Dear /tg/,
I'm starting a new campaign in a few weeks and I'm very excited because I'm finally bringing my group out of the monotonous deathtrap that is pseudo-medieval-european fantasy setting and into some science fantasy. But I have something I wanted to get some feedback on, the money.
I'm running a homebrew that is mostly 5e with some D20 modern thrown in, and since my setting uses all electronig money I was thinking about just using the wealth check rules as written in the D20 core rulebook, but does anyone have anything else that would work? It's a fine money system, but something about it just seem, I dunno like it's just not as fun having a generic "weatlh amount" as knowing you have XX GP. So I just want to know what other options exist as far as in game economies go?
If it helps, my PCs are people who did have lives so they would have bank account and such, but they are also criminals and the set up will have them on the run from the law, so they probably won't have access to them.
>Economy of the Future
Hmm...
Depends how far into the future we're talking, but I'm sure monetary value would probably be placed on how rare certain elements are to that group of people.
For example a substantial quantity of diamond would be worth less than a small pinch of astatine.
A person's "bank account" would show not a simple figure of currency but instead the various amounts of differing elements they possess.
Have the currency being "work hour". One work hour being index to the pay that someone working on minimum pay menial job will receive for one hour worked. The more specialised and in demand your line of work is, the higher "work hour to actual hour ratio" pay rate you receive.
Payment is all via online banking, with individuals each have a card issued by banks keyed to their DNA and uniquely identifiable information. POS machines will read the card AND require biometric information to ensure that the person is present AND not under duress at the point of payment. That way your money can never be stolen or be robbed.
>>45982566
>5e
>d20 modern
Welp the fucking economy is going to be the least of your problems.
>>45982566
The thing about future economies is that they will tend to become more, and more, and more abstract as time goes on. So depending on how far in advance this society is supposed to be, you should be making it less and less about granularity and complexity, and more about having just the ability to buy things simply.
>>45982900
someone had to say it. Well meme'd.
>>45982892
I like this a lot
>>45982835
Noted.
>>45982932
Like a tier/caste system? I guess to expand on the Society I had in mind it's kind of an Orwellian "The Party" type deal, where the leaders are artificially limiting certain technologies to supress any real chance at rebellion but leaving just enough technology to maintain space trade.
I know an interplantary conspiracy on that level is kind of a hard to believe, but my PC's aren't the most critically minded so I don't think they'll figure it out until I put it out there as a "big" reveal. ("What, you mean you simpletons never questions why there's so much stagnation in technology?")
Go to /biz/ and copy what the Etherium shills are claiming
>>45982835
Econ guy here. This is completely wrong.
Basically, this violates the Law of One Price. Different people value things differently already-- it's fundamental to the human condition. You can imagine a demand curve as being a histogram of purchase occasions, arranged by the maximum price the buyer is willing to pay. If I lower the price, more of those purchase occasions actually happen (but I make less from the ones I'm already transacting).
But it always has to be one price. Because if I try to charge more to Bob than I do to Abby, then Abby buys extras and re-sells them to Bob for a price in between. This benefits them both at my expense. Technology improves my ability to know my customers, but also their ability to know each other and set up these opportunities for arbitrage. You can have temporary local price differences, but as communications and transportation get better, those differences get smaller and briefer.
>>45982892
This isn't a terrible idea, but it implies that labor is fungible, which it is not. It actually basically is a straight-up implementation of the Marxist "labor theory of value". Which is largely discredited among mainstream economists. So if you're doing this, you'll need to read some modern socialist theory and make sure your campaign operates according to those rules. Mixing marx with real economics will create contradictions that won't be obvious at first.
I'm a GURPS player, and GURPS Traveller Far Trader (just went out of print) was written by a professor of economics. It's simple and complete and perfect for space opera.
HOWEVER. While GURPS has a decent abstract wealth system available as an option, IMO this is one case where d20 Modern's is the superior system.
