D&D 5e Economics

What is the first think you need to know about economics?

If your economy has a gold standard, meaning the value of everything is based on how much gold you can trade for it, then **you need to establish the value of a gold piece in your setting** and the most intuitive way to do this is to determine what is fair pay for an honest day's labor. This is how an individual knows what their labor (meaning their skill, knowledge, and time) is worth, and therefore they know how much of their labor they are trading for a meal, a drink, and a room at the inn, or rent. For example, in real world US dollars, federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr. If you earn minimum wage and if a burger and fries costs $7.25, then you know you're trading an hour of your labor for this meal. Actually no, taxes. Nevermind.

You also need to establish the value of other trade goods, like spices, tobacco, wine, wood, cloth, other materials, beasts of burden, land and property, food, drink, etc. That sounds pretty effortful, but it's all based on the idea of how much gold or labor is fair to trade for it.

Data

Let's look at some numbers from chapter 5 of the 5e PHB and Chapter 6 of the 5e DMG (why not 5e?) to get an appreciation of the value of a gold piece to a person in the 5e setting.

1 gp = 10 sp

1 gp = 100 cp

(we can also write these coinage conversions as 1 gp = 10 sp = 100 cp)

An untrained hireling (assume this is an ordinary peasant laborer or servant) earns 2 sp / workday (let's ignore how many hours are in a workday). 

A person living a squalid lifestyle spends an average of 1 sp / day on expenses such as food, water, shelter, clothes, etc.

A person living a poor lifestyle spends an average of 2 sp /day on expenses

Note that lifestyle expenses do not explain if the expense is the cost of YOU or the cost of YOU AND YOUR FAMILY.

A night at a poor inn is worth 1 sp (ouch), squalid is 7 cp per night

A gallon of ale costs 2 sp (ouch again), 4 cp per mug (I assume the poor drink really watered down stuff considering they spend 6 cp on "Meals (per day)" per page 158).

A loaf of bread is worth 2 cp.

A "hunk" of cheese is worth 1 sp (ouch! Can I assume this is the equivalent of buying a block of cheese from the grocery store?)

A "chunk" of meat is worth 3 sp (son ova! Can I assume this is the equivalent of picking up a cut of steak or some ground beef at the grocery store?)

(A sandwich must be expensive in faerun. Good thing I don't live there.)

A skilled hireling (assume this is a skilled laborer or tradesman, likely still a member of the peasant class) earns 2 gp / workday

A person living a modest lifestyle spends an average of 1 gp / day on expenses

A person living a comfortable lifestyle spends an average of 2 gp / day on expenses

Analysis

"Rations (1 day)", weighs 2 lbs, although an adventurer only needs 1 lbs of food per day (reference Chapter 8, Adventuring, section Food and Water on page 185), is worth 5 sp. Really think about this one. 5 sp is the same as 50 cp. 50 / 2 is 25. If a chicken costs 2 cp, then you can buy 25 chickens for the price of 1 day of ration. Poor people spend 6 cp on meals per day. 1 day of rations costs 8 times more money than a poor person spends of food per day. Rations which is defined as an allowance of a commodity during a shortage! The 5e books do not give the weight of a chicken, but I googled it and got a result of 5.7 lbs. Let's round down to 5 lbs because the people of faerun aren't using steroids on their chickens. You can buy 5 lbs of food (one chicken) for 2 pieces of copper, or you can buy 2 lbs of food (one days rations which the book describes as jerky, dried fruit, nuts, and effing HARDTACK) for 5 pieces of silver. Someone is being exploited, and I think it's the idiot adventurers. Call it murder-hobo tax.

As an exercise, look at Maintenance Costs table of page 127 of the 5e DMG. An abbey cost 20gp to maintain per day and requires 5 skilled hirelings and 25 untrained hirelings (30 staff). If 5 skilled hirelings worked full workdays, they would earn 2 gp each and cost 10 gp total per day. 25 Untrained hirelings working full workdays earn 2 sp each for a total of 50 sp per day. 50 sp equals 5 gp. The total cost of your staff is 15 gp per day. Where are the other 5 gp of daily maintenance costs going? Well, this table doesn't have a supplies cost, but we can assume supplies may include food and lodgings for the staff because it's common for the staff of an abbey to be a live-in staff.

Chapter 5 of the PHB has a table for Food, Drink, and Lodging. "Meals (per day)" says 3 sp for a modest lifestyle, and 6 cp for a Poor lifestyle. Notice that people living a modest lifestyle spend five times more money on food than the poor. Our abbey has 30 staff. 30 * 3 = 90 sp. That's 9 Gold, so the abbey probably isn't feeding these guys this well. 6 cp * 30 = 180 cp which comes to 1 gold, 8 silver.  Sounds better. We still don't know about the other 3 gold, 2 sp cost of daily maintenance. 

