Low Magic Campaigns?

[Celebrim]

My players gain contacts that often simply give them things because it is good policy for them to do so. Likewise, I encourage players to do the same to powerful NPCs. Think of The Godfather, where people give the Don things because they later might need his favour, and where the Don does things for future favours.

Yes, exactly. One of my characters once traded a valuable magical staff for a selection of 5th level spells. In addition to being a mutually beneficial business relationship, it was a chance to hobnob with an influential NPC and begin building a relationship. One of the reasons you would never sell magic items was that they were so much valuable given to henchmen or as gifts to important NPCs.

Alot of players have questioned what the coin wealthy but magic poor 1st edition players did with thier wealth. I'll provide an example.

Spells and spellbooks are expensive, invaluable, and easily damaged (item saving throws, remember?). To avoid being in the dire situation of not having spellbooks, you'd make backups in down time between adventures. This is expensive, and results are both cumbersome to carry around and it somewhat defeats the purpose to do so. (You might have a bag of holding, but you couldn't just buy them, and you wouldn't risk all of your spell books on a bag getting damaged.) To store your backups, you'd need a library, and to have a library, you'd need to build a building of some sort. Perhaps not a full stronghold yet, but some safe house where you'd keep possessions you weren't currently using. Your possessions were valuable, which means you had to protect them, both with whatever traps and protections you could devise but by employing hirelings to protect them. That was expensive. While you where employing hirelings to stand around watching your building, you might as well have them do things which were useful (to you), entertaining (for them), and profitable (for both of you). This also gave the hirelings more of a stake in your affairs than mere mercenaries. They were your retainers, your household, your people. For example, you might hire an alchemist, and this was expensive initially and required yet more initial outlay, and then go into business together making potions between adventurers and selling them while you were away. This might provide a trickle income, but more importantly it gave you your own 'magic shop' where you could buy items from yourself and choose what items the store would stock. Depending on your location, your adventuring company might also own sailing vessels, because it was useful to have them on hand and with a trustworthy captain when you needed one, and sooner or later your party might find the need for several vessels and would need to employ the ships when they weren't being used to go to remote archaepelagos, and that meant warehouses and other initial outlays and then a trickle of income afterwards. Then, you'd want to buy magic items. But magic items weren't just for sale in shops. They were in the possession of Very Important People, and only Very Important People had enough of them to consider parting with them. Well, you'd need to ingratiate yourself to these people, which meant gifts and living a lifestyle suitable to a Very Important Person. So, you were part of a community, and often as you got powerful, several communities, which meant over the long haul safehouses in multiple towns where you could hole up relatively securely even if you had magic wielding enemies. Which meant things like lead lined rooms and roofs to protect against scrying, and magical and mechanical traps/defenses and so forth. And all that is expensive (and took game time to develop). Overtime you'd end up with fortresses and small armies, and probably (after name level) titles and lands and serfs beneath you, and all of this meant expensive initial outlays that paid back in dividends (and power and influence) over time. And plus, you'd probably be paying taxes, and in most cases tithes - either because it was required of the class, or else because it was in character, or else because you were hoping to build up some credit for that once in a campaign 'Thor help!' situation where having shown the DM you really were pious might be some small mark in your favor.

This is I think a marked difference between 1st edition and 3rd edition. In many ways, 3rd seems to play the same at 18th level as it does at third. The numbers get bigger, but the flavor stays basically the same. In the longer running 1st edition campaigns I was in, the flavor changed markedly as the PCs increased in level. You may have started out as mere scruffy sell-swords, but you wouldn't end up that way. You may have started out owning little more than what you wore, but it didn't stay that way. You find you'd need things you couldn't carry on your back, or you'd find that you wanted to buy things that only you could provide to yourself.

 

[gizmo33]

As a DM, I don't need to know the absolute value of an item; I need to know the value of an item relative to that particular NPC. That doesn't require a table at all.

