[General] Loot and GPs: How Do You Like Your Economy?

[Saph]

Loot and GPs: The Three Types of RPG Economy

So your party's just beaten up one of the campaign's major villains and taken his stuff. What does that mean for your bank account? More to the point, what do you want it to mean? Do you want payment in money, game credits, or would you rather not pay attention to the economic side of things at all?

RPGs don't traditionally spend much time thinking about economics. The pictures on the front of the rulebooks are swords and magic and monsters, not shops and coins and trade. When it comes down to it, though, an awful lot of player motivation comes from money or the lack of it.


Type 1: Real Economy

In this sort of world, something's price is based on how much it costs to make and what people are willing to pay for it. In other words, the world runs on the real-life laws of economics. The developers won't go to too much trouble to model it, of course - this is an RPG, not Harvard Business School. But the general focus is trying to simulate a real world. For instance, in D&D 3.5, a torch costs 1 copper and a spyglass costs 1,000 gold, despite the fact that in your average dungeoncrawl, a torch is way more useful (it's a light source, an improvised weapon, and a way of setting things on fire, all in one handy package). But a spyglass is expensive to make and a torch is cheap. And that's why you see a lot of adventurers with torches and very few with spyglasses.

In this sort of world, money is really useful, and can be turned into serious power. If you're a billionaire noble from Coruscant, you may not be able to beat up the Dark Jedi, but you can buy yourself a Star Destroyer with turbolaser batteries. ("Deflect this, b**ch.") A Shadowrun corp exec can buy muscle that's better than the Runners. A 3rd-level 3.5 character with 800,000 GP to his name can take out even high-level monsters as long as he has access to a magic shop.

Since money is so useful, it's actually possible to set up a business, or even run campaigns that revolve around getting rich. Sometimes this can be a problem for the GM when the players decide to pass up his story in favour of getting rich. ("Nah, 10,000 nuyen's too low. I'll go jack a few cars instead.") Players also have a much better motivation to look for economic holes to exploit in this sort of system. ("So, if iron's a trade good, and this spell's duration is instantaneous . . .")

Examples: D&D 3.5, all editions of Star Wars, all editions of Shadowrun, lower-powered White Wolf systems, most variants of GURPS, Warhammer 40K games like Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader.


Type 2: Game Economy

In this sort of world, something's price is based on how useful it is in the hands of the PCs. Given the natural temperament of most adventuring parties, this means most of the economy revolves around weapons.

The aim of this sort of economy is to streamline buying and selling and get the PCs back into the action as fast as possible, usually by making Adam Smith cry in the corner. From a logical point of view, it makes absolutely no sense that the raw materials to make a magic item in D&D 4e cost 100% of the value of the item itself, nor does it make any sense that you can only sell stuff for 20% of its value ("screw monsters, I'm raiding a merchant caravan!"). But that's not the point; the purpose of the system is to encourage the PCs to get money by going on adventures rather than by buying and selling, and that's exactly what it does. The best way to get rich in this sort of world is generally by killing things and taking their stuff, which must make life rather hard on the inhabitants. ("Yeah, I guess I could have asked him for it, but he con'd blue and I was in a hurry").

Some games go to the next step and eliminate money altogether, using an abstracted points system. If you're playing a Batman-type hero in Mutants and Masterminds, you don't buy your night-vision goggles from a shop, you take the Equipment feat and buy a pair for 1 EP. You get more points by gaining XP, and you generally gain XP by defeating enemies. You can technically get regular cash, it's just that it's not good for much except impressing the groupies.

In this sort of world, money can be useful and you'll often find yourself needing it, but it's nowhere near as powerful as it is in the Type 1 games. The best equipment usually has level limits or availability issues that prevents it from being easily bought. It's pretty much impossible to go into business in this sort of system unless you're selling things to other PCs, and even then they're generally only interested in weapons or things related to weapons.

Examples: D&D 4e, Mutants & Masterminds, Spycraft, Final Fantasy and most CRPGs, World of Warcraft and most MMORPGs.


