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You do what for a living?
A critical look at the economics of
fantasy role-playing settings
By T.S. Luikart
Since the first incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons, we've
been told that many adventures begin when a hardy band of
likely youths go traipsing forth to seek their fortunes out
in the wide, cruel world. There's money to be had in
the dark places of the globe and plenty of it if you're
skilled or lucky. So why don't more folk turn to this
lucrative career? Because it's dangerous? Because it's
foolhardy? Because they'll have to kill a bunch of sentient
beings? Nope. Because it's B.S. The economic foundations
of most "fantasy heartbreakers" {thanks, Ron} are,
quite frankly, not very sound. Over the last few years, I've
become more and more interested in the study of economics
as they apply to fantasy role-playing games. My interest began
with a great deal of research I did for the (mostly) real
world equivalent gold and silver prices you can find in Green
Ronin's Skull & Bones, but it has since expanded
to the hobby in general. The greater bulk of this article
is directed at campaign settings that claim to be "realistic"
but are anything but. Obviously, when depicting a fantasy
world, you can do whatever you darn well please. I would like
to note, however, that a number of the more famous fantasy
authors I've read emphasize that the more "realistic"
a fantasy world is, the more accepting of it and audience
is capable of being.
Economic Foundations
According to present anthropological thought, almost every
culture begins as nomadic hunter – gatherers before acquiring
the knowledge of crop cultivation and settling down into an
agricultural society. Some tribes remain nomadic and/or proceed
to raid others for their goods, depending on how aggressive
they are. A culture can spend a very long time indeed using
nothing more than a barter basis for their economy before
ever needing to come up with interchangeable units of wealth,
e.g. coins, shells, teeth, etc. A number of cultures equate
value with specific animals and how many an individual owns,
so wealth is measured by the size of one's herd of cows,
horses, buffalo, etc. Long after coinage was introduced in
Europe, service "in kind" was the standard for well
over a thousand years, as most peasants were unlikely to ever
see more than a handful of silver coins in their entire life.
Thus, they passed on part of their crops and a chicken or
two when their lord asked for his rent. Coins eventually predominated
in Europe mainly because of trade. Merchants, when dealing
with folks they know, can continue to barter at a certain
level, but when they start dealing with foreigners they need
a unit of measurement whose value is, relatively, fixed and
easy to agree upon.
I could continue on this topic for quite a while, but I'll
steer back to my point: For-profit adventurers do not come
from barter-based societies. A campaign world's society
has to have hit a point where goods and economic units, e.g.
"treasure," were in wide scale use for some time,
either in the past or the present, for such adventurers to
even exist. Fantasy campaigns based on Europe must inevitably
have a Roman Empire equivalent in their past, or a truly thriving
present economy, to explain how so many far-flung beasts got
their claws on so much portable wealth, which leads to my
next point.
Where did all that specie come from?
Specie, in this case, is cold hard cash and for the sake
of my sanity and your edification, we'll just assume
it's all gold and silver. Coinage implies both a mint
and ready sources of the material in question. Some places
on Earth did, indeed, have gold and silver deposits on the
surface, which required little to no mining, but they are
the exception, not the rule. Extensive amounts of specie inevitably
mean mining. Mining implies fairly formidable technology.
It is true that anybody can dig a hole, but the process of
producing the proper tools for excavation, shoring up the
mine's walls, transporting ore, etc. all require a fair
amount of sophistication. However, a mineral rich environment
and a large work force can also cull quite a bit from the
earth. Slavery was frequently the main choice of labor for
the Roman Empire, fantasy worlds may follow suit, but they
also have access to golems, zombies, elementals, etc.
There has to be some sort of reason for needing large amounts
of wealth dug from the earth. Trade and expansion are the
mostly likely reasons our world has to offer. Trade demands
other nations who have similar outlooks on what constitutes
"wealth" and expansion means taking into account
population growth and the absorption of other peoples into
one's nation, e.g. there needs to be enough money to
go around. Trade also means that large amounts of wealth get
moved around, which is somewhat critical for the dissemination
of wealth. How else do beasts in the wilderness get their
hands on currency? Previous dead adventurers? Cynical economists
will tell you that no matter how much wealth there is to be
had that, given enough time, it will inevitably end up in
the hands of a select few.
The Spanish Empire is pretty much Earth's poster child
for ludicrous amounts of specie production. However, it didn't
do half so well from its holdings in the New World as you
might think. The costs of running and maintaining the Spaniard's
world spanning empire were enormous. Every time a new load
of silver specie arrived in port, there would be a shockwave
of inflation that would radiate outwards throughout Europe
as more silver was dumped into the economy. However, the heavy
raise in prices would inevitably crush the local Spaniards
first, who weren't benefiting from their ruler's
oversea holdings. Eventually, they came to dread the arrival
of the New World flotillas and stock up on basic goods when
rumor of their arrival came around. Thus, the economic windfalls
of the New World actually had a large part in bringing about
the downfall of the Spanish Empire, making them victims of
their own success.
Oh, no! Adventurers!
Bet you can see where I'm going with this, eh? Adventurers,
especially successful for-profit adventurers, while a boon
to merchants are quite probably a bane to common folk. The
vast amounts of wealth they carry with them can destabilize
carefully built economies overnight. D&D d20 presumes
a base wage of one silver piece per day to an unskilled laborer,
which is barely adequate for survival. Presuming a 30 day
month, with 5 days set aside as holy days, and a 12 month
year, said laborer makes 300 silver, or 30 gold in a year.
