Adventurer Economy

[virgil]

I'm not advocating that adventurers will crash the economy, but instead form the backbone for infusing wealth into the economy. A good dungeon haul is going to leave the players flush with wealth to spend it on. Rather than village economies subsisting/distributing wealth from gold mines, they instead serve the needs of rag-tag dungeoneers that liberate hoarded resources. What might this economy look like?

While I'm certain there will be tourist traps that cater to the whims of the adventurer, the typical murder hobo cares not for material comforts. As the common adventurer seeks to enhance their murder-gear, the magic item economy seems like the primary resource to tap; which requires one to determine what the components of magic item creation are. How much does 3.5 cover this area; does imbuing a sword or enchanting a wand use gems, incense, tincture of chimera anal gland?

[shadzar]

think of ANY site that has built something just for the olympics.

how was it before? how was it during, and then how is it after?

this is how i see adventurers affect local economies. they bring in a lot of money, but also help deplete supplies.

does that inn have enough food to host feasts every night for a fortnight? where does it come from? who is catching the animals? what will locals eat if all the food is used up after the adventurers are left?

town has a lot of money, but nothing to support it.

i cant speak of this murder-hobo concept because that is contrary to how i know of playing, or something that occurs in one-shots where the world doesnt have to work after that one session of play, so nobody cares about the "world" after that.

also Ye Olde Magick Shoppe never ecxists.

i see adventurers also like Waterworld, where at the atoll he asked for "those" and she remarked "what, you have bought eventhing there is", to which he replies "those shelves". So now you have money, but there is nothing to spend it on. local prices could be driven up due to supply and demand, or outside sources are needed and the mindless rabble have so much they will pay for anything at any price, so the merchants see a good way to raise prices, then when the money runs out the merchants arent willing to lower prices again, and that local economy has fallen and the area dies off like a gold rush boom town.

[Username17]

Gold is not in fact something you can eat. Adventurers in history came back with porcelain, spices, dyes, and seeds that could change peoples' lives for the better. The D&D adventurer is basically just coming back with gold. For that to be a service at all, you have to posit that the economy is depressed in a way that minting up a bunch more coinage could solve. It has to be an economy running below full employment because there is not enough currency in circulation.

So you have blacksmiths and scribes living without food security and also not working most days while peasants let their grain rot in storehouses and get by without replacing broken tools. In short: you have a general glut and mass unemployment with unused capital resources that can be improved with the introduction of more currency alone.

-Username17

[Foxwarrior]

If adventurers come back with Rings of Water Walking and trade them for Cloaks of Boring Stat Bonus, they are not just coming back with gold.

[hogarth]

Gold is immensely valuable in D&D-land because you can give it to dragons in exchange for not eating you.

I'm only half-joking.

[Shatner]

There is also the "adventurers killed/drove off the orcish war band. Now we won't be raided every month and/or can once again send workers to the mine the orcs had claimed."

DnD has quite the murder-conomy, with big piles of gold being only one output of a successful murder spree adventure.

[JigokuBosatsu]

One solution to that conundrum would be that the gold that adventurers bring back is not the currency of the realm, but salvage.

So instead of a shit-ton of dollar bills, the party is recovering doubloons.

Thus the necessity of having governmental patronage or a really good fence.

[Vebyast]

Another possibility is rare alchemical ingredient production. The adventurers don't realize it, but they seriously left an entire troll corpse just laying there. I mean, who leaves behind something like that!? That could feed the entire village for a month.

[shadzar]

they seriously left an entire troll corpse just laying there. I mean, who leaves behind something like that!? That could feed OFF the entire village for a month.

fixed that for you being that you know... trolls regenerate and all that...

[Chamomile]

Hm. Would it be possible to create an interesting list of non-gold goods that you could make up 90% of your treasure hordes in? They have a GP value but when you bring them into the village you're actually just bartering them away (and possibly getting some change in coinage).

[JigokuBosatsu]

I vaguely remember 1st ed had a random chart (OF COURSE!!!) of what your treasure actually was. Or was that WHFRP?