>>45983795
Hey OP, have you ever read anything by Charles Stross? Specifically the Saturn's Children series. It has some cool ideas for how currency could work in an interstellar society.
Also lots of hot robot-on-hobot sexthat was not a typo
>>45982566
Have the "wealth check" be a roll under system, using 6d10, then you can use centarii/GP they have as the target number they have to roll under for goods.
Then make bartering and haggling a matter of diplomacy checks, each successful check they make against the trader subtracts 1d10 from the wealth check, so after 2 successful diplomacy checks the wealth check involves rolling only 4d10 and if the wealth check succeeds you subtract the wealth check's amount from their current amount of cash and let them have the item/items.
>>45983795
>Econ guy here.
Something that can't be really be proven.
>This is completely wrong.
Oh good, I'm going to enjoy reading how I'm “completely” wrong.
>A load of shit straight from the last class at university anon took which takes the wrong end of the stick and runs with it.
Right, so if each element has its own fluctuating value based on demand and trading is done along similar lines to a localised stock exchange. For example Fe = 101.04 C or Fe = 35.86 S etc. Exchange rates being set based upon the collective trade made or government intervention. I don't see an issue when we’re talking about a system for fucking game!
I simply thought it would be fun to have a character carrying a tiny airtight box containing a highly reactive element that was worth a fortune. Or to have transactions made based upon grams of tin or zinc.
But don't worry because I'm clearly so completely wrong. Let's throw all creativity away and go back to playing Financial Speculation Simulator 2016!
>>45983795
Had to go to google to get a better definition than the one you've given here about the Law of One Price.
For starters it's a theory that's broken constantly throughout the world all the time. Even between two shops selling the same product.
The concept talks about two markets selling the same thing for different prices and clever investors buying from one and selling on the other eventually destroying both.
Yet as I said it happens all the time anyway, and the anon never said there would be two markets. You said that the buyer would somehow be in control of the pricing but that's not what was mentioned.
>>45984928
Which merely goes to show that you need to be playing Elite IRL and using regional price differences to make a net profit from reselling retail goods.
>>45984825
You really need to see a doctor about that prolapse-- the butt hurt you've got must be excruciating.
Nobody needs to take my word for it. Do what the anon below you did and look it up. Do some reading from a basic intro microeconomics text: Frank and Bernanke have it on page 371. Nicholson and Snyder, p441. Michkin p170. Ekelund and Ault p311. Those are just the undergrad books I have handy. Or read the wiki page and think out the basic logic.
>>45984928
>Had to go to google to get a better definition than the one you've given here about the Law of One Price.
Right, and thanks for looking it up. I try not to bloviate, so I figured that if OP wanted more he could ask for it.
Since you raised these issues (correctly) here you go. These are equilibrium conditions. That means that where there is a differential, it will tend to diminish over time. Sustainable differences are possible... but only where the "whole product" (product plus circumstances of the purchase occasion) is different.
So if I have the same candy bar having three different prices at the supermarket, convenience store, and vending machine, that's because while the candy is the same, the retail channel that delivers it is not. Supporting a network of vending machines such that there's always a candy bar within a few moments' walk of customers (spatial convenience) is more expensive than having a store on cheap land in the middle of nowhere. That extra cost is reflected in the final price the consumer sees.
People prefer safe fun jobs on paradise worlds to dangerous, grim jobs on deathworlds. So I have to pay my retail clerks more on the deathworlds, which increases the price of whatever they sell.
Etc. I can give more elaborate examples if you'd like. Having commodities as currency is a great idea (and is funny if they're radioactive or highly toxic). BUT. Having the prices vary wildly from world to world isn't logical and makes for a broken setting and game. I'll explain why next.
>>45983829
Stross is a transhumanist utopianist. He doesn't know or understand anything about economics.
>>45985382
>Having commodities as currency is a great idea (and is funny if they're radioactive or highly toxic). BUT. Having the prices vary wildly from world to world isn't logical and makes for a broken setting and game. I'll explain why next.
