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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 3509663" data-attributes="member: 30001">"What it's worth in the metagame" ?  I'm not even sure what that means, but if I had to guess I would think that would be a base price and yet that's apparently not the case.How can someone be "often wrong" about a fantasy +1 sword's price in an imaginary world?  If they establish the relative value of a +1 sword vs. a diamond, then I would think that would be helpful.  The other factors that you guys have mentioned don't really seem to be hurt by, or even relevant to, having base prices available as a tool for the DMs use in determining the reactions of NPCs.  So if you can only buy a +1 sword if you're a noble, then fine - but you're not going to buy it for a copper piece.  Nor is the Godfather going to give you his mansion just because you promise to do him a favor.A base price is a tool for modeling events - which is pretty much the core role that the rules play in DnD, right?  But then you seem to say, "well there's no such thing as markets, you can't establish a base price for anything, that's an anachronism"  I try to simply point that the historical records seem to show that as the population decreased as a result of the Black Death, labor costs increase.  Now if labor costs were simply a matter of kings taking whatever they wanted, this would not have been the case.  Are those labor values accurate?  It doesn't really matter IMO - it's certainly enough to establish that supply and demand are affecting the price.  I'm sure there were particular landlords that attempted to keep their serfs tied to the land - but that really didn't affect the perceived value of the serfs labor, either to the lord, the townsman who wanted to hire him, or the serf himself.  So a base price, established for that milieu, would help guide the DM as to how things are going to play out.  You're going to simulate an economic environment in a game by roleplaying the decisions of millions of people in your campaign world?  That's what it seems to me when it is suggested that the micro- situation (PC dealing with NPC wizard) can somehow be adjudicated without reference to the macro- situation (what all warrior-types would pay for a +1 sword, and what all wizard types would charge for it).</blockquote>

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