High Level Characters

[Archmage]

Not to mention that jackass that gets on a horse and rides to the next town, buys up a stupid amount of turtle shells for very little gold, comes back and goes to town.

Now I want to run a game where somebody does this and creates some kind of turtle shell monopoly. Because the notion of using turtle shells as fiat currency is inexplicably hilarious to me.

[hogarth]

Guys, while knocking over a government in the real world is a poor way to get money, doing it in the fantasy world is not.

That seems highly campaign-dependent.

[Roy]

Also, random note...anybody remember the shopkeep from that one gameboy Zelda game? I'm wondering what percentage of high level adventurers and whatnot just...retire. And open up a business or something. That guy always made me think of that, because he's relatively laid back until you show up and BLAM he hits you with a death effect, or hits for massive damage, or however it turns you into a grease stain. Regardless, why didn't -that- guy go kick all the asses that needed kicked? Because he's retired. Jaded. It doesn't directly effect him.

Lightning bolt. He only does that if you steal from him. And really, that's only to curb video game cruelty potential. Of course after he kills you, he's cool again (and you can steal something else).

'The game designers don't want you robbing shops' is not a valid argument. You might as well be saying 'that shopkeeper is pretty hardcore, if he can make rocks fall, and you die'.

[Crissa]

The problem with using currency that is not a trade good in or itself is that in times of trouble, people are not going to accept your currency or there will be vast inflation.

Except, that works against trade goods which aren't immediately useful. You still face huge inflation trying to sell off iron bars, gold bars, or anything which isn't readily useful in the time of trouble. Even vast amounts of readily useful things like food become useless in the face of needing one panacea.

-Crissa

[Agrinja]

Also, random note...anybody remember the shopkeep from that one gameboy Zelda game? I'm wondering what percentage of high level adventurers and whatnot just...retire. And open up a business or something. That guy always made me think of that, because he's relatively laid back until you show up and BLAM he hits you with a death effect, or hits for massive damage, or however it turns you into a grease stain. Regardless, why didn't -that- guy go kick all the asses that needed kicked? Because he's retired. Jaded. It doesn't directly effect him.

Lightning bolt. He only does that if you steal from him. And really, that's only to curb video game cruelty potential. Of course after he kills you, he's cool again (and you can steal something else).

'The game designers don't want you robbing shops' is not a valid argument. You might as well be saying 'that shopkeeper is pretty hardcore, if he can make rocks fall, and you die'.

I'm aware of the angle from the game designer's perspective, but I'm more speaking from an in story perspective. You wander in, you run off. You show back up. He obliterates you. Seems pretty hardcore to me given that Link gets greased regardless of what he's able to do.

[K]

The problem with using currency that is not a trade good in or itself is that in times of trouble, people are not going to accept your currency or there will be vast inflation.

Except, that works against trade goods which aren't immediately useful. You still face huge inflation trying to sell off iron bars, gold bars, or anything which isn't readily useful in the time of trouble. Even vast amounts of readily useful things like food become useless in the face of needing one panacea.

-Crissa

Precious goods are always exchangeable. For example, during Pol Pot's little turn at the ol' ethnic cleansing, the people who escaped did so by trading jewelry to border guards to get out of the country. Now, that's a terrible exchange rate of "all your money for your life", but it is an understood exchange rate.

Particularly warlike cultures use rice or salt as a currency to prevent inflation.

But currency based entirely on a government's backing risks not being accepted at all.

[Prak]

Elothar Buck

You guys ever going to tell this illustrious man's story in full?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well the main problem is getting people to listen to you. Even if you declare people should trade with turtle shells and that gold is valueless you'll totally get some guy going "Okay, cool, give me all your gold for this turtle shell." Because you can take that gold and trade it somewhere else, while the turtle shells are still going to be relatively valueless outside that kingdom.

And everyone probably doesn't even do that anyway cause when the king kicks the bucket or the government falls (and chances are if it's that poor, it will), you're going back on the gold standard.

What gold standard? There's no such thing as a fucking gold standard in D&D because there's no such thing as a nation-state unless you're playing in one of the weirder campaign settings like Spelljammer.

The economy in D&D is mercantilism, which is a fancy word for 'barter system where the government excessively fetishizes a type of good'. Trading turtle shells for gold is weird in a country for a gold standard, but in D&D it's no weirder than trading turtle shells for wood carvings.

