- B
A: The economy might be one of the most difficult things to consider in a game world - it's dangerous to upset the balance of your tabletop games. Just as with our technology post, a small change in the economy can have huge ripple effects. This is something we were even touched on: the city with a seaport, and a thus need lots of wood to make piers and maintain ships. As that city grows, it will require new and better tools, forest management, etc. This is all just supply and demand talking, two major economic forces. That's more about slow growth through economics due to changes we’d like to see in our games. But we also need to talk about quick boosts to the game, for things like when the PCs earn a large sum from a kingdom for completing an adventure or the windfall from defeating a dragon and taking its hoard. In these short-term cases you also have to consider both greed and politics. After all, there wasn’t a battle of five armies in The Hobbit just because there were different factions. They all wanted and/or claimed rights to Smaug’s hoard, which had been stolen from Dwarves and humans alike (and likely from their enemies, too, for that matter). These sudden economic boons can bring a city back to its full glory, make PCs major political players in their realms, or initiate full scale wars between nations. Before you set the carrot for your players, make sure you have an idea bout the stick that may follow.
There are some major complaints often heard about rewarding players with riches. This can seem like a strange argument when early editions of classic RPGs relied heavily on gold rewards to determine the advancement of a character. One complaint is that, for various reasons, this isn't “realistic." “One hundred gold," they might argue, "is more than the entire village would ever see in its lifetime!” Almost right. It was more gold than they’d have ever seen up to that point... and now the townsfolk have some rich adventurers to up-charge/overcharge. “But once the villagers see that adventuring is so lucrative, why wouldn’t they just go out and do that instead of carrot farming?” Maybe they will - a child or two in the village might just take up the mantle someday. That could even be some future character’s back story. Or maybe these untrained, non-magic wielding, non-weapon owning farmer types will realize just how dangerous the adventuring profession is and that they’d rather farm and relax until the adventurers come round to pay gold for their wares. So is there really a hit to realism? No. But what it really comes down to it, though, is the fun factor. Do those around the table agree that realism, specifically, in this case, economic realism, is something to strive for? In that case, game realism is something fun for players to engage with, rather than a burden we're trying to avoid once we eschew our own world for that of our fantasy realms.
B: There’s an old saying that the only one guaranteed to make a profit in a gold rush is whoever's selling the pickaxes. One can assume that any establishment outfitting adventurers is operating on a similar model, although many items, such as weapons and armor, will also have a customer base through the local military, mercenary groups, or constabulary. Indeed, if the area isn’t yet frequented by those seeking treasure and glory in nearby dungeons, catacombs, ruins, abandoned castles, and the like, we can assume that local forces (and their employers) are still the primary customers. A shopkeep, used to dealing in bulk, may charge the adventuring party more, given that they're only outfitting themselves and, given the riskiness of their endeavors, are more likely to be some monster's leftovers than repeat customers. The traditional haggle over equipment prices could potentially be made more interesting if there's the complicating factor of another purchaser, maybe the mayor or feudal lord's standard buyer, accustomed to easily getting those supplies the party needs. But, as you said, Andy, player (or audience) interest is key here: would the players find it fun to deal with complicated purchase negotiations? Or would they consider it unnecessary hassle standing in the way of monster killin'? It might be a good idea to start by incorporating a some of these details as color, and, if the audience's ears perk up, easing them into it. They may find the process more fun than they expect, and use the opportunity to learn a little more about the world they're engaging with.
I admit to being fascinated by the effect sudden infusions of wealth (the kind that break expectations of supply and demand) have on societies, both historically and in fiction, and most sword-and-sorcery settings have these rapid reversals of fortune baked into their premises. It makes sense, from an expediency perspective, that most of the treasure retrieved from dungeons and (moreso in electronic games that draw from early tabletop RPGs) simple fights, is considered de facto legal tender, but it could be a great worldbuilding exercise to explore how, in this particular setting, all that stuff becomes usable money rather than shiny trinkets. Provided that, unlike Smaug's hoard in The Hobbit, this wealth predates the living memory of individuals or societies, material wealth will need to either be sold as-is or turned into resources to create saleable items or simply modern currency - gold, after all, has been valued throughout human history not only because of its beauty and rarity, but because it's easy to work with. Since we can assume that most sword-and-sorecery settings have a limited number of museums, libraries, and universities, and there are only so many individuals wealthy enough to own ancient treasure in its original forms as things to collect, study, or show off, most treasure is going to have to be disassembled, broken down, and smelted into things people want and can use now. (More on usable artifacts and magic items in a bit.) One alternative might be the individual (possibly an adventurer) who views treasure items as a form of portable investment that can be sold off when cash is needed, but is easier to carry and keep track of than actual cash. We see something like this today with pimps - the gold and jewelry they're famous for wearing is not only a flashy signifier of the trade (and their success at it), but also quick-access money for bail and other legal costs when cash is confiscated on arrest. A traveler in a fantasy realm may not be able to carry legal tender for everywhere they go, but they could carry something they could sell or trade anywhere. On the other hand, many fantasy settings also feature some very long-lived species who, in positions of power, might insist that physical currency stay relatively unchanged, lest the cash they've amassed be functionally useless without smelting or sale. There are lots of different ways this could show up: an Elf King might pay the party he hired in antique gold and silver pieces that they've never seen before. If players are interested in paying along, they may need to find a way to turn this into money they can use. A whimsical world-building addition might even be something like the currency exchanges you see in international airports... likely high-profile targets for well-travelled thieves, and thus the frequent lookout for adventurers to hire as guards or recover stolen wealth.
Again, as Andy said, it's a matter of doing what everyone finds fun. But even if a group is less interested than a GM in the taxation of trade routes, coming up with interesting ways that these factors directly affects the characters makes a fantasy realm a little less generic and a little more your own - even if it's just a matter of who the party meets on the road... or who's trying to rob them, and with what. We talked last week about the "Been There, Done That" Threshold, and presenting changes at both the macro and micro level is a good way bypass that... even if it's just a matter of who's making money, how they're doing it, and what they're doing with it. Genre is about what's expected when one engages with a work, but even within that, having a little bit of the unexpected or different is what makes interesting and memorable.
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