D&D General Games Economies

[AlViking]

If DMs think the characters have too much gold, isn't the solution simply to not give them as much? I fail to see the issue here. If you're running a published module you are free to adjust it as you see fit. I don't personally see giving the characters a reasonable amount of gold and things to spend it on to be a problem. The key word here is reasonable. So yes, I want that fighter to be able to afford plate mail, the wizard can occasionally buy a scroll and add it to their spellbook or create a backup spellbook, characters can buy magic items from a curated list. They are never swimming in gold. I just glanced at the character sheets for a group that is level 8 and the average is a little over 500 GP. A decent chunk of change certainly, but if they're saving up for any big expenditures it's not much. The numbers are a bit skewed by the one guy that has more than double the amount the others have. I assume he's saving his pennies for something specific.

So if you think the characters have too much money? Talk to the person who keeps handing it out.

 

[kermit4karate]

Years ago I started using a trick in my D&D games where I began to think of silver pieces as US dollars. GP as $10. Etc.

Grounds it in reality, I guess.

By simply thinking of coins as dollars, it changes the thought process for me. I stopped giving out 10,000 GP for random encounters because...that's $100,000! Why would someone walking down the street find $100,000!?

Works great for me!

 

[LordBP]

 

[AlViking]

Years ago I started using a trick in my D&D games where I began to think of silver pieces as US dollars. GP as $10. Etc.

Grounds it in reality, I guess.

By simply thinking of coins as dollars, it changes the thought process for me. I stopped giving out 10,000 GP for random encounters because...that's $100,000! Why would someone walking down the street find $100,000!?

Works great for me!

I think of a GP like a $20 bill (or a bit more because of inflation nowadays). The average person would have at most 10 or so, if you want more you have to encounter the equivalent of a Brinks truck. It also depends on the assumed wealth level, many economies worked primarily on a barter or services economy. That servant may have only received a few silver a week but they also got room and board along with basic necessities.

So when people say "I bribe the servant with 10 GP, more than they've ever seen in their life!" it doesn't necessarily mean that much. I don't assume gold has the same value in game as it does in the real world.

 

[Horwath]

No, it's not D&D standard, but it works to explain why my world isn't drowning in magic items.

price can be easy explanation why world is not drowning in magic items.

and are +1 weapons or armor really that magical?
I always saw them as really good made pieces of equipment, sure as magic is everywhere a good smith will learn to imbue weapons with "magical" property, but +1 items could be fairly common.

besides, it is very boring when you are 9th level fighter in with the same sword and same armor and shield that you finished boot camp.

 

[kermit4karate]

price can be easy explanation why world is not drowning in magic items.

and are +1 weapons or armor really that magical?
I always saw them as really good made pieces of equipment, sure as magic is everywhere a good smith will learn to imbue weapons with "magical" property, but +1 items could be fairly common.

besides, it is very boring when you are 9th level fighter in with the same sword and same armor and shield that you finished boot camp.

There have never been enough, or a greater enough variety, of magic items in the official D&D books, IMO. I always, always feel that I have to create custom pieces, especially for adventures between levels 1-5, because to your point, it can't simply be about +1, +2, etc. That's too adolescent and cookie cutter for any type of remotely experienced TTRPG crowd.

Things like...

A Ricochet Axe - Handaxe with dwarven runes that mean "second chance" carved into the handle. When you make a ranged attack and miss the target, you can use your reaction to cause the axe to ricochet off a surface and make a second attack against a different creature within 10 feet of the original target.

That way it still isn't terribly powerful, and doesn't even have to have a +1, but it's still magical and different enough to be interesting and cherished by the owner (at lower levels).

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I go even further than others with the assumed value of coins. I treat 1 copper piece as the conceptual equivalent of $1 USD. That means a silver is $10, and a gold $100.

This was not arbitrary. I looked at the price of real estate in the DMG. I looked at the price of lifestyle expenses and hirelings (although I provide more tiers than listed), food and lodging. It works.

Most things fall into a logical place that way as far as purchasing power. Weapons and armor are so expensive because they are state of the art military gear, which pretty much always has been expensive.

It also means you should adjust how much money NPCs can afford to pay for things. If the adventure says the mayor of some thorp can pay each character 100 gp, you have to think whether it's reasonable that he would be willing and able to pay a total of $50,000 (or whatever party size dictates) for the service.

As far as loot from monsters and dungeons, I split it in half. But I also use a lot slower advancement, so that is to keep the party from being way above default wealth (they are already around 2x above). You don't have to do that for the value equivalency to work. Treasure hoards of dragons and such should be worth a ton, and by default individual monsters aren't typically carrying a lot of wealth.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I am very disappointed that none of the big fantasy RPGs have a functional economy.
The only believable fantasy economy I saw from them was in Ptolus.
One of my favourite books is ... and a 10-foot Pole (1999) (Link: ... and a 10-foot Pole )
I highly recommend it.

Hackmaster, Rolemaster, Gurps and many others had great "economies", but for some reason they didn't become mainstream.

ACKS (and especially ACKS II) also have a well thought out and researched economy, focused on Late Antiquity. But doing so is pretty rare in modern RPGs.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

The problem often is letting treasure be coins. If you make the treasure goods (wines, furs, artwork, preserved foods) there is a cut that middlemen take for converting it into some kind of credit. Even bars of gold and silver would be better than coins.

That's a good point. I often forget to do that.

isn't the solution simply to not give them as much?

Years ago I started using a trick in my D&D games where I began to think of silver pieces as US dollars. GP as $10. Etc.

That's what I've been doing. I think that's what people call the silver standard. You base your XP on the silver instead, and just move the currency from GP to SP. So if a dungeon says you find 2000 GP (because it intends to give 2000 XP to the players) yous just change it to 2000 SP. It drastically brings down their wealth while keeping the XP curve intact.

But for me it fixes half the problem.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, there's a major question about how much sense money actually makes in the real world, too. Money is a matter of consensual reality, not some objective measures of value.

Real world economics certainly don't always make sense, but I believe more can be done in the RPG space to simulate a viable economy that takes into account more than just adventurers. The fact that so many RPGs only care about...practically anything as far as it affects the PCs adventuring activities and no farther is a constant source of frustration for me.