[PoliteNewb]

What gold standard? There's no such thing as a fucking gold standard in D&D because there's no such thing as a nation-state unless you're playing in one of the weirder campaign settings like Spelljammer.

The economy in D&D is mercantilism, which is a fancy word for 'barter system where the government excessively fetishizes a type of good'. Trading turtle shells for gold is weird in a country for a gold standard, but in D&D it's no weirder than trading turtle shells for wood carvings.

Lago, I think you're using some terms differently than other people.

First, "gold standard" just means that the value of most goods is judged by a universal standard, and that happens to be a certain measure/weight of gold. It's functionally the same as the koku system in Japan, which you could as easily call a "rice standard". It's been done with tobacco, corn, etc.

Since people in D&D land seriously do measure the value of things (including gems and magic) by referencing how much gold its worth, not how many cows it is worth, D&D does have a gold standard (a precious metals standard, if you're being persnickety). This doesn't require nation states. All it requires is commodity money, which gold totally is...it's (relatively) easily transportable, divisible, fungible, and nonreproduceable (for most people). Yes, you can debase it, but there's a reason people in movies always bite gold coins, and as aforementioned, severe penalties for counterfeiting can discourage that.

I see this as different from a pure barter system, because you have a recognized exchange rate...it may fluctuate, but its fluctuation is not based on whether YOU personally need gold; because you can generally count on other people accepting your gold.

[Username17]

You are talking about a Gold Specie Standard - literal circulated gold coins. Which of course are wildly inefficient and profoundly depressive on the economy.

-Username17

[Gnosticism Is A Hoot]

You are talking about a Gold Specie Standard - literal circulated gold coins. Which of course are wildly inefficient and profoundly depressive on the economy.

-Username17

This.

A 'gold standard' is just the idea that the value of the currency (i.e. the bits of paper and bytes of electronic data that are actually used to make transactions) is linked to/insured by some gold somewhere that the government has. It's a bad idea for all sorts of reasons, but people on the fringes keep trying to bring it back because it makes a kind of dumb intuitive sense if you don't know any economics.

Actually carrying your nominal anchor around and using it to conduct business is a different (and even more economically ruinous) idea, that explicitly limits the size of your economy to the amount of yellow metal you have, and prevents said yellow metal from being used for anything useful.

[Agrinja]

I'm thinking that given the division of nation states, using money that's backed by a government in a way that you can use that money to pay taxes you owe to that government....whatsit called, probably wouldn't work well, but I'm wondering if it would in the correct setting.

Another bad idea, I'm musing over the idea of artwork as currency, if only because values between things vary wildly, and go absolutely nuts when you throw collectors in the mix trying to buy up all your hand engraved coins.

[RandomCasualty2]

What gold standard? There's no such thing as a fucking gold standard in D&D because there's no such thing as a nation-state unless you're playing in one of the weirder campaign settings like Spelljammer.

The fact that every nation takes gold makes it effectively the standard currency. Even if one nation declared that gold was valueless and went to something else, you'd have people from other nations buying up their gold, and they then couldn't trade with anyone else without gold.

I mean like it or not, D&D civilization is based around gold. Prices are in gold pieces. It is always worth something to someone in D&D land, even if one nation decides not to accept it. Whatever other economic unit you come up with always be compared with gold.

[Doom]

"always be compared with gold" is only because of our culture.

When Columbus came to the Americas, there were cultures that didn't find any value in it at all, no more than any other 'pretty' rock

[RandomCasualty2]

"always be compared with gold" is only because of our culture.

No it's not. I have literally no idea how many gold pieces my plasma TV is worth. I honestly don't care.

We think in terms of dollars, or euros or yen or whatever other paper currency our country uses.

But D&D land isn't like that. Dragons want piles of gold, kings amass treasuries of the stuff. There are no other defined currencies that don't have some gold-based conversion value.

[K]

Elothar Buck

You guys ever going to tell this illustrious man's story in full?

Elothar was a joke written into the Dungenomicon between Frank and I about how most PrCs handed out stuff you would get during a specific character's adventure, and how PrCs really just described individual character concepts and not playable broad concepts. It was designed as a satirical critique of the PrC system.

The fact that it ended up as a mostly playable PrC and that people played with it means the joke was on us, I think.

Now Elothar is just my idea for the "insert PC here" name and a bit of a mascot. If we had iconics, you could think of him as a Tome iconic, meaning he has various undefined adventures and never seems to level, making him a lot like Nodwick.