That doesn't seem like economics to me. Sure, those things I would call "circumstantial modifiers", and the preferences of a hermit might effect how things go - but I think it would affect them from the base, and what you seem to be saying is there's no base cost.

I just went and got lunch. Now the guy behind the counter probably wants to buy a gold watch, and I really want a sandwich, but our needs don't really determine the price. The fact is that I've got other things to buy, and there are other people selling burgers. In fact, I think the situation is so complicated that I would not have much trust in the DM doing an instant analysis of everyone who knows that "certain spell" you mentioned in your example.

Really, the baseline case to me is not that the PCs want to get the "certain spell" from the Blue Rock Hermit. 99% of the time they'll settle for getting the "certain spell" from anyone. Now using a hermit in a thought experiment about economics is like using a serial-killer in a thought experiment about social networks - it's just not going to be helpful in 99.9% of transactions where normal people are involved.

So the situation that I more commonly confront is that the PCs want to get the "certain spell" - period. They don't care who they buy it from. So they contact their information broker/purveyor, throw some money around, and get a result. There are other people wanting to get the "certain spell", there are other people selling it. There are a zillion possible combinations of buyers, sellers, personalities, other needs. Wealth, in fact, increases the amount of information I can get about what is for sale (similar to the 1E rules for hiring henchmen I would think) Some wizard might need quick cash to pay off a debt to the assassin's guild. Another wizard might think he's the only one who has the spell and thinks he can sell it dearly. How can you possibly factor in everything that could be going on in a quasi-realistic fantasy world? The only way I can see to do it is have a baseline that says "under normal circumstances of supply and demand, this is the perceived worth of the item". IMO it's not just about a particular buyer and a particular seller.

The other problem is that players/PCs are so far away from anything that makes sense economically. They don't have to eat the food that their character's eat, they don't have to feel the water dripping on them from a leaky roof. Now granted, there might be good roleplayers out there, but there's really no visceral motivation for a player to value 99% of things in the game - only those things that have to do with the player's primary objective which is killing things and going up levels. A diamond necklace has no intrinsic worth whatsoever to players because it exists entirely within their imagination.

So when I'm hungry, someone "roleplaying" me would value a burger more than gold - but that really don't mean that the burger is worth more. The value of gold, I think, is very much an amalgamation of all sorts of factors, and the individual's personality is just a tiny part of the resulting value.

Think of The Godfather, where people give the Don things because they later might need his favour, and where the Don does things for future favours.

Well, that's a barter economy, and besides the fact that there's no currency being used, there's still a value to the things being bought and sold so I don't see there being much difference. I go to the Don because I'm poor and I don't have a choice, or because I want to do something extra-legal. The Don isn't paying his hitmen with favors - at some point he's got a big mansion, his followers are wearing gold chains and he's throwing a 10-million dollar birthday party for his daughter.

And as it turns out, the significant thing here is that the Don is doing illegal stuff. Were he to have a legal apparatus to support him, that person's favor could be rendered in a contract, which could be sold to pay for birthday parties and such, or passed on to his descendants. Hermits and crime-bosses IMO are at the extremes, so unless magic items are illegal, I would think that people buying/selling them would have all of the normal tools at their disposal.

 

[gizmo33]

They were in the possession of Very Important People, and only Very Important People had enough of them to consider parting with them. Well, you'd need to ingratiate yourself to these people, which meant gifts and living a lifestyle suitable to a Very Important Person.

Well very important people need to pay the salary of alchemists and ship-captains, repair their ships, hire assassins/spies, buy new clothes, bribe chancellors, keep up with fashion, throw lavish parties etc.

Given all the reasons that a Very Important Person has for needing large sums of cash, there's a huge incentive for them to sell whatever they want to even a manure covered yokel, assuming that they can't get their well-payed hench-thugs to just take it from them.

