d20 Economy - Has anyone revamped it?

[DMH]

Sort of in that the Enchiridion of Treasures and Objects D'Art from S T Cooley (on rpgnow) has a method of determining what goods a community can have (and avoid the billion chickens problem entirely).

 

[Chimera]

I converted my last campaign to a Silver standard and also made the conversion rates a bit different.

20 copper = 1 silver
40 silver = 1 gold
2 gold = 1 platinum
5 golf = 1 mithril

A Longsword is roughly 300 silver "dollars" (or "dinars" or whatever the local government decides to call them), though that is in an area that is on the poor side and where demand is higher.

Given that I haven't run a campaign in over three years, I haven't had much impetus to flesh it out fully by working out the magic item calculations. That's the "Big Project" I have to complete before I can run another game.

 

[Tonguez]

So one wizard in town does this, and suddenly he's making megabucks, and nobody else in town is pulling in anything at all. They're still sitting around, hpoing an adventuring-party will show up with serious spellcasting needs (how often does your party hire NPC spellcasters for spellcasting at all, anyway?). Then they get wise, and drop their prices, too. And the'll probably sell every spell they can as well. And all the wizards, even the crappy first-level ones, are among the richest people in town still. And a lot more business is being done. Everybody is probably richer than they would have been charging those steep prices.

Actually I know an roading Engineer who gets paid $20000 to draw a road plan, the actual work component is to spend a week out in the field surveying, the rest is all done at home. I get $2000 to write a report (after having consulted with community stakeholders) - the government pays remarkably well, but then I also do a wonderful job

I suspect that the Wizard doesn't JUST sell spells, just as I don't just write a single report a year...

 

[Random Goblin]

Actually I know an roading Engineer who gets paid $20000 to draw a road plan, the actual work component is to spend a week out in the field surveying, the rest is all done at home. I get $2000 to write a report (after having consulted with community stakeholders) - the government pays remarkably well, but then I also do a wonderful job

I suspect that the Wizard doesn't JUST sell spells, just as I don't just write a single report a year...

What else does he do, then, other than sell magic items?

And my question remains, who pays him to cast all of those spells?

 

[Wolv0rine]

What else does he do, then, other than sell magic items?

And my question remains, who pays him to cast all of those spells?

Who says anyone's paying him to cast spells? Who says he wants anyone to pay him to cast spells? Maybe those prices are to keep all buy the richest people from asking him to cast spells for them. I an't think of many examples off-hand, but I have the impression that it used to be assumed that the wizard living near town wanted to be left alone, not open a market stall.

Maybe he has a handsome nest egg set aside from his adventuring days, maybe he makes a decent living from the fees he charges to apprentice someone, maybe he patrons/mentors/finances an adventuring group or four with minor magics (spells, items), information, whatnot in exchange for a percentage of their take?

I know the larger point is D&D economics, but every time the topic comes up people seem to always want to view it the way WE view economics and mercantilism in the moden day, with supply and demand counterbalancing each other (in theory) and set prices and all that. I think the wizard example is a good one, because maybe the wizard doesn't care about making 'mad dinars' or whatever, maybe he has other goals. Maybe the nearby hamlet leaves baskets of food and jugs of milk near his tower in the hopes that the mysterious wizard won't blast the town to ash, or make their cows birth four-headed club footed calves, or whatever they think wizards do.

Personally it seems to me that prices (and we must admit that the very structure of the game requires set listed prices for us as gamers to have something to work with) should be mutable. List prices should be a base recommendation in a good-sized town or city - lower in smaller communities, higher in bigger communities - as adjusted for mitigating factors. Do I know you? No? Then my prices rise by..oh... 10% today. Are you Enrique the radish farmer's wife bringing in radishes like you do everyday? Then we have an understanding that if you slide me a small basket of radishes, my prices drop by say 35%, both because I like radishes and because I know you. Did you just ride into town with eight large chests dripping with huge gold doubloons bearing markings I've never seen before, AND flub your diplomacy check to barter? Hehehe.. my prices just jumped 250%. Hey, don't point that sword at me mister, I'm the only merchant in town that stocks his stuff, and if you don't like my prices maybe you'd like to know how hard it is to get a supply of this stuff to this po-dunk little village, eh? Wanna hire on to guard my caravan shipments? No? Then pay my price.

