Fantasy Economies

[WayneLigon]

When you guys think of some of the worlds you've designed or played in, what economic forces do you picture? Are some of them new or much more important because of the fantasy nature of the world?

When I go to second stage world design, one of the first things I decide is who has X, who wants X and what are they will to do to get it. If I want X to be expensive or rare, it gets put on the other side of some mountains, or across a sea.

For the 'fantasy' nature, the most important thing I usually consider are dwarves. Dwarves are masterful masons and metalworkers and miners: all those trades are very, very desirable in the Middle Ages economy. Dwarves usually provide a lot of those things, so that human metalcrafters are not as common as they normally would be: why buy what a human can make when you can pay a little extra and get a much better dwarf-crafted item (yes, to me if a human and a dwarf both have Craft: Armor at +10, the dwarf still makes better armor). They also quarry quality stone and float it down rivers on large rafts, or portage it overland drawn in huge carts. Humans provide the dwarves with much better and varied foods, woodcrafts, cloth and wine. Note that the humans provide dwarves with luxuries while dwarves provide humans with necessities. This creates tension sometimes when the dwarves get greedy.

In the current game I'm working on, Elves are rare creatures. THey seldom interact with humans, but they provide many enchantments and magical items in exchange for mercenaries, metals, concessions from various rulers (ie, elves can move freely, those bearing a special sigil are immune to persecution by human law, etc). Humans provide mostly intangibles while elves provide the ultimate in luxury goods.

The human countries trade with each other of course. The major nations to the south produce wine, which the north cannot. The north provides rich furs, better ores, and silver (something unknown in the mines of the south, no-one knows why). Both trade horses and steel to the nomads for spices and silks.

Generally I let the economy settle into the background and use it only seldom save where it makes a difference to the adventurers or where it might provide a useful plot hook.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

In
Urbis, the people themselves are a valuable commodity.

You see, most cities have one or more so-called Nexus Towers. These take a small amount of life force from all people who live nearby, and convert it into magical energies. These can be used to power epic spells (now possible for even non-epic spellcasters) - or create magic items.

Thus, the number of people living in a city is directly proportionate to the amount of magical power at a ruler's fingertips. Thus, smart rulers do everything possible to cram as many people into a city as possible, even if that means using up some of that magical energy to do so (like casting epic plant growth spells to increase crop yields, raise new buildings, and so on...). Some of the magical energy needs to be used for defense, and the rest can be used for tradeable magical items...

This scheme has all sorts of interesting magical effects on the economy.

 

[WayneLigon]

They sited a couple of examples (which I unfortunately forget) of resources that tend to come from areas where the government is frequently overturned or otherwise not run so smoothly. The example I do remember is coffee. They mentioned that coffee take a lot of time (something like 5 years) to mature, so the political structures of areas that produce coffee are generally more stable.

That is an extremely fascinating idea. I need to look into that in more depth.

 

[WayneLigon]

They sited a couple of examples (which I unfortunately forget) of resources that tend to come from areas where the government is frequently overturned or otherwise not run so smoothly. The example I do remember is coffee. They mentioned that coffee take a lot of time (something like 5 years) to mature, so the political structures of areas that produce coffee are generally more stable.

That is an extremely fascinating idea. I need to look into that in more depth.

 

[Umbran]

That is an extremely fascinating idea. I need to look into that in more depth.

It may be fascinating as a concept, but I question it's veracity. The coffee example is a bit of a giveaway, there. A great deal of coffee comes from Central and South America. Stable governments? If that's "stable", I'd hate to think what the authors consider to be an unstable government...

 

[Aristotle]

Well, you have a point, but it was also looking at the crops in a more historical perspective than current. Imrpovements in farming equipment and methods might make it less of a factor in current economies.

Take from it what you will though. I'm certainly no expert. I thought it was a neat concept, and one I am using as a factor in the design of my own homebrew.

 

[Agback]

Please add to my list of basics, as well.

As people's basic needs are food, drink, clothing, shelter, and medicine, you tend to find that the basic commodities are food, fuel, fibre (at least where clothes are woven), oil, salt, building materials (usually not traded very far, because of their bulk), and drugs. You really ought to understand how each society you design obtains each of these things. Materials to make tools out of (flint, jade, obsidian, copper, tin, iron) and various ceramic vessels are also often traded widely.

When we think about ancient and mediaeval trade, we tend to be seduced by the glamour of the high value-for-weight items that were shipped long distances: dyes, spices, perfumes, ornamental minerals, furs, feathers, silk, etc. But food, fuel, fibre, and oil actually employed a lot more economic activity than silk or pepper, and were more valuable in total, too.

I would suggest that you read Gies & Gies Life in a Mediaeval City (ISBN 0-06-090880-7).

