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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
World Building: Commerce and gold
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<blockquote data-quote="Deset Gled" data-source="post: 9050459" data-attributes="member: 7808"><p>My advice here would be: think smaller. </p><p></p><p>As a new DM, you don't actually have to figure out how the economy works across your entire world. If your PCs travel between two towns, and prices are different at each location, you only need to figure out the economy of those two places. Even then, keep it simple. The difference in price is either due to supply (e.g. one town grows something locally, it's imported to the other) or demand (e.g. something is popular in one town or disliked in the other). That's it. No mass commerce economics, no world-sized problems.</p><p></p><p>It might be a good thing to have a few "big idea" plans for the world. Decide if the economy is based on gold or something else. Have a "rich" city and a "poor" area. But you absolutely don't need to worry about filling in those ideas with details until the players actually go there. Build the parts of the world that the players will interact with first. If you want to spend time world building, make the next town the players will go to, then the next ancient abandoned dungeon, etc. As you build them, add them into the economy one bit at a time.</p><p></p><p>It is possible to build worlds from the top down or from the bottom up. But unless your players are starting at the top, it makes a lot more sense for a first time DM to start at the other end. Trust me, you'll have plenty of design work to keep you busy.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Deset Gled, post: 9050459, member: 7808"] My advice here would be: think smaller. As a new DM, you don't actually have to figure out how the economy works across your entire world. If your PCs travel between two towns, and prices are different at each location, you only need to figure out the economy of those two places. Even then, keep it simple. The difference in price is either due to supply (e.g. one town grows something locally, it's imported to the other) or demand (e.g. something is popular in one town or disliked in the other). That's it. No mass commerce economics, no world-sized problems. It might be a good thing to have a few "big idea" plans for the world. Decide if the economy is based on gold or something else. Have a "rich" city and a "poor" area. But you absolutely don't need to worry about filling in those ideas with details until the players actually go there. Build the parts of the world that the players will interact with first. If you want to spend time world building, make the next town the players will go to, then the next ancient abandoned dungeon, etc. As you build them, add them into the economy one bit at a time. It is possible to build worlds from the top down or from the bottom up. But unless your players are starting at the top, it makes a lot more sense for a first time DM to start at the other end. Trust me, you'll have plenty of design work to keep you busy. [/QUOTE]
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