Wish Economy

[hogarth]

"All rich people somehow agree not to flood the world with gold, so it's okay." -- That's just stupid.

This is breathtakingly simple. A wizard can create 15000gp every 6 seconds. They can trivially make 1,000,000gp a day and still have time to party like a rock star. If you want to buy all of that wizard's time for a month to have even a rather modest magic item made you need to pay 30,000,000gp plus the cost of him having to avoid strenuous effort, like rockstar partying, for a whole month.

Only a total moron of a wizard would agree to make a powerful item for gold. That being the case only a total moron would sell a powerful item that they somehow acquired for gold.

And an altruistic cleric can afford to buy food for every starving person on the planet by selling one +3 mace. Except he doesn't because gold is simultaneously worth something and worth nothing and the economy asplode.

[Maxus]

There isn't enough food on the planet to keep everyone fed, dumbass.

Not in a D&D world where they don't commonly have things like tractors or large scale harvesting.

Hypothetically, you could feed everyone in the world.

Once.

After that, most of the population starves to death together.

Edit: Whoops, typo

[hogarth]

There isn't enough food on the planet to keep everyone fed, dumbass.

Whoosh.

[darkmaster]

I think the argument was that with the mindset of the wish econimy, yes, you could feed everyone in the world.

[Maxus]

I think the argument was that with the mindset of the wish econimy, yes, you could feed everyone in the world.

Except you can't. The logistics get in the way. Until someone comes up with a sub-15k item to make a variety of fresh food (Yes, I know Murlynd's Spoon. Believe me, that would motivate ME to hit the fields every day to get something with actual flavor. It'd be like the dwarf bread from Terry Pratchett).

You could probably do quite a lot once you hit the magic economy. Hell, I'd go all Polgara and start building up infrastructure and improve the lot of the people as a whole. That can be done with gold. It's a worthwhile project.

And you've benefited the whole of society by using something which you have no personal use for. And the only benefit you, personally, get from twenty years of building roads, opening schools, funding a defense force, teaching people how to fight monsters is...well, a nicer world. Which is great, it just won't help you survive when a level-appropriate monster comes looking for you.

[tzor]

Except you can't. The logistics get in the way. Until someone comes up with a sub-15k item to make a variety of fresh food.

But you are assuming that the wish economy would directly create the food. To quote your eariler point ...

Not in a D&D world where they don't commonly have things like tractors or large scale harvesting.

So at this point, you only need appropriate sub-15k items that can supplement the natural growing process. Items to provide the necessary water; mitigate the harsh extreemes of climate / weather; and other very simple, easy to do things. I'm pretty sure this is possible within the restraints of the wish economy, even if the result is somewhat vegan.

[Swordslinger]

What is your solution Swordslinger?

Well first, you have to get rid of the "wish for everything" bullshit and make wizards part of the standard economy. However what you need to do is make the numbers big enough such that villages and the like are small fry. Peasant villages should be dealing in copper, towns in silver, big cities in gold, kings in platinum and the epic level stuff need their own currency.

It's pretty much the EVE system where everyone is part of the same economic system, but it's generally not worth it to go beat up newbies because the amounts you get are too low.

So wizards are super rich, but they're still interacting with the economy buying stuff. And the peasant needs a place in that economy too. Mining and harvesting magical item components is a tiring boring job and something that wizards should definitely want to relegate to servants.

[LR]

It's pretty much the EVE system where everyone is part of the same economic system, but it's generally not worth it to go beat up newbies because the amounts you get are too low

But it's still worth it to greyhawk everything you find. The 100' wide solid sapphire sun that hangs inside the Temple of the Sea Eternal? That's going on mBay as soon as the kuo-toa are cleared out.

[RadiantPhoenix]

In EVE, people do, in fact, greyhawk whatever they come across, often including newbs who happen to wander into the lawless areas they hang out in; in EVE any corporation (equivalent to a guild in some other MMOs) that doesn't strip mine at least a solar system worth of asteroid belts a day is at a very significant disadvantage compared to those who do.

[K]

It's pretty much the EVE system where everyone is part of the same economic system, but it's generally not worth it to go beat up newbies because the amounts you get are too low

But it's still worth it to greyhawk everything you find. The 100' wide solid sapphire sun that hangs inside the Temple of the Sea Eternal? That's going on mBay as soon as the kuo-toa are cleared out.

I've yet to play DnD and not have the party break the WLB within four sessions. The fact that spellcasters can break the WBL without adventures doesn't mean that the WBL is still not getting broken all the time. In fact, the only way it doesn't get broken is if the players deliberately just ignore money on the ground.

