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Dragon 107	-	-	-	Dragon

One of the commonly forgotten aspects of
a campaign is the economic situation of the
world in which the characters find themselves. No matter how much gold is brought
into the system, or how much damage is
wreaked on the crops by marauding armies,
very little change is usually seen in the
economic activity of the game. Food still
costs the same amount, and one gold piece
will still purchase the same amount of a
given item. While a detailed economic
system would bog down the game and
provide the Dungeon Master with an unreasonable amount of work, some accommodations can be made that will have a realistic
effect on the game without excessive effort.
Another area of the game that often lacks
realism is that of purchasing and selling
goods in towns. This is closely related to
general economics, so an attempt is made
here to cover the two topics in this set of
suggestions.

Most people have a basic understanding
of how supply and demand control the
prices and availability of goods, but there
are a number of finer points to the system
that can be greatly affected by a party that
brings back two wagons full of treasure
from a major outing. One of them is the
effect that a large supply of money will have
on the value of the money. Inflation is rarely
accounted for in AD&D® game campaigns,
but it is exactly the sort of world that would
have the most inflation. There is little speculation and buying on credit to produce
economic failures, the area is usually cut off
in most ways from foreign markets and
suppliers, there is no dumping by subsidized producers, and no way to sell to anyone outside of the immediate area. Thus,
any industrial and craft manufacturers are
usually operating at nearly full capacity, and
surpluses are rare or nonexistent situations.
All of these factors will tend to produce a
state of constant inflation.

To simulate this in the world of AD&D
gaming, the Dungeon Master merely has to
decide on a fixed set of base prices (the ones
g i v e n   i n   t h e   Players Handbook  and
Dungeon Masters Guide  work well), and an
annual rate of inflation that seems reasonable, given the adventuring activity in a
given region. Then simply keep a running
total of the inflation multiplier, adjust every
game year or so, and use it to figure actual
prices when a character wishes to buy or sell
something.

For example, consider that chain mail
starts off at 100 gp, and inflation is 35% per
year. (While that may seem like an unrealis
tically high rate at first, remember that
places like Israel and some South American
countries often have inflation rates in excess
of 100%.) After one year, the chain mail
will cost 135 gp, and after two it will cost
about 182 gp. This figure can then be used
to find prices for any item, by multiplying
 the inflation factor by the initial price of the
goods. Thus, food costing 15 gp at the start
of the game would rise to 20.25 gp in one
year (15 gp x 1.35), and 27.3 gp at the end
of two, years (20.25 x 1.35). Obviously,
these? prices would be rounded? and could
vary depending on the honesty of the mer-
chant, but this system provides a base price
to which adjustments may be made.

To make this more than an excercise in
multiplication, some cause and effect must
be seen by the player characters, so that
they have some chance to react to it and
hopefully keep ahead of it. For instance, if
the kingdom is run by a spendthrift ruler
who lives in a grand castle, the inflation rate
should be higher in that country than in a
neighboring land with a much more modest
ruler. Similarly, if the region consists of
farmers and towns, with little uncontrolled
areas and thus little or no adventuring, it
should have a lower rate than an area with
huge piles of gold waiting to be captured by
brave adventurers. Thus, the characters can
 be induced to buy their supplies in the
civilized areas in the interior of a country
and transport them to the frontier, rather
than buying them at the ubiquitous "general store" that is often found one mile from
the dungeon. They will also want to travel
to areas of high inflation to sell their treasure, thus allowing for all sorts of opportunities for adventures along the way.

Since areas with high inflation will have
more money circulating than backwoods
areas, the incidence of two-legged dangers
should be higher. Pickpockets, thieves, and
organized crime are much more likely to
attack the party, thus giving the adventurers
the choice of going to the big city in an
effort to get more for their goods at the risk
of attack, or settle for a smaller but safer
amount somewhere else. This allows the
DM to give the various areas of his or her
campaign diverse flavors and dangers, even
if they have similar types of terrain.

