D&D Economics - Out of the Dungeon

[Olaf the Stout]

The 2E PC thief which gave me my screen name is currently the owner of The Hearty Meal and Missy's Gems in Sigil. Both of them were "liberated" from their former owners! - An efreeti and a mind flayer if I remember correctly. What can I say, we were teenagers at the time.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Aaron L]

In our long running epic game, the party cleric Caemon started out small: he invested in a few things, started an oyster farm(?!), and started his own bank. After a few years (real time) he was known as the richest man in the world. It got to the point where he controlled the economy of the entire kingdom his businesses were based in.

Unfortunately, that kingdom happened to be mine.



Subtle power struggles ensued, political maneuvering, lots of intrigue. It's not that we weren't friends; he was the high priest of Jas, the god of Good and the sunrise, and I was Malachi the ranger, founder and first king of Falcor (Malachi was very Chaotic and chafed under his crown, and by the end he was the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th king of Falcor ), and by that point in our careers had become kind of a direct mortal agent of our god. (Jas had been raised to divinity from human origins, and as such was kind of a "hands on" type of god in a very Eddings kind of way. He even visited from time to time, and would bring Malachi boxes of his favorite cigars [Malachi was very much a character in the vein of Nick Fury and Wolverine])

Anywho, Caemon pretty much owned the economy of Falcor and had so many businesses I couldn't count them. He ran the banking system (actually he owned it, Malachi was Chaotic Good and felt the only interference he should have in people's lives was to provide military protection, so he didnt touch the economy.) But as High Piest of the state religion he also ran the Church and all it's charities. His stated goal was to make everyone in Falcor rich. And he did so. The only problem was that while everyone had lots of money, inflation went crazy and loaves of bread started costing 15 gold pieces. Caemon and Malachi had power struggles of a sort, which ended up with Malachi gettin sick of everything and abdicating in favor of Caemon and taking off into the wilderness for a year. Then Jas visited me and told me I shouldnt have handed Caemon the throne, it was my country. So I went back and told Caemon that Jas had commanded me to take back the kingdom. He left in a huff, and never even bothered to commune with Jas to see if I had told the truth. I had in fact lied.

He eventually moved to a new continent to found a new kingdom, a theocratic utopian society where no one needed money and everything was provided for by the church. Funded by his business activities on the mainland.


His player had notebooks full of data and accounting stuff. He had a lot of fun with it


Damn, I miss that game. We did that for 12 or 13 years. At the end, half the ganme sessions were political or economic, almost all roleplaying; diplomatic meetings, balls, sometimes wars. It took something momentous to get us out in the field again. We almost fought the god of entropy and Evil once.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Hmmm, how do they make money.... Let me count the ways.

In the beginning, the PC cleric realizes he has some coin that he can't figure out how to use; not enough for a great item and he doesn't feel like buying another backup wand of curing. He visits an NPC trader who is a former adventurer and arranges to invest in the trade caravan. The party goes on an quest for a few months and when they get back, the cleric is handed a bag of gold by the trader.

Instantly, the rest want in on the racket. I explain it is a random system that is weighted towards a moderate profit over the long haul. The smart ones figure out that means they need to diversify and begin trolling through their list of past contacts who were traders and see if they need silent partners.

Later they had to travel between continents. Chartering a ship was expensive, simply because of the risks and time involved. Upon further consideration, they purchased the ship and contracted the crew. They then leased it to the trade consortium they were heavily invested in, and turned their journey into a profit generating venture.

IMC the nobility dislikes giving out rewards more than a few hundred gold in cash. So I've given out tax exemptions (causing them to invest in that region), exemptions to toll roads and to city entrance taxes (resulting in their escorting some of their own caravans, again bringing wealth into the region. Smart, those nobles).

When that begins to pale, they switch to military rank. Heroes of note should be able to give instructions and have people take them seriously. Military rank gives them that, as well as giving the military influence over them (heh, heh, heh.) Military rank also tends to come with a stipend (pretty minor for their level, but comforting), the guarantee of a warm place to sleep & food in any town of note (handy, very handy) and the ability to requisition supplies (also very handy).

Beyond that, gifts of land are popular, preferrably land that should be profitable but has some monstrous presence that keeps away the peasants but isn't such a nuisance that it has ever been worth getting rid of it. (Again, it indirectly results in investment within the nobles' demenses)

I've also used the "investment due to guilt" approach. Their adopted town wanted to make some improvements (build a real protective wall around the town) but hadn't raised all the cash they needed and would the heroes please loan the town a few thousand gold at a fixed interest rate? They agreed but were smart enough to require a parcel of land within the wall as part of the repayment process.

After that they started looking for investment opportunities. When they were given a reward for saving a keep from a goblin invasion (but not before the goblins burned the fields and destroyed the peasants' houses), they gave the money back to the lord to loan out to the peasantry to get them productive faster. They also arranged for a school of magic to be built in the area since a) the goblins were so dangerous b/c they had magic and b) the locals are a ready workforce that won't be tilling fields any time soon.

