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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gus L" data-source="post: 9356470" data-attributes="member: 7045072">Prices in early editions are very weird for a "dungeon crawl" game - or even one about bands of heroes fighting monsters, especially with the general loose encumbrance of those editions.  When one combines how cheap equipment is with how much gold you need to level (and the treasure tables theoretically offer) it's easy to suspect something weird is going on.My own guess is that the reward and equipment bits of early D&D (also note there's a persistent rumor I can't track down that the D&D equipment price tables are based on prices in a 19th century Sears catalogue... with 1GP = $1 ... presumably a gold Eagle?) are for a war game....That is the dungeon crawl is sort of a diversion or mini game where heroes and squad leaders from your fantasy domain go into a place to grab loot that is largely intended to pay for troops.  Like Plate Mail is only 50GP, meaning a level 2 fighter could spend all the gold the got leveling and have a collection of 40 suits of the best non-magical armor - disregarding the cost of walk in armor closets.  Instead imagine that the 2,000 GP is recovered and you're trying to equip an army.  Hiring Heavy Infantry in OD&D costs a mere 3GP a month ... but I assume they don't come with equipment.  So that 2nd level fighter could instead pay for a squad of equipped heavy infantry (upkeep/pay @3GP, plate mail @50GP, Helmet @10 GP, Shield @10GP, Sword @10 GP, 4 rations @20 GP = 103GP each).  Our Level 2 Fighter can lead a band of 15 0-level Heavy infantry at this point and still have a few hundred gold to spend on fancy hats...I can't prove this of course, though the "First Campaign" or whatever about Arneson's Blackmoor suggests something of the sort, but to me the rules structure around logistics and equipment cost makes sense in this context, and I think those are things that were very important to the designers wargamer souls.Of course D&D and RPGs went another way - because exploring dungeons and playing as one character in a basically heroic, novelistic fantasy was more popular then running PvP domain wargame campaigns.</blockquote>

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