It should be obvious that using such an
inflation rate allows the DM to provide the
thinking players with some choices to make,
without really requiring extra work. It also
adds to the realism of the entire campaign,
and the players are likely to enjoy it much
more.

The second part of this discussion follows
from the first. There is something ridiculous
in seeing a character walk into almost any
town and have his choice of two inns in
which to stay, even if the town only consists
of ten buildings. Yet, this often happens
simply to give the character a choice of how
much money he wants to spend for a night?s
rest and relative security. The same idea
applies to most items or services that a party
needs; all items they might need shouldn?t
be available in every town through which
they pass.

There is a branch of economic geography
called ?central place theory? that addresses
this problem. While most of the theory is
superfluous to this sort of discussion, the
part covering why different cities are of
different sizes, and what level of services
you could expect to find in a given city, is
 interesting. Following is a quick overview of
the ideas of central places and some sugges-
tions for how they can be applied to a fan-
tasy role-playing game campaign.

The general concept is that cities exist in
networks that allow each city to be sur
rounded by enough people to buy the goods
 and services it provides. The distance be
tween cities, and the size of a given city, are
functions of the goods it sells. Since the
 number of customers needed to support a
given industry differs from product to
product, cities differ in size. If a store in the
capital city of the kingdom sells plate armor,
and the dealer needs to sell 25 suits a year
to survive, he needs to be the only merchant
in an area large enough to have 25 customers a year if he is to make a living. Thus
the next closest dealer of plate armor will
be, say 100 miles away in a sparsely populated or poor region, or possibly in the same
town if there is a large demand for the
armor (say, to outfit the king?s army). Items
come in three general varieties: low-order
goods, such as food; mid-order goods, such
as swords and armor; and high-order goods,
such as magic items. The ranking of a good
is determined by something called the
?range? of the good, which will be explained momentarily.

    There will be very few cities offering
high-order goods, and they will be spaced
far apart. There will be more cities offering
mid-order goods, and they will be spaced
more closely together. Nearly every small
village and hamlet will supply ?low-order
goods, and they will probably occur as
closely as one day?s travel apart, or about
10 miles. Finally, a city that offers highorder goods will also offer mid- and low-
order goods as well, and mid-order cities
will also provide low-order items.
Now for an explanation of how a good?s
?range? is determined. If the item has a
price of 5 sp, the adventurer isn?t going to
travel across the country to buy it, but he
may be willing to do so for a good costing
1000 gp. Basically, when the costs of getting
to the good outweigh the cost of the good
itself, the range of the good has been
reached. In this case, another supply will
usually arise in a closer region. This is what
results in low-order towns being much
closer together than high-order towns.
All of this may seem a little overwhelming at first, but if you compare it to the
present-day society we live in, it becomes
intuitive. Gasoline is a low-order good, and
there are gas stations on nearly every corner
in a large city. Furniture is a mid-order
good, and there are usually only several
stores selling furniture in a given city, Also,
in the smaller towns that sell only low-ordergoods, it will be impossible to buy furniture
at any price, because there are no stores.
Automobiles are high-order goods, and
similar considerations apply to them. Simply think of your milieu in that light and
arranging the stores available in a given
town will be easy.

The following dialogue should illustrate
one of the possible ways to use this system
to force some forethought by your players.

Scene: The Wild Boar Inn, in a small
town on the edge of the wilds.

Cedric (party spokesman): ?So, you say
that the daughter of the local despot has
been carried off by trolls, and he?s offering
200,000 gp and a personal army to anyone
who can rescue her??

Torpthar (Sheriff for His Most Honorable
Potentate): ?Yeah, and if I don?t arrange
for someone to find her, I?m going to be fed
to the moat-monsters. I can arrange for ten
of the King?s Guardsmen to go with you,
and I?ll pay their wages if you succeed. But
you have to leave by tomorrow, or it?ll be
too late.?

(A quick conversation follows among the
adventurers, and they decide that they?d
love to go, as soon as they get some new
weapons and other gear.)