[Whatever]

You can roll for random treasure in 3rd edition, but they've had tables for it going back pretty much forever. They got rid of "Treasure Type C" and all that, though, since you just roll based on level.

[Chamomile]

I've always been unsatisfied with the random treasure because it's always stuff like gems, the same three pieces of artwork in every horde for three levels, etc. etc. They're interesting, but they're not trade goods. Almost none of it is the sort of thing that would improve someone's quality of life, such that an adventurer can walk up to a blacksmith and say "I'll give you fifty pounds of this stuff in exchange for a Hackmaster +12" and both of them will walk away better off for making the trade.

[wotmaniac]

So instead of a shit-ton of dollar bills, the party is recovering doubloons.

When commodity money is a standard of trade, gold nuggets are gold nuggets (given, of course, that gold happens to be at least one of the specific commodities in use).

It's only salvage if there is a different currency standard.

also Ye Olde Magick Shoppe never ecxists.

The very second someone decides that they'd rather have a pile of gold (or something that gold can buy) instead of his magic sword (for whatever reason), you now have a market. (hint: there will always be at least 1 yokel willing to do this)
MagiPawn is inevitable.

I've always been unsatisfied with the random treasure because it's always stuff like gems, the same three pieces of artwork in every horde for three levels, etc. etc. They're interesting, but they're not trade goods. Almost none of it is the sort of thing that would improve someone's quality of life, such that an adventurer can walk up to a blacksmith and say "I'll give you fifty pounds of this stuff in exchange for a Hackmaster +12" and both of them will walk away better off for making the trade.

Artwork is a "luxury good", so the market for it is just different than the market for hammers. So, you just have to go find an art dealer, for whom artwork is a trade good. You're just interacting with a different sector of the economy in this instance ... and then you take that money and go interact with other sectors.

[shadzar]

also Ye Olde Magick Shoppe never exists.

The very second someone decides that they'd rather have a pile of gold (or something that gold can buy) instead of his magic sword (for whatever reason), you now have a market. (hint: there will always be at least 1 yokel willing to do this)
MagiPawn is inevitable.

merchants just refuse to buy these fake magic items cause all the travelers going across the country side trying to sell their snake-oil. people other than the merchants just dont have to money to afford such things, and even merchants dont have all the money in the world to devote to buying things they may never be able to sell when no one might be able to afford it.

that would just be bad business.

while a gold statue of a local king might be a valuable thing, the cart full of fruit is much easier to sell.

[Chamomile]

So, you just have to go find an art dealer, for whom artwork is a trade good.

Sure, but how many art dealers are kicking around your average medieval village?

[Foxwarrior]

So, you just have to go find an art dealer, for whom artwork is a trade good.

Sure, but how many art dealers are kicking around your average medieval village?

You're an adventurer. Maybe you should visit a place where they appreciate art.

[wotmaniac]

So, you just have to go find an art dealer, for whom artwork is a trade good.

Sure, but how many art dealers are kicking around your average medieval village?

You're an adventurer. Maybe you should visit a place where they appreciate art.

That's what I'm thinking.

while a gold statue of a local king might be a valuable thing, the cart full of fruit is much easier to sell.

... to a peasant. Come on guy -- this isn't hard.

[Chamomile]

You're an adventurer. Maybe you should visit a place where they appreciate art.

First, places where they appreciate art can potentially be extremely far out of the way, especially at lower levels, which is also when you are most likely to run into a place at the level of poverty where extra gold in the system will do nothing because everyone is already working at their meager capacity. Second, while making a trip to a major city to hawk your stolen goods is doable in certain settings or when travel becomes much easier, it's still really weird that the treasure hordes you acquire are always silk tapestries and gold statues and never, y'know, a stockpile of food for the orc garrison. And third, only a very small number of example art pieces are actually given in the book, and they become much less interesting in a hurry when they turn up over and over again.

