Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Irda Ranger" data-source="post: 4711737" data-attributes="member: 1003">In the DMG 1E actually Gary Gygax explicitly noted that the GP prices are a result of the inflationary action brought on by piss-poor adventurers going out into the wilds and coming back with a dragon's hoard on a regular basis. So it's &quot;realistic&quot; - D&amp;D economies are similar to the &quot;exogenous wealth&quot; economies of post-Soviet Russia and the Middle East where adventurers play the part of the Gazprom billionaires and sheiks; but none of the campaign settings that have come out since then have really emphasized that point - and it sort of breaks the tone/feel that most people aim for when playing an FRPG. So this is a problem for me too. One of the down-sides of being a (amateur) student of the history of financial systems and markets is that &quot;D&amp;D economics&quot; hurts your brain. Only the modern financial markets can maintain enough liquidity to actually buy and sell items with the book-listed values for magical items without hyperinflating the value of the currency every time an adventuring company comes back from the dungeon. Prior to financial markets wealth was unsecuritized and tied up in land or commodity goods; no one would ever have 1,000,000 of any form of currency (except when the Roman treasury decided to debase its own currency by floating millions of lead-core coins with gold leaf, but that's not really money anyway), so once anyone did come back with that much money it would quickly wash through the local economy and you'd pay for shoeshines with diamonds.Financial markets don't require any special technology though so you could make up a D&amp;D world that has them even with medieval-level technology, but none of the D&amp;D worlds I'm aware of has those. The closest D&amp;D seems to get to modern finance are Venetian-like merchant-nobility in Waterdeep and Amn.&nbsp; My preference is to keep monetary rewards handsome but low so that adventurers make a living similar to landed gentry, and that other rewards (such as magic items, lost knowledge, or answers to prophecy) are meaningful but cannot be converted into cash.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Irda Ranger, post: 4711737, member: 1003"] In the DMG 1E actually Gary Gygax explicitly noted that the GP prices are a result of the inflationary action brought on by piss-poor adventurers going out into the wilds and coming back with a dragon's hoard on a regular basis. So it's "realistic" - D&D economies are similar to the "exogenous wealth" economies of post-Soviet Russia and the Middle East where adventurers play the part of the Gazprom billionaires and sheiks; but none of the campaign settings that have come out since then have really emphasized that point - and it sort of breaks the tone/feel that most people aim for when playing an FRPG. So this is a problem for me too. One of the down-sides of being a (amateur) student of the history of financial systems and markets is that "D&D economics" hurts your brain. Only the modern financial markets can maintain enough liquidity to actually buy and sell items with the book-listed values for magical items without hyperinflating the value of the currency every time an adventuring company comes back from the dungeon. Prior to financial markets wealth was unsecuritized and tied up in land or commodity goods; no one would ever have 1,000,000 of any form of currency (except when the Roman treasury decided to debase its own currency by floating millions of lead-core coins with gold leaf, but that's not really money anyway), so once anyone did come back with that much money it would quickly wash through the local economy and you'd pay for shoeshines with diamonds. Financial markets don't require any special technology though so you could make up a D&D world that has them even with medieval-level technology, but none of the D&D worlds I'm aware of has those. The closest D&D seems to get to modern finance are Venetian-like merchant-nobility in Waterdeep and Amn. My preference is to keep monetary rewards handsome but low so that adventurers make a living similar to landed gentry, and that other rewards (such as magic items, lost knowledge, or answers to prophecy) are meaningful but cannot be converted into cash. [/QUOTE]

Verification