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Silus
2014-12-27, 05:32 PM
Okay so let me preface this by saying 1) these are just ideas I'm kicking around to try to liven up a setting I'm looking at running, and 2) yes I have been re-reading Spice and Wolf.

Okay so a couple of ideas I'd like ya'll to weigh in on. What I'm looking for feedback-wise is:
1) Firstly, should I implement these ideas, and if not, why not?
2) What sort of problems would these ideas present aside from more paperwork?
3) Ideas to streamline the ideas to make them more user friendly/improve them?

Right then, here's the ideas.


This is the big one I feel. In the setting there are four nations capable of producing their own currency (other nations simply use foreign coin or a barter system) and the idea was an occasional fluctuation in the value of coin in terms of exchange rates.

So let's say that Kingdom A and Kingdom B's gold coins are both at 20% purity (that being 20% of any given gold coin is actual gold) and we use 20% as the "baseline" (so a 20% pure gold coin would equal "1"). Now let's say that Kingdom A wants to get an economic leg up on Kingdom B and decides to issue a new batch of coins that are 25% pure, making them worth more than Kingdom B's. Due to the increase in value, the exchange rate between Kingdom A and Kingdom B would be 1.1, so exchanging 1 gold coin of Kingdom A would get you 1 gold, 1 silver from Kingdom B. The internal exchange rate in-nations would still be 1:1 though, so you could trade 1 20% pure gold coin for 1 25% pure gold coin within the confines of Kingdom A with no issue.

Things to note:
1) Players that are clever/have read Spice and Wolf would be able to, in theory, make a profit off the exchange rate by figuring out when new coins will be issued, getting their hands on older coins in bulk, then exchanging them for newer, more valuable coins and then turning around and doing business in another country. Or something like that.
2) The coin values (as in mechanical value) would go up by decimal points, so a coin valued at 1.54 would be 1 gold, 5 silver, 4 copper. Working out the purity percentage => mechanical value is gonna be tricky IMO, but I figure I'd just wing it.
3) Realistically, over the course of an extended campaign (Let's say lvl 5-15) you could realistically expect currency to be issued ~3-4 times per nation, so it's not going to be a massive thing.
4) Would actually give the appraise skill a use aside from "how much can we sell Magic Sword #638 for?". "Well you have 500 gold coins you looted from those bandits. But how much are those coins actually worth?"



Simple realistic stuff. Winter is coming and the cities to the north are now paying a higher price for preserved meats, veggies, furs, etc., so there's a profit to be made if the players decide to get ahold of trade goods. In short, the time of year, events (be they player caused or otherwise) and general locational things would cause the stock prices of trade goods (and some adventuring gear) to swing one way or the other (either more costly or less costly).

Issues I can see:
1) Angry players who try to buy gear and find that it's more than what's in the book. "What do you mean a longsword is 50g? The book says it's 15g!" "Well the engineering guilds have been buying up most of the metal recently for a thing. If you had bothered to make a Knowledge Local check you could have found that out..." *Cue table flipping*
2) Possibility for the players to try and cheese their way into oodles of money. Could be counteracted by doing...something to reflect a flooded market or something.


This one I actually like and really wanna add in.

So let's say the players finish dredging the depths of Dungeon #197 and have brought back a massive haul of loot to sell--magic items, lost tech, potions they'll never need, the usual. Now assuming they're selling everything and it's reaching into the 5-6 digits, realistically no independent merchant would have that much coin on them. However, trade guilds would be a thing, and they players could sell the items there without worrying about getting stiffed or doing the whole Skyrim/Fallout runaround of "Okay I'll sell this stuff until you have no coin left then go over here and sell this to this guy and so on and so forth".

But of course, even trade guilds have limits on what they can give in terms of cash. So in come certificates of credit. Basically "Okay this document says you gave us loot equal to X-gold. Take this to any of our trade guild branches and we'll honor it".

Issues I could see with this:
1) Forgery. I really wouldn't put it past even the most LG-minded players to not consider forging certificates of credit.
2) Actually making it viable for the players. Encumbrance is generally handwaved, as is weight of coin, and things like Portable Holes, Handy Haversacks and Bags of Holding generally trivializes weight restrictions. So while a neat idea I feel, I can't really see the players buying into the whole "certificate" thing unless they're forced to.

TheCountAlucard
2014-12-27, 06:42 PM
Admittedly this book doesn't account for the possibility of magical fabrication of goods and services, but I believe it's still bound to be a useful resource in all but the highest-magic campaigns: Debt: the First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber.

Also, I like Spice and Wolf - some folks I know have run Exalted games based off of it - so I'm admittedly a tad intrigued. Color me interested, OP.

Milodiah
2014-12-27, 06:45 PM
One of the core issues with "fixing" economics in fantasy settings is that prices are arbitrarily assigned to objects.

Bucket- one gold.
Sword - fifteen gold.
Bread- One silver.
Tent- Twenty gold.