Type 3: No Economy

In this sort of world something's price is either irrelevant or doesn't exist. Sometimes it's because the PCs are so powerful that there's nothing in a shop that they'd care about and they could just take it if there was (like Amber), sometimes it's because the world is so dysfunctional that there isn't really an economy worth talking about (like Paranoia), and sometimes it's because the PCs aren't capable of grasping the concept of an economy in the first place (like Toon).

Players like loot. Gold coins are shiny and make a fun jingling sound when you have lots of them. Perhaps for this reason, game systems with a Type 3 economy are the least common.

Examples: Post-apocalyptic or pre-civilisation RPGs where there's no money, games where the PCs play nonhumans which don't have the concept of an economy, most first-person shooters or sims.


Type 4: Mixed

This is where you get a combination of two or more of the above: usually, a mixture of Type 1 (real economy) and Type 3 (no economy). For instance, in Legend of the Five Rings, there technically is a Type 1 economy, it's just that the PCs hardly ever spend any time dealing with it; they usually get a stipend from their Clan, and the focus of the game is on honour, reputation, and deeds. (Besides, when looking at a courtier the wrong way can get you ordered to commit ritual suicide, money isn't really the uppermost thing on your mind.) Likewise, in Mage: the Ascension, you still need money, it's just that you can create it out of thin air and the best stuff you could buy with it looks like Lego blocks compared to what the Technocracy gets to use; there's an economy, it's just not particularly useful.

Examples: Star Trek, Legend of the Five Rings, high-powered White Wolf systems.


Post your preference, and suggest which category your favourite system should be in!

[dsmiles]

[SIZE="5"][B][U][CENTER]So your party's just beaten up one of the campaign's major villains and taken his stuff. What does that mean for your bank account? More to the point, what do you want it to mean? Do you want payment in money, game credits, or would you rather not pay attention to the economic side of things at all?

RPGs don't traditionally spend much time thinking about economics. The pictures on the front of the rulebooks are swords and magic and monsters, not shops and coins and trade. When it comes down to it, though, an awful lot of player motivation comes from money or the lack of it.

I play DnD, but we use fairly realistic supply-and-demand economics. Kind of a Mixed of Types 1 and 2. The more demand there is for that +2 weapon, the more it's going to cost. I've had players willing to pay double the DMG price for items (or even more in a low-magic setting), simply because it was the most useful item they could purchase (like a HHH for a low-strength character).

[Mastikator]

I'm 100% with type 1, real economy. I want supply & demand to affect the price of goods and services, I want scarcity (of raw material) vs demand to affect supply (of products). I want economy of scale to affect price.
I want to be able to play as a merchant that can literally make a living of buying surplus products in one location and selling them in a place where it's scarce and in higher demand.
I also want people to have realistic amounts of money.

On another note I want the "type 1" variant of crafting and building. I prefer a full plate armor to cost 50 lbs of iron, a blast furnace, lots of firewood and crafting tools (anvil, hammer, etc).


If I can't have that... honestly don't even bother.

[Cyrion]

It depends on the game I'm running. I played in and ran a couple of GURPS Swashbuckler games where the economy was largely irrelevant except as a plot device (establishing a spice trade for example), and we never worried about money as long as you lived more or less in keeping with your wealth level. It definitely put the emphasis on being romantic heroes.

In D&D I pay much more attention to the economy because treasure is such an integral part of the game. However, my worlds tend to run more on a Medieval or Renaissance economy mindset than a modern one in order to keep adventurers adventurers instead of merchants.

[Winter_Wolf]

I have a personal preference for not bothering overmuch with the whole merchants & marketeers aspect of RPGs, because my interest in playing is to kill things, take their stuff, and go on epic adventures. DMs giving me fetch quests better expect the inevitable 'I am going to become a sword carrying merchant' mentality to kick in though. After all, they started it.

I prefer the type 1 real economy model for my D&D-esque RPGs. It irritates me no end when some systems (D&D 3.x, apparently 4e*) make it impossible to get value out of stuff that you no longer want or couldn't use in the first place. Hate that whole 'selling price is equal to crafting price' model.