I agree with your assessment, but there are a lot of assumptions in it, such as a unified free market with good interstellar transportation and communications. I wouldn't make those assumptions unless this is a Star Wars-like space opera. Anything that's more hard scifi wouldn't be able to sustain it. Individual worlds would operate much more like independent isolated markets, and even then government intervention/market distortions would probably be very heavy.
>>45985382
OK, so talking to >>45984928 now, since he looked it up and I appreciate that.
(BTW while my examples are two markets, the logic holds up perfectly well if you have more markets.)
Where this intersects with an RPG is that if you have sustained major price differences without some kind of explanation, then it's easy to end up with a perpetual motion machine. Players find that they can buy germanium on Eridani Five for cheap and then sell it on Cook's World for a fortune, and then "break" the economy by just doing that cargo run forever. Which is not just unrealistic; it makes for a boring game.
But thanks to the Law of One Price, as DM you know in advance that arbitrage will in the long run erase any price differences. It can still be more expensive on Cook's World, but the equilibrium price will be equal to the price on Eridani Five plus transportation costs to haul it to Cook's World. Because if there was money to be made, hundreds of other traders would have jumped in on this route and farmed it until the price dropped enough that it was no longer profitable enough to be worth doing.
That's at equilibrium. But prices only tend towards equilibrium values. Which means that the players CAN make a profit shipping ore. Once or twice. Then the price fluctuates again and they have to find some other opportunity. That's basically the business model of tramp freighters (I'm hugely oversimplifying here) but it also makes for a far more varied and cool game because the players have to constantly move around to find the next opportunity.
This is a case where good setting design enhances the game, and not thinking things through in your world-building can break game design.
BTW I'm fine with breaking the rules of economics. This is sci fi. I even suggested as a possibility in my first post. But you have to know what you're doing well enough that you know what breaks if you screw with something.
>>45985009
>Which merely goes to show that you need to be playing Elite IRL
Can't tell if this a joke or not.
>>45985382
The fact that you're now doing the copy pasta with your text books only proves my point about you being a uni student not able to understand that we’re talking about a game instead of implementing a new system of financial management for the real world. i.e. More Arthur C Clarke less George Osborne.
>Blah blah blah blah blah it wouldn't work cause you could abuse the different markets.
Maybe the system is designed to be abused by the players? Maybe it's a intergalactic trading game? Or heaven forbid the concept of wealth could be abstract!?
>I'll explain why next.
Oh the many terrible gods, I hope you enjoy talking to thin air then as I'm not sticking around to read your 400 page report on how direct trade wouldn't work cause you don't understand fun.
>>45984825
Maybe if you worked toward an actual degree instead of Culture/Gender Studies then you'd not have a stick up your butt and opinions where they don't belong.
>>45985382
How do you debunk amateur Star Trek wannabee economics who insist the setting must be MUH POST SCARCITY! MUH REPLICATORS?
Or at least, make it happen in practice in another sci fi setting?
>>45985552
You're getting this all wrong, econfag. OP didn't ask about the economics of the future, he asked about the ecomony, which I think means green, ecologically-friendly money or something. Recyclable bills, I'm guessing. It's right there in the title.
>>45985811
Shut up, moron, the adults are talking here.
>>45985501
That's perfectly possible. OP said he was doing Space Fantasy, so mostly I'm starting from Star Wars assumptions here.
As FTL travel becomes more risky and infrequent (but NOT more expensive), then you'll see more price differentials. Making FTL more capital-intensive simply changes the size of the companies doing the trading. Rogue Trader is a good example of how you can have big price differences be possible in a setting.
In those situations, d20-style Wealth systems aren't appropriate because you don't have a contiguous capital market. And interstellar travelers like mercenaries, free traders, explorers and pirates (ie most adventuring groups) won't be able to get credit or make tradeable investments. If communication and transport between Cook's World and Eridani Five is so infrequent and risky that the Law of One Price doesn't work, then my financial assets on one world won't be salable on the other, either. (Currency won't be exchangeable, either). Abstract Wealth systems imply continuous markets. Remove the continuous market, and your wealth is determined by your tradeable goods on hand.
