Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Grackle" data-source="post: 1833410" data-attributes="member: 23976">So, I'm playing in a new D&D campaign this month, and although I'm not the DM, the players and the DM are all sort of co-operatively creating a setting.  It's going to be a pulp-fantasy, grim-n-gritty, urban setting. Although we're kind of basing the city on Lankmar, we are keeping in lots of traditional D&Disms like the PHB races and the Underdark, and so on, but w/a few spins on stuff to sort of explain it all in.  (1/2 orcs are warrior-slaves bred on ranches just outside the city, dwarves are war-refugees forced to the surface, etc.)  One thing that Scott (my DM) wants is dragons.  Maybe not living in the city, or directly visible to the citizens, but definitely w/some connection to the place and influence over it.  He likes dragons.This got me thinking.  What effect would dragons have on a human city, and specifically it's economy?  I mean these guys must suck up a ton of money.  Gold, jewels, artwork, magic- they would try to collect and horde as much of it as possible and once it got on their pile they would never let it go.  All that loot is effectively out of circulation forever.One thing I thought was that if the Dragon-in-Question kept hording gold coins and such, it could drive up the cost of precious metals.  Maybe the city at some point has stopped minting gold and converted to base-metal coins.  We might still use "GP"s as the standard unit, but they're not actually gold.  Gold is valued by weight, maybe dozens of GPs for an ounce.I imagine almost all of the economy is a matter of trading grain and wood and animals and boring stuff like that.  Works of art are usually just things rich people buy to make themselves feel better about themselves, but if you have a dragon hanging out, that stuff becomes way more important.  It becomes a way to bribe/hire/pay tribute to this incredibly powerful monster.  This might mean their would be lots more trading in foriegn curiosities, superbly crafted anything, objects pillaged from ancient graves, etc.The dragon would love being near a prosperous human city.  To him it would be like having an army of lemurs scouring a junkyard for dollar bills and loose change.  He might have even arranged for the city to develop the way it did- guiding its history from behind the scenes. hmmmm....  Maybe he formed a contract w/the church or nobility a thousand years ago and the city has been paying yearly tributes ever since.This is all pretty 1st stage stuff.  I don't have alot of specifics on what type of dragon(s) it will be, and Scott will probably keep some of the facts to himself.  Still, any brainstorming will help .So, any thoughts?  I'm sure there are a million things that I'm not thinking of.  Do you have any stories about draco-human politics?</blockquote>

Verification