Silly economics of DnD

[the Jester]

Pardon me if these points have already been raised; I just barely started reading this thread but thought I'd butt in nonetheless.

First off, keep in mind that most of the peasantry prolly feeds themselves not by buying a poor meal three times a day but by living off of their gardens, eggs laid by their chickens, etc, especially in rural areas. Secondly, as to buying a kingdom with a dragon's treasure- well, if you look in the dmg it has prices for some basic building types. Unless said dragon was very wealthy, I find it hard to swallow that its horde will cover 1000 gp per simple house for the whole kingdom, not even getting into the cost of better buildings.

Now, are dnd economics realistic? No. In the 1e PH, one thing mentioned is that the prices are for a "gold rush" mentality area, where there's lots of new money pouring in from adventurers looting and whatnot. Keep this in mind and it may feel slightly more palatible.

I once ran a campaign where the standard value of one gold piece was that it would feed a man for one year. That made pcs not only really value their money, it also changed the cost of everything. I gave out much less treasure, naturally, and had brass coins below a cp. Fun times.

 

[LostSoul]

First off, keep in mind that most of the peasantry prolly feeds themselves not by buying a poor meal three times a day but by living off of their gardens, eggs laid by their chickens, etc, especially in rural areas.

Yep. Like I said before, being able to buy five chickens a day (who breeds these things?) doesn't make the unskilled labourer dirt poor.

 

[Ace]

There's lots of talk of labor markets here, but D&D sort of assumes a lot of medieval economics, and free labor markets aren't among them.

Why doesn't Joe Peasant go into bookbinding? Because the bookbinders guild will break his knees, leaving him Joe the Beggar, pining for the day he could earn a silver.

Lots of guilds were based on not training others in their craft, not letting others sell goods made by that craft, and keeping prices high. If you fold those rules into the thinking, the disparity between unskilled labor and craftsmen is appropriate.

IMC, I have a pair of rogues posing as simple laborers. They had to take out a loan to buy basic equipment, and come payday, they will find they OWE money (want another loan? just to tide you over...) If this was their real lives instead of an adventure hook, they'd be well on their way to serfdom.

PS

I am not sure that normal economic ideas like you suggest would work in a D&D world. The disparity of power between say a High level commoner (Guild Master) and his Bully Boys and the mid level Rogue is pretty incredible. With a tiny amount of cunning a mid level rogue could kill every single living member of the book binders guild in a year. All of them.

Never forget IRL people are quite vengefull. I don't know about you I would not mess with someone who just might be capable of what a D&D adventurer can do.

FREX in many parts of Africa people still believe in witches and are scared to death of hexes curses and the like. People kill suspected Witches.
Yet magic (if its real at all) is very subtle and lmited.
Imagibe if you knew for sure magic was real

In a typical (say Greyhawk) D&D world magic is as real and sure a force as light or gravity. A beginer Sorcerer CHA12 (33% of the population is at this level or better) can Kill a normal person with a word a gesture (Magic Missle) create a shield as hard as plate (Shield spell) Fix objects (mending) and more. AT high level he can use a word and a gesture to Burn your guild hall to the ground, summon demons, animate the bodies of your fallen guildsman and worse.
In addition without magic of your own you have no way to find him among the crowd.

That doesn't even take into acount Clerics and Wizards.

While your world may very most D&D worlds are filled with powerfull mages and awesomely deadly adventurers

As far as this

<IMC, I have a pair of rogues posing as simple laborers. They had to take out a loan to buy basic equipment, and come payday, they will find they OWE money (want another loan? just to tide you over...) If this was their real lives instead of an adventure hook, they'd be well on their way to serfdom. >

The old Company store routine wouldn't work very well against anyone but low level Rogue types. How would you enforce it? Who would be stupid enough to attack a mid level rogue-- Whoops you just took 1d4 (dagger) + LH Dagger 2 (1d4) + 3d6 (Sneak) + 1 (Strength) or 16 points --- You were second level and only had 16 (Average rolls + toughness and con12) -- You are dead--
So sad
In the hands of a hidden Rogue thrown rocks do 1d3+1+3d6 or 143 Hitpoints, thats enough to kill a 1st level warrior (10- on average, Con12+ toughness) and hit likley hits on a +9 or better, so if you have chain shirt (so he doesn't out run you) and sheild for AC16 he hits you on a 7 or better from ambush. BEtween the two Rogues with luck they can kill 8 or 9 men than escape.

After that you either Higher a high level type (very expensive) Hire guards (so they don't come back and take you out) send more cannon fodder (and lose them) or forget the whole thing

Shoot even a lowly 3rd level Rogue can use a club for 3d6 (1d6+2d6 Sneak attack)and take out a level 1 Warrior with a single shot

Basically in a late medieval world you have different tiers of power, Call it King, Church Merchants with peasants at the Bottom. IN a D&D world you need to add in Mages (Bards, Wizards and Sorcerers) and Adventurer tiers as power brokers too.

This will have profound effects on the distribution of wealth and power

 

[Breakdaddy]

I find myself not caring in the least whether a farmers wage is economically feasible, as none of the PCs IMC are farmers. I also find that in 14 years of gaming, not one time has one of my PCs ever uttered a complaint about the monetary system in D&D. I'm glad because this analysis makes my head hurt

 

[hong]

Ah, another thread on the pseudo-economics of D&D, which means it's time to drag out this Newmanworld classic again:


[repost]

From: Peter Newman (pnewman@gci.net)
Subject: Seven billion Chickens!
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Date: 2001-08-22 01:35:28 PST


According to the DMG a community with 30,000 adults will
have 7,500,000,000 chickens. [DMG p 137]

0.5 x the GP limit [100,000] x 0.1 x the population [30,000]
is the total value available. Thus at any given time the
metropolis will have 150,000,000 GP's worth of chickens
available. At 2 CP/chicken this will be 7.5 billion chickens.

