the thought crossed my mind when i remembered just how much gold a player character goes through regularly--when a commoner gets a few copper pieces a day's hard work, an adventurer rolling in with several (hundred) thousand gold would be completely outlandish.
in a fantasy world i can see 'adventurer' existing as an occupation, since they're effectively glorified pest control (who deal with REALLY exotic pests).
adventurers in themselves are an interesting concept--from the outside they're obscenely wealthy homeless people who are equally likely to tip with bars of solid platinum as they are to burn your city to the ground. while most of their obscene wealth is poured into keeping up with the increasing power of the pests they deal with, over the course of their career more money passes through and adventurer's purse than most small kingdoms have in their entire treasury.
18th-level fighter mclargehuge buying that +5 dragonslaying falchion of awesometude is effectively injecting ~200,000 gold into a single city's economy, which would lead to complete chaos--or at the very least the 'magic mart' closing down entirely as the shopkeep goes into early retirement on his own ISLAND because of how staggering that amount of money is for a regular kingdom.
so how does fantasy world support itself (dont say magic dont say magic)?
Creative Director
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That's kind of one of the things you have to just accept and move on...
There's basically two economies in a pen and paper fantasy world.
1) The economy driven by PCs buying and selling magic items.
2) The economy driven by in-world NPCs and trade and the like.
They don't really play well together, and it's best not to make them try in my opinion. At least, not without completely redesigning how the game handles magic item pricing, balance, and creation from the ground up.
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200,000 gold isn't that much from the perspective of a kingdom.
It's enough to equip 1000 soldiers with breastplates, or to buy six or seven galleys, or 4000 cattle.
I don't think commoners are as badly paid as you think.
The guy selling items for 200,000 gold is probably some extra-planar traveler anyway.
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It would be interesting to develop a setting in which adventurers are seen as necessary for protection but widely reviled for the destabilizing effects their lifestyle has on society and feared for their great power. Magic item vendors might be shunned with the same fervor as tax collectors. Segregated and overpriced 'adventurers only' taverns might crop up, both to take advantage of their carefree spending and to keep those drunken barbarians and fighters from killing people every time a bar brawl broke out. Even the paladins, selflessly giving out their riches to the poor, might be hated by the noble class for devaluing their currency. Would make for an interesting setting for a 'grim and gritty' type campaign.
Fantasyland economy is not intended to represent a real working economy because it is not really worth doing the in depth math to make it work, and with spells such as fabricate it etc etc it is really too much trouble. It is just there for game balance reasons, just like many other rules.
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In Pathfinder, a tiny elite have all the power and wealth and can use it to make themselves even richer and more powerful without concern for the impact their actions will have on the masses. That sounds like a pretty realistic economy to me.
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The search function is your friend, this argument has been covered several times.
A recent discussion[url=http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rgry?Adventurers-are-neccessary-to-balance-the][/url].
As Matthew said, 200.000 gp are a big sum, but not something really staggering. It is around 10 millions euro. In our world we have people that is paid that sum for a year or even a month of work and while they are rich people they are very far from being part of the richest elite.
The PC are similar to the Russian nobles fleeing the communist revolution, people with a lot on wealth on themselves but without a steady source of income. They aren't really rich.
To make another example a big truck is worth about 10.000 gp. You see a trucker as a rich guy? A fishing boat is worth even more. You see a professional fisherman that own his boat as a very wealthy man?
The adventurers are guys that own a very expensive equipment that they use to do their work. They don't have a very large income, they have costly equipment. At least for me a rich guy that can affect the economy is someone that has a large expendable income, not someone that has a large sum of money immobilized in the equipment he use for his work.
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the thought crossed my mind when i remembered just how much gold a player character goes through regularly--when a commoner gets a few copper pieces a day's hard work, an adventurer rolling in with several (hundred) thousand gold would be completely outlandish.
in a fantasy world i can see 'adventurer' existing as an occupation, since they're effectively glorified pest control (who deal with REALLY exotic pests).
adventurers in themselves are an interesting concept--from the outside they're obscenely wealthy homeless people who are equally likely to tip with bars of solid platinum as they are to burn your city to the ground. while most of their obscene wealth is poured into keeping up with the increasing power of the pests they deal with, over the course of their career more money passes through and adventurer's purse than most small kingdoms have in their entire treasury.