A 5th level adventurer is nominally worth 9,000 gold, in specie
and equipment. In other words, it would take the ditch digger
300 years of money accumulation, presuming not a cent was
spent on surviving, to reach the equivalent.
Is it any wonder that all old taverns seemed to be owned
by ex-adventurers?
Adventurers are also one of the only ways through which incredible
amounts of previously unavailable specie can suddenly enter
an economy. Translation: dragon slayers are great news for
the King's exchequer and bad news for everybody else.
Let's consider Smaug the Golden in economic terms. I'm
going to presume that Smaug was very old with a particularly
impressive hoard. The result runs something like this: 100,000+
in loose gold, 100+ gems and art objects worth over 140,000
gold, 8 medium strength magic items worth approximately 80,000
gold and 6 major items worth approximately 240,000 gold. Grand
total: 560,000+ in gold value, not to mention several tons
of dwarf-wrought armor, weapons, etc. All of which is 200,000
gold less than the 760,000 gold equivalent that a 20th level
adventurer is supposed to be worth according to the 3.5 d20
Dungeon Master's Guide.
Yep, that's right. A single (admittedly very high level)
adventurer's money and equipment are worth more than
a very old dragon's whole hoard. Which do you think is
easier to kill, hmmm? Tolkien had it right, 5 armies would,
indeed, march at the death of an elderly dragon--but a
single high level adventuring party is even more valuable
and probably easier to waylay.
How much gold fer that there wand?
Giving magic items a gold piece equivalent, while useful
as a game-balancing mechanic, was a really bad idea from a
realistic economics point of view. It is true that supply
and demand greatly increases the value of a given commodity,
but hardly anybody would have enough hard cash to justify
the costs of any of the mid-range magic items in d20, much
less the more expensive ones. If you ever happen to find yourself
in a position where you're coming up with a magic item
system, I strongly suggest you connect their existence and
the faint possibility of purchasing them to the rarity of
materials and the difficulty of any given item's creation.
So what's my point?
A lot of people, gamers and otherwise, tend to cringe if
you start discussing economics, but thinking about the foundations
of your world's finances can only enhance your campaign
and/or game. The underlying structure can provide a lot of
room for adventure, as can the interactions of cultures with
different priorities. Say, for example, that you're GMing
a game where the PCs all come from a Celtic style clan that
only values how many heads of Yaerwen Cattle a man owns. Stealing
cattle from other clans and making a good marriage are typically
the only ways to improve one's fortune in their culture,
so a few adventures, at least, would revolve around raiding
and protecting their herd from the raids of others. Gold and
silver acquisition wouldn't mean all that much to such
warriors, until they find out that there are some fools that
will actually sell Yaerwen Cattle for coins! Another common
example, certainly the most common that I've seen in
fantasy and science fiction, is environment influenced economy,
e.g. desert areas or worlds. Water is always the most precious
of substances and there are areas where no amount of gold
will be able to purchase it.
Questions to consider:
Is this a barter or specie culture?
Where did /does their money come from?
What does this culture / race value? Why?
Dwarves and their gold. . . .
Let's take one of my favorite races, dwarves, and build
on a number of the more common conceptions about them with
an eye towards economic implications. They live deep in the
mountains. They have a clan-based structure that values honor.
They love well-crafted goods and greatly value gold, silver,
jewels and alcohol.
They live deep in the mountains for both spiritual reasons
and the fact that it puts them far closer to the ore veins,
which supply the raw materials for their smith work. They
have the capacity to acquire gold, silver and jewels easier
than most other races. If there is any race that would've
produced their own coinage, surely, it's the dwarves.
Living deep in the mountains means that they're either
self-sufficient or have long since set up trade routes with
others for any goods they cannot produce. Seeing as they have
a large and expanding subterranean empire, I figure they must
have established trade routes. Because of their well known
reputation for honor, traders would be willing to deal with
them regularly, however, they're probably known for being
hard bargainers, for they value both their work and their
gold highly. Work, however, can be replicated. Gold cannot.
Thus, the mountain dwarves are far more likely to want to
trade a shipment of dwarf-wrought arms and armor than their
gold for goods from outside their kingdom.
So what do they need? They have access to wool from their
mountain sheep. However, they need leather for a number of
their goods and silk or other unusual cloths might interest
them. They certainly need every kind of foodstuff, from meats
to produce. Barley and hopps for their beloved ales are absolutely
essential, and probably one of the few things they'd
be willing to trade gold for. Fruits coming from trees that
will never grow in their cold high mountains are delicacies.
I can easily imagine dwarves loving apples and swooning at
the thought of a tumbler full of apple brandy.
Thus, we have a dwarf kingdom with a healthy internal economy
based on specie and work. Among their fellows, they use gold
and silver coinage to purchase goods, or trade one of their
creations whose value is proportionate to how much time and
craftsmanship went into it. They prefer to keep their specie
in dwarven hands, so most of their agreements with outside
traders involving the selling of dwarf-wrought goods, though
certain crops will pry some of their specie away. Citizens
of the kingdoms surrounding the dwarf mountains are far more
likely to have seen a fine masterwork axe then a dwarven silver
penny. Characters wishing to purchase wares from the dwarves
are better off acquiring a couple of bushels of apples. The
dwarves would certainly take gold without compunction, though
they would make a better deal on jewels that they didn't
have in their mountains, such as opals or pearls.
I hope my musings were of interest. I'll leave you with
China Miéville's awesome take on for-profit adventurers:
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