So IMO, and I think history backs me up, if you're rich enough you don't need to ingratiate yourself anyone to buy and sell stuff. People want money, and it's only because the DM can have his NPCs act in a completely arbitrary fashion that you can have a situation where a barbarian PC has 100,000 gp but can't buy a royal-purple tunic because those are only for rich people. I guess it depends how much control a central government has over the economy. In the Middle Ages, folks who were non-Christians were, for the most part, not part of mainstream society, and yet non-Christians moved *HUGE* amounts of wealth around in the form of buying and selling.

Ultimately though, it is your campaign and the NPCs can do whatever you want them to do. I myself don't find the enconomic system you describe to be intuitive, but if I were a player I would hope to have enough sense just to keep my mouth shut and play the game as it is defined by the DM.

 

[Celebrim]

That doesn't seem like economics to me.

One the things that so annoys me about 3rd edition is that the default cultural setting appears to be 21st century America. So many of the things you take for granted in that post are artifacts of our particular time and culture. Thats why I was stunned by the assumption that lighted streets were default. Things like menus in restuarants, instant gratification, retail stores, journalists, prices determined by markets, and so forth that I've seen banted about on these boards as must existing are largely artifacts of our current culture and technology and don't necessarily have any business being put into a fantasy campaign thoughtlessly (thoughtfully adding these things is another matter).

The culture found in default D&D has become such an anachronism that it is less alien for all its magical trappings than what can still be found in much of the modern third world. Perhaps its because I've lived in the 3rd world, but I find this terribly confining, unimaginative, and for lack of a better word 'unrealistic'.

You say that players have no motivation to value things which don't involve killing things. To a certain extent you are right, in that there are very few rules for things that don't involve killing things. But on the other hand, they don't value these things not because they are not valuable, but because they are not made to value them. PC's don't value them because they know that the DM will ignore them, and so why should they value them? If the DM ignores them, then there actual value is nothing. Why should you eat if the universe doesn't demand you eat? Why should you defecate if the unverse doesn't demand you do so? Why should you bathe if you never get dirty or smelly? Why should you worry about hygiene if you never get sick or infested with parasites? Why should you own a home if you can carry everything you need on your back? And so forth. Now, I'm not saying that you should necessarily worry about these things as a DM. It may suit your group to ignore the necessities of life in favor of killing things. But don't claim that this isn't a choice you've made. All I'm suggesting is that you shouldn't make this choice thoughtlessly, but after consideration.

 

[Celebrim]

I myself don't find the enconomic system you describe to be intuitive...

Of course you don't. You've never actually seen it in action. The economic system you've lived in your entire life is largely (not entirely, but largely) free of social class, nepotism, despotism, and barter and all the other things which are typical of natural human economies.

I guess it depends how much control a central government has over the economy.

You are still thinking in highly modern terms - rule of law, centralization of government, etc. That isn't it at all. You don't even have to dig that much into our own past. Just read some Jane Austin novels, and look at the role of social station in buying and selling.

Of course you can buy your way into the aristocracy. But the point is, you have to buy your way into the aristocracy. If the muddy beggar has 100,000 gp, the aristocrat just takes it from him as his natural right, and the beggar is lucky to get a new cloak and a meal out of it.

 

[mfrench]

I'll provide an example.

This is one of the greatest single posts I've ever read. Whenever I try to explain an alternative to magic-item-shop campaign-styles, I can just point people to this post, since I haven't been able to do it eloquently myself.

 

[Raven Crowking]

That doesn't seem like economics to me.

Do some more reading on economics.

Sure, those things I would call "circumstantial modifiers", and the preferences of a hermit might effect how things go - but I think it would affect them from the base, and what you seem to be saying is there's no base cost.

The idea that there is a "base cost" is largely an illusion of modern economic systems. There is only actual cost.

For example, you just went and got lunch. The guy behind the counter was an employee who worked according to the dictates of his employers. He does what his employers ask, within a degree of reason, perhaps because he wants to buy a gold watch. His money doesn't come directly from the sandwich; it comes from his providing service for his employers.

Now, his employers gain their money directly from the sandwiches, and they have no other real motive. So, they want to get as much as they can charge while keeping the costs down as low as possible. There are a number of different means they can use to go about this, from having exceptional (but exceptionally priced) sandwiches to having poor (but cheaply priced) sandwiches.

