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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agemegos" data-source="post: 1541278" data-attributes="member: 18377">But some of the prices are unreasonably cheap.Your rock stars are paying triple for bread but getting chicken at an 87.5% discount.And besides, the mediaeval prices I have for meals, beds, light, fire, and meals in inns were paid by wealthy outsiders: gentlemen travelling with servants.I don't think that that is necessary. Colossal windfalls enrich a few people, and temporarily increase the real prices of the things they want. But pretty soon the money gets around and bids up the price of everything, and you are left with a perfectly functional economy with high nominal prices.It simply isn't a problem that a D&D gold piece containing 9.5 grammes of gold has a much lower purchasing power than a mediaeval ducat containing 3.5 grammes of gold. That is a perfectly reasonable result of an environment where gold is plentiful.The problem is when a PC want to buy and operate an inn, but it works out that the building is so damned expensive that no reasonable estimate of the number of patrons and the amount they could afford to spend will allow the PC-innkeeper to cover running costs and depreciation, let alone making a return on his investment.Or possibly the problem is that when a PC wants to buy an inn it is so damned cheap and so damned profitable that the PC is soon so rich that he doesn't care about monsters' treasure.I understand the argument that the price lists in D&D have to support dungeon-bashing, and provide a little balance in dungeon-bashing campaigns. The thing is that I don't see why they have to make problems for other campaigns when doing so has precious little impact on dungeon-bashing. Some of us like to run campaigns with other premisses andsometimes even other focusses than dungeon-bashing. It is a pity that some parts of the rules have been written so carelessly that we have to re-write them ourselves to do so.Moreover, when players discover something silly in the rules it often spoils the mood. "Frank, if you were a mediaeval peasant, would you rather eat half a chicken or half a pound of bread?" "Easy, Tony, I'd rather have the chicken." "Righto then--they're cheaper, too. From now on our henchmen dine on chook." And throughout the rest of the campaign players are making chicken jokes, and whenever the characters have to be silent players will make clucking sounds.The game doesn't have to be unworkable in the dungeon. But it shouldn't be laughable outside of it.</blockquote>

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