Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-Prices and Costs in Greyhawk?

Tue Jul 13, 2004 4:41 pm Prices and Costs in Greyhawk?

If anyone here has a copy of EGG's old 1st Edition DMG, flip back through it and look at the costs and prices of hirelings, services, and the miscellaneous expenses players rack up. Did anyone else balk at the high prices involved?

I personally can't imagine an 8th level character automatically spending 800 gold pieces per month if they eventually run into severe financial trouble. Shouldn't the player be able to cut back on expenses if they want? The same thing extends to things like warships-if a single cog costs 30,000 gold pieces, then how do the Sea Barons stay solvent? If the captains and crews of a ship eat up 70% or so of the plunder and booty they take on raids, does that 30% left over cover all the costs of running a government and maintaining the ships? I would imagine that Basmajian Arras would take not less than 50% of all the base booty for the national coffers, before the treasure could be divided.

I can understand the heavy costs of spell research and magic item creation to keep a lid on these things (the fewer magical items created every year, the better), but could a country on a tight budget like Sunndi really be able to construct a series of castles and keeps if they each wind up costing upwards of 30-40,000 gold pieces? In a time of crisis, could the king of Furyondy honestly afford to give each of his sages 200-1,200 gold pieces per month in research grants? After you take out the costs of guards, transport of the money, the processing of the ore in a smelter, the minting of coins, and the salary of the workers, how profitable is a copper or silver mine? All the described costs have to be paid by NPCs as well as players...

The problem is exacerbated in 1E by the fact that players could only carry 10 coins to the pound, thus severely limiting the amount of money they could carry. If the DM is especially nasty, how do the players get all that excess coin from the mountain caves to their own cities? How do they carry it all on their persons? How do you transport all that wealth through rough terrain and/or bad weather?

I'm just wondering about these things, given that I think if prices and costs ended up that high for too long, most **** would eventually go bankrupt trying to meet every expense. Just wanted your thoughts on this, and how you handle these things.

Tue Jul 13, 2004 5:37 pm

Depends on how you want to handle it. The prices were high to soak up excess funds that DMs were wont to hand out Laughing

Most of the other items ie: ships and castles would be financed by the Captain of the ship or a person wanting to be a noble. I'll provide a letter of marquee if you will attack so and so's ships and return the treasure to me to be divided 50/50. Or build a castle where I direct and you become Lord so and so and are entitlied to collect rent from the peasants in a 20 mile radius and to provide yourself with game from the forests on your land. Sorry for being wordy Shocked

Tue Jul 13, 2004 8:18 pm

Thoughts on the above
Cost of building a castle is large but think how long would they take to build, so costs would decrease over time due to inflation. Also would local trademan provide work in return for protection or to offset taxes?

Merchants guilds would probaly help with letters of credit and such like for a small commision so reducing the need for large amounts of cash. I have always taken it as read that there are a number of mercentile groups around which would be more than willing to help out the odd cash strapped noble. I can't remember off the top of my head if there has been anything written in authorised texts based in Greyhawk on the same.

Tue Jul 13, 2004 9:28 pm

The 1stEDMG is explicit about it: prices are meant to represent a "gold rush" economy around centers of adventuring and exist primarily to remove money from PC's (to give them a spur for further adventuring).

In other words, the prices listed are too high, and normal people do not pay them.
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Wed Jul 14, 2004 2:22 am

I recently read Saga of Old City and I was amazed that Gygax's literary economy worked differently than his roleplaying economy. Gord was absolutely beside himself if he had a few gold pieces and a single platinum piece could support him for a year. And this was GHC not a small village. The denominations were different than in the 1E PHB too. I don't recall the exact breakdown but it also included iron and brass pieces IIRC.