18th-level fighter mclargehuge buying that +5 dragonslaying falchion of awesometude is effectively injecting ~200,000 gold into a single city's economy, which would lead to complete chaos--or at the very least the 'magic mart' closing down entirely as the shopkeep goes into early retirement on his own ISLAND because of how staggering that amount of money is for a regular kingdom.
so how does fantasy world support itself (dont say magic dont say magic)?
A few things. Firstly, why is that such a staggering amount? The average large city (according to the rules) has about 17,500 people in it (which seems pretty lowball to me but it's a start). Now the average person can make 5 gp / week taking 10 on a craft or profession check earning about 20 gp / month for being untrained laborers. Even if they really suck at making a living (a 3 Int / 3 Wis = 3 gp / week) they're pulling about 12 gp / month.
That means there's at least 350,000 gp worth of community income generated each month. The income might not be in the form of actual currency (some might be in trade goods like livestock and such) but it's happening. That's 4,200,000 gp worth of money that the plebeians are generating each year. So the money is there, to be certain, but it's not always going to be in the hands of the adventurers or someone who can buy their loot.
Each community has a purchase limit based on its size. By default, you can't go to a large city and sell off a magic item (or anything really) that's worth more than 50,000 gp. Likewise, the standard purchase limit on an item is 16,000 gp at the largest of cities: the metropolis. As a general rule, if McLargeHuge is buying a +5 dragonslaying falchion of blinging, that's a very rare and one of the kind thing that exists in the city but isn't part of the regular trade.
But would his dropping 200,000 gp into the city's economy, even if such a wondrous item happened to be within the city, for sale, and he had the money, would he really be disrupting it that much? Well, let's look at our population and average monthly economic generation.
He injected an average of about 11 gp / person into the enconomy. That's a bit of a surge, but it's probably going to be forgotten about in a few months. If you're actually following the rules, the fighter probably wouldn't have been able to reliably buy anything much more expensive than a 16,000 gp item, and while 16,000 gp is super expensive, but it's less than a 5% surge to the monthly economy.
Even if you do happen to find the +5 sword of bling for sale and have the resources to buy it, you're not going to wildly disrupt the economy. It's not even going to be enough to shake it up a whole lot, unless you're making a purchase like that regularly. Somebody is going to get rich, some gold will trickle down the mountain, but it's barely going to affect the bottom line of the community at the end of the year (a bit less than 5%). Unless you're making purchases like that throughout the year, it's doubtful it's going to have a huge impact on the community.
What We Can Conclude: If you're actually going with the standards presented in the books, the scenario probably falls flat as the chances of finding an item of that value is almost nil (play around with the random item generation rules and tell me how many tries it takes to get a +10 anything. I'll wait). Even if you do, it's not going to have a major influence on the daily lives of the people living in the settlement.
This is also in a standard that assumes that about 1/2 of that total economic pool is in expendable income. The other half is the 10 gp / person that goes towards daily living expenses + taxes (so it's probably fair to assume about 5 gp / person is taxed).
Take Note About Kingdoms: The above is just 1 city. Not even the largest city, or even a large "large city" but one with an average population for a large city (based on the population charts, I'd estimate a metropolis has having a monthly income generation of 87,5000 gp / month (estimating a mid-line population for a metropolis at being about 43,750 people) or 10,500,000 gp / year.
Now how many thorpes, hamlets, villages, small towns, large towns, small cities, large cities, and metropoli does a Kingdom actually have? Well it varies on the kingdom, but it's probably pretty safe to assume that most fantasy kingdoms are dotted with communities that seem to spring up in time for the next adventure. :P
So no, really, it's not that much money. It's a lot of money to an individual, in the same way that if you decided you wanted to finance a new Walmart in a town you are talking more money than virtually anyone in the community would ever be able to generate in their entire lives or even their grandchildren's lives, but it happens.
