D&D Economics

[der_kluge]

Speaking of economics, I've found a curious thing in my games.

Players won't hesitate to spend large quantities of money on magic items, when they are available for purchase, but they'll totally balk if I charge more than 2gp for a room at a classy inn. I've tried charging like 10gp for a room before and the players are like "that's crazy!" Despite them having thousands of gold coins to their name.

Anyone else seen this?

 

[Rel]

Well, assuming I run another game with more standard item practices in it (I'm very ham fisted in the one I'm currently DMing), I have this plan. First, there's not all that much cash around. I mean, sure there's cash, but not the situation were each member of the party is hauling around 10 pounds of coinage with mighty jingle jangling. There'd be a lot of copper, some silver, a little gold. I'd consider the wealth guidelines as a sort of invisible score. See, the large quantity of money that a magic item costs isn't really what it's about, the cost associated with the item represents instead the sort of influence it can pull in.

I find your ideas intriguing and I may consider using this in the future. Thanks, ThoughtBubble.

 

[MojoGM]

Well, assuming I run another game with more standard item practices in it (I'm very ham fisted in the one I'm currently DMing), I have this plan. First, there's not all that much cash around. I mean, sure there's cash, but not the situation were each member of the party is hauling around 10 pounds of coinage with mighty jingle jangling. There'd be a lot of copper, some silver, a little gold. I'd consider the wealth guidelines as a sort of invisible score. See, the large quantity of money that a magic item costs isn't really what it's about, the cost associated with the item represents instead the sort of influence it can pull in.

This is a great idea!

 

[Henry]

Speaking of economics, I've found a curious thing in my games.

Players won't hesitate to spend large quantities of money on magic items, when they are available for purchase, but they'll totally balk if I charge more than 2gp for a room at a classy inn. I've tried charging like 10gp for a room before and the players are like "that's crazy!" Despite them having thousands of gold coins to their name.

As an experiment, tell them that anyone who stays in that more expensive room with the hot bath, the hot meal, the extra bolts on doors and windows, etc. will get one free reroll of an initiative roll the next day the first time they find themselves in combat. Guarantee you'll find far more takers for the more expensive inn rooms.

Alternately, if they are more into the roleplaying descriptive aspects of it, remind them what they get for that 10 gp. Sometimes just the descriptions of "plain room with a cold water basin and a single bolt on the door" will make them more conscious of where they stay.

 

[Belen]

As an experiment, tell them that anyone who stays in that more expensive room with the hot bath, the hot meal, the extra bolts on doors and windows, etc. will get one free reroll of an initiative roll the next day the first time they find themselves in combat. Guarantee you'll find far more takers for the more expensive inn rooms.

Alternately, if they are more into the roleplaying descriptive aspects of it, remind them what they get for that 10 gp. Sometimes just the descriptions of "plain room with a cold water basin and a single bolt on the door" will make them more conscious of where they stay.

Agreed. Also, having expensive wines, imported food, in house seamstresses etc. You need to make these inns truly unique and really bring out the fantasy experience. For instance, maybe each room has a magical alarm...

 

[Altalazar]

Just read www.lewrockwell.com - it is a libertarian site, so there is politics there (evil!) but they also have a lot of links to articles on basic economics.

I, for one, like a realistic economic system - but then I'm weird and I like economics and capitalism and investing as an interesting pasttime.

To a certain degree, unless your players are building kingdoms, you don't need to worry about too many of the nitty gritty details - and the economics of your players actions (buying magic or whatever) will find its own center after a while, if you play it right - once you establish how it sort of works and what prices are, your players will then take advantage of that knowledge, which is a good thing - maybe it will adjust prices for certain things up or down as they make their own business out of it.

 

[Rel]

Speaking of economics, I've found a curious thing in my games.

Players won't hesitate to spend large quantities of money on magic items, when they are available for purchase, but they'll totally balk if I charge more than 2gp for a room at a classy inn. I've tried charging like 10gp for a room before and the players are like "that's crazy!" Despite them having thousands of gold coins to their name.

Anyone else seen this?

Tell them that the 10GP room comes with a Changeling hooker.

 

[The Sigil]

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.

Don't know if this has been linked already, but the economic system as written is not too bad at handling magic items... I (re-)present "The Economics of Magic Items (RE: Naked Adventurers)"

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=17162&highlight=Magic+shop

Besides, it even has a laugh-out-loud funny comic book guy reference!

--The Sigil

 

[Wilphe]

ThoughtBubble:

That I like; take the market out of it entirely and base it all on reciprocal gift-giving. There's a lot of potential there; gifts should balance out in some way but it would be utterly crass to mention the fact out load. Give someone a gift they can't reciprocate and you've either insulted them or made them your client.

 

[Gez]

A long time ago, ENBoarder "Old One" posted an economic system in the Homebrew forum, which I had then archived online as a simple HTML file.
http://gez117.free.fr/dnd/economics.html