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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 3508335" data-attributes="member: 30001">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.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.</blockquote>

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