A Note on Perspective: It's difficult to fathom how much money wealth is actually moved around or grown in a given day. As an example, a Walmart near where I live does over a million dollars in business a day. In a small town convenience store, it's nothing to do several thousand dollars of business in a single day (we're talking convenience store where you buy stuff like Dorritos and Pepsi).
You're talking an entire kingdom. Of hundreds of thousands of people. There are millions if not billions of gold pieces getting traded around in some form every day in your typical campaign.
/rambling
From a practical standpoint in a world where magic items are everywhere and cost so much the medieval, feudal, or agrarian societies make no sense. He who had the money or the power would rule whole kingdoms and be unstoppable in many cases. With this person being so strong why would be ever pay anyone, just take slaves.
Again, nothing wrong with that in RPG realism terms. Good people with power will rule kingdoms fairly. Bad people with power will abuse it and become the type of villains that adventurers have to kill.
A President with nuclear weapons and tanks at his disposal isn't necessarily going to reintroduce slavery, and the existence of trillion dollar military budgets doesn't mean people aren't still going to be farmers.
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If having a nonsensical economy makes for an unfun game for you, then create rules for a realistic economy (warning: your fellow players might not find it fun).
Or they might LOVE IT. I had a GM who built and incredibly detailed economic system for his setting. I like playing adventuring merchants so when I gleefully got a copy of his rules I started out becoming rich. I started by becoming the groups money and trading girl and I kept various cargos in our ship's hold and our money productively invested throughout the campaign. By the end of the game I may not have been a very dangerous character in terms of combat power (the others always overshadowed me there) but I kept our group fat with wealth, property, and resources. And it was wildly fun.
gremlins steal money away into the ether to keep the economy in check.
For me, I always thought the monster economy was off key. Your average Orc or other gobliniod never farms it seems so has to live off raiding and hunting.. So this means their number should be very low andnot large enough to pose a threat to any settled land
The diet of orcs is more of a Lord of the Rings problem than an RPG problem.
One thing about the economy inI a fantasy world people should keep in mind is how would magic effect it. You are going to have better health care for one thing and perhaps better weather so less chance of famine or plagues hurting the economy.
Ah, but you also probably have evil clerics to spread disease and famine, so it balances out.
A couple of other things to consider when creating a believable fantasy economy:
Magic can make producing some goods a lot quicker and easier. This is a bit like someone in our world owning a factory. It increases the availability of certain goods, and drives some old-fashioned craftsmen out of business, and may focus wealth in the hands of the owner, but doesn't fundamentally break anything.
If things get too out of whack, the majority of gods (including lawful evil ones) have a vested interest in keeping the world going, so will probably intervene when necessary to preserve civilization as we know it.
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There is a good article about how much people Really earn by rule in Pathfinder at this site.
Punch line, most people are average, living off a few hundred gold a year. The economy is roughly running as though a gp is worth $100 US.
So a 200,000 gp weapon is twenty million dollars of buying power. A lot of money, but not really enough to destroy a reasonable sized economy. Our local quarterback makes that in a year...
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For me, I always thought the monster economy was off key. Your average Orc or other gobliniod never farms it seems so has to live off raiding and hunting.. So this means their number should be very low andnot large enough to pose a threat to any settled land
I always figured orcs & goblins lived as a sort of hunter/gatherer society when not raiding - and that they were only a threat to isolated villages & hamlets.
In Lord of the Rings they're a major threat - but the world of Lord of the Rings, while rich in history, doesn't really make any sense.
There is a good article about how much people Really earn by rule in Pathfinder at this site.
Punch line, most people are average, living off a few hundred gold a year. The economy is roughly running as though a gp is worth $100 US.
So a 200,000 gp weapon is twenty million dollars of buying power. A lot of money, but not really enough to destroy a reasonable sized economy. Our local quarterback makes that in a year...
Woot. I always estimated the GP to be about $100 as well. Simply based off the price of services which I felt were probably a more reasonable analog than trying to measure things like what the current value of precious metals is. :P
Meals per day, cost of a low, medium, or nice inn stay, etc. It's just always felt most "right" based on those models, for me at least.
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How does the economy work in the REAL world?