You really want a sandwich, and your needs determine how much you are willing to pay. The guy behind the counter? His needs determine how little he's willing to jockey sandwiches for. The employers of the jockey guy? Thier needs are to maximize profit, and absolutely affect how much that sandwich is going for.

But we are in a culture whose economics are designed to prevent you from opting out, and most D&D worlds don't have similar economics. The guy behind the counter needs cash to buy things, the employers need money to buy things, and you were at work before lunch to get cash to buy things. You cannot build your own home and grow your own food without also making cash, because the government would take possession of your home for failing to pay taxes.

Not so the D&D wizard living in the tower on his own. He certainly needs food and shelter, but he has no need of you to give him money to get it. He is self-sufficient in a way that modern people are not.

"Base Cost" is just someone's guess as to what someone might want for something. This goes back to ancient Summeria, where clay tokens were made to indicate specific items for trade. Ostensibly, a cow token was worth one cow, but the token didn't produce milk and couldn't be slaughtered for meat, bones, and leather.

If you examine something like ebay, you'll see that "Base Cost" is frequently what others were willing to pay for something. And, like ebay, you may want to get item X from anyone, but the reality is that you can only get it from those who have it to begin with. And you are competing against the needs of everyone else who wants that item.

Of course, in a Guild Economy, the Guild sets the value (not the base value, the absolute value) of all services rendered and objects sold by the Guild. In this case, the value is known, but the value is the same regardless of quality. And, I would hazard, more than one Guildsman operated outside Guild strictures if the profit was high enough and the chance of getting caught low.

Well, that's a barter economy, and besides the fact that there's no currency being used, there's still a value to the things being bought and sold so I don't see there being much difference. I go to the Don because I'm poor and I don't have a choice, or because I want to do something extra-legal. The Don isn't paying his hitmen with favors - at some point he's got a big mansion, his followers are wearing gold chains and he's throwing a 10-million dollar birthday party for his daughter.

And as it turns out, the significant thing here is that the Don is doing illegal stuff. Were he to have a legal apparatus to support him, that person's favor could be rendered in a contract, which could be sold to pay for birthday parties and such, or passed on to his descendants. Hermits and crime-bosses IMO are at the extremes, so unless magic items are illegal, I would think that people buying/selling them would have all of the normal tools at their disposal.

I disagree here. What the Don is doing is, effectively, forming an alternate Feudal government within the confines of another nation. That other nation gets a bit peeved about it, of course, but how many D&D worlds have governments as strong as a modern republican democracy? If you take ancient Italy as an example (or France, or England, or Almost Anywhere) you see the exact same mechanisms that the Don uses used as the means of legitimate government.

In many ways, the D&D sellers have more at their disposal than modern sellers do. Modern economics creates a buyer's market -- the person selling (whether an object or his service) has generally less power than the person buying. Which is why, when I last bought a dishwasher, I was able to lower the price by $60 simply by being willing to walk from the sale. The person selling is at an inherent disadvantage.

In D&D worlds, the seller of objects is at an inherent advantage. (This is actually why guilds regulated prices in the real world.) He can easily meet the needs of his existence without the extras that your money brings. He might be more interested in his own research than in making Gauntlets of Bling for you. If he has any stature, he has others working for him to meet his daily needs. He is almost a miniature government in himself.....And he wants to maximize both his profit and (equally important) his social prominence.

Finally, contracts are worthless if they cannot be enforced. If the king decides not to honor a contract, he has that right. And so does the Lord Mayor of Smallville. And the King will back the Lord Mayor. And if the Blue Wizard chooses not to make the Glamthing of Almighty Poking, then he has that right. No other wizard wants to step in -- unless you're under their protection -- because doing so limits their own rights in similar circumstances.

And this is good for PCs because, ultimately, they get to be the Don.

