/tg/ - Traditional Games

>>422484

Just use "minted gold coins" as an extrapolation of the actual value of goods and use that as the standard for fictional currency prices. Just like in real life.

For your question of the sudden increase and drop, I am going to ask for more details. If the timespan is less than a month then the economy would already have to be at the very brink of collapse already. Otherwise it is just another case of fraud, or an occurrence that is accounted for with a plunge protection team.

>>422484

Read this, your doubt is more deep and important than you realize.

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=7976EB4C8A58D52ADA4ABD1E18059400

>>422654

>The negative effects of inflation are caused by dividing the money into smaller pieces but not by injecting more money into the economy at large?

Inflation has more to do with inadequate backing. The introduction of more gold/silver to a coin-based model will cause inflation because you're somewhat reducing the value of the backing itself, but this still evens out a lot so long as you have an open economy. Paper currency is a bit different, and the effects differ depending on if you're changing the backing (adding more metal) or injecting more, while keeping backing stead. There's a lot of T-charts involved.

> For a very poor nation i use leather and clay coins

Going to add that this shouldn't really happen much (at least not long term). Leather and clay are poor containers of value. Furthermore, while a gold coin is still gold, a leather or clay coins ceases to be useful as leather or clay, and is effectively worthless, unless they have some form of backing - in which case, paper currency is often superior to either.

>>422658

Thats kind of the point. The whole nation is run by

vampires who have access to gold and silver and trade it on the regular. They just use things like leather and clay in order to keep their population dirt poor. Hard to bribe a sailor to smuggle you out if the only things of value are clay coins

>>422654

>To better answer some questions the massive influx of gold is coming from a dragon's hoard. They are going to use the gold for a massive portal into heaven. I mean if you knew the local dragon had a fuckton of gold why wouldnt you send adventurers to kill the dragon and collect it?

Sounds like the adventurers would make themselves rich and spend the money into the economy over a period of time to buy the resources they need.

>As for the vanishing thing, a demon they made a deal with is going to place a curse on the gold so that in a few months it will just vanish one day.

OK so like instantaneous. Depending on how quickly money circulates this could mean the people who get paid by the party suddenly lose that money, or it could mean that various people the money has gone to suddenly have less pocket change.

>It disappears in an instant about 6 months after its available to the economy

For a medieval economy in a growth period from rebuilding the capital, this would probably be somewhere in the middle of the above scale. Whoever gets paid by the party is probably buying their own materials and the money would circulate to more people and spread out. This would probably manifest as a lot of people suddenly finding their coin purse lighter. In addition to the economic impact this would 100% result in people trying to figure out what happened, possibly thinking there was some kind of curse. Realistically people tend to draw an association with recent events, so whatever happened shortly before the money vanishes is likely to get blamed and face social/political repercussions. If the party does something very notable at the time, it would make perfect sense for an angry mob to coincidentally blame them.

>>422654

>So what do you think happens after this? Im guessing a massive depression in cities dependent on trade but more rural villages and small towns would fare better because of their local independence from outside goods and services. This in turn im guessing would lead to political power shifting to the smaller peasants and towns as they now have the resources but the city folk lack the money to buy

There'd probably be a decrease in international trade and relations, and power would re-center locally. The enforcers of the established political system also get paid in money, and suddenly there's less to go around. If they get a hit to their living standards, they are more apt to use their weapons and training to extort the peasants Seven Samurai style. This kind of thing foments resentment toward the nobility. As far as the players are interested, you should see a depression in the money economy, making it harder to find stuff to buy, instead trading favors for goods and services. You should also see a lot of plot hooks from social/political unrest.

You are likely looking at a Game of Thrones scenario where instability leads to people fighting for power.

