Excerpt: Economies [merged]

[Mort_Q]

How long will it be before UNALIGNED PC's realize that merchants have far more magic items and cash than the monsters?

Merchants are monsters. Grrrrrrr!

If the PCs want to go darkside, that's OK... they just shouldn't expect all merchants to be minions.

 

[malraux]

Yeah, that just doesn't fly well. I've known way more greedy players than I have met players that fit into all the other problem categories. The question of selling directly will come up and a response of "Sorry no, the rules say you can't." is just not good enough to satisfy them. This gets even worse if the party has a thief character with high gather information and other skills and background that would imply that this is in fact just the kind of thing he would be good at.

This can and will come up in more than a merchant based campaign. This is human nature to want to get the best prices, and by making the price disparities so large it almost begs for players to try to get around it.

Again, unless the characters decide to spend a significant amount of resources establishing the contacts/reputation/time, then they can't get the full value. But if you want better reasons, why do you pay more money to buy something from a store than from ebay/craigslist/garage sales? Because you have reasonable trust in the store brand, the return policies, established levels of quality, etc. Also, stores are regulated as a business by different agencies (BBB, consumer protection laws, etc). For your characters to become a business, they need to establish themselves as a reputable provider of magic items. That starts at selling their items basically at the wholesale price (1/5 market price). After a few years and many many sales, they can have built up a name for selling quality magic items and can then charge full price, assuming they've spent those few years just selling magic items. So I really don't think its reasonable for characters to say that they should sell magic items at full price unless they're wanting to play a merchant campaign.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Merchants are monsters. Grrrrrrr!

If the PCs want to go darkside, that's OK... they just shouldn't expect all merchants to be minions.

Nor, IMO, should they expect the local merchants to NOT hire other adventurers to protect them.

 

[Keenath]

The Economy article kind of makes me chuckle because this "new way of handling treasure" is more or less how I've been doing it for years. I don't think I've ever rolled treasure according to the monster's type -- I looked at what they give to determine what *sort* of treasures to give them, but the values have always been based on the total per-level value divided by the number of encounters, modified by the type of encounter. (For example, a raiding party typically won't carry much treasure, but their camp will have a large store of cash and goods -- it's a "feast and famine" style of treasure distribution. It averages out the same, but it's more fun to find two or three really massive hauls rather than a dozen little rewards, with the occasional "single valuable item" that's worth perhaps one encounter of treasure all by itself -- usually as a hidden treasure that they might miss.) I haven't done this "packet" thing, but that sounds like it's just an easy way to record what I'm talking about.

 

[Wolfwood2]

Yeah, that just doesn't fly well. I've known way more greedy players than I have met players that fit into all the other problem categories. The question of selling directly will come up and a response of "Sorry no, the rules say you can't." is just not good enough to satisfy them. This gets even worse if the party has a thief character with high gather information and other skills and background that would imply that this is in fact just the kind of thing he would be good at.

This can and will come up in more than a merchant based campaign. This is human nature to want to get the best prices, and by making the price disparities so large it almost begs for players to try to get around it.

If that is what the players want to do, then of course it is doable. You don't need any rules above and beyond what you already have, though. Selling the goods for full price is an adventure, composed of skill challenges and fighting creatures to get the goods to the right buyer. The profit they make at the end is the appropriate number of treasure packets.

Simple, see?

 

[nerfherder]

Again, unless the characters decide to spend a significant amount of resources establishing the contacts/reputation/time, then they can't get the full value. But if you want better reasons, why do you pay more money to buy something from a store than from ebay/craigslist/garage sales? Because you have reasonable trust in the store brand, the return policies, established levels of quality, etc. Also, stores are regulated as a business by different agencies (BBB, consumer protection laws, etc). For your characters to become a business, they need to establish themselves as a reputable provider of magic items. That starts at selling their items basically at the wholesale price (1/5 market price). After a few years and many many sales, they can have built up a name for selling quality magic items and can then charge full price, assuming they've spent those few years just selling magic items. So I really don't think its reasonable for characters to say that they should sell magic items at full price unless they're wanting to play a merchant campaign.

Not to mention guild fees...

 

[Mort_Q]

Nor, IMO, should they expect the local merchants to NOT hire other adventurers to protect them.

That could make an interesting hook. A merchant has acquired, legitimately, an item that is invaluable to the PC's latest quest. They can't afford what he's asking, and they don't have time to go adventuring for more.

 

[Rex Blunder]

I wish that people could specifically reply to a certain post, like on Slashdot, and their replies would appear under that post. Then I could just stay away from the "20% resale value" ghetto and read the interesting posts.

My first eye-opener in the article was the fact that all found treasure was above the level of he PC. "Then why have treasure level at all?" I thought. "Seems like artificial inflation."

Then I read the part about how the PCs could only manufacture treasure of their level and below. Now it makes sense: PCs are able to get whatever they want, of their level and below. But the system retains the excitement of finding otherwise unobtainable items through adventuring. Nice.

The other thing I wondered about is, as someone else mentioned, it's impossible to find level 1 stuff in treasure hordes? Also, level 1 is the only time you'll ever find level 2 stuff in a horde. Kind of strange.

 

[eleran]

It's funny because in AD&D we never allowed the selling of magical items at all. They were given to henchmen, trusted friends, or used as a bribe. Selling them just wasn't allowed. And it never was a problem.

obviously you were not playing correctly, please turn in any left over materials and notes from that time to your nearest simulationist re-programming center. And don't eat the green stuff, its gamists.

 

[Mort_Q]

I wish that people could specifically reply to a certain post, like on Slashdot, and their replies would appear under that post.

Some forums will autolink in the quote to the post you're quoting, which works fairly well too. I don't like nested forums myself however.