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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 3508548" data-attributes="member: 30001">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.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.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.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).</blockquote>

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