Otherwise the type 3 no economy model works fine for me. I'd much rather have the abstract character trait for wealth at X level which grants access to anything of Y currency value or less, and Z level of restricted use (unrestricted, permit, law enforcement, military, etc.) BESM TriStat dX (which is apparently unpopular/dead) had a great system for this, because no matter how filthy rich you were, it didn't really matter because other character had Influence, Giant Mecha, Servant, or Item of Power for their build points, which were equally if not more powerful.

*Never played 4e, but from what I gather, it exacerbates the problem of selling loot.

[dsmiles]

I have a personal preference for not bothering overmuch with the whole merchants & marketeers aspect of RPGs, because my interest in playing is to kill things, take their stuff, and go on epic adventures. DMs giving me fetch quests better expect the inevitable 'I am going to become a sword carrying merchant' mentality to kick in though. After all, they started it.

THAT'S IT!!!!! A NEW GAME SYSTEM!!!

Merchants & Marketeers, here I come!

[Morty]

My preferences lie firmly in the 1st type of economy, with the "Don't bother about it overmuch" clause. I like the world around my characters to seem real, but even if I'm playing a realistic, down-to-earth, low powered game, a simplified economy model tends to work better for me.

[Tyndmyr]

THAT'S IT!!!!! A NEW GAME SYSTEM!!!

Merchants & Marketeers, here I come!

I've often considered making such a game, where economy is central. I *love* complex economies, with great amounts of detail, and can be perfectly happy running a business or the like.

This tendancy definitely isn't shared by everyone though. Lots of them like wealth level systems and such which are amazingly simplified. Meh.

[Calimehter]

I try to have my cake and eat it too (i.e. realism w/o the extra work!) by running Type 4 campaigns in Type 1 worlds, usually by having the PCs start out as part of some higher organization/church/guild/etc. that takes care of most of the finance side of things.

I got away from that a bit in my last effort, and was rewarded with trying to figure out how to use the DMG II business rules when the PCs tried to take over a small-time crime racket.

[dsmiles]

I've often considered making such a game, where economy is central. I *love* complex economies, with great amounts of detail, and can be perfectly happy running a business or the like.

This tendancy definitely isn't shared by everyone though. Lots of them like wealth level systems and such which are amazingly simplified. Meh.

It must have the Loves Pie/Hates Pie, Sane/Crazy axis for alignment.

[valadil]

I don't pay a lot of attention to the economics of a game. Bean counting isn't really something I do in character, so it doesn't feel like roleplaying to me. Maybe if I played a game with more interesting economics I'd be more intrigued to play with them, but so far, in ~15 years of roleplaying I haven't encountered such economic mechanics.

I like my economies to be based on the book with a few exceptions. Rolling scarcity checks for each item is too tedious. I'd rather just cap how much wealth of a given type each town has. A frontier town has +2 armors, +1 weapons, and level 3 scrolls. Done. If items are criminally underpriced, they're not available. Someone else bought them all. Instead the players receive those items as loot once they're at an appropriate level. That's how I like to both run and play the economy in D&D.

[Susano-wo]

I like 1 and or 3

If we are going to worry about money, rather than simply abstracting levels of wealth, etc, I want it to *make sense, dammit!*
I hate seeing buckets of gold everywhere, and I hate being sold things based on in game power, unless that *also* makes sense (for instance, in a world were you can sell magic items regularly, like standard DnD, it makes sense to assume that someone will price some itmes more than their crafting price would indicate, for the same reason real buniessmen do--because they think you'll pay for it, and they want to make more money!)

That being said, my economics view mirrors my physics view. "Its really just a game, I really should relax" If everything's not perfectly accurate, I won't fret, but when you start not only making Adam Smith cry, but actively taunt him, then I have a problem ^ ^

[The Rose Dragon]

I prefer either "screw the rules, I have money" or "screw the money, I have rules (or superpowers)".

[Saph]

So out of curiosity, which category would these systems fall into, since I don't know them well enough to place them?

