Money in Fantasy Setting

[Fearghus]

Just out of curiousity...

 

How do you guys resolve moey issues in Fantasy Games. The only guidelines I find in the basic book have said "In heroic games characters pay money for normal equipment"

 

But... what about not normal equipment? What would the monetary value of a magical sword be? I have often tried to make some sort of formula based on the character points the item would cost if you were spending character points on it, but none have worked out, so in the end my system is just kinda arbitrary, but it would be great if I could just say... "This item would cost a character 15 character points so it costs 150 silver (10x15)" or some other simple formula.

 

Even the monetary cost of mundane equipment is not covered in any hero books I have seen, so I want to know what the rest of you do? What does the money system in your heroic games (specifically fantasy) look like?

[John Desmarais]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

Just out of curiousity...

 

How do you guys resolve moey issues in Fantasy Games. The only guidelines I find in the basic book have said "In heroic games characters pay money for normal equipment"

 

But... what about not normal equipment? What would the monetary value of a magical sword be? I have often tried to make some sort of formula based on the character points the item would cost if you were spending character points on it, but none have worked out, so in the end my system is just kinda arbitrary, but it would be great if I could just say... "This item would cost a character 15 character points so it costs 150 silver (10x15)" or some other simple formula.

 

Even the monetary cost of mundane equipment is not covered in any hero books I have seen, so I want to know what the rest of you do? What does the money system in your heroic games (specifically fantasy) look like?

 

What kind of mundane equipment are you looking for? The equipment price list in the FH book is huge? While I occasionally look for things that aren't on it - I can usually use it to extrapolate prices based on similar items.

 

As for how I handle it - very much like that other fantasy game that relies so heavily on 20 sided dice. Character start life with a small amount of money that they can use to purchase initial equipment (magical equipment as initial toys). From that point on they must rely on what they can earn through play for buying better/more stuff.

 

So far as the cost of magical equipment, just make up a formula that gives you costs that seem appropriate for your setting (and adjust accordingly). "10 x Real Cost" might be ok, but it sounds a little cheap to me (unless enchanted weapons are either common or not that much more useful than normal ones), so for me "100 x Real Cost" might be more appropriate.

[Legendsmiths]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

There isn't a simple formula, because point value does not necessarily correspond to utility.

 

For Narosia we have come up with a detailed system to determine cost of items. A simpler version of that system is in use in my Wilderlands game, which is very d20 influenced.

 

Formula: real x active x expertise x cost factor

So, a "+1" sword would cost:

 

Broadsword 1d6+1K = 20 points, +1 damage = 5 pts; 25 active points.

OAF -1, STR Min 10 -1/2; -1.5 = 10 real points

 

Expertise on a 25 ap item = x1.

Cost Factor on standard power = 5gp.

 

10 x 25 x 1 x 5gp = 1250gp. Close enough for me!

 

Incidentally:

 

+1 = +1 damage class

+2 = +1 OCV & +1 DC

+3 = +1 OCV & +2 DC

+4 = +2 OCV & +2 DC

+5 = +2 OCV & +3 DC

[boomer]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

We had a cost list for items like that in our campaign world. Of course in our campaign world magic items were rare......a disguise ring was one of the more powerful items we found.....so to get a weapon that did more damage or gave you more OCV we used a quality scale....poor, normal, fine, exquisite, etc. The better the quality, the higher the bonus. Just say you found some mithril or other fine metal ore and wanted a sword made, you'd have to save up the cash...about 250-500 gp, and find someone that could manufacture it. We also used a system of extra xp called Brownie Points. Brownie Points could only be used to get Perks, etc in the game, not for upgrading your character. So if you had the Brownie, had the cash and could find someone to turn that Ore into an exquisite quality weapon you were in the money.

[Old Man]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

The big problem is that FH is completely disconnected from any particular fantasy setting, and the setting is what determines cost, availability, and "normality" of goods. The price for Sting in a Middle-Earth setting would be higher than in, say, Forgotten Realms, where you can't throw a rock without hitting four magic items and a cursed artifact.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

The big problem is that FH is completely disconnected from any particular fantasy setting' date=' and the setting is what determines cost, availability, and "normality" of goods. The price for Sting in a Middle-Earth setting would be higher than in, say, Forgotten Realms, where you can't throw a rock without hitting four magic items and a cursed artifact.[/quote']

 

Heh...someone should write a supplement for Hackmaster or something, where people gamble by throwing a rock and trying not to hit anything magical.

