Let’s face it, roleplaying game economics suck. Coming up with a monetary system that’s both balanced and believable is difficult at best and impossible at worst. In part, this has to do with how currency works and what is afforded value. Too much of what serves as currency and the issue becomes one of hyperinflation of a person’s net worth. This is a huge problem in relation to the power structure underlying the progression to higher levels of play.
Money serves as a measure of a character’s power. As such, money needs to be aligned with other progressions in the system. Where levels represent combat prowess, they don’t explain how that translates into influence. So, in addition to the balancing act of power, the economics of the game must coincide with the believable. Characters start out poor as a way to provide incentive to go adventuring. This helps establish the equipment selection is limited to items that do not give characters an edge that skews the math well beyond that which already favors player characters. The expense of the item based on what it inflicts or prevents is a game mechanic as much as it is an economic one.
Characters should accumulate wealth over time. The players will want this as much if not more than their characters. The measure of a character’s growth is based as much on its social influence as it is combat skill. Story wise, it’s great to defeat the dragon and raid its lair, but if, say, it has no treasure and never bothers the local populace, what benefit is it to the players who are trying to change the story world at large through their characters? Unless this is a one-shot adventure there are actually two stories being told in an ongoing campaign: the rise to power and the rags-to-riches tale.
The relative strength of the monsters and villains characters face effectively establishes the power/combat economy of the game system, but it doesn’t effectively illustrate how to apply this to the non-action portions of the narrative. That’s where the economy of currency becomes key. This is the other half of the equation for representing growth. Both are important for illustrating the growth in power, but one is easier to design than the other.
One of the reasons for calling combat into question is to address a real concern in game design. Many games lay out an elaborate system for conducting this exciting element of any RPG. What they don’t detail is how to make a functioning economy. Even the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons can’t tackle this topic despite having tables ascribing the treasure awarded per encounter per level. It gives an economy without describing it. This is not an isolated incident, but does show a way in which designers have approached this problem with no easy solution.
Why is it hard to make a working system in a sandbox game? Consider this: despite their training, real world economists can’t predict or design systems that are flawless. The subject is too complex and relies on numerous and intricate variables. Closed system games like Monopoly might get away with a fixed economic model, but its rules ensure finite system will not be corrupted by external values, meaning real estate prices won’t fluctuate. They retain their value, though this fixed price can be circumvented by a player in a negotiation. Open systems like the ongoing narrative of a roleplaying game doesn’t benefit from that luxury. What constitutes value is limited only by the story and the character. More often than not, the designers leave this thorny problem for gamemasters to solve.
A few systems have used an abstract measure of wealth to avoid the issue altogether. White Wolf’s World of Darkness games have long done this by requiring dice rolls for items which may exceed or damage a character’s wealth rating. The d6 System by West End Games uses a similar approach. One of the more intriguing methods has been d20 Modern‘s introduction of a Wealth statistic that is used as a modifier to a dice roll to see if an item is within a character’s financial reach. All of these methods use a mathematical system that works well to emulate a real world economy.
Some systems, such as the point-buy games Big Eyes, Small Mouth and HERO, effectively dispense with actual currency values in favor of expending character points for items intrinsic to a character’s growth. This combines both combat and socioeconomic power into one value. While the story may make use of money, the game system doesn’t care and is thus insulated from any potentially unbalancing effects from reward totals. Given the downplay of money on the math in other areas of the game, this alleviates the burden on the designer to have an economic engine other than suggestions for how quickly characters should gain points to go up another level/buy a new ability/improve an existing power. Thus, the abilities one uses in that system are the commodities, which likely include social status.
So, barring a removal of money from the game, how does one enact an economy in a roleplaying game? Trial-and-error. This is how young gamers learn how to maintain a story world. Doling out too much wealth either causes too many problems in a campaign, grinding the game to a halt, or leading to games of wretched excess. Now, I’ll readily admit that the occasional dungeon run that nets millions of gold coins’ worth of treasure (known as “monty haul” games) is fun and breaks up the tone of the campaign so it doesn’t become too entrenched. That said, a campaign that’s not built to explore the theme of characters drowning in the excess of their desires will grow stale quite fast. When you get everything you want, you tend to get bored; at least that is the lesson of this narrative.
In all seriousness, there is no real way to learn how much money a character should have other than by finding out what constitutes too much. There are ways to give both large payouts and drains on those gains. For this reason, many games have suggestions for the following: taxes, room and board, equipment maintenance, miscellaneous bills, and so on. Some games even cover large-ticket items like strongholds, ships, and magic items. One area left out of most games is investment. Castles, starships, +5 magical swords, etc. are all forms of investment, but these are combat oriented. What’s needed is infrastructural money sinks.
By pouring money into community improvement projects, the game has a fully functional economy. It also grounds a character in the community and lets a player feel as if he or she has a stake in the story. None of this is covered in as system’s rules because it has little to do with how the game works. The results of the money spent, however, may. Then again, there are no rules explaining how characters own castles or portions of their communities. Again, such actions are beyond the purview of most games. This is one of the reasons economics get so little coverage in game rules.
Another reason why economics goes to the wayside in game rules has to do with the math. Quite simply, it’s too complex and time consuming for most gamers to use in their sessions. This is just for a basic system, forget about derivatives! So one of the workarounds for all this complexity designed to explode your mind regardless of whether or not you’re wearing a helmet, is simply to generalize it as a component of storytelling. Effectively, an infrastructure money sink.
To pry all of that bullion out of your players’ characters’ hands, you have to make them feel invested in the story you tell. Economy in games is a negotiation between the needs of the story, the wants of the players, and the level of intimacy money has with the rules. If all of this isn’t a nightmare for you, let’s look at crossover games.
The transfer from one era to another is sometimes more of a hassle than it may be worth. The Wealth mechanic used by d20 Modern, for example, doesn’t really scale well for a time-traveling game where someone invests heavily in a company in 1950 and moves forward to 2010 to reap huge profits. What would Wealth 20 in 1950 equal today? Accrual of interest compounded over sixty years (not to mention value increases in the stocks) surely wouldn’t still equal Wealth 20. Now, how much Wealth does 10,000gp equal? Or, Wealth 20 equals how much gold? Keep in mind that beyond a few differences in mechanics, d20 Modern and Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 are the same game.
Point-buy systems like GURPS, HERO, d6, and Big Eyes, Small Mouth have a wealth mechanic, but regardless of the genre, it remains an abstract value keyed to their respective core mechanics (or subsystems therein). There isn’t much in these systems to address a scale equivalency from time or genre jumps, either. So, how does one make an economic system that works? Simply put: you don’t. The best any system can offer is lists of equipment and services with prices that serve as a benchmark for charging characters. This is all one needs to develop the economy of his or her desired world. After all, the rules are meant to facilitate play, not what cultures and their respective objects of value are possible; and that, more so than the amount of an object available will set its price. An item nobody wants has no value, no matter how rare it is.
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