Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="mythusmage" data-source="post: 671736" data-attributes="member: 571">If you really want to complicate your players' lives, introduce inflation. Fluctuating exchange rates, recessions, depressions, booms and busts, and rampant currency speculation all add to the fun.Scenario: The party finds a chest full of rare copper coins. About 1,000 of them. The last such coin (one of six known to exist in the whole world) sold on the open market went for 100 gold. Guess what the players are going to be thinking...Ask yourselves, will 1,000 rare coins hold the same value as 6 rare coins?<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Now, for an example of a different exchange rate, find yourself a copy of A Mighty Fortress (an "historical" campaign setting for D&D2e, set in the Europe of the Thirty Years War). It's a simplifed version of the actual exchange rates used at the time.In my own (in construction) setting coin value is based on weight. With an often substantial difference between currency value and trade value. (For instance, a one pound copper bar (trade item) can usually be bought with a one ounce copper coin (currency).)But, not all coins are made equal, with coins from countries with a bad reputation having a lower value in other lands. By the same token, currency from a realm with a good reputation (at least where its money is concerned) can often buy more in other countries than the local coinage.Finally, for those of you who remember the M:TG craze of years ago, back in the late 17th century there was something of a craze for Chinese porcelin. That is, china made in China. Sometimes the stuff was valued at its weight in gold. The good stuff was worth more. So pirates would pass up gold laden treasure ships and hit merchantmen carrying cargo from the land of Cathay. Then the market fell out. Things Chinese became passe.Scenario: The party finds 3 chess sets carved entirely from Brightstar Wood. Back home there is something of a Brightstar Wood craze -the stuff is selling at an average price of 5 ounces of gold per ounce of wood. They now have (at 10 pounds per set) thirty pounds of Brightstar Wood. Will the craze continue long enough for them to get the sets back home and sold?(True Story: I sold the M:TG cards I'd bought for about $20 for a price of $200 wholesale. By the time the buyer'd paid me in full (which he was honest enough to do) those same cards had a retail value of about $50.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />)More to come, but first I have to compose it.</blockquote>

Verification