August 22nd, 2010
Shadows of Dooooom! – part 25
I’ve never had a boysenberry, I don’t think. It’s good to see Patricia’s shopping coming in handy. In a video game when I stock up on healing or anti-poison potions I almost never run out. They’re like insurance that never gets used. I think you could write an interesting paper on the economics of gold pieces in video games or tabletop RPGs. How can the smithy afford to pay me 1,000gp for a suit of magical chainmail and offer me a 10,000gp platemail of smiting aura but still live in a shack in a rundown village? Is that all taxes? If so, who enforces those tax laws? Guys in armour of smiting aura +10?
August 22nd, 2010 at 3:09 am
I wonder when they’ll start moving on to “hocus pokus”
August 22nd, 2010 at 4:32 am
No, it’s not taxes. Just the cost of doing business. They keep buying so much from adventurers that they have to keep a LOT of cash on hand. Also, have you checked the price of enchanting steel, lately? wow.
August 23rd, 2010 at 3:46 pm
No no I think he’s onto something here! The economics are clearly skewed and I think I smell a conspiracy coming on!
August 26th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Rundown villages are visited frequently by adventurers planning on offloading valuable goods before moving on to cities with somewhat less valuable ones. Also, there are more villages than cities, so spreading out lets them charge more and pay less for items, due to the relative lack of supply, and justify the lower demand with the sudden peak when adventurers come calling. That way, the smithy can gain a fortune quickly and live in luxury afterwards, rather than competing in a cutthroat game of economics. Besides, some just want children to inherit a fortune and/or like the peace and quiet.
May 21st, 2014 at 12:10 am
Few games ever have you in the market for a house, so maybe those are really expensive. It would be rather fun to design a game as a deconstruction of the way that heroes tend to spend so wantonly and have so much money, where you can cause a massive economic collapse from buying the highest level armor.