Struggling With Economics

[Elricaltovilla]

This is as much fluff as it is mechanics, but I'm trying to suss out how much stuff should cost for a project of mine. Based on my own entirely arbitrary standard, 1 gold coin is enough money to buy a hearty meal for 1 person (think hamburger and fries, or spaghetti and meatballs from a decent local restaurant). Of course, building from this arbitrary standard, I have no idea how much something like a dagger should cost, much less a Forest Drake egg. So does anyone have any suggestions or insight?

[SilverStud]

HEY THERE!!!!

So I had a similar question a little while back, only I made the mistake of asking it in the 5e Forum, and got a whole bunch of unhelpful "herp durrrrrrr that isn't enough info durrr" responses. Here though, people understand the effort that goes into making a world and its economy.

The silver lining of that thread though was one guy who gave me a link to a fantastic .pdf called Grains into Gold. Hats off to the people who made it, as it is an excellent read. It is 80sih pages long, but I recommend reading the whole thing. They take it from wheat on upward into everything else and explain how economies work. The best part is that they understand that we are gamers, not economists, and that what we need are functional generalizations. Seriously, this thing is the best.

https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1367/76/1367764453511.pdf

Tell me what you think! It saved my bacon!

[sktarq]

one of things to start with. . .

what kind of game to want to play? It matters because different worlds have different economies and that will be reflected in prices.
A different world lean towards different kinds of games.

How stable is the world, politically, culturally, ecologically?
How much do you want the game to focus on the cities vs the countryside?
how big a scale do your societies operate on?
How militerized do you want the world to be?
How do conflicts between burgurs, nobles, and priest resolve their conflicts?
what is the tech level you're planning on?
how rich do you want the world to feel?
how much of a connection to the past do you want the world to have?

then it is a question of local variance. This variance is of course what merchants make their living off of.

[Tzi]

This is as much fluff as it is mechanics, but I'm trying to suss out how much stuff should cost for a project of mine. Based on my own entirely arbitrary standard, 1 gold coin is enough money to buy a hearty meal for 1 person (think hamburger and fries, or spaghetti and meatballs from a decent local restaurant). Of course, building from this arbitrary standard, I have no idea how much something like a dagger should cost, much less a Forest Drake egg. So does anyone have any suggestions or insight?

This is a huge struggle because your trying to put values on things that are not real.

I find there is really only a few easy answers. One is to use the SRD prices as a base. Lets say the SRD represents the PERFECT value of all these goods in a totally perfectly functional economy. You then modify those prices based on local conditions.

Otherwise simulating economics becomes a very insane math problem for LOTS of goods.

[Mechalich]

Part of the problem is that the majority of high fantasy settings are based on type periods where there was not a fully functioning market economy. Even Renaissance or Ming China games have only proto-economies to work with. The problem is that adventurer types work best when envisioned as if there was a market economy - because it makes purchasing specialized goods and dumping huge quantities of valuable goods onto the market much simpler to represent. So prices are purely a game mechanic designed to allow parties to fast forward through what would otherwise be a highly complex process of trying to dispose of all their goods in an economically advantageous way.

A method to make this less blatantly game-y is to provide the party with a buyer who has functionally infinite pockets who pays the group fixed prices for their loot and sells them things back accordingly (this is one of the more obvious services for an adventurers guild if the game world has one), with the assumption that this buyer is doing the hard work of integrating all the other stuff back into the economy by turning it into labor, land, livestock and other stuff the PCs don't really need. This also helps you deal with the issue of local purchase limits (which are realistic but annoying in actual play) and allows you to elide the issue of dumping massive quantities of money into the local economy.

So long as characters are engaging in a fairly standard D&D style economic escalator - buy equipment, get loot, turn loot into cash, buy better equipment, repeat - that's really all you need to worry about. Further economic detail is really only necessary if you're adding on a minigame dealing with kingdom management.

[sktarq]

Or if you include the part where who you sell the often powerful loot to (and buy from) is a political act in many places.

Which is an easy way to get the PC's into local power politics and the adventure hooks that come from that.