But I agree that there are many other mechanics you can use to create price differentials such as government intervention, different tech levels, habitability differences, etc etc etc. And IMO *those* are both good plot ideas and also good ways to have exciting adventures without screwing your economics up by violating core economic laws.
If you can find a PDF of it, that GURPS book handles all of this.
>>45985552
>and then "break" the economy by just doing that cargo run forever.
Yeah cause the GM would allow them to do it forever without doing something.
Players: 'I broke the game.'
GM: ‘Awesome. Anyone up for Mario Kart then?'
>But you have to know what you're doing well enough that you know what breaks if you screw with something.
Cause everyone is stupid when compared to me.
>>45982566
If you are running a game with multiple civilizations on different continents/towns/planets etc you could just aswell have hard currency, and when it gets hard to track/you notice it's buggy just run them into a different monetary zone and force for a exchange in currency into a new more finely honed system.
Eventually you'll find something that works for you and lo behold, it seems this currency is now taken moslty everywhere or you find a trustworthy party to do currency exchanges with.
>>45985822
>then you'd not have a stick up your butt and opinions where they don't belong
Go away, you're wrong. I won't prove why or how just stop picking on me.
>>45985877
>the adults are talking here.
Highly doubt you're an adult you're on 4chan after all.
>>45985881
I would imagine another problem with interstellar commerce would be doing interbank settlements and having trusted third parties if communications are not beyond light speed.
Bitcorns, obvs.
Currency will be based on "work", but in a fully formed mid-far-future economy, work will be even less to do with human labour than it is now. Today work is not counted in ounces of sweat but more in hours wasted sitting in some arbitrary building. It's why women are nearing wage parity.
A future where the inevitable luxury communism is the new normal will have digital currency where work is the point where (solar) energy consumption meets the time taken to calculate the crypto sum that verifies the (open ledger) transaction.
Ao the idea of a physical commodity being currency will seem as laughably insecure and corruptable as we view medieval tally sticks. But a thus-far uncrackable and open digital currency that discovers price based on the cost of running powerful calculating mining rigs will be the norm. Of course, that norm itself only lasts while nobody in your game world is able to break the crypto. Meaning potential for cool, society-changing plots.
>not living in the post-capitalist future where society has evolved into glorious stateless, moneyless anarcho-syndicalism
>>45985876
Well... you don't, right? If that's the game they want to play, then let 'em. Marxism isn't empirically supported, but it is an internally consistent logical system of economics. (And nearly all the post-scarcity economics is marxist, incidentally). I'm not a fan of Eclipse Phase or Star Trek, but those settings work perfectly well within their own assumptions. This is space FANTASY, right? So applying these ideas in a game world is no different from replacing standard laws of science with magical laws in a fantasy setting.
If you want to know how to argue economics vs the marx-derived stuff, then that's not really /tg/ anymore. And there's like a million people who've written books fighting those battles anyway.
>>45985877
Lol that's actually pretty close to the truth. OP wanted to know whether to use abstract wealth (good) in a sci fi setting (great), and if d20 Modern's system is any good (it is very good).
If we violate the law of one price, then you have to throw it out and use the D&D approach of "your wealth is the value of whatever's in your cargo hold"-- a declining balance of fixed physical commodities. I can explain why in more detail if necessary, but basically nobody's going to honor a promissory note from a bank on another world that you have no regular contact with.
>>45985811
>I'm not sticking around
I suspect we'll get on just fine without you.
>>45985876
You're asking a microeconomist about intergalactic supermacro. You're gonna make him put pants on his head and pencils in his nose.
Basically, if we are talking inter-planetary travel, then post scarcity is way more interesting and less hack cliche than "the space pirates". Cod otherwise you are basically saying that civillian privateers get access to intergalactic smugglar ships before governments and megacorps have set up a stock market and arbitrageur trade.
