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Dungeons & Dragons	-	Dragon magazine	-	The Dragon #21

I know that nobody likes inflation. Today it is considered to be this
country’s #1 problem, it even overshadows the terrible
afflictions that are unemployment; heavy taxes, and the threat of
spreading Communism (whether it is real or imagined). 

We constantly
complain about the Government’s ridiculous inability to balance the
country’s budgets, and yet we allow it to be present in our fantasy worlds,
the very places where we go to forget the pains of reality. We never seem
to notice it, in fact we enjoy it, as long as we are on the receiving end.

If you do not believe that many of the fantasy campaigns of D & D
and EPT are suffering from inflation, then perhaps we should take
another look at what the word means. I basically see it as the loss of a
unit’s value. In our world it is the dollar that is constantly losing its value.
What about in D & D? What can you do with one gold piece in your
campaign?

In a recent THE DRAGON article, DMs were given the
idea of rewarding experience only for money spent instead of for money
gained. While this may help get rid of the players’ loot it is not terribly
realistic. In most cultures you gain power (experience levels) by gaining <+>
material wealth, not by getting rid of it. But if you don’t give players
incentive to spend their money the won’t; and so the problem of too much
money remains. Such is the result of too much gold being given to the
players.

I think an analogy should be made between the GP and our
dollar.  How many dollars is a GP worth? While I recognize that
such a comparison is impossible to make I ask you to imagine the GP
being equal to the dollar in value. In various campaigns I have
repeatedly seen players gain tens of thousands of gold pieces by slaying a
single monster (not always worthy of possessing such treasure). If we
converted that to the modern scale it would make the player instantly
rich.

Again using the 1:1 ratio we have common peasants walking around
with hundreds of gold pieces on their persons. How many of us routinely
carry hundreds of dollars in our pockets? If you have that much money
floating around, available to anybody, what happens? Because of the
merchants’ attempts to stay even the prices go up. INFLATION! ! !

And if you are one of the many (including myself) who consider a
gold piece worth more than a dollar (maybe 5 or 10) then the situation
becomes even more unbelievable. There is another thing wrong, if
everyone has that much money the can easily buy land, build castles,
towns, etc. Usually this is in a setting where most (the vast majority) or
people didn’t even own their homes; rather, they lived according to the
feudal system. But I guess everyone owns their own place in these
campaigns. The Middle Ages were never so good!

What about silver and copper? They seem to exist merely to add
variety to the treasures so easily found by the players, they are merely
converted to gold and then forgotten. After all what are they worth?
What can you buy with a copper piece? With a silver piece? Instead, the
need is seen for such metals as Platinum and Electrum, worth even more
than the inflation ridden gold piece.

The whole idea surrounding precious metals is that their rariety
makes them valuable. Is it any wonder that gold is virtually worthless
when the world contains so much of it? That must be why the
preconditioned players, used to monstrous amounts of coins, grumble so
loudly when they enter my campaign and initially receive only (?) 1-10
gold pieces, or when they go to all the trouble of pickpocketing some poor
little commoner and get nothing but a few copper pieces? What the hell
can you do with that? Much of the same things that you use gold for in
most other campaigns. I merely cut the prices when I cut the amount I
give them; thus silver and copper are brought into use.

Money is not the only thing that has lost its value to inflation. With
the advancement to 20th or 30th level what is a single hit point worth? Its
worth a heck of a lot when you don’t have too many of them. Magical
items are also in ridiculous abundancy. Why, just the other day, a purple
dragon (on the 1st level) gave me a plus 5 sword and 2 plus 5 spears, just
because he liked me. Now, come on, people!

I think, rather, I know, that there are more than a few of us who
should read an old STRATEGIC REVIEW article (Vol. II No. 2) by
Gary Gygax that was entitled “D & D is Only as Good as the DM”. I wish
THE DRAGON would reprint it but I guess they have given up on getting
through to some of you and frankly I can’t blame them.

So those of you complaining that your players have too much gold,
possess too many magical items, or are of too high a level for ordinary
monsters to kill, can just quit your whining. You are the dungeon master,
you are god, if you don’t want them to get that powerful then make it so
they cannot or at least make it so that it is very difficult to do so. Maybe
you have room in your campaign for every player to own their own castle
or become a demi-god in strength but I do not. Like they say: SMALL
IS BEAUTIFUL!