Similarly this community will have 15 million cows, 15 billion
candles, 15 billion pounds of wheat (7.5 million tons),
7.5 billion pounds of flour, 15 billion torches, 300 million
pounds of soap, 7.5 billion loaves of bread, 1.5 billion flasks
of oil, 1.5 billion peasants outfits, 750 million pounds of
cheese, and much much more

It will also have 3 billion arrows, 10 million longswords,
10,000 suits of full plate armor, 1,000 keeps, 1,500 longships,
3,000 grand houses, 15,000 simple houses, and 100 grand castles
available.

These rules are very broken.

 

[rounser]

How much XP for "overcoming an encounter" with a chicken?

 

[S'mon]

I know that I am probably the ony person in the world who is bothered by the things like this but...

Have you noticed that, in DnD world, average labourer needs to work 20 days (and not eat) in order to buy the empty barrel or a crowbar. That the daily wage will buy you a poor meals for the day (for one person) but not lodgings of any sort.

Despite of that however, in a village *at any given time* amount of "ready cash" per capita exceedes what a trained craftsman earns in a month and in a large town excedes what a simmilar craftsman earns in a year. And that there is enough "ready cash" in an average small town at any given time to purchase a warship.

On a same count a city of 30000 (less then the size of medieval London and 1/3 of such places as Venice and Genua) has enough ready cash to hire mercenary army of 1.5 Milion men in the case of emergency, retain them for a year and still have enough left to finance the puchase of roughly 3000 warships.

On a more every day scale 1st level NPC's gear (200gp) is of enough value to hire 20men+leader mercenary company and retain them for about two months. Alternative is however to purchace 50' of chain.

On the topic of chain, a full suit of chain mail, (easily over 30.000 rings, work of over a month for master armourer with full shop of assistants) costs roughly as much as 50 feet of chain (250 rings, blacksmith's work of a couple of days).

And so on and so on.
This sort of stuff makes building anything resembling a believable setting neigh impossible...

#

The 'ready cash' number is ridiculous for larger settlements, agreed. The problem is the multiplier by settlement type. For small settlements it seems ok. I suggest setting a fixed maximum x the population, eg 30gp (rather than eg the 50,000 gp x 1/10 population it suggests for a metropolis), so a city with pop 30,000 would have 900,000 gp in ready cash, and work from there. I suggest the following, modified from DMG:

Settlement Type Ready Cash (x total population)
Thorp 2gp
Hamlet 5gp
Village 10gp
Small Town 12gp
Large Town 15gp
Small city 20gp
Large city 25gp
Metropolis 30gp

Seem plausible? Probably different campaigns need different numbers - mine has lots of 100,000 to 1.2 million population cities, mostly full of non-magical commoners, and you can't go into a shop and buy 100,000gp magic items in any of them.

IMC, 30gp x the largest metroplos, Imarr's, 1.2 million population gives 36 million gp in ready cash, which is a lot, but a lot more plausible than the 5000 x1.2 million gp, 6 BILLION gp, given by the DMG formula.

 

[BeholderBurger]

Electrum is a compound of silver and gold which was actually used throughout history in coinage.

D&D is in my opinion very like modern day tourism. The adventurers are basicaly heavily armed backpackers wandering the earth to see the sights and hear the sounds of wonderous places and get themselves into some adventures.
Just like today the adventurers are super rich compared to the indigenous population and treat everything like it can be bought with there overvalued money. The average commoner is likely to harbour great jealousy and hatred of these middle class elitists and will spit in their soup or beer whenever possible but will also recognise the value the adventurers have to the local economy.
On the other hand if adventurers come into a village and spend super amounts of wealth cleaning out the local stores of equipment and provisions trhen they have inflated the prices of whats left (if any) putting the goods even further beyond the reach of normal people. This is liokely (eventuall) to lead to some sort of peasant revolutionary movement which no doubt will be cut down brutally by the local lord and his hired help (the adventurers)

 

[Storm Raven]

Which third world countries have you been to?

Tanzania (2 years), Rwanda (about 6 weeks), Nigeria (3 years), Zaire (2 years, when it was still Zaire), Togo (2 years) and Benin (3 months). My observations of the local practices in those countries match up pretty well with Vaxalon's assumptions. Extended family living is pretty common, and when the extended family breaks down (like in large parts of Lagos), the populace lives in abject poverty and starves, as opposed to living in modest poverty.

For the most part, people live on what we would consider to be unlivable amounts of money, usually by pooling resources and self help (growing or scavenging food to supplement their resources). For example, in Zaire, a particular breed of caterpillar is eaten on a regular basis (it has a "season" where the caterpillar population all seem to be born and for about a month, the trees are covered with the buggers). Poor families fill buckets with these caterpillars and prepare them as food. Many of my Zairois friends said that some families live exclusively on caterpillars when they are "in season" in order to save money. I would suspect that a D&D economy would have similar "food scavenging" techniques.

[Edited for a grammar error]

 

[BButler]

So poor that it takes them 20 days of work to buy an empty barell ?

Have you checked out the price of a good wooden barrel lately?

Check it out: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/wine/barrels.asp

Even in today's world, a good, watertight wooden barrel aint cheap. Now imagine how long it would take to save up that much cash on the average Nike sweatshop wage . . .