These are the Rules of Fantasy Economics:
Rule 1: Everyone has roughly the exact same amount of money and/or property as everyone else of his or her respective experience-point total. Except at character creation, obviously, where some people totally get the shaft, which sucks … but “being poor” and “staying poor” are two very different things.
Only about 99.9% of all people — specifically those who lack the initiative to spend every dollar they own on studded leather and a knife and to abandon their families for the open road on a mad, bloodthirsty whim — ever really STAY poor.
[. . .]
Rule 2: Money cannot make more money. Investing in businesses is a fool’s bargain: stores burn down, castles crumble, merchants and/or bandits will constantly steal your shit, and you will never, ever make a dime. Ever.
It is far wiser to invest in non-depreciable items like swords, hats and magic boots. Likewise, the things that you need to do your job (boats, armor, weapons, rope and horses, for example) do not depreciate at all and may be used forever unless somehow completely destroyed.
Rule 3: All currencies of all countries are worth almost exactly the same amount — and all currencies of all countries are evenly divisible into platinum, gold, silver and copper pieces by factors of exactly ten. No other non-magical objects have any real value, including land.
The exceptions to this rule are gems, which are randomly & subjectively priced (and therefore effectively useless as trade goods) and ‘art objects’, presumably meaning paintings and such, the value of which are objectively determined, fixed and unchangeable, making them a lot like personal checks.
January 21, 2012
Those aren’t rules of economics. These are rules of economics!
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