Wednesday, August 15, 2007 7:29 PM
From: "Chris Anderson"
To: "Paul L. Ming"
Another dissenter here. Paul's reasoning below matches my own.
Realistically, prices tend to rise around PC's in direct proportion to the amount of nice equipment they have. Almost every merchant I have tends to size up PC's and view them as walking coinage, so there's a gold rush mentality when the PC's come to town. It makes for a nice time, wonderful accommodations, the best food, and a burning need to replenish those purses fairly often by adventuring.
Merchants tend to have one price for PC's and another for locals, too.
-- Chris
On 8/15/07, Paul L. Ming < pming@northwestel.net> wrote:
Hiya.
I'm one of those 'dissenters' who don't find the AD&D pricing too out of whack. I mainly rationalize it by saying that the economies of countries is quite heavily influenced by "adventurers". In modern day analogies, what if every 25th person could go out and make, legaly, $1,000,000.00 over the course of a weekend. He could do this every weekend. After a couple of months/years of this, his 'hauls' wouldn't be just $1 million a weekend, but $10 million or more. Suddenly, the value of 'money' would drop. People who were not 'adventurers' wouldn't see much actual money because the actual 'dollar value' would be way above their means...they would resort primarily to barter. A farmer might give a carpenter a half-dozen chickens in exchange for the carpenter building him a new wheel barrow. The inn keep would give a free meal to the gardener who cuts the lawn, trims the hedges and trees, and thins the rose bushes. Actual coin wouldn't be used nearly as much as labour/barter.
As long as I keep this in mind, I don't have a problem with the economic situation in my games. In my games, a 'typical' NPC might make 3 to 5 gp's per month (lantern lighter, porter, stable hand, etc.). A more 'professional' NPC would double or triple that (scribe, page, carpenter, blacksmith). And a 'specialized' NPC even more (armorer, alchemist, engineer, etc.). In this way, when the PC's come back to town
with 700gp's each, they will be *very* rich. They can live like lords for a couple of months. And, IMHO, this is what PC's generally do. The role of "adventurer" in my game campaigns are pretty rare. My games are also "low-powered" type things, where a master wizard is of unthinkably high level (at least 6th!). ;)
Paul L. Ming
Thatotherguy wrote:
> As I said, from what I've seen. If you feel differently, feel free to
> present a defense. I would be interested in hearing it.
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