Where'd the numbers come from? I made them up, like most of these games. It's certainly not an evaluation of material cost, labor, and market conditions based on actual medieval accounting...and then magic shows up. Sure, in a zero-magic setting that was a damn good replica of Medieval Europe, a few hours' research could get you a fair estimate of a realistic cost for a sword. But what's the price of iron when Wall of Iron is a thing? And what's the cost of a finished good when Fabricate exists? And God, magic item costs...really there's no accurate way to figure that out without the highest-level economic models, the sort that usually win Nobel Prizes. And I don't see anybody Nobel laureates stepping up and offering their assistance to WotC. Even if they did, I bet WotC would say "Nah, 99% of our target demographic doesn't give a **** about theoretical macroeconomics." Which is partially true, given the number of people who hand-wave prices.

The main argument for setting the bar so high for magic item costs is that "wizards don't wanna spend their time doing boring things like participating in the economy, unless there's a big payoff for them...after all, they're wizards!".

Nope.

Either you set the stage for a natural monopoly when Lucian the Greedy decides he'll be the only wizard to offer his services at a lucrative-but-achievable cost, or the market practically collapses on itself when Lucian the Greedy shows up and everyone realizes that getting buckets of gold for a spell is actually really cool and something they'd wanna be a part of.

Fel Temp
2014-12-27, 10:38 PM
I'd be worried about these kinds of things just boring players who are in a game for high adventure. It really depends on your players, but I'd recommend maybe trying some economic elements in a session or two to see if they really respond to it before designing much of a campaign around it. It also might be better to tie in broader economic concerns rather than small things like profiting from exchange rates. In any case, here are some things that come to mind for how economic matters could come into play:

1. If there's a war going on, it would make sense for at least one of the nations involved to issue paper currency or base metal coins whose value is guaranteed by the government's promise to exchange these for precious metal coinage once the war is over. If the party's wealth is largely tied into this currency, making sure this government doesn't lose the war and therefore erase their wealth could be a motivating factor. It could be fun to gradually reveal that the other side is really the lesser of two evils, so they have to chose between their conscience and their pocketbook.

2. The Roman Empire's solution to budget shortfalls was to debase their currency. While this did cause inflation, that still took time to happen, so it would give them an instant solution to a short term problem, and they'd have time to adjust taxes to insure the treasury kept up with the increased prices that followed.* I'd say a debasement like this is probably more likely than increases in the purity and weight of coin (though that happened, too). One interesting side effect of this is that trade partners would sometimes be less than pleased when they found they were paid in lesser quality coin than expected, and would insist on being paid in older, purer coin. Perhaps a party has to find a way to acquire such coin in order to get what they want from someone in a foreign city or a foreign merchant.

3. Counterfeit coins were pretty common throughout most of history. Normally, these would be fourees, which are made by wrapping a cheap base metal in a silver or gold foil, then hitting it with either copied dies or ones that were stolen. A party could find that they were paid in bad coin, perhaps running into issues with the law when they tried to spend it. They may run into a town that prefers barter due to the shear number of counterfeits that are in the area. Maybe the party is hired to find and stop a counterfeiter. Or maybe you just have a merchant check the quality of their coins for flavor.**

4. You could have factions that are for or against major economic reforms, such as splitting up the large farms owned by a few rich aristocrats and giving the land to the farmers. Or a populist is trying to push for debt relief for a population who cannot afford the rent on their land due to several years of poor harvests. Or he's trying to put a cap on the often absurd interest rates that the rich forced on the desperate poor who needed to borrow (over 100% wasn't that uncommon in the Roman empire). Or maybe some merchants hire the party to try to take out someone who put an embargo or tariff on a good they want to sell.


*If you know much about Roman history, you'll know that this all fell apart in the third century, which had severe inflation problems. However, it mostly seemed to work for the first two centuries AD, and the overall inflation rate for those centuries was less than just about any modern country over the last two centuries.

**There are a few ways to check. The ancient Athenians would often test a few coins by cutting into them to confirm a silver core. One could check the weight of a coin to see if it was off. They could do the whole biting into a gold coin thing to see if it bent right. Or they could drop them on a hard surface and listen to how it rung. Or maybe they note that the coin has some sort of major flaw (I actually own a counterfeit denarius whose inscription misspells the emperors name and seems to trail off into gibberish at the end).

jedipotter
2014-12-27, 11:55 PM
This will depend a lot on the game and the players. I tend to think most players won't care too much.

If your running a more action adventure role play game, like D&D, where the plot is ''kill the dragon'', then you won't likely even get to use any ''economics''. And if you did, they might just get in the way, or be ignored.

But if your running a more urban or set in place game they can add to the story. If the game is D&D where everyone is a noble struggling to make some money, for example.

sktarq
2014-12-28, 01:04 AM
Totally depends on ypur players.

Super classic high adventure use none
If they are in classically as realistic as possible. . . mostly use the latter two
the first. . . makes a good plot point but is distracting otherwise for even the most economically minded players I've met. . . .

my 2cp. . .