Goodman Games

Cool stuff; I'm looking forward to reading the article.

I've used a simple rule for years now that I think works well. Every member of a given population equals 3 gold pieces worth of wealth that can be obtained by outsiders. So, a village of roughly 1000 people has 3000 gp worth of wealth to dole out. Total. In coins and goods.

This rule is an abstraction, like Hit Points, and it's intended to measure a given locations ability to accommodate travelers. That means if one PC wants to buy a new suit of armor and then another wants to sell the seven emeralds he has they're going to hit a limit quickly if it's a particularly small village. Obviously there are exceptions for some places that are meant to be visited, like an inn along the side of a road, but in general it seems to work quite well and it can end up spurring some interesting role-playing moments as the blacksmith who just took all of a character's coin refuses to buy anything from him. "You just gave me enough gold to retire, why on earth would I spend it on more weapons I would be forced to sell?"

Only thing with that e.g. 3k gp limit / 1k population is, it's not distributed evenly. I guess in a DCC-like economy, probably 80 to 90% of the population wouldn't have anything to speak of, but the remaining 10% would probably be highly stratified. I guess in an abstract sense its fine, like hit points. I may steal this idea. IIRC there's a bunch of this sort of stuff in the AD&D DMG. (I just skimmed through it and apparently I don't RC, heh.)

Don't forget that in addition to buying and selling stuff, merchant's can be great sources of information. That merchant behind the counter has a steady stream of other customer's not to mention the teamsters bringing in items from afar. Merchant's selling in selling the bazaar will collect all sorts or rumors. That old guy with the shop,of curiosities just happens to be a scholar of the ancient civilization that build the ruined temple you just raided.

You don't have to haggle over every sale. But letting the merchant get the best of you might open him up. Or maybe he'll respect you more if you drive a hard bargain.

Don't make the buying and selling the focus, but part of the interaction between PC and NPC.

That old guy is going to receive some grievance from the bartender syndicate...