Gold and jewels are all over the treasure tables in the Dungeon Master Guide. Player characters can get filthy rich from adventuring! But then … What can they do with it? After a 1,500 GP suit of plate mail, the only expensive things left for players to buy in the D&D PHB are boats. How many boats is a level-15 wizard supposed to own? Does high-level play morph into some weird naval combat sim we haven’t seen yet?
The DMG has a few more options, but the entire D&D economy is underwhelming, and many other modern TTRPGs have that same issue. These are design decisions: The game is supposed to be about character powers and adventures, not shopping. Yet, gold is still a huge part of the RPG reward system.
This leaves a ton of interesting depth you can add to your game by creating an economy that lets players make choices and build out their characters. After all, is Batman any less interesting because he has all those wonderful toys?
In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about how they handle the RPG economy and the crazy things players can and can’t do with gold in their games.
2:00 Why does the economy matter in a roleplaying game?
7:00 The problem with D&D 4E’s residuum and 1-to-1 magic item swapping
10:00 What role should money play in your game world? Can players buy magic items? Spells? Property? Adventure access?
17:00 The argument for a magic item shop and how to run them
22:00 How closely do you track the party’s gold?
25:00 Different systems for tracking PC money and resources and how they change the game
30:00 Does a magic item economy break continuity in your game?
33:00 Managing the power curve of games with more magic items
39:00: Power money can’t buy: High-level magic items, false honor and money-related party dynamics
45:00 Economic mechanics: Making money part of story goals and side quests
50:00 Do your players even want a castle?
54:00 The amount of money PCs find is preposterous compared to the rest of the village. What could they do with that?
58:00 What we’d like to see out of crafting and professions
63:00 Should players be able to buy training in skills, abilities, combat, etc. beyond normal leveling? How do you balance that?
75:00 Is high-level play boring for some classes? Can you use the economy to shake it up?
80:00 Other crazy stuff you might let players might do with their gold: Paying the thieves guild to do their adventure, upgrading a pet imp like a Pokémon, have the king assassinated?
87:00 Final Thoughts
I’m a big fan of hardcore realism (I’m a BA in History too), so for my current campaign I threw out D&D 5e economy system out of the window and made my own from scratch, based on the value of a Renaissance-Age Florentine florin. It wasn’t easy, but at least I made it feel like a gold coin is actually a GOLD coin, and is valuable as such.
Agency-wise, I would allow my players to do with their coins everything that they would be to able do if they would be actually living in that world. Anyway, thanks for this podcast, lots of great ideas there!
Of course some DMs avoid all those problems by simply NOT HAVING ANY TREASURE! 🙂
No Treasure?! *DM Tony’s head explodes*