[Curufea]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

Depends on how difficult it is to create the magic item, labour, skill, costs of materials. In my games, characters pay for equipment - whether normal or otherwise.

[CTaylor]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

I have a few thoughts on money.

 

First: take it from the players as much as you can with taxes, fees, expenses, etc. Tax them at the gate of the city. Make the money found in dungeons strange coinage (why does everyone use universal coins? They don't; maybe dwarven coins are poorer quality because they prefer the stone from where the money was minted, maybe elven coins are worth more, what about coins from ancient lands, will they be worth more, or less? Moneychangers all take a cut.)

 

I took the copper piece as my base monetary unit; roughly 1 dollar. Silver is 10 x copper and gold is 1000 times (100 silver). That way people have a two tiered economy: the wealthy and noble work with gold and silver, the common people iron and copper. Most basic goods cost copper, luxuries and important (magical) gear costs many silver or gold.

 

I charge 5xActive points in silver for magic items bought from or made by someone else. They sell for half that, modified by trade skill and other things (being a friend).

[Spence]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

For me the only thing available for money is mundane goods. The most common form of magic is that that is created/used/cast by someone. And spellcasters of any type are very very rare. Anything that retains magic, any magical item, is extremely rare. The only real method to the PC (at least until they become the systems version of a 30th level plus godling) to acquire magical weapons, armor and so on it to find it, kill the previous user and take it, inherit it or if they are very very very rich buy it from someone willing to sell one at hideously high prices (think of someone trying to buy a nuke with ICBM included).

 

So I don't have the problem and magical items are named and rare.

[Fearghus]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

Thanks for all the advice guys... there are some really great ideas here.

 

I'll tell ya why I am looking for this info...

 

I am running a game for a group of people who is new to hero system. They were previously players of the system that relys on d20s that shall not be named, and have become disenchanted by that system. So I agreed to intoduce them to hero system. I am trying to run a fairly classic RPG fantasy game (like forgotten realms), so low power magic items kinda need to be readily available, and some more powerful items float around for sale. I figured I have to teach them a whole new set of game mechanics I should probably be nice and make the setting something familiar

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

Here is how I do Magic Items including guidelines on how to derive monetary values for them.

 

This is how I do starting funds in most Fantasy Campaigns:

 

MONEY

If using the Price Chart from Fantasy HERO then Characters start with the equivalent of 5d6 x 3 gold coins. If using an xD&D price chart then Characters start with the equivalent of 3d6 x10 gold coins.

 

WEALTH PERK

If a character has the Wealth Perk, multiply the randomly determined starting gold by double the rank of the Wealth Perk to arrive at a final total starting gold amount. GM permission is required to take more than 5 points of the Wealth Perk during character creation, and to be taken at all in any increment after character creation.

 

EXAMPLE: In a campaign using the FH Price chart, Bullarx the Dwarven Warrior rolls 22 on 5d6 and multiplies this by 3 for a total of 66 starting gold.

However Bullarx comes from a wealthy Dwarven family and benefits from a stipend; thus he has taken 3 points of the Wealth Perk. To calculate his total starting gold the rank of the Wealth Perk (3) is doubled to 6 and then multiplied by the randomly determined 66 starting gold, yielding 396 total gold.

[Legendsmiths]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

Let me know if I can help. My Wilderlands game is exactly what you were describing. We run it very much in the D&D style, and I have been running nothing but Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures in that setting, with White Plume Mountain as the next adventure.

 

Good luck.

[eternal_sage]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

if you are going for something every similar to DnD, then what John Desmarais said would probably be a good indicator, with the ability for the DM to up or down certain costs to suit them for some items that may not seem "balanced for actually usability value".

 

however, if they were feeling disenchanted (pun intended) with DnD, you may want to freshen things up with a new take on things. any of the low magic/few magic items concepts could do that, as well as making use of the resources (i think its called Wealth in HERO, but i forget, been playing nWoD to much recently) perk to simulate it, and then push all of that stuff under the table to reduce paperwork, etc. or use the resource pools from Dark Champions (can't remember the pages of hand) to keep some of the feel of economy and paperwork, but reduce it somewhat.