(Okay sorry, got carried away there with the merchant-point-of-view text)

 

[Aaron L]

Who says anyone's paying him to cast spells? Who says he wants anyone to pay him to cast spells? Maybe those prices are to keep all buy the richest people from asking him to cast spells for them. I an't think of many examples off-hand, but I have the impression that it used to be assumed that the wizard living near town wanted to be left alone, not open a market stall.

M

Well dangit, thats exactly what I was going to say!

 

[Wolv0rine]

Well dangit, thats exactly what I was going to say!

You mean I actually managed to beat someone to saying something? Hot damn! LOL I'm usually the one coming along saying "Aw man, I was gonna say that!"

 

[Tonguez]

What else does he do, then, other than sell magic items?

And my question remains, who pays him to cast all of those spells?

Okay I think we can probably compare the DnD Wizard to modern rl Scientist
most of them are employed by education intitutions and spend a lot of their time teaching other would be wizards (and getting paid for such), those lucky enough to have a patron (either state (ie the Royal Mage) or Private) can act as pure researcher. There is also the military use of Wizards (again a Patron relationship). In DnD the option of retired adventurer living of his piles of gold is a possibility

I assume in DnD with its plethora of abandoned ruins and adventurers that every now and then an advnturer will turn up with the gold and need to purchase a spell, however this may in fact be a very small part of their actual work (the majority of which is the above mentioned research and teaching and of course state sponsored events (eg the Fireworks show put on by Gandalf at Bilbo's birthday - that was done for a friend but a King might pay an illusionist to do a light show at the royal wedding etc, those are all options)

 

[EdL]

and how after a single adventure someone can destroy an average sized town's economy.

I'm going to leave the economy issue mostly alone. (I tend to swear mightily whenever I look at the PHB price list. Some are quite close to actual midevil prices, but most are right off the chart.)

I will, however, relate a tale from one of our 1e games. We did a job for a hamlet (around 3rdish level IIRC) then went back looking to get paid, in addition to the loot we got. These guys were dirt poor, but scraped up what they could, including veggies and livestock. Well sir, some of us started feeling a bit guilty about that, so someone gave them all the copper from his share of the loot. Not to be outdone, someone else handed over all their silver. Long story short, no one wanted to look like a cad, so the hamlet made out almost as well as the party had.

Some weeks later we heard about a village where the entire population had simply disappeared. Looking into this new plot hook we realised that it was the hamlet we'd been so generous to. Doing some more (quite) investigation we figured out what monster had depopulated the place. Us! After we left they figured that they were now rich and they all moved to the big city!

So yes, indeed, D&D style economies, being geared to providing the PCs with large amounts of loot (relatively speaking) can be destroyed very easily if the PCs start dumping it on the 'poor peasants' instead of spening it on magic items and the like!

 

[S'mon]

That high level PCs returning from successful dungeon expeditions have more money than powerful barons is part of the charm of the game IMO, and one of the main reasons why anyone would do something as dangerous as dungeon-crawling.

The only problem I've seen with 3e economics is that Monte's formulae are ill thought out and give cities far too much wealth. I cap the liquid wealth in a city at about 30gp per head of population, and that seems to work out ok. Sure, 12th level PCs returning from a dungeon looting expedition can buy a small town (possibly a big town), but that's no problem; in 1e it was part of the milieu and it stays that way IMC. Such events are not normal or routine in the campaign world, they are inherently disruptive. This is one of the reasons such PCs are encouraged to settle down as nobles & rulers in their own right.