Cedric: ?We?ll go, if you pay for some
armor for our horses and a few swords.?
Torpthar: ?What??!! You came all this
way without any armor? The only place to
get that is in the capital city, over 200 miles
away. I can?t help you, and I have to leave
so I can find someone else to help me before
His Most Honorable Potentate comes back
for me. Sorry!?

An exchange of that sort should convince
the characters to plan ahead the next time
and carry more of their equipment with
them to the frontier.

The following are more suggestions on
how to apply this system to your campaign
in a manner that will make sense to your
players, allowing the play of the game to be
more believable and challenging. Set up a
rough network of cities in the area your
characters ark in. Decide where the mid-

and high-order cities will be located, and
what specific goods will be available in each
one. This need not be very timeconsuming, as most cities of a given size
will have all of the basic goods of a given
level. However, you may-decide that crossbows are a rare commodity in a dwarven
kingdom, thus making them high-order
goods in that region. A few logical changes
such as that, based on the attributes listed
i n   t h e   Monster Manual  for each nonhuman race, will make the campaign a
three-dimensional backdrop for the party?s
adventures. Also, recognize that while there
may not be a store that sells crossbows in
the town, one of the citizens may have one
for sale, if the party thinks to ask around.

Remember that this system works the
other way, too. If the PCs come back from
an adventure with four extra sets of bows
and arrows, they shouldn?t be able to sell
them to the arms merchant in the dwarven
village. He won?t be willing to buy goods
for which no market exists, and the party
members will either have to carry the stuff
to a larger town or sell it at a large loss.

Another factor that affects the goods
available in a given town, and thus its size,
is the local economy. If the town contains
one of the most talented swordsmiths in the
country, it should not only have good
swords for sale, but all of the related stores
that accompany swords, such as armor,
warhorses, and large numbers of fighters
available for hire. This will tend to be selffeeding; as more adventurers come to the
town to buy the fighting gear available,
more shops will be able to open up and
attract even more adventurers.

The local economy in turn is often affected by the natural resources of the area.
A swordsmith needs fair amounts of coal
and iron to manufacture his product, and
he will tend to locate near a supply of these
items. (This is the reason why Pittsburgh is
the steel center of the United States.) Likewise, if the town contains a larger-thanaverage number of magic-users, it should be
located near some sort of educational facility, most often in a large city.

If you keep these ideas in mind, the
whole system should be very easy to implement. It provides an excellent framework
for your campaign and gives it more direction than would otherwise be found in the
game. Characters now have an incentive to
travel across the continent for a specific
item of opportunity, rather than as a reaction to a DM-devised crisis. It also gives the
DM a good way to communicate the condition of an area to the PCs without having to
spell it out for them. If the PCs come to a
town with rapidly rising prices, they should
be able to figure out that the place is ripe
for revolution without having to ask someone in a bar (who will probably say nothing
out of fear of the King?s troops).

If the town subsists in a large measure
due to the presence of one highly skilled
man, such as the swordsmith mentioned
above, it would suffer virtual collapse when
he dies or decides to move, unless some

replacement can be found for him. Once the
characters realize this, and connect it with
the effects produced by a hill giant who has
been raiding the local iron mines, they are
in a position to direct their own adventures.
While the supply of ore may not be immediately interrupted, it will eventually stop. If
the characters react first, they could demand a large amount of money for killing
an otherwise normal monster. While this is
obviously extortion, it?s also the way modern business operates, and it isn?t hampered
by the laws in the campaign.
All of the above should aid your campaign, both in reducing the need for artificial challenges, and by providing a
workable backdrop for what is happening.
In addition, since most of this is based on
how real life operates, it is easier to improvise without destroying the system. Just
decide what would happen in today?s world,
and adjust for the more primitive technology and the presence of magic (which is a
form of technology).
Hopefully this article has helped to show
both the need for sensible economics and
the advantages that such a system provides.
If characters are forced to act more realistitally in the purchase of goods and the trading of treasure after an adventure, they are
also more likely to take an intelligent approach to the rest of the obstacles you
present them. Not only will they think
about where to buy swords, but also about
when to use them.