 

the reason i'm suggesting this is that i know the economics of DnD was a major breaking point for me. it may not be the same for your players (and thats FINE! ) but you may want to talk about it with them, so you can know how they want to proceed. i am right now getting ready to run a low fantasy game in which money is going to be abstracted into the a resources perk of some kind (exact mechanics to be determined).

[Legendsmiths]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

I agree with both sage and shrike. There are many ways to approach this, but don't try to fully replicate D&D in Hero - it's not worth it, and you lose sight of some of the cool things that Hero does.

 

For my materials the goal was to come up with formulae that approximate the item values in D&D without replicating them perfectly. We are also completely comfortable with using the D&D item lists and just converting the effects to Hero. I wanted to ensure I could use the treasure results from the modules directly in my game without necessarily having to build the item in Hero, and that has worked very well.

 

I also allow increased wealth in the game, but solely as a function of social status (unless earned through adventuring). http://www.legendsmiths.com/node/74

This allows a player to start out as a knight or a noble of some kind without putting too much stress on the campaign.

 

Feel free to PM if you need any help as well.

[Fearghus]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

Thanks for the insite. What they got sick of in D&D was the over complicated rules and constantly digging through books to confirm rules and such. Basically thier complaint is that D&D has turned into a beast where there are special rules in every new book and unless you are a very organized player and know not only what all your feats, spells, skill tricks and combat maneuvers do, but can also lay your hands on the exact page the descriptions of these things are on then the game take FOREVER to resolve simple actions. Basically thier complaint about D&D is mechanical not a setting issue.

 

Sorry for ranting about the short comings of another system... I'll stick to talking about Hero from now on.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

The big problem is that FH is completely disconnected from any particular fantasy setting' date=' and the setting is what determines cost, availability, and "normality" of goods. The price for Sting in a Middle-Earth setting would be higher than in, say, Forgotten Realms, where you can't throw a rock without hitting four magic items and a cursed artifact.[/quote']

 

This man speaks truth.

 

In a setting where magic, and magic items, are incredibly common, the price will be much, much lower than in one where they are much rarer.

 

I think you'll need to come up with a formula of your own that reflects the rarity of items in your setting.

 

For my Fantasy Setting, I use:

 

(Real Cost x Total Active Points) x 10

 

This reflects that items with more limitations (a lower real cost) cost less than items with fewer, while still taking into account the overall power of the item (Active Points.)

 

I then further adjust the cost based on where the players are, the local currency, etc. In Noordmar - my fairly wealthy, egalitarian society - they are much cheaper, while in Ulohi - with its totalitarian government and religious fanaticism - you can only buy them on the black market, on top of the increased cost due to that nations poor economy.

[Old Man]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

Of course, in a sufficiently high-magic setting, money could be entirely different. Magical credit-card equivalents could be used, or magical counterfeiting and forgery could adversely affect trade. Or a Star Trek Federation-like moneyless utopia could be formed.

 

To me the real breakpoint is how many of a particular item are available. If there are 100,000 Excaliburs, then they'd be priced as really good swords. If there's only one then obviously it's priceless (where "priceless" is a really really high number).

[CTaylor]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

One other thing: not every commodity and item will be equally common or priced in every place. An economy requires rarity and plenty, and the exchange based on that. In a desert area you won't have much wood but you might have ore and salt. Maybe some areas are magic-poor, some are magic-rich, some are near ancient ruins and items are found more often, some are near many alchemical ingredients, maybe some potions can be found in one area and not others, and so on. This takes some work as a GM but it can be fun once you have it all running.

[Spence]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

One other thing: not every commodity and item will be equally common or priced in every place. An economy requires rarity and plenty' date=' and the exchange based on that. In a desert area you won't have much wood but you might have ore and salt. Maybe some areas are magic-poor, some are magic-rich, some are near ancient ruins and items are found more often, some are near many alchemical ingredients, maybe some potions can be found in one area and not others, and so on. This takes some work as a GM but it can be fun once you have it all running.[/quote']

 

Adding on to that, if your campaign requires ingredients for magic and/or devices. Not all places may call them the same thing. The rare and magical flower may just be a weed and if the mage has only see it in a powder form he may not even know it is there.

