House buying through the Stronghold Builder's Guide

[Neo]

Do we really want to play an economics simulation, people?

heh its not quite that bad, but it would be nice if things make sense.

For example if a tavern keep earns like 365gp a year and you have adventurers spending like 5gp a pop in drink each nigth, another 3gp per night for a private room with a lock, tips here and there for service and info... give it a month and almost every tavernkeep is going to be able to sit back and take the year off

I guess people would just like for wages and purchase prices to at least work of similar assumptions...adventurers are supposed to be the exception in society not the guideline.

 

[gizmo33]

The D&D economy is ignored except for the actions of PCs, as it should be in a heroic fantasy game.

Ah. The "never give a sucker an even break" school of DnD (who says 1E isn't alive and well?). Was the "Conan Goes to the Market to Buy a 10 ft Pole" story in one of Howard's unpublished manuscripts? The idea that someone would charge Conan 10 times as much for a sword as he charges someone else I find a little strange. Adventurers, or any rich person, would probably be sought out by merchants selling "high-end" goods - rare items and such. For example - a horse that has a dragon-horse as one of it's distant ancestors might be sold for 10 times the norm, even though the horse has no actual extra abilities and maybe just looks different.

But the idea that a common horse would have a different price-tag hung on it when PCs approach bothers me because:
1. meta-gaming - DM taking advantage of the fact that he can play all of the NPCs the same way (ie. why not this? - PCs are about to buy a sword in the market when another NPC walks up and says "hey, don't buy that sword - he's charging you too much. Here, follow me to my sword shop and I'll give you a deal.")
2. it violates guild regulations
3. it's dangerous for NPCs to do this to people that cast fireball - the DM should probably play most NPCs as if they care if they die.

I'm not saying that there's no possibility for a daring rogue to take advantage of folks from out-of-town. Or even that a whole village might try to take advantage of the travellers. But I don't believe that possibility should be built into the standard price guides for DnD.

 

[gizmo33]

Do we really want to play an economics simulation, people?

Wait - the rules say, for example, that if you're flanking an opponent you get +2 to hit. Does that make DnD a combat simulation? - just because there is some measure of logic being applied to the rules? Why not the same for the economic rules?

In an extreme case, if a peasant cottage costs 5000 gp, and an average peasant makes 1 sp a day, I think should understandably bother people. It doesn't take a masters in Economics to see that something is wrong with that.

Perhaps you could reason that a typical peasant cottage requires 2.5 peasant man-years to build (10 people working for a season) would cause you to expect about 900 sp in labor. Perhaps materials would be a fraction of that (you assume that a peasant uses the materials on hand as oppposed to quarrying and transporting stone). So 100 gp for a peasant cottage is probably at the high end - possibly more likely that of the cottage of a yeoman farmer.

Then again, master carpenters (guild members) and persons make several times the salary of unskilled labor. The question of how much expertise is required for a given building could be better answered by looking at the historical record. Not something that I recommend every DM do - but given that the industry has already given us 80 different varieties of polearms, I would figure someone with some time on their hands could produce a useful, believable, and easy-to-use result.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

Well, the PCs had a treasure haul of well over 200,000gp. So the affordability is not a problem (beyond eating into their magic-item money). They asked how much it cost, I said "maybe 1,000gp," and we played on. They've already "moved into" the house. [Ironically, they are immediately preparing to leave on another extended adventure (live in house 1 week, adventure will probably take several weeks).]


Quasqueton

If you want to be realy evil.

"So, we're back from the adventure to kill the evil lich. bob. Can't wait to get home and rest."

"Wait, where's our house? Waht's that pile of smoldering ruins doing there!!??"

NPC Peasent: "Yep, burned down the night after you left."

"How"

"Probably forgot to take the food off the stove. Yep. Somebody shoulda' takin' a few ranks in that there Profession (cook) proficiency."

"NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

 

[gizmo33]

Or dire termites - they close the door behind them and the whole house disintegrates into a huge cloud of dust of sneezing and choking that blows across the village - forcing evacuations.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

Or Tornadoes.

You could just relocate their house to Oz.

Then they have to find a portal to OZ.

Then follow the yellow brick road, find an awakened scarecrow & tin golem, plus somebody has to wear ruby slippers.

Ambushes are much easier when everbody on teh plane knows exactly what road you have to take.

 

[Benben]

I don't want to change my "ruling" on the price after we've already "played" through the situation. Several comments here have convinced me that the SBG prices are not as outrageous as I at first thought. I agree, on second thought, that this is actually a relatively big/nice home.

The Players had mentioned they were going to buy a house before the game session, and I really should have checked out the SBG *before* the game. <shrug> Oh well, it's not the first nor last time I'll screw up.

They got a really good deal. [And that has adventure hooks built right in.]
Quasqueton

Maybe the reason the house is so cheap is because it's build on an abandoned graveyard. Or maybe they're next door to the head of the local mafia and will need to pay both protection, and silence money.

 

[Psion]

Do we really want to play an economics simulation, people?

Perhaps not, but for some people, such head scratchers can break their suspension of disbeleif and dampen their enjoyment of the game.

Now sure, there are things that if you overthink, you'll find such things inevitably (as some are wont to do.) But when it's in your face, it seems a little less excusable.

I beleive some of the prior edition books on castle/construction has a more simulationist model that wasn't built on D&D magic item economics like the (IMO dull) Stronghold Builder's Guide was.

 

[gizmo33]

Or Tornadoes.

You could just relocate their house to Oz.

That is great. I have a wizard PC in my campaign who was just given a manor house as payment for services. I think I might use this idea (I'd probably follow a more Dungeonland type format). The only problem would be if he found a way to control the house, then he could be using it to land on witches and take their magic items.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Stronghold Builder's Guide is all kinds of silly. That said, that price for that house seems fair. What you've got there is a large house by modern standards (2,000 sq ft, I think). You don't indicate materials.

I like the simple construction rules in MMS:WE, myself. Very simple, including all kinds of options.

On the topic of economics, no we don't need a massively accurate economic system for D&D - but just making the prices make sense would be nice. I'm still waiting for someone to produce such a product, and starting to come to the conclusion that no one will. I just might myself.