D&D Economics

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Due to a recent thread, I've been looking at economics as presented in D&D. It's already well established that they don't make sense, and that they're broken and stupid in general. Some products make this even worse, by pricing things in entirely unreasonable fashions.

Is there any sourcebook that makes a reasonable attempt at fixing this mess, by providing realistic wealth guidelines per level and making the prices of goods and services make consistent sense? Is there any way to adjust the magic level of a campaign by comparing the price of magical items to big-ticket mundane items?

The more I look at this issue, the more it's driving me absolutely insane.

 

[Tric]

Last time I looked, it was a roleplaying game, not an economics simulation.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Last time I looked, it was a roleplaying game, not an economics simulation.

Yeah, and the more mundane elements of a setting make sense, the easier it is to suspend disbelief when dealing with the fantastic elements.

If it were an economics simulation, I'd expect a hell of a lot more then a rough semblance of logic and consistency.

 

[diaglo]

i still use Aurora's Catalog

if you want to play P&P check out the 1edADnD DMG (1979 revised by Gary Gygax) i think they have a mention of the rules.

 

[Tric]

Yeah, and the more mundane elements of a setting make sense, the easier it is to suspend disbelief when dealing with the fantastic elements.

If it were an economics simulation, I'd expect a hell of a lot more then a rough semblance of logic and consistency.

Unless your group consists of stock brokers, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Other threads that MAY give some help.

Bank in… http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=125245&highlight=Economics
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=96867&highlight=Economics


How Does…
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=109701&highlight=Economics

Other…
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=88300&highlight=Economics
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=85621&highlight=Economics

 

[radferth]

If it bugs you:

1) You're thinking about too much.

so

2) Shift to a more abstract wealth system (like the one in Blue Rose or d20 Modern)

or

3) Decide on a conversion (like 1gp + $10 or $20) and price everything in based on modern prices. Remember to base the price on hand-made items, rather than mass produced ones.

I don't know if #3 would give any more satisfying results, but it will at least shift the focus of your ire from arbitrary game prices to real-world prices.

 

[reanjr]

Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe makes sense of the nonsense, but doesn't really try to fix it.

One problem with fixing it is that the first thing you would do is remove coins for the most part. No one really used cash until fairly recently.

Even if you kept coins as the means of exchange (reasonable given some situations) you've got the problem of coins of different nations.

Then you've got commodities. Managing a commodities market in D&D could turn into a nightmare.

You've also got regional deviance. In the U.S. alone, some things range by up to 500% depending on where you purchase them. And that's a nation with a standard unit of exchange and mass transportation.

Chartered towns would sell things for different amounts than next door kingdoms due to taxation and tarriff differences.

Certain goods can vary in price wildly during wartime or famine.

Then you need an economic picture of what's manufactured and/or grown where. Saffron is ridiculously expensive due to the global economy, but without mass transportation it would likely be fairly cheap in one area and prohibitively expensive elsewhere (this may be the case in realiyu, I don't know).

Then you've got the service industry which can vary on whims and be easily price-fixed by a guild.

Not to mention quality of goods which is never addressed in D&D. A functional longsword is great, but what about a beautiful one made by a master craftsman? These would be more like works of art, costing whatever the market could bear, upwards of 1,000 times that of a common sword if it was the right craftsman or it used to be owned by the right person.

To be honest, I think the best way to do it is to simply learn something of economic theory and ad hoc everything.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Somewhere I've got a pretty extensive price listing from the 2E days that bases prices off of actual medieval prices. I think that setting prices to a more "realistic" level could be integrated into the game pretty easily - the trick is getting the prices in the first place. The other trick is picking what time frame and location to use as the model. In some time frames, coins may not be in much use, but that doesn't hold true across the entire medieval period.

Once setting the prices at a particular level is done, then you could tweak the other parts of the system to compensate pretty simply by relating them to key costs.

This would be a product that I'd like to see, personally.

 

[Desdichado]

Personally, I prefer a more abstract wealth system as in d20 Modern. Or just handwaving money.