The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by Skyscraper »

cthulhudarren wrote:If the lowest wage earner was making say 2 coppers a day, which is accurate per research, how much does a minimum wage earner in recent times make in a day (take home!)? I'd compare the two numbers as the base. Say pick a take home pay as $5/hour, 8 hours is $40. That makes a copper equal to $20 bucks. I guess that's too high a base value. I'd take a copper as $5 to be closer to a workable number. Nothing is cheaper than $5.

To add to what Dogwood said, I'd like to clarify my thinking when I said that 1cp = 1$ is a workable idea.

The idea is to get a quick-and-easy to use comparison here. The 1cp = 1$ (Canadian or US dollars) is a good basis or comparison for item prices, that allows a quick on-the-fly determination of item prices. However, in a typical medieval setting, we need to remember that most people are poor. So the 1cp = 1$ is not necessarily a good comparison for salaries, in that the average current north-american person can buy most of what he needs, while the average medieval peasant could not. So the way I see it, this comparison remains workable only if we think to shrink salaries accordingly. In other words, the average price/salary ratio is probably much lower in current north-american standards than it was in medieval settings. Considering that the average Canadian income is about 45K$, I think shrinking that shrinking that to about 10K$, while mainting the same prices, is probably an interesting way of seeing the effects of this. Most people would consequently not own a car (horse equivalent), because who can pay 20K$ on a 10K$ annual salary? A lot of the people would need to work a lot just to feed their family, people would own little (making the trade goods list at character creation more relevant), etc...
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by Ddogwood »

Skyscraper wrote:
cthulhudarren wrote:If the lowest wage earner was making say 2 coppers a day, which is accurate per research, how much does a minimum wage earner in recent times make in a day (take home!)? I'd compare the two numbers as the base. Say pick a take home pay as $5/hour, 8 hours is $40. That makes a copper equal to $20 bucks. I guess that's too high a base value. I'd take a copper as $5 to be closer to a workable number. Nothing is cheaper than $5.

To add to what Dogwood said, I'd like to clarify my thinking when I said that 1cp = 1$ is a workable idea.

The idea is to get a quick-and-easy to use comparison here. The 1cp = 1$ (Canadian or US dollars) is a good basis or comparison for item prices, that allows a quick on-the-fly determination of item prices. However, in a typical medieval setting, we need to remember that most people are poor. So the 1cp = 1$ is not necessarily a good comparison for salaries, in that the average current north-american person can buy most of what he needs, while the average medieval peasant could not. So the way I see it, this comparison remains workable only if we think to shrink salaries accordingly. In other words, the average price/salary ratio is probably much lower in current north-american standards than it was in medieval settings. Considering that the average Canadian income is about 45K$, I think shrinking that shrinking that to about 10K$, while mainting the same prices, is probably an interesting way of seeing the effects of this. Most people would consequently not own a car (horse equivalent), because who can pay 20K$ on a 10K$ annual salary? A lot of the people would need to work a lot just to feed their family, people would own little (making the trade goods list at character creation more relevant), etc...
I think you're right. It's easy for us to forget that modern Western-style material wealth is a very recent phenomenon. If you look at historical wills, as late as the late 19th century, people who were fairly well-off carefully bequeath possessions that seem unlikely to have much sentimental or material value to us - beds, wagons, old clothes, and simple tools. The general explanation is that these things are only cheap and low-value in a wealthy, industrialized society. To anyone living in pre-modern times, a decent set of clothes or a good-quality tool was vey valuable, and a thing to be treasured.
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by Aplus »

The game is about adventuring first and foremost, so when it comes to economic matters, the question "does it work?" is more important than "does it make absolute perfect sense?"

I've never once had a player balk at a price on an equipment list. If I ever did come across someone that was adamant about such an issue, I'd honestly probably suggest that maybe my game wasn't the right one for them. Because really, if an adventuring PC is unwilling to part with 30 gp or whatever, I'm not sure there's anything I can do to help the situation.

Personally, I have to be conscious of "boogeyman" problems in games - i.e., things that appear to be issues to me on paper, but actually work just fine in play. I have spent my share of hours brainstorming solutions to problems that weren't actually problems, and my time is too precious for that these days.

As others have suggested, if matters economic are really an important part of play to you, ACKS would be a great thing to use to supplement your DCC game. Otherwise, I would highly recommend just playing and keeping in mind that the only questions that really need answering are the ones that come up in actual play. Sometimes you can get good adventuring mileage out of stuff like this.

Let's take an example:
Brand new Level 1 Warrior really wants a chain, for whatever reason, but he doesn't have the funds. Here's what I would do:
1. Just let him have it and move on. Maybe an I.O.U., or just handwave it.
2. The guy in town that has the chain is willing to give it to the PC if he does something. (1) Give the NPC a back rub; (2) Take his rather homely daughter on a date; (3) Take his totally inept son on a dungeon expedition; (4) Help the NPC sabotage a business competitor or local rival.