Maybe you greyhawk the iron walls of the Iron Fortress or you decide that the lich king's furniture and tapestries are worth the effort to cart away in Portable Holes and Teleports, it happens as long as magic power can be bought for coppers. The fact that a 11th level Wizard has about a dozen ways to make money without going on adventures is a tangent to the core problem of wealth being stupidly easy to get in the kleptocracy that is DnD society.

I mean, I don't know why people think there should be a finite amount of potatoes that can buy a Ring of Wishes. That's retarded.

[RadiantPhoenix]

My roommate's AD&D party ran off with the gold couch from the tomb of horrors, IIRC.

[DSMatticus]

Then at that point all wizards have infinite magic items. That's seriously bad, because there's now no reason for them to do anything

Magic items take time and experience, unless they can be wished into existence, and in the Tomes, only magic things cheaper than 15k gold can be wished into existence. So the wizard has a ridiculously huge number of cheap magic items, and then hardly ever spends his own time or money making powerful magic items unless he stands a lot to gain (and that 'lot' cannot be measured in gold, because there is no amount of gold that adds up to a 'lot' for a wizard).

@Swordslinger
You're not really getting the point of the wish economy. In D&D land, wealth is an aspect of character power. You can seriously take gold and translate that into magic items (of any kind and power) and then use those to make yourself stronger. A rich level 1 character can buy a +10 sword and +10 armor if he has some way of generating enough money, and at that point WBL instantly breaks down and is a joke concept.

If you want a unified gold economy (HAH) for everything from turnips to +10 swords, you need to stop low-level characters from being able to turn turnips into +10 swords, or else they will seriously fucking steal people's turnips and hawk them for shiny magic things.

It turns out, turnips aren't the problem, because nobody collects that many turnips. But when you bump into the deserted royal palace of a long dead kingdom, your PC's will fucking loot the god damn walls themself in exchange for things that make themself more powerful. And the only thing you can do to stop them is to step in and say, "rocks fall, your loot is destroyed." Or you can carefully calculate the cost of every single fucking encounter AND all the awesome lootable fluff you describe so it adds up to the expected wealth, and then facepalm the second your players realize you forgot to account for something and they get ridiculously wealthy and powerful hawking it.

Trading mundane shit (that the world has everywhere) for character power (which is supposed to be limited by level) will never, ever, ever, ever work.

[Swordslinger]

If you want a unified gold economy (HAH) for everything from turnips to +10 swords, you need to stop low-level characters from being able to turn turnips into +10 swords

Absolutely.

And the only thing you can do to stop them is to step in and say, "rocks fall, your loot is destroyed." Or you can carefully calculate the cost of every single fucking encounter AND all the awesome lootable fluff you describe so it adds up to the expected wealth, and then facepalm the second your players realize you forgot to account for something and they get ridiculously wealthy and powerful hawking it.

Or you can set it such that that stuff grants a relatively trivial amount of wealth compared to what they want. Okay, so you got some ruined tapestries and a broken elven urn, and some stone off the walls... big deal, you wasted several days trying to sell that crap and ended up with a handful of silver pieces.

If you're tossing priceless relics at the PCs and making ruins made of gold, you're designing adventures with too much treasure.

[DSMatticus]

If you're tossing priceless relics at the PCs and making ruins made of gold, you're designing adventures with too much treasure.

This is a fictional world where things fictionally exist, and some of those things are going to have value, and being lucky or clever can get you those things, and when players go and be lucky or clever like that, the WBL breaks. This also completely guarantees that players will never spend money on anything but things that provide anything but character power. Players never have 'money to spare,' because sacrificing money is like sacrificing XP - unless it can give you something better than the XP you're trading away, why the hell would you do it?

Any system that does this discourages spending money on anything but magical shinies, requires that the DM always outsmarts his players, and requires that adventure settings are never awesome (or less awesome than they could be). Or in other words, is bad for character development, has an impossible to fulfill requirement, and makes awesome things like obsidian fortresses impossible.

[Swordslinger]

This is a fictional world where things fictionally exist, and some of those things are going to have value, and being lucky or clever can get you those things, and when players go and be lucky or clever like that, the WBL breaks.

The players could just steal magic items too. So I hardly really see the big deal. If they find a way to rob the king's treasury for tons of gold and beat a challenge above their level, then let them. So they're a bit better equipped than they should be. The key is to make it orders of magnitudes larger between tiers.

The king might have tens of thousands of gold coins. But epic archmagi have millions. The gods have billions. So you may knock off the king at a lower level than you should, but it's not a huge deal, because there's still other places to go.

Any system that does this discourages spending money on anything but magical shinies, requires that the DM always outsmarts his players, and requires that adventure settings are never awesome (or less awesome than they could be). Or in other words, is bad for character development, has an impossible to fulfill requirement, and makes awesome things like obsidian fortresses impossible.

