I never liked how utterly inflated gold as a currency always was in Dungeons and Dragons. I have had a long established house rule that reduced all gold outputs (and all gold costs) significantly enough where it was no longer a thing where you could almost make a house out of gold for the price of buying that house in the rules as written.
Also, in a fantasy setting with magic and the like, it’s absurd to try to pretend that magic items would remain as super rare after centuries or even millennia of adventurers rummaging around and eventually putting them on the market.
The bullshit about how peasants would have to work all day for a silver piece but somehow a +1 sword costs roughly a lifetime of their labor was always silly.
Don’t even get me started about how bullshit “Forgotten Realms” is as written where (the older books at least) claim that most people have never seen a spell being cast before and are in absolute awe of magic-users yet magic-users rule basically everything and it’s hard to find an official town map without some magic bullshit somewhere.
The Elder Scrolls series, flaws and all, is generally better about applying magic to its world-building.
The Elder Scrolls series, flaws and all, is generally better about applying magic to its world-building.
For the most part its worldbuilding is like the one thing The Elder Scrolls actually did really well (that and Morrowind’s aesthetic/art direction), at least in terms of the lore. Where it fails is translating that intricate, weird, well-thought-out worldbuilding into gameplay and storytelling.
And the Elder Scrolls series still has a gold inflation problem where gold itself is basically a non-precious metal and it’s like everyone’s carrying massive piles of pennies in their pockets if currency counts are taken literally.
It’s just another form of capitalist realism to think that a magical feudal society would have a well developed money economy like a capitalist society to the point where everything is a commodity with a price tag that can be sold on a market that’s always nearby. In an actual magical feudal society, stuff like magical swords would simply have no monetary value but be weapons that could only be wielded by certain strata of society (nobility, knights, wizards). Serfs, tradesmen, traders, and so on would be forbidden from touching let alone wielding a magical weapon on pain of death. There will still be an exchange value of the item based on the labor hours that was used to create the item, but it wouldn’t be something that you would buy or sell in a store.
I agree with you, actually, which is in large part why the rules as written with gold as a standardized currency are wonky but are expected by most players. I’d rather have a magic sword be given in return for a good deed to someone that’d been holding onto it, or the like.
It might be a situation similar to that of diamonds irl. They’re not terribly uncommon, especially not uncommon enough to warrant the exhorbitant prices they supposedly cost (as in, a blood diamond, not a lab one), and new diamonds are added every day to the economy, but prices are kept high.
I’m imagining a bunch of superstores on a zoom meeting fixing prices across the region. hm, I might have a plot for a campaign.
It’s shiny though
I’ve always struggled with Gold Coins in D&D. I think it’s because of the roots of the game, where in the earliest editions, Gold was your Experience Points, and you only gained Experience Points if you could get the gold out of the dungeon.
As the editions came out, the game became less of a dungeon crawl and more of an action movie simulator. Especially with 4E and 5E. I don’t know in what edition they decoupled Experience from Gold, but that is probably when the Gold stopped making any sense. Just try finding an answer to the question “What are the wages of commoners per day/week/year”. You’ll get nowhere.
Once players have thousands and thousands of gold, most of the time, unless you’ve really invested in making it part of the game, they won’t even spend it. What are they going to buy with gold that’s better or more interesting than the items you’ve placed in the dangerous places? It puts you in this position where you either allow them to buy magic items or not. Being able to buy a +1 weapon has implications for your entire world.
I could write forever about this. The lack of guidance from Wizards is part of the problem. I think the next time I run a game of “D&D” it’ll be one of these OSR games like Knave or what have you.
Have you seen what an economy based on SoJs and HRs looks like?
Don’t remind me.
I haven’t played Diablo II since 3 came out and I still remember FG and perfect gem exchange rates.
Wtb alteration orbs 1500/div
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