The same table also says Inn stay (per day) is 7 cp for squalid, 1 sp for poor. We can assume the abbey is not providing inn service for profit, and if the staff is live-in, then laundering beddings and clothes is part of their duties. I would just assume the cost of soap, which is 2 cp, but we can't quantify how much soap is used based on the information in in the PHB, and so we can't say what the total cost of soap is. I'm just going to shrug and throw my hands up at this point.  That other 5 gp allows you to assume some loosey-goosey other stuff. It works perfectly well for your pretend elf-game needs, and that's the point.

Conclusion

I think the costs of things given in the 5e books are inconsistent but functional for a game. Most importantly, I can't say prices are intuitive so that I can't intuit the value of any damn thing and I have to look it up. I think it's fair to say people are easily POOR or worse in Faefun. I mean this game doesn't even tell me about EFFING TAXES. Could I do better at designing an economy in my own fictional setting. I think I could, but it would take me as long as it took Tolkein to write his books. I think what would really strains my suspension of disbelief (if I actually cared about economics) is the cost of adventuring rations vs the cost of meals per day for the poor. And you know what, I say 5e a lot, but for all I know these tables could go back to the first edition in the 1970s and maybe they haven't been updated since. I don't know if any of this data is based on real world data, and if so, how much of it is based on real data and how much is arbitrary.

Proposals

Proposal 1. Make all food and drinks cost 1 cp minimum and 2 or 3 cp maximum. Remember a whole chicken is worth 2 cp in the rules. People cannot break money down into amounts smaller than 1 cp without bartering (or physically breaking the coin). So, when a restaurant puts a dish together to serve to a customer, the amount of food in the dish will be based on what is equal to 1 or 2 or 3 cp worth of food and service (cooking, cleaning, waiting on customers). A poor person spends 6 cp on food per day. Assuming three meals a day, 6 cp divided by three meals is 2 cp. This makes the math simple.  If a tavern serves you some drink, they give you a minimum of 1 cp worth. 1 cup of ale is 4 cp, making ale a drink for a special occasion. The taverns probably water their ale down into grog unless you ask for ale to be served without being watered down. 

Proposal 2. Hand wave all inconsequential expenses and don't worry about this minutia. It's easier, and players don't really care as long as it feels fair and plausible. 

Proposal 3. Assume players have been throwing money around and making minor transactions all day, and just have the players deduce from their money the amount based on the lifestyle they choose to live by for each day they spend in a town or city, with a cap of Poor for a village. This is also fair and simple.

Proposal 4. Come up with your own fictional currency, like the shilling, farthing, doubloon, or whatever. Work out your own values for everything from the ground up. You can make something more intuitive and therefore easier to use, you won't have to track types of coins, you won't have to do any conversion, and it can give character to your setting, but it's probably effortful.

Recommendations

Proposals 2 and 3 together, or just eff it.

Custom Pokemon for Rom Hacks

I have an idea for custom Pokemon feature in a pokemon Rom hack, were I to make one. Let's face it, I won't. Note that I know nothing about coding. I assume that if you have a rom-hack making tool, there is probably a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) user-interface like RPG Maker with an option for writing code. Either way, I expect this to be laborious, possibly too laborious for something that players might dismiss as a gimmick that would also likely be incompatible with the games trading mechanic if the players somehow find a way to work that. I can also see players boxing the custom starter.

Here's the in-game premise for your custom pokemon: Your pokemon professor / researcher mentor character is studying genetic engineering of pokemon. Assume some deep lore that this pokemon researcher used to work with the guys on Cinnabar Island who attempted to clone mew and who made mewtwo. He wants a young pokemon trainers (like the plyer character) to gather data for his genetically created pokemon for him by training it. At the beginning of the game, he gives you a starter pokemon with specifications that the player chooses. The options are: Type, sprite, cry, a stat to be good at, and a stat to be poor at.

"What type is it?"

A1. Fire

A2. Water

A3. Grass

"What should it look like?" The game gives the player a list of options related to appearance. A custom sprite or re-purposed sprite applicable for the description chosen by the player will be applied to the custom pokemon at the end. By default, there could be 3-8 choices. Samples descriptions for choices are below which I'm basing on the 8 or 9 menu sprites that Gen 1 made for pokemon. Player choice affects back sprite, front sprite, menu sprite. 

B1. Plant

B2. Beast

B3. Serpent

B4. Bug

B5. Winged / Bird

B6. Cute

B7. Cool

B8. Aquatic / Marine

B9. Fissile or Egg

B10. Odd shape (pokeball shape like Electrode)

"What should it sound like?" This is the choice for its cry. For the in-game descriptions for the players to choose, I'm basing these on the descriptions the games used to give to moves from the beauty contests.

C1. Tough

C2. Cool

C3. Beautiful

C4. Smart

Next the game is going to ask you two questions to generate what kind of stats and move sets the pokemon has. For reference, this idea comes from Kingdom Hearts 1. 

"What should it be good at?" If the player chooses a pokemon good at attack, their starter will get a slightly higher Atk and Speed. If they choose to be good a Special, they get a slightly higher Special. If they choose to be good at Defense, they get a slightly higher Def and HP. 