>>45986002
YES. And that's very setting dependent. Without knowing more of what the OP has in mind, it's tough to speculate.
And if the OP wants to tune the economy to fit a certain kind of play style and adventure, then the interstellar banking/monetary system is a great place to play around with, because there are lots of possibilities that are all politically and economically feasible but lead to very different outcomes.
IMO the best way to do it is to decide what kind of adventures you want to have, then what kind of setting supports those adventures, and then what kind of assumptions support that setting. You don't need to go nuts with layers of autistic detail, but trade is usually a core component of these kinds of stories so you need to have something thought out in advance.
>>45986100
>You're asking a microeconomist about intergalactic supermacro. You're gonna make him put pants on his head and pencils in his nose.
There's some justice to saying this. I'm not going to deny it. :)
However, given the empirical record, the macro guys are the ones who are still in the "peeling bananas and flinging poop at each other" stage of development.
You don't need a whole lot of macro anyway. Macro theorists are still arguing about the quantities of interest, let alone the relationships between them. You can safely drop in a little lingo so you can genuflect towards macro theory and otherwise ignore the whole problem.
Whereas micro issues of price, trade, and transactions are absolutely core if you're going to be a trader, merc, or criminal. Adventurers spend a lot of their time buying and selling, and it's the only part of this that actually impinges onto something listed on your character sheet. So micro is important.
But with that said, yes you're right this may be my biases talking.
>>45982566
One: d20 modern is a horrendous piece of shit and i strongly advise you against using it. Not just becuase it's 3.0 D&D, and all the terrible breaks that entails, but becaue the game's core aspect: Guns in d20, is broken beyond all comprehension, because combat *is too deadly*.
There are no forms of effective armor which are available to the average PC, but the weapons that *are* available start at a baseline of 2d6 damage and scale up from there. d20 modern is an excellent example of offense grossly outstripping defense. Getting in a fight will flat out kill characters. Piss off a member of the neighborhood watch? If he beats your initiative, which he has a decent chance of doing, he will Trey Von Martin your ass. and there is little to no PC defenses available. +2 AC is the most you could reasonably get without your PC dressing like a SWAT team member at all times (Oh, and those SWAT kevlar pieces? Restricted sales item. Not for normal PCs to buy), meanwhile, using a normal gun, a NPC nobody might have a +4 to hit from level 1.
No, if you want to use a game system to run near-future or sci-fi (a) pull your PC's heads out of the ground and (B) run Traveller.
Traveller is purpose built for Sci-Fi in the golden age of space travel. It's economy works (unlike d20), and it has *actual monetary values* which the PCs will be able to deal with in the MILLIONS, through capitalisim. It's not expensive: if you go after the Classic Traveller route, they have the first eight books bound together for $28. The modern Mongoose Traveller core book is only $40, and it has a slightly simplified plot outline.
Or, if you want to roll Science Fantasy, and are terrified of getting out of d20, try Dragonstar: a d20 setting where the D&D universe advanced a few thousand years, scientifically, and dragons conquered the universe. Since it's also 3.0, you probably want to just use their setting, rules for weapons and armor, items, economy,and a few minor tweaks.
>>45986362
OP didn't want to use d20 modern, just its abstract wealth system. Which is excellent. He's doing the rest in D&D5.
I agree that Traveller is great, especially if he doesn't want to do a lot of world-building. I strongly suggest him finding a copy or PDF of GURPS Traveller Far Trader even if he doesn't play Traveller at all (OOP, but check GURPS general for a download link or buy online). It explains all this stuff very clearly and in a game-centered way, plus lays out the Traveller economy so that it's very easy to have adventures.
Star Wars, Rogue Trader, and BattleTech all have fleshed out economies (even if they don't quite hold water, they're good enough that most players won't care). GURPS Transhuman Space has a very well-thought-out economy. I haven't played Dragonstar, but it sounds like it's worth a look.