• Spirit of the Century
• Mouse Guard
• Call of Cthullu
• Iron Heroes
• Runequest
• Earthdawn
• Rolemaster
• Riddle of Steel

[Tvtyrant]

I prefer realistic, but the issue is that high fantasy simply cannot work that way. A masterwork sword was freakishly expensive in real life, because only a few people could afford to spend years getting the requisite talents for it, and magical items that cost xp would be worth dramatically higher amounts then they are. Potions would be all but none-existant, because they rely on midlevel wizards devoting their life to potion making, and horses wouldn't be buyable most places. Seriously, for short of zounds of money you are not getting a horse in a country of 5,000 people. Someone with real money already has it.

If you have a higher population it becomes possible, but then you don't have a reason to play the game, since there are going to be armys or bands everywhere.

Which leaves the Indiana Jones economy; the past was awesome and the present sucks, so who ever is willing to die looting ruins gets money faster then lords do. Thus magic items abound, but robots/Aberrations/guardians are in the old cities and it is extremely dangerous to get stuff. This is actually my favorite, with clear ruins you can see from far off but which are extraordinarily dangerous to enter. Things like Mind Flayers sun themselfs on the ruins of old (insert name here) and taking their stuff is... problematic.

[Saph]

If you have a higher population it becomes possible, but then you don't have a reason to play the game, since there are going to be armys or bands everywhere.

Why do you say that? The standard model for most fantasy settings is that you have some civilised areas, and some wild ones. You do your adventuring in the wilderness and your shopping in the city.

[Earthwalker]

I think Runequest and Earthdawn fall into type 1.

I prefer type 1.

I do find it odd in DnD how much loot is just laying around to be picked up in some old ruin. Rolling on the treasure table for some old paintings and a couple of vases he goblins seems to cherish.

[Aharon]

I play a mixture between real and game economy, weighted heavily towards game economy:
(D&D 3.5, but can probably be used in any level-based games that use something similar to WBL)

The PCs get a portion of their WBL proportional to the XP gain at the end of the adventure.
Say the characters are 11th level, and get 1000 xp. WBL for 11th level is 66000 gp, WBL for 12th is 88000 gp, so they get 1000/11000*(88000-66000)= 2000 gp added to their WBL.

Divorced from the level-dependent WBL are the ingame rewards. They might find 100000 gp at 11th level, but they can only convert the xp-dependent part into power. Afterwards, "real" economy kicks in: Whatever rewards they gain in their adventure, they can't convert to power directly - as their demand for powerful stuff goes up, so does the price. Things they would normally get for 2000 gp might instead cost 20000 gp, because the merchant notices his customers really, really want [X].
This excludes material components, scrolls, potions and other one-off power increasers, but includes staffs and wands.

This has the advantages that
a) I don't need to care about what the items NPC #23 uses are worth, allowing me to make him a credible threat via good equipment.
b) the PCs aren't rich violent Hobos who invest millions in their equipment, but nothing into luxury.
c) the players have the pocket change to afford scrolls of Discern location and similar very expensive stuff that is out of their level range, but needed for continuing the plot.

It might have the disadvantage that the players don't feel excited about treasure, because they convert it into the items they want anyway. I solve that by introducing useful items that would be almost unaffordable or flat-out ruleswise impossible, for example items that use Tomes-mechanisms: they improve along with their owner.
It might also be abused if a player invests heavily in one-off items, but none of them have done it till now. There seems to be some reluctance to spend money on stuff you can only use once, even if it's only in a game.

[Drascin]

THAT'S IT!!!!! A NEW GAME SYSTEM!!!

Merchants & Marketeers, here I come!

Capitalism, Ho!

[dsmiles]

Capitalism, Ho!

You're talking to the guy who specifically built a rogue to be able to build a merchant empire. His ultimate motive was to have enough money to buy the world. He didn't actually want to buy the world, he just wanted that much money. He did, however buy a small continent. I'd probably love that game.

[Black_Zawisza]

I prefer a "Game Economy" where it's easy to exploit the flawed system and get rich.

[WarKitty]

I do Type 1 shifting to Type 4. With the aim that low-level PC's can buy what's useful to them, but by the time they get high enough to break the economy there's no point for them to do so.