Merchants who can will likely just move somewhere else, taking their stuff with them. The rest would have trouble selling anything and might resort to a fire sale to make their bread in the short term, but they'd ultimately end up destitute since the money and productivity has gone. Craftsmen would likely not get paid even though their work is needed. They might instead get cut in for political power because building walls, weapons, and whatnot would be crucial given the weakened state of the country and impending wars. Skilled trade might well take a lot of power, and an upstart political movement might originate there. If there's already some kind of guild like the IRL Freemasons that organize skilled trade and have sociopolitical interests, it's a given they'd use the situation to get more influence or pursue their agendas.

A demon pulling loads of money out of the economy probably cares less about the coins than about the chaos that ensues. This is the kind of economic hardship that is liable to produce a situation where a strongman/warlord establishes an ordered system and rises to power by providing structure that's otherwise missing. Perfect opportunity for demons to get a minion to take power as a new BBEG.

Alternatively, if the subsistence farming economy is strong enough for the state to mostly dissolve and the country to decentralize, the realistic outcome in a medieval setting is for neighbors to see an opportunity for expansion. Feudalism is dominated by neighbors constantly fighting over land, resources, and people. If a country suddenly weakens massively, you are pretty much guaranteed to get conquest attempts. If the loyalty of the knights can no longer be effectively bought by the nobility, they are likely to become opportunists, whether mercs or bandits. There's not much incentive to fight a defensive war if your status and pay are in question. Whether peasants prefer the outsiders is going to depend on how positive/negative the change is for them. They'd be glad if the outsiders are stopping knights-turned-bandits, but wouldn't be too happy about having to work for lords again if they got a taste of independence.

There would probably be a mix of various scenarios throughout the country. Some areas would get conquered, some power would probably be retained in the capital, and some areas that weren't "worth" taking would become independent. You're liable to see a re-emergence of power later on, using the "take back our land" justification and a sudden expansionism, so even if the party leaves they're likely to hear from this country again later.

I recently came up with the idea that even if you could say, have an Alchemist turn lead into gold, the price of gold wouldn't inflate because crazed wizards will use said gold in their various arcane experiments.

Forgot to mention, Dark Sun has this part covered. There's barely any metal, so common currency is ceramic. The Merchant Houses and Sorcerer Kings work together to make sure inflation doesn't go off the rails.

Also, the punishment for forging ceramic pieces is to have you and all of your extant family cremated alive.

>>422717

If alchemy worked as imagined you'd no longer have the concept of precious metals and something else would have to serve for money.

>>422718

>Also, the punishment for forging ceramic pieces is to have you and all of your extant family cremated alive.

Hopefully the ashes get incorporated into the ceramic currency.

Looking for help for costing slaves in 3.5 D&D system. Question is in context of trying to write a litrpg with 3.5 edition as basis for the rules.

The planned setting would be a mix of Conan/Forgotten realms, with slavery being relatively common means for governments to handle criminals, debtors, prisoners and other un-dersirables.

Specifically want to come with a way to set an appropriate cost for the magic that would enforce the slavery without being to out of whack with the rest of the spells / magic costs - anyone can point me to spells that impose a geas, or permanent dominate, or cursed items like that?

what I have so far:

There are a lot of costs given for items, but I figured a good place to start for the cost of slave would be cost of food and upkeep vs. earning potential vs. the cost of actually enforcing the slavery

From here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#meals), cost of Meals(poor) comes in at 1sp.

Which happens to be the wage for untrained labor here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#spellcastingAndServices): Hireling, untrained 1 sp per day

Using this as baseline, keeping kids as slaves would be generally uncommon because owner would likely be a net loss in upkeep vs. whatever labor they contribute even before factoring in cost of slavery magic. So that sort of thing would presumably be limited to orphanges/schools that might try to train them into professionals and hope for long term profit.

Meanwhile teens to adults would presumably be trainable for some kind of labor and their earning potential is estimated at 3sp. There are also earning potentials for professionals -

so one can estimate daily profit from a skilled slave and than work out how long it would take to balance out the cost of whatever magic was used to enslave.

Anyone can advise what source material might be helpful?