>>45985811
>ITT I pick fights on the internet because I can't stand if someone disagree's with me
>>45982566
THE BEN BERNANKE FUTURE:
In the grim darkness of the year 40,000 all prices on the equipment list double every week due to inflation.
All digital currency in your bank account looses 1% every week due to negative interest rates.
>>45984825
Damn man he, an actual economist just gave you some feedback that YOU asked for and you exploded on him with autistic rage. Calm down man
>>45985811
>we’re talking about a game instead of implementing a new system of financial management for the real world. i.e. More Arthur C Clarke less George Osborne.
I hope you understand that Clarke had more financial nous than Gideon Osborne.
>>45987524
>Gideon Osborne.
George Osborne.
>>45987431
No I didn't. I was insulting him.
>>45987894
Same person. George is the name he uses to address the proles, because he thinks being called "Gideon" would make him sound like an inbred cunt.
>>45987431
>>45987919
LOL, you mean it was OP who was saying shit? If I'd known I wouldn't have bothered bumping the thread helping him. I assumed it was some random kid who'd wandered into the thread. His grammar and spelling must have fallen apart when he got upset.
Some people can't stand to get what they ask for.
>>45985822
Yeah I very much doubt he's out of grade school. A college student would have just stopped by an econ professor's office for office hours and asked a few questions. You'd be surprised how many are gamers.
>>45987919
You couldn't even manage that very well.
>>45982566
Just have your Fantasy Currency be equivalent to USD. No fuss, no muss.
>>45986033
>meme-economics
>>45989867
Isn't htat just a fancy kind of dinarii though?
>>45988817
>LOL, you mean it was OP who was saying shit?
Woah now, OP here, that shit was not me, I've been asleep since I made this post >>45982998 this morning.
I'm very appreciative of all the suggestions ITT. I'll definitely be looking at Dragonstar and I've got some GURPS PDFs so I'll read through them too.
I am unfortunately married to the 5e system as core for this campaign. I would love to move more into something else but my PCs are plebs and I don't think I could convince them to adopt a new system
>>45986362
This was a concern I had. I had the thought of adding DR as a property of armor to at least slow down the blood bath and try to fine tune the results over the first couple of sessions.
Anyway as for some of the setting questions I was indeed think more of the star wars type set up, with reliable FTL and communication but oddly archaic parts of society co-existing alongside that, so that why I want as many options as possible to compare between.
>>45982566
Nuyen is one of the better designed currencies.
It's pretty much a bitcoin that's psychically carried around on pen drives.
>>45992650
Whew! Sorry for ever doubting you, OP. Something else in Far Trader is a discussion of how even with common place FTL, you can still have big differences in tech level on even nearby planets. So that might help you with the verisimilitude.
Two things that might save you on the mortality front. In GURPS, some effects like death aren't resolved until after combat (unless it's an instakill situation). So when someone drops, you give surviving players a chance out of combat rounds to do first aid/stimpacks/psi healing before the PC officially dies. Until then, they're "dying" and can't take actions.
>>45993774
Nuyen is a pretty well thought out bitcoin-type currency.
I wouldn't sweat currencies too much. You probably should have many coexist and compete with one another. Remember that currency is just a placeholder; the laws of economics don't require any particular type of currency or that you even have currency at all. Ultimately, it's just a convenient medium for barter.
So in addition to fiat currency, you can base your currency on commodities like precious metals, reactor fuel, food yeast, pharmaceuticals. You'd be amazed what historically has been used successfully, and so long as the currency is more or less stable, it won't matter except as a fluff detail. I even read one book where people paid each other in "minutes" at the Geisha Bank, the currency backed by minutes of time with one of the prostitutes.
What's more important is who is mediating trade flows: capital, goods, labor, information, risk, etc. That coordinating function is really important and while people go to twelve decimal places working on their world's currency, GMs often ignore that function altogether.