Obsidian fortresses aren't impossible, it just means you have to make obsidian pretty cheap. Fortresses made out of expensive stuff are impossible, but that makes sense because building that would be stupid unless you were ridiculously wealthy. That's verisimilitude.

Castles and dwellings in general shouldn't be all that expensive compared to powerful magic items. Even peasants making coppers still have primitive huts.

[DSMatticus]

Except there are things completely without CR (or CR well below your appropriate level) that have wealth, and nothing stops you from doing whatever it is you do to get that wealth. You can try to change the numbers, but that just means players have to do it more of it before they break the game.

Castles and dwellings in general shouldn't be all that expensive compared to powerful magic items.

Making it a less painful option does not change the fact that it is a trap option. And trap options are always bad things to design into a game.

That's verisimilitude.

We are talking about a magic-influenced economy. Verisimilitude is perhaps an inappropriate thing to evoke. Fortresses made out of expensive stuff do not have to be impossible, and can still make complete sense and not strain anyone's suspension of disbelief.

would be stupid unless you were ridiculously wealthy.

Or have access to magical means of generating that wealth. Or you have more wealth than you know how to spend, because it can't buy you anything you want. In a game with multiple 'currencies' you can have castles of ridiculously expensive things, and nobody cares because the players can't turn them into character power. They might just decide to flat out live there and become rulers out of a palace of solid gold, instead of turning it into being more powerful than they should.

What you're suggesting is incredibly more number-intensive for the designers of the economy subsection of the game and encounter designers. I was serious about having to outsmart the players at every turn - they are going to come up with ways of generating huge amounts of mundane wealth from your settings and encounters unless you are ridiculously careful and always run the numbers compulsively, and that's just not a fun part of the game, so we should look for ways to fix that.

[K]

What you're suggesting is incredibly more number-intensive for the designers of the economy subsection of the game and encounter designers. I was serious about having to outsmart the players at every turn - they are going to come up with ways of generating huge amounts of mundane wealth from your settings and encounters unless you are ridiculously careful and always run the numbers compulsively, and that's just not a fun part of the game, so we should look for ways to fix that.

I don't even think it's possible to always outsmart the players, and to even think you can do it is both laughably arrogant and demonstrably wrong. They can and will figure out ways to get wealth unless you basically sit everyone down and say "fuck verisimilitude because I am not letting you write down any wealth. Welcome to 4e and the Heisenberg Swords in every orc's hands that vanish when not being observed by the owner."

It goes like this:

DM: "OK, you Greyhawk the castle and get some tapestries and furniture that looked really expensive, but on closer examination is moth-eaten and moldy. It might fetch a few coppers a piece in this condition."

Player: Oh, good thing I have Make Whole. We're rich!

DM: Ummm, Ok. Rocks fall and your moneybags explode. No treasure!"

Player: Fuck you, dude. Just FUCK YOU."


You see, when an arbitrary design choice leads to absurd player behavior, you need a new design. The fact that wealth for power leads to people not sleeping in inns and checking the anuses of their enemies for loose change so that they can buy MO' POWWA should be an indicator that the mechanic needs to be changed.

I mean, that's above and beyond the fact that it doesn't work and leads to punitive and unfair DM behavior, penalizing creative play.

Second, I am not going to play DnD if I have to be 136th level to have an adventure in an obsidian castle because it would be too much wealth for a lesser level. Most DnD games don't make it to 10th level, so I'd like my cool adventures now, please.

[talozin]

This also completely guarantees that players will never spend money on anything but things that provide anything but character power. Players never have 'money to spare,' because sacrificing money is like sacrificing XP - unless it can give you something better than the XP you're trading away, why the hell would you do it?

One of the things I loathe about the cash-for-power system is that it encourages players to have their characters live like hobos. I could spend money on a fancy room at the inn and dine on pheasant and enjoy a bottle of thousand-year-old elven wine. Or I could pitch a tent in a field and eat gruel and drink rainwater and be more effective for doing that.

The fuck? How is that remotely a good idea for a fantasy game? I should not need to metagame by telling myself the DM will equal out the cash we find no matter what I spend it on -- assuming the DM is clueful enough to even do that -- in order to justify blowing money on booze and whores rather than saving my pennies for a Helm of Brilliance.

[quanta]

I should not need to metagame by telling myself the DM will equal out the cash we find no matter what I spend it on -- assuming the DM is clueful enough to even do that -- in order to justify blowing money on booze and whores rather than saving my pennies for a Helm of Brilliance.

No, you should just get phat bonuses for blowing money on booze and whores.

[Red_Rob]

The king might have tens of thousands of gold coins. But epic archmagi have millions. The gods have billions. So you may knock off the king at a lower level than you should, but it's not a huge deal, because there's still other places to go.

So you thought the bit in the Epic Level handbook where everything had costs listed in the millions and players were literally expected to cart around metric tonnes of gold was a good thing, and if anything didn't go far enough, is that it?