[Elricaltovilla]

HEY THERE!!!!

So I had a similar question a little while back, only I made the mistake of asking it in the 5e Forum, and got a whole bunch of unhelpful "herp durrrrrrr that isn't enough info durrr" responses. Here though, people understand the effort that goes into making a world and its economy.

The silver lining of that thread though was one guy who gave me a link to a fantastic .pdf called Grains into Gold. Hats off to the people who made it, as it is an excellent read. It is 80sih pages long, but I recommend reading the whole thing. They take it from wheat on upward into everything else and explain how economies work. The best part is that they understand that we are gamers, not economists, and that what we need are functional generalizations. Seriously, this thing is the best.

https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1367/76/1367764453511.pdf

Tell me what you think! It saved my bacon!

This is very much along the lines of what I was looking for. Thank you.

[SilverStud]

This is very much along the lines of what I was looking for. Thank you.

Hey I'm glad I could help. It made a huge difference for me.

[Max_Killjoy]

That doc looks like a promising read. Thank you for posting.

[Deepbluediver]

The best part is that they understand that we are gamers, not economists, and that what we need are functional generalizations. Seriously, this thing is the best.

https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1367/76/1367764453511.pdf
I just started reading it and I already like this section from the introduction: "Although most game worlds are written and designed so that player characters can adventure through them, this system of economics assumes that adventurers are not the most important people in the world. Adventurers have their place and can become important, but the world really cannot revolve around them. This simply does not make sense. Even if they save the world from disaster, they will not be the focal point of the world’s economy. Adventurers may live “rock-star” lives, but they simply fill one section of the economic picture."

I know that some gamers and GMs prefer worlds where no one besides the PCs and the Big Bad is above level 3, but I've always found that difficult to make work in the types of games I want to run for a variety of reasons. At the very least there are other adventurer-groups (NPCs) that exist in the world so you can have some reason for their being an actual market of magic items and stuff.

[Crusadr]

HEY THERE!!!!

So I had a similar question a little while back, only I made the mistake of asking it in the 5e Forum, and got a whole bunch of unhelpful "herp durrrrrrr that isn't enough info durrr" responses. Here though, people understand the effort that goes into making a world and its economy.

The silver lining of that thread though was one guy who gave me a link to a fantastic .pdf called Grains into Gold. Hats off to the people who made it, as it is an excellent read. It is 80sih pages long, but I recommend reading the whole thing. They take it from wheat on upward into everything else and explain how economies work. The best part is that they understand that we are gamers, not economists, and that what we need are functional generalizations. Seriously, this thing is the best.

https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1367/76/1367764453511.pdf

Tell me what you think! It saved my bacon!

Just another poster who wanted to thank you for sharing this!

[Yukitsu]

This is as much fluff as it is mechanics, but I'm trying to suss out how much stuff should cost for a project of mine. Based on my own entirely arbitrary standard, 1 gold coin is enough money to buy a hearty meal for 1 person (think hamburger and fries, or spaghetti and meatballs from a decent local restaurant). Of course, building from this arbitrary standard, I have no idea how much something like a dagger should cost, much less a Forest Drake egg. So does anyone have any suggestions or insight?

Actually, that's a perfectly valid starting point for a standard. I think in economics it's referred to as the "big mac index" which indicates how much buying power someone has by how many big mac meals they can buy. As a sort of coincidence, it's a good start.

[Lord of Monies]

I've taken a rather simplistic translation with my players by saying that 1sp = £1, so 1gp = £10 and it's been easily accepted and even given a little extra context to the value of some things, but I'm also not sure if it's entirely accurate. I am also reading through the big research document and finding it very helpful, so I may end up keeping my fantasy to reality exchange rate but change the value of some in-game things instead.

I tend to think that the monetary barrier is the only thing stopping a person from acquiring it, but this document is a good reminder that diamonds are expensive because they are so rare, so the likes of raise dead have the extra hurdle of trying to find £50,000 of diamonds in the first place. Suddenly a mid-level shopping trip is now a small adventure in its own right.