[squirrelloid]

I think the first thing we want to do when we start refiguring adventure economies is get off this obsession with everything having piles of coins. I mean, this might make sense for a dragon (although *where does he get them*?), but for most monsters they'll have at best a small change purse. This is of course why the *royal tax collector* features so prominently in tales like Robin Hood, because he actually has coins in quantity.

Wealth will tend to exist as useable equipment, tools, animals, food supplies including spices, furnishings, jewelry, art, and so forth. The only group that routinely has piles of *currency* is royalty, because they collect taxes. (Even lesser nobility don't tend to have piles of currency, because most of what they're due is collected in material - bushels of grain, livestock, or products).

So when you knock over the bandits, you don't find a pile of coins, you find a handful of coins, weapons, armor, horses, some minor jewelry, a half pound of salt, a few casks of wine, and so on. Unless of course they did knock over the royal tax collector, but then said royalty probably wants those taxes back, and will reward you with some funds for returning it. (The alternative is to become outlaws yourselves - the crown doesn't see that coinage as becoming free for the taker just because they've been unlawfully relieved of it).

[virgil]

With coins being displaced out of treasure drops, Greyhawking is now de jour?

[squirrelloid]

With coins being displaced out of treasure drops, Greyhawking is now de jour?

Well, its a matter of convenience and ability to trade.

Horses and salt are pretty easy to sell and transport.

The temple's marble facing - not so much. I don't recommend counting things which are basically nailed down as treasure.

Furniture is a grey area. Of course, your typical noble family will have vastly more wealth in things like tapestries and furniture than it will in easily liquidated form. And at some point it's just easier to *claim the place as your own* rather than cart everything out.

So I don't expect greyhawking. I do expect the PCs to loot the silverware, jewelry, valuable spices, and livestock, because that's all virtually liquid wealth for the time.

[TarkisFlux]

Why is the default assumption always that coins and gems accepted from adventurers make their way into the local economy? Why can't merchants and barkeeps just charge adventurers 3-10 times what it actually costs for the items or service and then sit on the difference so that they can rebuild when a monster or adventurer inevitably damages or destroys their stock and shop? Whether it's collected by a tax man for the good of the colony or stuffed in a mattress for the good of the owner, money that is saved for rebuilding after the latest adventurer failed to succeed a rainy day is money that is not crashing the local economy. It's not like there's a source of credit for peasants to use as an alternative to hoarding, and you potentially need a lot of capital to pay off traders and whatever to bring you material / stock after such a bust.

[Red_Rob]

also Ye Olde Magick Shoppe never ecxists.

The very second someone decides that they'd rather have a pile of gold (or something that gold can buy) instead of his magic sword (for whatever reason), you now have a market. (hint: there will always be at least 1 yokel willing to do this)
MagiPawn is inevitable.

That argues only for the existence of a magic item trade, not actual shops full of stock. I can see the argument that you should be able to put out word you are looking for magic gear and find a retired adventurer or a down-on-his-luck mage willing to make a trade, but the expense of running an actual item shop seems extreme.

This is mainly due to the fact the stock is of extreme interest to people who's modus operandi is breaking into places and stealing magical swag, with an optional side of killing everyone present. In the real world art dealerships and jewellry stores get by because there is a limit to the power of a single man, but in D&D that isn't true. If a 10th level adventurer decides he wants that +4 Flaming Claymore in the window, neither you nor the local establishment are going to stop him unless they have much greater magical might than any of the books suggest, at which point you have to ask why these 10th level guards don't just set up their own kingdom somewhere.

I see the magic item trade as going down like major drug deals. Meeting in a neutral location, both parties warily eyeing the other up as they try to calculate whether they could dispense with the trade and just take the items by force. But the image of a bored 12th level mage sat behind the counter of a shop with racks of magic swords like a sporting goods store just doesn't fly at all.

[hogarth]

Sure, but how many art dealers are kicking around your average medieval village?

How many art dealers are in a modern rural village? And yet modern rural people still consider works of art to be valuable.