this may sound similar to a modern economy, our prices are driven by scarcity after all, and a good that becomes scarce goes up in price. However, its not exactly the same, modern economies are driven by "scarcity of production" and not "scarcity of total amount". Oil prices do not reflect how much total oil there is in the world's crust, but how fast we can pump it out of the ground. Only at the very tail end of a good's lifespan when the supply completely runs out, do you see prices start to reflect total amount. But with this strange magical effect, instead the ruby has intrinsic ever increasing value....the more CF is cast, the more powerful the remaining wizards that didn't cast CF become, and no amount of ruby mining in the world can change that. In fact perhaps the price of ruby itself is set by this very process....50 GP of ruby dust is the amount of dust it takes to cast a CF, which sets the price of ruby at any time (which in itself is a sort of planned economic price rather than a market driven one).<br /> <br /> Here's a quick example in case that is confusing. Say it takes 100 grams of ruby dust to cast CF. 100 grams of ruby = 50 GP = .5 GP per gram. 10 years from now, it takes 50 grams to cast CF. 50 gram of ruby = 100 GB = 2 GP per gram.....ruby has quadrupled in value over 10 years (its unlikely to be that fast but it highlights the point).<br /> <br /> So under this model, the more CF is cast, the more expensive it becomes for that caster to cast it again. Further, the more wizards that exist that cast CF, the more expensive it becomes.<br /> <br /> In this model, a wizard is heavily incentivized to hold on to their ruby dust. Therefore the same long term investment desires that an artisan has to buy a CF spell is also convincing the wizard its best not to cast that spell, and let their ruby dust simply grow in value. And so the availability of CF naturally balances itself, the more there is, the more expensive it becomes to make a new one, the price will continue to increase over time, eventually economies will balance to create a set amount of CF in the world.</li> </ul><p></p><p></p><p>In summary, we have to respect that CF either does not follow standard economic theory, or that market forces have been historically something that explains their relative scarcity (assuming they are in fact scarce in your setting).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Stalker0, post: 8422091, member: 5889"] Ah yes, always a fun subject! I think one of the economic issues here is we need a REAL DEEP look at what the "costs" of CF actually are. 50 GP of ruby dust. Now 50 GP is an economic term not a "quantity", which is not how we in the real world would define the formula for making something. For example you would never see a cookbook say "add $5 of flour". So in terms of what this means for the spell there are a few possibilities: [LIST] [*]The setting is an absolute planned economy for all time. Gold is set at a certain value because some entity said so (governmental body, the gods themselves, etc). Therefore, ruby dust has a set economy standard, and the price of CF has a set standard, absolute and unchangeable. This is technically how it is if you take the mechanics literally and ignore any setting considerations. If this is true, than all discussions of market economics and supply and demand go out the window..... as a market driven economy does not exist. [*]Prices are a current snapshot of a market driven economy. Prices can change over time with market forces, so a CF spell could cost 50, 60, 100, 10 gp worth of ruby dust.... its just it costs 50 gp because of the market forces on price [I]at this moment in history[/I]. In this model, we can explain CF's high or low availability with any explanation of historic market forces. "Yes under current prices CF is becoming more available, but 50 years ago it costs 150 GP of ruby dust so very few had it until the ruby mining expansion lowered prices". This explanation holds unless your setting goes over a long history of time in which case you need to get a bit more creative to explain it. [*]The amount of ruby dust required by CF is decreasing over time. In this model, CF does not actually require a SET amount of dust, but some set X% of the world's total ruby amount (or heck maybe even the multiverse!). Therefore, the more ruby dust that is consumed, the less actual quantity of ruby dust is needed by the spell. This is a very weird concept that has no place in our reality.... chemistry does not change if one of the chemicals suddenly became rarer in the world. However, this is magic, the rules of standard reality need not apply.... perhaps the "magic" within the dust is concentrated to the remaining ruby in the world as its consumed in the spell.... and so the remaining world's ruby becomes more "concentrated with magic" over time. Now this may sound similar to a modern economy, our prices are driven by scarcity after all, and a good that becomes scarce goes up in price. However, its not exactly the same, modern economies are driven by "scarcity of production" and not "scarcity of total amount". Oil prices do not reflect how much total oil there is in the world's crust, but how fast we can pump it out of the ground. Only at the very tail end of a good's lifespan when the supply completely runs out, do you see prices start to reflect total amount. But with this strange magical effect, instead the ruby has intrinsic ever increasing value....the more CF is cast, the more powerful the remaining wizards that didn't cast CF become, and no amount of ruby mining in the world can change that. In fact perhaps the price of ruby itself is set by this very process....50 GP of ruby dust is the amount of dust it takes to cast a CF, which sets the price of ruby at any time (which in itself is a sort of planned economic price rather than a market driven one). Here's a quick example in case that is confusing. Say it takes 100 grams of ruby dust to cast CF. 100 grams of ruby = 50 GP = .5 GP per gram. 10 years from now, it takes 50 grams to cast CF. 50 gram of ruby = 100 GB = 2 GP per gram.....ruby has quadrupled in value over 10 years (its unlikely to be that fast but it highlights the point). So under this model, the more CF is cast, the more expensive it becomes for that caster to cast it again. Further, the more wizards that exist that cast CF, the more expensive it becomes. In this model, a wizard is heavily incentivized to hold on to their ruby dust. Therefore the same long term investment desires that an artisan has to buy a CF spell is also convincing the wizard its best not to cast that spell, and let their ruby dust simply grow in value. And so the availability of CF naturally balances itself, the more there is, the more expensive it becomes to make a new one, the price will continue to increase over time, eventually economies will balance to create a set amount of CF in the world. [/LIST] In summary, we have to respect that CF either does not follow standard economic theory, or that market forces have been historically something that explains their relative scarcity (assuming they are in fact scarce in your setting). [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The economics of Continual flame
Top