Most recently they funded a tavern/brothel in a town they "saved."

At the moment they are brokering a land deal for a group of psions that were self-exiled in an extradimensional realm for a few thousand years. Exactly what profit they will make there has yet to be seen but I expect there to be some.

Net result is they hold the rank of Major in one military, Sargeant Majors in another, are adopted members of a major Clan, between them own something like eight houses and about 5,000 acres on two continents and in five different cities, are the primary holder of a city bond to one city and a loan to a small barony, are the co-owners in a tavern/brothel, and have a combined total of about 500,000gp invested in about six different traders scattered across two continents and three seas. They are exempt to all tolls on the King's or Emperor's Highways, are exempt to the normal entrance fees & taxes for cities in the Kingdom and an Empire, are exempt to the cargo fees & taxes in three cities, have tax various tax shelters on a variety of properties, hold traders' guild "Master" status across most of the planet, and are honorary deans of an Imperial School of Magic.

The party is 20th level now, FYI, and it took some 6 years of IRL and game time to amass those assets.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

In our old Birthright game, I took advantage of a quirk in the holdings rules to make a chain of 0-level holdings in large provinces; the one in the Imperial City was especially fruitful, as it got me d6 gold bars (2000 gp)/season. This was a separate holding from the national guild of Halskapa which I also ran, which was in the middle of a vast capital improvement project when the DM said he didn't want to worry about domain stuff any more. (Actually, he changed the rules on us, but that's what he really meant to say) Which was a pity, as I was just about to start doubling the guild's income via a series of linked trade networks.

In our current Eberron game, we keep saying we're going to become arms traffickers. That is to say, we'll buy used weapons in vast quantities in Khorvaire and ship them to Xen'drik.

Brad

 

[Treebore]

To answer questions like this in my campaign, with more realistic details, I bought Magical Medievel Socities: Western Europe and A Magical Society: Silk Road from Expeditious Retreat Press.

They are very well researched and kept financial rewards "realistic", even so you learn why the rich get richer if they are moderately competent.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

This recent thread got me thinking.

D&D adventurers typically start out rather poor. But they engage in high-risk, high-reward activity that tends to make them either dead, or quite rich indeed - and in fact, the assumption that the PCs will steadily accumulate wealth is built into the very rule system itself, thanks to the cost of magic items and other gear the PCs will have.

In the beginning, it is entirely understandable that the PCs will reinvest their earnings into their equipment, since that's what keeps them alive. But sooner or later, it is quite possible that their wealth reaches a point where the PCs might say: "We are rich now - so let's invest our money in things other than equipment!" Opening up a buisiness, creating a trading company, or purchasing land - all are viable possibilities for a sufficiently rich PC.

Of course, none of these need be hindrances to further adventures. For one thing, they have now property to defend. For another they can get into trouble or find new challenges when they try to expand their business. Finally, they might adventure for ethical or political reasons unrelated to their property.

With that in mind: What kinds of businesses have the PCs created or what kinds of other larger-scale efforts did the PCs pursue in your campaigns to accumulate even more wealth?

I recently read a book called "Warriors of the Plains", a book about "cowboys/merchants" based on real life. (Don't snicker.) It was from 1830-1855 or so, which is actually a bit before the cowboy era as I understand it, but whatever. They were competent traders and adventurer-types. But, here's the thing.

Running a business takes smarts and skills. Some adventurers aren't smart (most fighter types aren't), and most don't have any business acumen. The only character from the company who didn't have business acumen was a scout, who naturally was never around the other characters except for a few days every few months.

Nobles frequently had someone (a steward) take care of their land while they were gone. However this meant the steward ended up doing most of the business, while the noble could go to war, become a government minister or even adventure with few hindrances.

The rules system makes it difficult for PCs to spend money on anything but magic items after a few levels. You can't start a business because it'll make you too weak to recoup your initial investment through the usual method of "kicking arse and taking names" - unless you don't mind not adventuring for five years to make money the less violent way. (By that time, you might be too comfortable to want to adventure again, now that you've got more to lose.) If the PCs were rewarded with a fief (or adjoining fiefs) by the king or queen, they might not have to put much money into it, in which case they install one or more stewards and go adventure. But at that point, little has changed, other than giving them a home base from which the PCs can occasionally dispense business advice. They won't even be able to invest loot they acquire later on because of the rules system.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

One PC started a bookshop in a DnD city based campaign we played in.

It ended up trashed by the mafia, and the stock was too expensive to replace. So we started looking for a cheaper commodity.

Moved onto selling 'rat on a stick'.

The mafias protection money demands were too high, so to make extra money, we started selling the drained rat blood out the back door to poor vampires.

Eventually saved up enough for a shortsword each. Which rocked.

Was a funny campaign that one.