[eternal_sage]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

Adding on to that' date=' if your campaign requires ingredients for magic and/or devices. Not all places may call them the same thing. The rare and magical flower may just be a weed and if the mage has only see it in a powder form he may not even know it is there. [/quote']

 

(warning! LoTR reference ahead!) like Sam Gamgee and the Aethalas plant, by that name its a wondrous healing powers, but in the Shire its called King's Foil and its just a weed.

[Spence]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

(warning! LoTR reference ahead!) like Sam Gamgee and the Aethalas plant' date=' by that name its a wondrous healing powers, but in the Shire its called King's Foil and its just a weed.[/quote']

 

Yup.....

 

It can really mess with a party too...

[Ternaugh]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

And now for a bit of heresy.

 

For the last few games that I ran in my campaign setting, money wasn't really the driving factor. Part of this was a borrowing of a bit of the adventuring party model from Ars Magica, and part of it was the result of a player who purchased Wealth for his Storm Mage. With his character, it became a matter of deciding if he had carried enough cash with him for major purchases (like finding a rare book at the bookseller), and assuming that things like inns, taverns, and the like were covered. It allowed us to concentrate on the plotlines, and not worry about the mundane stuff. To be fair, however, the campaign wasn't designed to be a group struggling to get established. It was more of an exploratory/investigative campaign with organizations providing some of the support. More of a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" than a "Thieves' World" setting.

 

Though I started the campaign with detailed information about the various coinages of the major territories in the campaign, most players tended to ignore the detail. Keeping track of all of the money was a lot of work, with little reward to me as GM, or, really to the players. Almost from the beginning, only the most basic magic items were available for purchase, so I didn't have that D&D magic item treadmill to worry about. The really good magical items required a quest, either for materials, or for the item itself. And most of the middle level stuff was either created by the party's wizards, or captured from enemies.

 

JoeG

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

One thing you can't get around no matter how fantastic the setting: the Law of Supply and Demand.

 

I'm not telling you how to run your games, but to give an example from my games, magic items are rare (even the low-powered ones). There are no "magic item shops" anywhere. You might be able to find a potion-maker some places that can sell you a small variety of potions, but that's about it. And most of the magic items that do exist, are created because of a Demand. At least 99% of the population in any quasi-historical society has no use whatsoever for a magic sword. And a great majority of trade is done via the barter system anyway.

 

I never keep track of money in my games. The players (and I) know how rich or poor they are and roughly how much stuff they can afford. And I know how rich or poor the people they encounter are, and what Supplies and Demands they have.

 

PC: "I have a magic sword."

 

NPC Villager: "Oooh, shiny!"

 

PC: "I'll sell it to you for 100 pieces of gold."

 

NPC Villager: "Why would I need it? I'm a goatherd."

 

PC: "How about 50 gold?"

 

NPC Villager: "How would I ever acquire fifty gold in my lifetime?"

 

PC: "How about 20 gold?"

 

NPC Villager: "You don't understand. I don't have any gold at all, and have never even seen a gold coin, and probably never will."

 

PC: "Do you have any silver?"

 

NPC Villager: "I have goats."

 

PC: "Uh... how many goats would you give me for this magic sword?"

 

NPC Villager: "Well, maybe I could hang it up over my cooking hearth as a decoration. I'll offer you one baby goat."

 

PC: "What am I going to do with a baby goat?"

 

NPC Villager: "That's up to you."

[Spence]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

I played in a game where the GM didn't have money/coin at all. It was all barter/trade or the ever popular looting.

 

I have to say it was a different way of looking at things.

[keldrak]

Re: Money in Fantasy Setting

 

:DBack when DnD came in a little box with a copy of Chainmail rules for combat....

The original authors stated something like "These are not rules. These are guidelines. Use what you like. Drop what you don't like. Modify the rest to suit." Then the rules-lawyers started playing and (understandably, wanting to make more money off the popularity of the game) rules were printed for just about everything. After a while it breaks down to who can memorize the most rules.