Setting Idea: The Residuum Economy

[Jürgen Hubert]

I was just writing an Arcana Wiki entry for the technology of "3D Printing", when I had an interesting idea for a D&D setting:

Imagine a world where it is possible to create any physical object with the right ritual, with each ritual creating a perfect replica of all the other objects created by the same ritual. The material component cost is equal to the list price of the item. The rituals take one hour to complete (though very large items - like buildings - may take longer). Various organizations try to mass-produce the material component costs so that they can produce these items cheaper (possibly using nexus towers or similar methods).

What would a world like this look like? How would this affect trade, society, and so forth?

 

[Fallen Seraph]

-Trade be even more centred around cities then it already is.
-The trade of raw goods would die off (besides for the materials needed for the rituals).
-Most craftsmen would be out of their job not being able to compete with mass production.
-The people with Nexus Towers/access to the rituals would essentially have a monopoly on all worldly goods.
-There would probably be conflict over control of Nexus Towers and Rituals.
-Lots of magical research in making new rituals to construct new, unimagined items.

In some regards, I could imagine it almost being like Dune. With the Rituals/Nexus Towers being Spice/Arrakis and all the different city-states, kingdoms, etc. be the Great Houses.

 

[roguerouge]

I could see a Dark Sun consequence. All this material comes from somewhere; something can't come from nothing. Either it's taking its raw materials from the free world without the inherent bother of getting it (leading to massive over-use of resources) or its draining the magic mana from the world (the resource being drained is magic itself.)

If something does come from nothing and easily too... you've got yourself a Garden of Eden situation. And we all know how that story turned out.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

If something does come from nothing and easily too... you've got yourself a Garden of Eden situation. And we all know how that story turned out.

Not necessarily a "Garden of Eden" situation - you still need someone to supply the components, and you still need skilled ritual casters to produce the items. And not all economic activities center on physical products.

But it would certainly be a lot different from the typical quasi-medieval world. People in general would be a lot wealthier, but there will still be wealth disparities and most people will still have to work for a living. Society might more resemble the modern world, where much of the economic activity in society is knowledge-based.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Wait until unscrupulous mages try to invent rituals to convert normal stuff into residuum, razing entire forests just to get a pinch of residuum. Draining life forces, from land, soil, people.

Soylent Green Residuum is People!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Wait until unscrupulous mages try to invent rituals to convert normal stuff into residuum, razing entire forests just to get a pinch of residuum. Draining life forces, from land, soil, people.

Soylent Green Residuum is People!

Suddenly I imagine giant golems shoveling people into the portable residuum converters on their backs...

EDIT: Someone needs to stat that golem. Let's say it gives residuum equal to the XP value of the converted creature...

 

[wedgeski]

What you're talking about, I think, is a kind of Star Trek Federation "poverty has been eliminated" economy. Within a closed circle or group, the technology (magic) to 'replicate' food and building materials from essentially any waste product eliminates the need for currency and commerce. Exchanging labour for wages is no longer required. All time is leisure time. As long as you have enough slave labour -- automata, constructs, etc. -- to do the menial jobs around the place, I would say such a system could reach a reasonable equilibrium before really subtle social problems (for example, sheer boredom) began to erode it. I firmly believe, for example, that people need something constructive to do with their time. They need to feel that they are contributing to a greater good.

Well, I do anyway.

This would not eliminate the economics of dealing with groups *outside* this closed system, however, and commerce across economic borders would probably continue until migration kicked in and the closed system grew to basically encompass everyone.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

What you're talking about, I think, is a kind of Star Trek Federation "poverty has been eliminated" economy. Within a closed circle or group, the technology (magic) to 'replicate' food and building materials from essentially any waste product eliminates the need for currency and commerce.

Not exactly. It still costs effort to get the raw materials - the magical components - and waste products won't do. It still requires skilled people to cast the necessary rituals. Items will still cost money, although people in such a setting will likely have more money on average than in a typical D&D setting.

In other words, there is still need for currency and commerce, and though poverty may be alleviated, it won't have been eliminated.

 

[mmadsen]

Imagine a world where it is possible to create any physical object with the right ritual, with each ritual creating a perfect replica of all the other objects created by the same ritual. The material component cost is equal to the list price of the item.

If the raw materials cost as much as the list price, then there isn't much incentive to produce goods through this method -- unless the market price is much higher than the game's list price in that locale at that time. After all, it takes raw materials plus skilled labor and, presumably, a large capital investment to produce something valuable through this method.

What makes it interesting is that it reduces the need for and benefits of trade, since difficult-to-make goods needn't actual travel from where skilled craftsmen with rare raw materials can make them. Just perform the silk ritual, or the spice ritual, or the atomic bomb ritual, et voilà!

On the other hand, intellectual property becomes even more valuable. The recipe is all that stands between you and great wealth. Throughout history, that meant hoarding knowledge, but in our modern era we benefit tremendously by sharing knowledge, which is a nonrivalrous good, in economics parlance.

 

[RangerWickett]

Stone Age people could theoretically have concocted how to make bronze, but a) they didn't need to, so why bother, and b) there wasn't enough metal handy to make anything useful. Only when there were enough people to make it feasible to acquire the components of bronze did it get invented.

Economies require input.

Are you proposing a system where the economy, via these rituals, creates more than it requires in resources? Because then boom, the world changes drastically from anything we can imagine, and though it might take a few centuries, eventually you'd have a culture completely foreign to our understanding.

Or are you proposing a system where people act like Chinese gold farmers, hundreds of thousands of peasants running around the country-side, mining or scrounging for ritual components, which then get bought and sold as pretty much the single commodity in the world? You would have the simplest economy imaginable, and aside from some niche markets of local produce and stuff (which would be profitable because it's likely not many people would have the ritual to create Vidalia onions, just 'typical' onions), everything would be reliant on just two factors.

1. Do you have enough residuum?
2. Do you have someone who knows the ritual for the thing you need?

Depending on how complicated rituals are and how much specialization is required -- can anyone who knows magic cast any ritual they find, or is it like a trade skill, requiring practice for different creations -- you might end up where pretty much only two businesses would be prominent in the world: residuum farming, and crafting.

I guess you might have a few other professions. Inventors trying to come up with new rituals; master craftsmen who can create things with more custom touches than your 'mass production' ritual would; bankers who could loan out residuum; politicians and warriors and such to make sure the country has a fair control of the stuff.

But you'd need to come up with an explanation of how to make residuum, and where it all comes from. Then the largest bulk of the economy would be devoted to exploiting that resource.