Obsidian fortresses aren't impossible, it just means you have to make obsidian pretty cheap.

This is the attitude the designers took, and it didn't fucking work then and it won't work now. You are but one man, and no matter how you think you've proofed your world against imbalances if you incentivise your players to break the rules they will find a way to make money somehow.

Fortresses made out of expensive stuff are impossible, but that makes sense because building that would be stupid unless you were ridiculously wealthy. That's verisimilitude.

We aren't talking about whether it would be realistic if the king built an expensive fortress out of marble, this is D&D. We're talking about the Empress of Ice conjuring up a silver castle from the permafrost, or the Elemental Prince of Gem's castle hewn from a single giant diamond. D&D is a fantasy game which uses fantastic locations, and its better for the game to account for that than to crumble when they are included.

[K]

This also completely guarantees that players will never spend money on anything but things that provide anything but character power. Players never have 'money to spare,' because sacrificing money is like sacrificing XP - unless it can give you something better than the XP you're trading away, why the hell would you do it?

One of the things I loathe about the cash-for-power system is that it encourages players to have their characters live like hobos. I could spend money on a fancy room at the inn and dine on pheasant and enjoy a bottle of thousand-year-old elven wine. Or I could pitch a tent in a field and eat gruel and drink rainwater and be more effective for doing that.

The fuck? How is that remotely a good idea for a fantasy game? I should not need to metagame by telling myself the DM will equal out the cash we find no matter what I spend it on -- assuming the DM is clueful enough to even do that -- in order to justify blowing money on booze and whores rather than saving my pennies for a Helm of Brilliance.

I've never even met a DM who could keep track of WBL with any reasonableness when any kind of spending on consumables happens. Hell, I've met DMs whose heads explode when you decide to give found magic items to the people who can best use them rather than selling them for half and splitting the treasure, even if that that means the Sorcerer goes 3-4 levels without getting any magic items.

The best DMs just don't let you buy magic items and don't flip when you enter the post-wealth phase of your adventures. It's better to spend brain-space on crafting an engaging story.

[hogarth]

It goes like this:

DM: "OK, you Greyhawk the castle and get some tapestries and furniture that looked really expensive, but on closer examination is moth-eaten and moldy. It might fetch a few coppers a piece in this condition."

Player: Oh, good thing I have Make Whole. We're rich!

DM: Ummm, Ok. Rocks fall and your moneybags explode. No treasure!"

Player: Fuck you, dude. Just FUCK YOU."

No, I think the way it goes is that you get 5,000 gp from sacking the castle, but a +3 sword costs eighty million gold pieces (instead of "three non-exchangeable angel souls" in the Wish "economy"). So basically it's like Warren Buffett checking his couch cushions for loose change; I mean, he probably does it, but it's not really making him that much richer.

[DSMatticus]

hogarth, and the problem there is still that you're hoping you can outsmart the players. There are ways of getting super-fantastically rich (because someone can afford that +3 sword), and anyone who wants to be a game designer, adventure designer, encounter designer, or just plain DM has to be familiar and comfortable enough with the numbers that they don't accidentally ruin it by giving someone access to one of those ways that they never expected.

This is not universally true, but it is generally bad form to try and solve a game design problem with, "I know! Let's make the math more detailed." Especially when the success of that measure depends on the complete and utter flawless of that math and your arbitrary values holding up in every conceivable possible situation.

It's a fuckin' pipe dream, and we shouldn't waste our time with it when there are easier, more flexible, and just plain better solutions.

[K]

It goes like this:

DM: "OK, you Greyhawk the castle and get some tapestries and furniture that looked really expensive, but on closer examination is moth-eaten and moldy. It might fetch a few coppers a piece in this condition."

Player: Oh, good thing I have Make Whole. We're rich!

DM: Ummm, Ok. Rocks fall and your moneybags explode. No treasure!"

Player: Fuck you, dude. Just FUCK YOU."

No, I think the way it goes is that you get 5,000 gp from sacking the castle, but a +3 sword costs eighty million gold pieces (instead of "three non-exchangeable angel souls" in the Wish "economy"). So basically it's like Warren Buffett checking his couch cushions for loose change; I mean, he probably does it, but it's not really making him that much richer.

So instead of using different currencies that make previous tiers irrelevant, we should be using different orders of magnitude of one currency to make previous tiers irrelevant AND expect people to shlep around 4 million tons of gold?

Brilliant!

PS. I play a MMO where I make about a million a month. I still sell 500 items almost every day. Playing at a bigger order of magnitude has no effect on my Greyhawking habit.

[RobbyPants]

When you say "Greyhawking", does that refer to plundering every last bit of wealth? That's what I'm gathering from context.