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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 1337708" data-attributes="member: 3051">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.</blockquote>

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