Tips for Creating a Metagame Economy

[Asisreo]

Math wizzes, Excel addicts, and GMs among us: I need to create an economy for my game. I want PCs to earn a limited, variable amount of money per-adventure, and they'll spend that money on supplies, repairing gear, and buying new gear. Some gear/magic items will be expensive and require saving between (not too many) adventures. The economy's inputs and outputs are very limited.

Toying with the ideas of PCs with art skill producing valuable work between adventures, and those with crafting skill being able to repair their own gear at an advantaged rate. Also, crafting skill and negotiating skills offer a flat 10% discount to goods/services.

Is there an easy way to do this without the PCs always needing to save money (being broke) or just sitting on piles of gold?

An economy is too chaotic to really simulate wholesale, but you can take whatever the regular price for items and bump them up or down by 10% to simulate fluctuations. Maybe 5% and 1% if you're afraid of predictability.

Keep a calendar and have certain items go on sale or just be cheaper at certain times like during the goods' harvest time or when it's offseason to need them.

For the stock market, make the companies you wanted to include in the market and generate "predictions" on their stocks. This is what happens to the company if the players don't intervene. You can add major events like buyouts or changes in management to make it more exciting and to give your players agency. When they change something about the company, make a new line predicting where the company goes now on the market chart for that company.

A crude sketch to illustrate:

 

[Cadence]

Math wizzes, Excel addicts, and GMs among us: I need to create an economy for my game. I want PCs to earn a limited, variable amount of money per-adventure, and they'll spend that money on supplies, repairing gear, and buying new gear. Some gear/magic items will be expensive and require saving between (not too many) adventures. The economy's inputs and outputs are very limited.

Toying with the ideas of PCs with art skill producing valuable work between adventures, and those with crafting skill being able to repair their own gear at an advantaged rate. Also, crafting skill and negotiating skills offer a flat 10% discount to goods/services.

Is there an easy way to do this without the PCs always needing to save money (being broke) or just sitting on piles of gold?

How bad would something like PF 1e's Craft / Profession rules be for a start?

Profession, for example, had: "You can earn half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the profession’s daily tasks, how to supervise helpers, and how to handle common problems. You can also answer questions about your Profession. Basic questions are DC 10, while more complex questions are DC 15 or higher."

 

[Lanefan]

Bankruptcy from a thousand cuts? I'm only going with main expenses because I don't want the PCs to need pocketbooks (or worse, an NPC accountant). After a quest, they'll likely need:

• Repair for 1 item. Unlikely: 2. Although sometimes, an item breaks and they'll need...
• A new piece of equipment. Weapons are easily looted instead of purchased (but usually banged up).
• More arrows.
• More magic scrolls.

Their guild will cover burial costs and one healing potion per job. And a torch. Healing happens naturally between quests. Resurrection: nope. There are stakes in this game.

So if I'm not mistaken, each PC will need to earn (or be able to earn) the sum of the above costs, plus a margin for buying new and better gear, per quest. The hard part is that there aren't a lot of fixed values in that, and that some PCs might have higher expenses than others, like repairing nice armor can get pricey, or expendable scrolls aren't cheap. Then there are the damn bards...

Question: is it your intent that the PCs roughly break even, that over time their total expenses more or less match their total treasure found in the field? If yes, then every copper matters and always will.

But if the intent is that after expenses etc. the PCs generally profit from their adventuring, then after the first few adventures these minor details really aren't going to matter very much as by then they'll have built up the wealth/resources to cover them with ease.

Second question: are you somehow trying to keep the PCs' wealth in balance with each other, such that no PC gets too rich or too poor in relation to its peers? If yes, then the only control you have is to tweak the expenses such that each class has roughly the same outlay per [level/downtime/whatever]. After that, there's little you can do without impacting player agency: if one PC has next to no money because it's been willingly spent on frivolities over the months/years while another is sitting on 12,000 g.p. because she's been saving up for something big, so be it.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Is there an easy way to do this without the PCs always needing to save money (being broke) or just sitting on piles of gold?

No. Sorry.

What I have done:

* Assemble as large a market table as I could. Costs for gear, medicines (herbal and patent), nostrums, riding animals, war dogs, &c. Harn is a good resource.

* Determine 1-3 goods or services for each town and city. A prosperous or significant village might have one. This lets you know where things come from, what route merchant caravans might travel, and where PCs might want to go for rare or specific things. If my PCs need some alchemical work or have ingredients to unload, they know to go to Jasp. If they want cheap grains, beer, mead, they know to go to Beryl. Exotic pets are in Zothay, &c. These areas can either have the cheap prices or lines on resources not readily available elsewhere.

* Determine any market "nails". I'm sure there is an economic term for this, I don't know it. The city-state of Pearl is, expectedly, on a warm water coast and has many oyster beds. They have fixed the price of a 100gp pearl as a pearl of this specific size and quality. This happens to be the minimum for a pearl component for an identify spell. In my game, the pearl component needs to have certain objective characteristics for it to fuel the identify spell. An in-game entity has developed a means to fix the quality to a price. They do have a stockpile of these pearls, and will always buy or sell pearls of this quality for the specific price of 100gp. They have become known as "trade pearls" for this reason. They may be traded for higher values at large distances from the city of Pearl depending on demand.