Anyone who claims to know is lying to you.
Having read the blog on your link, I concur wholeheartedly, Mr. Quest. :)
I've divorced magic items and wealth in my game. Permanent magic items cant be crafted by normal means, and are effectively priceless and rare artifacts (I have a whole set of house rules to deal with the power game caused by a lack of magic items). Doing this means the only 'pricey' things around are wands, scrolls and potions. Consumables. This means that while you can still have your players be fabulously wealthy, they dont HAVE to be.
In a friend's E6 game this has allowed some fairly normal interactions with the economy, including using the downtime rules to put together businesses using a significant portion of our wealth.
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How does the economy work in the REAL world?
Anyone who claims to know is lying to you.
Q: What do you when you take all of the economists in the world and lay them down end to end?
A: Everybody pointing in a different direction.
Slaves and thralls farm. That's why you raid, to capture more of the. Orcs as nomadic herders also makes some sense.For me, I always thought the monster economy was off key. Your average Orc or other gobliniod never farms it seems so has to live off raiding and hunting.. So this means their number should be very low andnot large enough to pose a threat to any settled landI always figured orcs & goblins lived as a sort of hunter/gatherer society when not raiding - and that they were only a threat to isolated villages & hamlets.
In Lord of the Rings they're a major threat - but the world of Lord of the Rings, while rich in history, doesn't really make any sense.
One thingI did is make my Orcs and Gobliniod sexist. Female farm and do all the hard work while males huntand wage war
Magic?
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Going by the 1gp = $100 estimate, buying a 200,000gp item is a bit like buying a $20 million dollar military helicopter. (Which is actually pretty cheap - some military helicopters cost over ten times that much.) It's a major purchase where hundreds of people will be employed (gathering materials, security, advertising, sales, accountants, catering, maintenance, assists on crafting rolls, etc.) Much of the profits will be paid in taxes and/or bribes to the local mob.
Every purchase on that scale will probably be celebrated locally, since they keep so many people in employment.
This assumes a relatively mundane trade. The alternative is that you buy it from, say, a mysterious high level caster who lives on his own timeless demiplane, in which case the city you were in when you bought it is largely unaffected.
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There's also the fact that anyone with the dosh to purchase an item like that is most definitely going to have the security systems to protect it. Seriously, have you ever looked at the horrible things you can do with a combination of magical traps and/or intelligent items?
Rooms that lock down and fill with negative energy and poison gasses?
Traps that conjure guardians into the room every round on the round?
Teleportation traps that ensnare anyone trying to teleport in and out?
All of these are things that are actually relatively inexpensive to do. So much in fact that any location that deals in magic items regularly will probably have some pretty elite security systems. If anything, trying to rob a business that deals in high-value goods like magic items would be an adventure unto itself; not stealing candy from a gas-station.
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I dipped levels into economancer, investeror, hedgefund witch, bargain hunter, credit bard, loan oracle, warbond priest, greed antipaladin, and APRager.
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I dipped levels into economancer, investeror, hedgefund witch, bargain hunter, credit bard, loan oracle, warbond priest, greed antipaladin, and APRager.
That got hilarious about halfway through!
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I actually wrote (back in April) an essay for my World Building 101 helper series dealing with exactly what happened when my players started dumping buckets of gold on a sleepy little fishing town in my game world.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but basically I find that letting the PC's drive the economic development of their native land tends to result in them suddenly being really careful with their money and trying to invest it "for the better."
Q: so how does the economy in a fantasy world even WORK?
A: The same way it does in real life: horribly.
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That's kind of one of the things you have to just accept and move on...
There's basically two economies in a pen and paper fantasy world.
1) The economy driven by PCs buying and selling magic items.
2) The economy driven by in-world NPCs and trade and the like.
They don't really play well together, and it's best not to make them try in my opinion. At least, not without completely redesigning how the game handles magic item pricing, balance, and creation from the ground up.
I actually think this is missing a trick. There is game to be had in their only being one economy, and PCs utterly destroying it. ;)
The "money in the root of all fun: economics in gaming" panel from gencon this year is definitely worth a listen.