Regards,


Agback

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

It may be fascinating as a concept, but I question it's veracity. The coffee example is a bit of a giveaway, there. A great deal of coffee comes from Central and South America. Stable governments? If that's "stable", I'd hate to think what the authors consider to be an unstable government...

There are a lot of nations in that continent and a quarter. They vary a great deal in stability.

Also, the effects of American, the US variety, imperialism can throw things off a bit. The International Fruit Corporation, and similar entities, has sometimes had very particularly types of stability in mind when it looked to advance its trade agenda. It seems to me that economic/technological imperialism might become much easier to do in a world with some high magic societies. Similar effects might also be in store for imperialistic intellectual cultures as well.

More to the topic.

Variances in lifespan create new educational realities that can have a profound impact on the development of industry in any given culture or nexus of cultures.

The permance and low maintenance costs of any number of magical effects, but particularly the low level ones, might have a profound impact on how much micro-micro-economic activities are farmed out. I mean families that used to spend a lot of time making light sources at home might only need to acquire the skills to create a continual or even light spell and be perfectly all right.

I'm not certain whether that would discourage household economic activity or increase it or both given different cultural inclinations.

The increase in pernicious monster threats would undoubtabley have a variety of nasty impacts on the way human or demi-human communities organized themselves.

 

[Spatzimaus]

As someone who's played in a very economics-based campaign, I'd like to comment.

The core D&D seems to be locked into the classic medieval economic model: barter for common goods, "commodity" (inherently valued) materials acting as the primary backing of currency, and most coins only being worth the metal they're made from. For example, in the middle ages pepper was worth its weight in gold (literally), simply due to the demand and difficulty in transport.
This just doesn't fit well with many other aspects of D&D; plenty of other financial systems could work in this setting. So, IMC, we shook it up a bit, with the culture of each society resulting in a different monetary system:
1> Elves have an incredibly old society, but disdain things like mining. They also have a very isolated society, and want to ensure their currency doesn't go elsewhere. But, it's a stable, very lawful society.
There's no reason their currency would be based on the material value of the coins themselves. In their mind the ideal currency is one which has no value outside their own lands. This, of course, leads to the basic paper currency, backed by the good faith of the rulers.
2> Gnomes are almost "lawful anarchists" in our world. They've got this incredibly intricate set of almost arbitrary rules, with new rules constantly being added and old ones being removed almost on a whim. Everyone has a certain "Social Rank", based on their material wealth, influence, and the ranks of the people they're connected to. The King isn't a hereditary post, it's just the most influential person of the clan that under these rules has the highest current AVERAGE wealth. In fact, there's a sort of stock market where people invest in each clan on the assumptions of whether their influence will go up or down, and new clans form all the time in attempts to bypass the averaging.
So, under this system, quantified money is just not as important; most people's "wealth" is actually an intricate web of IOUs. You can easily see a Gnome pay for a masterwork sword by trading a favor from the current King, or a derivative share in the future profits of one of the minor clans. It's all very abstract, and outsiders hate getting involved in it (since they're constantly taken advantage of by Gnomes who know the system better). After all, I can trade you an IOU with the King, but maybe I know that he'll be out of office by this afternoon...
3> The Dwarves... well, the Dwarves have plenty of valuable materials, but that's not the basis of their economy any more. The economy of most Dwarven towns is now effectively controlled by a large guild of spellcasters, the Circle of Moradin, who set the price any time they think it'll help the town. (The Circle isn't a dwarf-only guild, it's also got a lot of elves and humans, it just started in the dwarven towns and has the most influence there). It becomes almost a command economy: "Sell your plows for no more than 50 gold, or else we'll just use Fabricate to flood the market and put you out of business". It isn't REALLY evil; they're using plenty of divinations, so they're actually probably right about the long-term effects. It's fairly close to Socialism, but that's not always a bad thing.
4> Halflings have no centralized economy (and very little in the way of government) and just Barter outright for everything. They have no real social concept of "inherent value" beyond the utility of the items; a hot apple pie can be traded for a small bag of seed, a sharp knife, or a good rope. In general this still fits with the PHB prices, except that they don't value most commodities or physical artwork.
When they do absolutely need to trade with other races, they use one of the many Human currencies they've stored up.

Anyway, that's four major races, each of which has an economy very different than the standard D&D.

 

[Buttercup]

Lots of good advice here. Don't forget that in a D&D world, people would trade spell components at the very least, and magic items also, if the world were not low-magic.

What I do is decide what each region can produce, then, based on who lives there, figure out what sorts of things they want and don't want. For instance, if the Kingdom of Salku has abundant vinyards and olive groves, and the finest marble quarries in the civilized world, while the Caliphate of Periperi grows fine cotton,has huge salt flats, and breeds horses, then you just have to figure out how the two kingdoms would trade. Land route? Sea? River barge? Because trade they would.

And if the two kingdoms are separated by the hobgoblin steppes, well then, you've got a big ol' plot hook as well as your trade goods.