* Determine subsistence living costs and higher cost lifestyles. So, like Celebrim mentioned above, for me it takes a person 1sp per day to live at a base "peasant" level. A basic inn with food costs 2sp per night. From there I've extrapolated up living costs per month. In part this takes into account maintenance of gear, but not replacement. One thing that is a part of my campaign is that if you want an audience with a ranking priest, noble, successful merchant, &c., you have to look and smell nice. Clothing and baths are an expense. At lower levels of living costs this is extra, but at higher levels it is assumed, and nice or fancy clothing is at least maintained. (Might go out of fashion, however!) If a character has a domain or holding, this mitigates much of their living expenses through taxes, and possibily for their friends as well.

* If a PC knows a trade, it is assumed that it was learned from their parent or they were apprenticed. It is also assumed that they left their apprenticeship to become an adventurer. If the character wishes to develop their skills in the trade, they can spend years resuming their apprenticeship (never happens), spend feats to climb the ranks (abstracted off-screen practice and insight), or proceed with apprentice level work. The amount that can be earned is abstracted and can depend on trade. Somethings aren't necessarily very applicable to personal projects (carpentry), or can take a lot of time (prospecting).

NB: That should make it less of a wall of text.

 

[GrahamWills]

This is absolutely an area where you can learn from MMOs, for which the economies they run are key to the experience.
things to take away:

• You can always sell/buy to and from the general market. The result will be a slight loss. You do this when lazy or what you created is unwanted
• There is a pool of people willing to pay a premium. Their tastes vary (you as the GM simulate them worth by fiat or random tables). If you make/acquire what they want, you make money.
• When you make or find stuff, it’s mostly only OK, but semi-randomly can be very expensive. Have long tails on your outcome distribution so the possibility of making a ton is always there.
• Excess cash can be traded for fashion / glory / other non-combat meta currency.

I’d also suggest an idea from medieval history. As a subject of (wherever) your liege lord can just require large amounts of money from you to pay ransoms, fund wars and pay for big events. You get glory, he gets cash. If he does it too often, his subjects will dislike him and may revolt — so as a GM you should make it clear it won’t happen often. It’s a historical way to drain cash if you give players too much by mistake!

 

[GMMichael]

things to take away:

• You can always sell/buy to and from the general market. The result will be a slight loss. You do this when lazy or what you created is unwanted

Was going to do this as: merchants buy used gear at 50% new price or 25% for damaged gear.

• When you make or find stuff, it’s mostly only OK, but semi-randomly can be very expensive. Have long tails on your outcome distribution so the possibility of making a ton is always there.

Found stuff is 50% damaged, 50% good-as-new, as a general rule.

• Excess cash can be traded for fashion / glory / other non-combat meta currency.

Meta currency. Interesting...I wanted to have PCs keep their silver as a means of comparing each other. To see who is most glorious. I suppose they could buy glory points?

At first, I'd like to sell hero points (d6 bonuses), but that becomes a weird sort of pay-to-win thing...

I’d also suggest an idea from medieval history. As a subject of (wherever) your liege lord can just require large amounts of money from you to pay ransoms, fund wars and pay for big events. You get glory, he gets cash. If he does it too often, his subjects will dislike him and may revolt — so as a GM you should make it clear it won’t happen often. It’s a historical way to drain cash if you give players too much by mistake!

I was also thinking about selling homes on an increasing scale... but I think the total silver account becomes less comparable as cash becomes assets.

 

[dragoner]

I went back to school after the crash of '08 and got a degree in management, one of the side effects of that is that I also received my certificate in financial management. A lot of this is too close to what I do in real life to be interesting. Prior to the modern age, one doesn't have a securities exchange, and even corporations are little more than a proprietary concern. Commoners weren't allowed to have large amounts of cash, often enough, looking at things like sumptuary laws. However places with a large amount of cash often saw instant inflation, such as gold rush San Francisco an egg cost a dollar. Also governments were leery of cash because of counterfeiting, such as what Prussia did to Poland.

I think first off they are going to need to acquire a title, and build some sort of fortress to protect their wealth.

 

[pemerton]

Math wizzes, Excel addicts, and GMs among us: I need to create an economy for my game. I want PCs to earn a limited, variable amount of money per-adventure, and they'll spend that money on supplies, repairing gear, and buying new gear. Some gear/magic items will be expensive and require saving between (not too many) adventures. The economy's inputs and outputs are very limited.

Toying with the ideas of PCs with art skill producing valuable work between adventures, and those with crafting skill being able to repair their own gear at an advantaged rate. Also, crafting skill and negotiating skills offer a flat 10% discount to goods/services.

Is there an easy way to do this without the PCs always needing to save money (being broke) or just sitting on piles of gold?

If I've understood you properly, the answer is yes. Torchbearer 2nd ed does this (you need the Lore Master's Manual as well as the Dungeoneer's Handbook and Scholar's Guide).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Me: Undergrad degree in Economics, and an MBA as well.

Advice: as long as you don’t try to get too nonsensical, like having super high prices for locally abundant goods, merchants buying high & selling low, or deciding “X kind of shop simply doesn’t exist“ without some kind of in-campaign rationale*, most people aren’t going to notice the economics part of their role playing experience.

(And the ones who would have probably read or learned more about economics** to be impressed with something you’ve cobbled together with the help of an online forum.)



* IOW, some kind of legal or divine interference with the market

** its entirely possible to READ about economics without actually learning it, so he distinction matters,

 

[dragoner]

Also there is a sort of weird thing to think about is that the Romans constantly changed the purity of the silver in their coins as a way to inflate their value. Something later people knew, and usually would not look upon the old coins as having real value, as they had no way to figure out the purity, and a lot of smaller states having no banks or exchange rate. So that horde of coins could simply not be spent as money, only sold as for its metallic value, and only then in a larger city, probably capital of a kingdom.