(You should see players eyes light up when they realize the control their PCs have over the masses, and when n00b wizards start petitioning them for spells & magic items! And, more often than not, the answer is No -- after all, no one gives away power without good reason!)

RC

 

[gizmo33]

One the things that so annoys me about 3rd edition is that the default cultural setting appears to be 21st century America. So many of the things you take for granted in that post are artifacts of our particular time and culture.

I'm not sure about this. Money is a very old concept. "Usury" is a term that is well-known to have been bandied about in the middle ages. People knew what the value was, and while there were fluctuations in the cost of grain because of weather issues, changes in the availability of silver and gold, etc. - I think the differences are far smaller in this area than you think.

In fact, if you factor in the Greeks and Romans from the prior age, as well as contemporary medieval Chinese and Middle Eastern culture, I think you'd find that the only "artifact" unique to 21st century thinking is the belief that we invented the things we use. In most cases we didn't.

Thats why I was stunned by the assumption that lighted streets were default. Things like menus in restuarants, instant gratification, retail stores, journalists, prices determined by markets, and so forth that I've seen banted about on these boards as must existing are largely artifacts of our current culture and technology and don't necessarily have any business being put into a fantasy campaign thoughtlessly (thoughtfully adding these things is another matter).

I think I could find examples of some of these things. "Prices determined by markets" are, however, trivial to find in the history, and are not unique to the modern period. People have an implicit understanding of the value of things in their society and that is not an anachronism (medieval agricultural manuals IIRC routinely quote market prices for goods).

IMO people know far less about social and economic history, even well-educated people, than they do about who killed who and which wars were fought. What people know about social history IMO is largely determined by cultural myths.

I'm not saying that 3E (and especially campaign settings and such) aren't full of things that I find uncomfortably anachronistic, I just don't think that markets, or the general examples that you cite, fall into that category.

The only thing modern about "instant gratification" might be the term and the guilt associated with the term (and even then I could probably find some Roman examples of such guilt regarding materialism). Vendors that sold pre-prepared foods (and example of instant gratifcation if you will) are present in Medieval France (see "Life in a Medieval City") as well as the same time in China (I'm thinking of a book on Tang-era life that I read, don't recall the title).

Journalism in terms of the institution as we know it - ok probably not without a printing press. But in terms of people passing along news and information, that certainly happened. Town crier's et. al. And like with markets, I think the basic factors and things going on would be similar.

I think one of the main differences between the periods is the scale at which these things are available. A city probably can't afford to light it's streets because 80% of it's income is going to defense. But we're talking about adventurers here, who often have 10's of thousands of GP to throw around - so what the average practice was for a medieval society might not even be relevant.

It's very likely the case that a king in the late medieval period could "instantly" gratify himself with a brand new scarlet cloak simply by clapping his hands. Sure, he paid a huge amount of money to keep cloths of various colors in his wardrobe, and a staff of tailors on hand, but as far as the king's player is concerned, he erases some GP from his character sheet and writes down "scarlet cloak". Later on, his chancellor might sell his second-hand clothes, or just given them away, but the sale will be for a rational amount of money.

The culture found in default D&D has become such an anachronism that it is less alien for all its magical trappings than what can still be found in much of the modern third world. Perhaps its because I've lived in the 3rd world, but I find this terribly confining, unimaginative, and for lack of a better word 'unrealistic'.

I guess it's a question best left to social scientists, but I really don't think medieval=Third World. I suspect that the characteristics of the 3rd world are largely defined by it's historical relationship with the first world - so looking at the 3rd world itself it not an example of a stable society or economy. There has always been a trade in pepper, silk, swords, glass, etc. Whether or not such things are documented is another story, but a lack of documentation doesn't mean that it wasn't going on - because I find that when the documentation is present you invariably find markets. DnD is probably much more money-oriented than many (but not all) of the socieities in the assumed time-period, but then that's been the case since 1st edition.

