D&D General Games Economies

[TheAlkaizer]

Why would anyone risk their life for 'more income than average joe'? Adventurers life on the premise of "get rich or die trying". You need to give them appropiate amount of money. For longer campaigns offer them big money sinks like expensive magic artifacts, and domain gameplay. If you don't want that they need to have different motivations to go on adventurers aka the classic backstory / narrative driven adventures. But having money as main motivation and than not giving out a lot of money, doesn't make sense. When adventurers slay a dragon they want the hoard and expect it to be a mountain of gold and not 50 gold and a milkshake.

Because people do it all the time? People do risky jobs in real life for twice or thrice an ordinary salary all the time. And sure, adventuring can be go slay a dragon and most likely die. But at lower levels, it's a different proposition.

I mean, I wouldn't go slay a dragon for 50 GP. But 50GP is alot of money for ordinary folks. And I would suggest that milkshake are quite hard to come by and might be coveted.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think the main disconnect with D&D-style games is when people don't transition to large parties --> domain play. I absolutely agree that if you play D&D as a dungeon crawl from levels 1-14/1-36/1-20 (whatever your preferred version uses as a level range) it doesn't make sense, and you quickly run out of stuff to spend money on. However, having run and played in a fair number of domain-style games, the trajectory of play usually goes like this.

*Level 1. Poor as dirt, barely able to afford armor.
*Levels 2-4. Crazy rich, start hiring retainers to spread out the risk.
*Level 4ish. Man, these retainers eat up a bunch of gold, and we've explored all the nearby dungeons. Time to transition to wilderness exploration so we can continue to pay our retainers.
*Levels 5-8. Crazy rich, let's start hiring mercenaries/buying ships/running caravans/commissioning wizards to make us magical items.
*Levels 8ish. Man, all these mercenaries/ship's captains/caravan masters each up a bunch of gold. You know how you really get rich, off the backs of the peasantry. Time to found a domain.
*Levels 9+. Crazy rich, but the neighboring kingdom/invading undead/Tarrasque is threatening the kingdom and we need to raise an army to defend ourselves.
*Rinse and repeat.

With this style of play, characters have constant expenses that drain the coffers and push them towards exploring, whether personally or by using retainers. Otherwise, as suggested, I don't see a problem with dropping gold rewards. I get the sense that 5th edition has done a pretty good job with this.

IMO, this is the way to go for me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It seems like the real issue isn’t that RPG economies are “broken,” but that they’re serving very different purposes depending on the type of game being run.

In most versions of D&D (and many OSR-inspired systems), treasure is deliberately inflated. That’s because gold is meant to function less like an economic simulator and more like a pacing mechanism. You clear a dungeon, you haul out a hoard, and that sudden surge of wealth is the proof of success. The loop is treasure → more dangerous adventures → more treasure.

The challenge comes when players ask, “what do we do with all this money?” Since the best rewards in these games are usually earned in play (magic weapons, relics, rare items from the dungeon), spending coin rarely feels as satisfying. That’s why piles of gold tend to accumulate without a clear use, unless the DM introduces sinks—stronghold rules, hirelings, lifestyle expenses, or house systems that treat money as a resource with weight.

This is why it can feel like apples and oranges when comparing with grittier, street-level play. In those campaigns, money really is survival: it covers debts, upkeep, food, lodging, or bribes, and scarcity is part of the drama. But that’s a different tone from the default “kick in the door and grab the loot” model most D&D material is structured around.

So rather than asking “how do we fix the economy,” maybe the better question is: “what role do we want money to play in this campaign?” If it’s meant to be a motivator and a limiter, you build systems to make every coin matter. If it’s meant to be a scoreboard, then it doesn’t need fixing—it’s already doing the job it was designed to do.

I want wealth to serve the same purpose it does in the real world (just like most other aspects of the game). A motivation, a limiter, a gateway to new opportunities and options in life, and yes, a way to generate influence.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You can sometimes be surprised with throwing it a little bit of "cosmetics" into the game for the PCs to spend their money, especially if it comes up play later some way. With the way some video games are these days, seems like it might be something players go for, especially if you had art for the item(s) in question.

Had a player once who recovered a 1,000 gp pearl necklace from a dungeon, and refused to sell it, keeping it for their own necklace. Came in quite handy during a court ball later down the road, with the PC using it to "wow" the attendees and get the party some aid they might not have otherwise received.

Agreed.cosmetics like that matter to the world at large. They can be used as social currency, and IMO a lot of games could do with emphasizing that more.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This makes sense on paper, and yet, in my actual experience, players never seem to mind the fact that gold is useless. The “broken play loop” is mostly a theoretical problem that GMs get in our heads about, while players usually aren’t even looking at treasure that way. They’re busy using it as a high score system.

Nobody complains that points in arcade games aren’t “useful” in the games. Because our primate brains treat them as intrinsically valuable. We make number go up, and that makes us feel accomplished, so we try to make number go up more. Gold and other monetary treasure in D&D works mostly the same way. That’s why even long after players have accumulated enough money as for it to be no object, they still insist on haggling over every transaction, because transaction makes number go down, and number going up is how they know they’re winning.

Any resemblance to the behaviors of people who have more money than they could ever spend in real life is purely coincidental, I’m sure.

What if the GM minds the fact that gold is valueless?

 

[Micah Sweet]

What I’m getting at though is that regardless of if you “take it seriously” or not, whether you try to create the impression of market forces or not, it’s not really an economy. A pricing system, maybe, but certainly not an economy.

If the GM and the designer put some work in and are honest about NPC behavior, it absolutely can be more if an economy then you're saying.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think people get way too concerned about money. My solution is fairly simple, gold coins are about the size of a dime not a dubloon and alchemists have devalued gold. Transforming lead to gold isn't free but it still happens.

That along with not giving out gobs of gold, having a limited magic mart and throwing enough difficult combats their way that they spend significant amounts on healing potions seems to take care of the issue for most people.

As fsr as the wider economy? I don't really care because like a bazillion other details it has little impact on the game.

I disagree. The world and the economy can have a huge impact on the game if the GM and the players want it to. It depends on why you're playing. I play to create and/or explore a world with verisimilitude, where things work like the real world unless good reason is shown otherwise.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I was always fond of Medieval Magical Society Western Europe as a guide to economies.

A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe

From publisher blurb: This 144-page supplement is for GMs and players who wish to add a touch of realism to their game. It's for the people who'd like to flesh out the background of their gaming world, but don't have the time to dig through scholarly books. A Magical Medieval Society: Western...

rpggeek.com

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.

Character expenses are another issue. Removing training costs I think was not helpful to managing character wealth. Character's status could be improved by spreading the wealth around. Getting players to build manors or estates also keeps them busy and adventuring becomes a seasonal hobby.

Another issue is players not being connected into the local governing structure. What noble would allow armed bands to wander around that are not part of their service or the service of another noble? Integrating characters into the social structure of their environment would help the taxman get some of that treasure spent on bettering the realm.

Agreed. IMO all that stuff should be taken into account for the verisimilitudinous setting I prefer.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Agreed. IMO all that stuff should be taken into account for the verisimilitudinous setting I prefer.

Taking all of it into account is maybe not always realist. But I generally spend some time before my campaigns to target a few financial hinge points that I want to make some sense. If it's a naval campaign, I might look into the financial details of ships, berthing, etc.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Taking all of it into account is maybe not always realist. But I generally spend some time before my campaigns to target a few financial hinge points that I want to make some sense. If it's a naval campaign, I might look into the financial details of ships, berthing, etc.

Certainly, the degree of abstraction in how all these things are taken into account can and likely will vary based on practicality.