Just say the loot found is worth 1000 of a noteworthy country's currency and they'll get roughly that pretty much anywhere. Exchange rates are like taxes: They seem like an interesting idea, but making the PCs deal with them is really just a pain in the ass.

>>422986

The problem is that D&D prices generally are not particularly reliable. Here are a few quick resources that you can eye-ball for private research:

http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html

http://www.medievalcoinage.com/prices/medievalprices.htm

https://economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/SPICES1.htm

It's not medieval, but since D&D assumes a highly Americanized version of fantasy setting, the material here can probably be applied to give you a rough idea:

https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php

I can't help much for medieval slave values, since it's not a thing that's come up yet in my own world-setting.

In terms of keeping kids as slaves or whatever - Yes, slavery is in fact inefficient. Slavery was something ingrained into what people considered "normal" for most of history, but even from the start, paying market-derived wages would always have been the more economically efficient solution - something which contributes to why there's some truth to the saying that the relative quality of life for a slave in ancient Greece might have been higher than a modern work (though absolute quality of life is of course still lower). The biggest factor is that slavery is a large up-front cost, which is always an inferior option to long-term payments, unless the economy is for some reason shrinking over time. This can be mitigated when you capture your own slaves. It's also a non-factor for sex trafficking - this is a large part of the reason why, in the modern world, most of our modern-day slavery is either people tricked into working for the human trafficking ring directly, or human sex trafficking, rather than sales for hard labor.

The idea that slavery was a superior option to simply hiring people for the job was the greatest trick that colonial-era European countries ever fell for, and it's because people on the whole didn't yet understand the economics of it. It worked in Africa, where they were never advanced enough to reach the point of having wages to begin with. It was a burden on the civilized world.

As far as spells go, even a simple charm person applied every once in a while can be a good way to keep people working for you, and better than that, working well. For something a little bit simpler, though, I'd go with something like the slave bracers in Morrowind - magically sealed bracers that need a specific key, and mark you as a slave so people know to turn you back in, would be the most cost efficient you could get. Items like that would probably be appropriately valued at whatever the cost of an item with a permanent arcane lock spell - so probably the equivalent of a 3rd Level spell, at most. Since it's effectively single use, and would have to be mass produced, I would go ahead and price it based off of a potion which replicates a 3rd level spell, or even a scroll +20%, whatever looks nicer.

>>422990

What sort of retarded group is unable to deal with a couple percent exchange rate? Let alone taxation? Even if you're somehow too retarded to do the simple math in your head, just use a calculator. It takes 10 seconds, if you're slow. Not to mention that this completely fucks over any sort of old-school or other treasure-based gaming system when you arbitrarily fiat the value of whatever they dig out of the dungeon.

>>422484

>>422491

Not too much experience with boardgames here but if you want to make an interesting economy you could link the value of coins to bullion by the prosperity and economy of different cities/nations with different coinage.

Bigger, richer cities/nations with good economies would mint coins with more gold, whereas poorer nations would add other metals.

If you could create a system with a fluid economy the coins could go up and down in value (against bullion) every decade or so, making for an interesting economy.

That said, your goblin gold could be very resourceful as a lower-standard gold bullion seeing as they are impure lumps of gold in your case, having a fixed price against bullion.

Heck, a system where an experienced part member and/or a guy you helped out on a quest could melt it all down into pure bullion would also make it more interesting.

Do note that if you work this much with gold, remember to account for inflation, for example a whole lot of gold got available to an already rich nation, making the price of their goods more expensive as more gold coins get circulated within that nation.

This could happen if your party keeps on trading with a poor city-state with high-purity gold coins or bullions, after a while the city-state gets richer thus the prices go up.

>>422994

>slavery

thanks, that's quite helpful

>>422484

Dwarves are the money creators. Consider them a federal reserve of the fantasy universe.

Gold is gold. When stating the price, you're taking into account after its been purified.