PC's don't value them because they know that the DM will ignore them, and so why should they value them? If the DM ignores them, then there actual value is nothing. Why should you eat if the universe doesn't demand you eat? Why should you defecate if the unverse doesn't demand you do so? Why should you bathe if you never get dirty or smelly? Why should you worry about hygiene if you never get sick or infested with parasites? Why should you own a home if you can carry everything you need on your back? And so forth. Now, I'm not saying that you should necessarily worry about these things as a DM. It may suit your group to ignore the necessities of life in favor of killing things. But don't claim that this isn't a choice you've made. All I'm suggesting is that you shouldn't make this choice thoughtlessly, but after consideration.

You can't make someone taste food as part of a DnD game. If someone chooses to eat gruel instead of a steak, you can't actually make that player eat gruel. So I never "claimed" that I didn't make this choice but I don't agree that I can somehow (as the DM) influence the player's decision in most cases. There's no amount of in-game word-smithing that's going to get across the body odor of the dwarf in the group, nor are we going to sit there at the game table for the entire 8 hour camp-time where the PCs endure the tent with holes in it. No - I don't think that detailed tables of disease, discomfort, nutrition, etc. make for an interesting game, they certainly don't exist in default 3E anyway.

Now granted, I can over-react by having an NPC haul off and attack the bad-smelling dwarf. "That'll learn 'em" might be might thought, but that's really heavy-handed and inaccurate. The situation, IMO, is that DnD just isn't played at the level of detail necessary to enforce these things in that kind of visceral way.

So IMO, a market price guide for items in the campaign helps to approximate the results of all of these factors that are not part of my normal game. If you'd want to translate the GP values into herds of cattle, or number of huscarls that will serve you, or whatever that's fine. But acting like a Mongol tribesmen would trade 2 horses for a bolt of silk one day, and 15 horses the next day IMO is extremely out of whack with history and human nature (unless, of course, the market forces governing the value of silk on the steppes had changed and the tribesman and/or trader became aware of those changes).

 

[Brother MacLaren]

One the things that so annoys me about 3rd edition is that the default cultural setting appears to be 21st century America. So many of the things you take for granted in that post are artifacts of our particular time and culture.

I love this stuff. I'd really like to hear more about the cultural side of things, how to make D&D feel more like a truly different world -- not 21st century America with magic taking the place of technology. Cultural mores, non-modern legal or economic ideas, etc.

And yes, in many cases a king can just take whatever he wants when he wants it. In reply to gizmo33's point on Non-Christians moving money in Europe -- English kings taxed and taxed until they eventually just TOOK everything the Jews had, not caring that they were destroying a source of income. Not logical. Not good economics. But it's the way it happened.

The "wizards almost never share access to spells" things from earlier editions may have been annoying, but it was cool if you considered reasons for it -- wizards were paranoid that every other wizard was a competitor out to kill them and take their stuff, so increasing the power of a potential rival was a dangerous thing to do.

Interesting to think how the price, or even the availability of the item, might vary on class, personal connections, guild membership, race, and religion. Considering the prereqs, a typical Ring of Protection is made by someone of 12th level or higher, and usually a cleric. So that's a high priest of LEGENDARY stature as per Legend Lore. Would he just sell these to anybody who wants them, not considering how they'll be used?

 

[Brother MacLaren]

But acting like a Mongol tribesmen would trade 2 horses for a bolt of silk one day, and 15 horses the next day IMO is extremely out of whack with history and human nature (unless, of course, the market forces governing the value of silk on the steppes had changed and the tribesman and/or trader became aware of those changes).

I suggest that it's quite possible if he's dealing with two different traders. One trader needs the horses badly since two of his own have just died. The trader is also rude and a European of some different faith. The Mongol knows he can get a good rate from this guy and doesn't feel like cutting him a break.

The next trader is the Mongol's distant cousin. This guy has looked out for the Mongol in the past, given him food during lean times, and is fairly close to the Khan's family. The Mongol figures that by being good to this guy, he maintains important personal relationships and possibly opens up some new markets in case the Khan needs horses. So he gives this trader a very generous deal.