D1. Attack

D2. Special

D3. Defense

"What should it give up in exchange?" This will offer the player two options for the stats they did not pick in the previous question. If they choose Attack, their pokemon's Attack and Speed go down slightly. If they choose Defense, their defense and HP go down slightly. If they choose special, their Special goes down slightly.

If Player chose D1, offer choices E2 and E3 now. If player chose D2, offer E1 and E3 now. If player chose D3, offer E1 and E2 now.

E1. Attack

E2. Special

E3. Defense

For it's stats, if you want to add a fourth option for speed, you could, but the more options you make available to the player, the more complicated this becomes for the designer. 

One possible way this all comes together is in your games pokemon database / index is this; You'll have a number of spaces reserved for the different combinations of your player's choices based on the type they chose, the stat they want it to excel at, and the stat they want to give up. Each combination gets its own list for moves learned by level up and moves learned by TM / HM / tutor. For each type (Fire, Water, Grass), 18 spaces will need to be revered for a total of 54 spaces. I hope you copy paste efficiently. The combination of choices will look like this for just one type:

Pokemon Index Numbers

152

153 Combination D1, E1

154

*NOTE: in the Combination above D1 is to be good at Attack, E2 is to give up being good at defense.

155

156 Combination D1, E2

157

158

159 Combination D2, E1

160

161

162 Combination D2, E3

163

164

165 Combination D3, E1

166

167

168 Combination D3, E2

169

For each combination, the first index number is for the first form, the second index number is for the intermediate / second form, the third index number is for its third / final form. The second and third index numbers have a higher base stat total, the move learn levels are delayed, etc. If breeding is an option in your generation, then the combinations would also have an egg group associated and breeding compatibility.

Next the game will apply the sprite and cry to that pokemon based on the players other two options. For the sprite's colors, the color pallet will depend on the type. If all pokemon in gen 1 games have 4 colors, [white, black, color 1 (or light grey) and color 2 (or dark grey)], color 1 could be blue for water, and color 2 would be a color that suits being paired with blue.

Finally, the game will ask the player to name their pokemons species and then offer the player to offer it a nickname. The game will apply the player's input to the index numbers for the combination the player chose. All indexes will have a generic description that based on the choices the player made for its stats, something like "A genetically created pokemon! It is strong but does not appear to be that smart / bulky." The player's custom pokemon is complete.

When the pokemon is added to the players pokemon roster/team, Stat IV's will be generated as per normal.

Now, for the Rival's pokemon! If the player chooses pokemon number 152, have the game give the rival pokemon 1xx. Work that out however you feel it's appropriate. If the player chooses to have high attack, maybe the rival should get a pokemon who sacrifices either attack or special but keeps defense. If the player chooses to have high special, maybe the rival chooses to sacrifice defense and keep special. Etc. Give the rival's pokemon a species name from a database of 10 to 20 pokemon names (Cait Sith, Balrog, Titanoboa, or good names, whatever). Choose a sprite and cry that the player did not choose and apply that to the index number. Call it a day.

Mapless Towns

Imagine a grid or draw one if you can't imagine one. Let's say it's 2 by 3, but it could be larger or smaller. Each grid square abstractly represents a distinct area in your town, and the grids abstractly represent the layout of those areas in your town, meaning the relative placement of one area to another area, not the shape or size, or the scale. If any of the areas of town being represented by the grids are particularly big or small, notate it in the grid as you go.

Name each area of town and label your grids. Example: North End, West End, Center Square, Old Town, etc. They don't need to be the official names of areas of town, they could be the informal names given to them by folks in town, or names you give them for the purposes of organizing town. You may want to try to come up with names that describe what primarily is there, like residential area or business district.

In each grid, list major locations. Example, City Hall is the name of an area, and so it's also the name of a grid space.  It includes all the government buildings such as the City Hall, the mayoral manor, Prisons, Courthouse, gallows, and stockade. It also has a job board or bulletin board for odd jobs and news, and official proclamations. Maybe there's a mail courier station. It might even have an armory or barracks for the town militia. You can also list important NPCs, products or services associated with each location.

Old Town Slaughterhouse and Meat Packing Old Mill and condemned buildings.	City Hall Mayoral Manor Heath Ledger, mayor Town Hall Bulletin Board (Job Board) Gallows, Stocks Militia Barracks and Armory	Up Town High class shops and traders Armstrong Smithy Erin Tinctures (apothecary)
West End Residential (poor / slum) Scum and Rook (seedy bar with Pitt Fighting, gambling, secret hideout of the Black List [gang]) Bartholemew	City Central Gate house with toll Carlin Bros Gen. Store Blue Moon Inn & Tavern Mark Piper, owner Thomas St. Richard’s Church Father Simon Belmont	East End Residential (modest) Nelly (Nel) Hilldotter’s home (cultist)

Finally, scale. Instead of a bar or line marked with a distance in feet, yards, or miles, we'll do something simpler and more practical. The scale will be walking time, and the walking time for this town will be 1/4 hour. That's how much time it takes for the player characters to walk anywhere within one area. If the players want to walk from one area to another, add another 1/4 hour for every area they pass through.