So here you have two ways to solve the problem in the event it actually comes up. Neither requires any time outside the game agonizing over price lists. One allows you to simply skip over the issue entirely, and the other adds some potential for fun gaming. I'd put forth either as preferable to spending time devising a coherent economic model in your free time (unless of course you really enjoy that sort of thing, which many do and that's totally fine).
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by Pesky »

Aplus wrote:(2) Take his rather homely daughter on a date
Perhaps a "ball and chain" would be more appropiate in this case. :lol:
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by imperialus »

I've always found the fantasy economy to be pretty interesting... One of the best resources I've found is a PDF called Grain into Gold published by Board Enterprises.

It's a bit of a beefy book, and their 'simple' system takes 80+ pages to explain but damnit it works, and what's more it works for all levels of society, in all parts of a given campaign world. They start at the very low end, looking at how much grain a peasant farmer can expect to produce since at the end of the day the ability to make bread really is the basis for any economy. After that they start looking at looking at the overhead that the farmer needs, then they start looking at unskilled and semi skilled labour, and skilled labour. They even look at the effect that Magic (extremely skilled labour) "boom town economy" and taxes would have. If you feel like going all out you can use the entire book and build a fully functioning economy that will hang together. It's mostly front loaded too so you can do the work during the prep stages of the campaign.

Just for example. First thing they do is set things to a silver standard. After figuring out the cost of a loaf of rye bread at 5.4 CP in a local market and factoring other costs of survival they set the subsistence cost of an adult at 4SP per day. From there they move upward through skilled craftsmen where a weaponsmith for example makes 12 SP per day a bookbinder makes 7, an alchemist makes a whopping 150. This lets them calculate the cost of goods. According to their price table a hatchet in a market town would cost 6 SP, a longsword in the same town would be 112. A spear would be 30. Things like bows are still expensive, but a bow designed for combat with a 100lb+ draw weight was not an easy thing to make. If you wanted to you could probably come up with a cheaper bow designed for hunting that does a whole lot less damage.

If you'd rather not muck about too much with the economy then just use the price/wage charts in the back of the book. That works almost as well. :p
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by Count Fosco »

Hey that book is really cool. Thanks for the tip.
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by finarvyn »

Aplus wrote:The guy in town that has the chain is willing to give it to the PC if he does something. (1) Give the NPC a back rub; (2) Take his rather homely daughter on a date; (3) Take his totally inept son on a dungeon expedition; (4) Help the NPC sabotage a business competitor or local rival.
Aplus, I can't believe in a game of funky dice that you'd give us an example that can be resolved with a roll of a d4. Couldn't you put in some effort and come up with a 5th option so I could use my d5? :P

Also, I agree that it's often pointless to worry about issues that may never pop up. As you said, no one ever seems to argue the prices in a cost chart. My personal reason for using the 1 CP = 1$ scale is just to "on the fly" costs without having to bother to take the time to look stuff up. If you have a general idea of the $$ cost of an item, you can wing it.

Just my two coppers ... er ... two dollars ... whatever. 8)
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by DrBargle »

Mr Black wrote:
Ddogwood wrote: [snip]
First off, I don't think that the economics should be that big a deal, because this isn't the focus of the game. If you want or need more verisimilitude I'd suggest importing the economic system from Adventurer Conqueror King, which isn't perfect, but puts a lot more thought into these issues.
[snip]
This is what I was thinking when I saw this thread. I plan on using ACK for price guidelines in my next game. Like you said, not perfect, but it seems they have tried to achieve some logical consistency. I may shoehorn in the Domains part too if the DCC RPG game goes that way.
This. Both of these, in fact. ACKS has done all the hard work for me, if I want the equipment list to square with the hireling wages to square with the domain game, if it goes that way. If I didn't own ACKS it wouldn't bother me enough to buy it - especially at low levels where the PCs interaction and immersion in the world is more limited - but given that I do, I'll use it.
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by cthulhudarren »

Dangit, Now I want ACKS. About ~$35. Are there any detailed reviews out there to push me over the decision cliff?
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by DrBargle »

Aplus wrote:The game is about adventuring first and foremost, so when it comes to economic matters, the question "does it work?" is more important than "does it make absolute perfect sense?"

[...]

Personally, I have to be conscious of "boogeyman" problems in games - i.e., things that appear to be issues to me on paper, but actually work just fine in play. I have spent my share of hours brainstorming solutions to problems that weren't actually problems, and my time is too precious for that these days.
I think the above is spot on. The problem with, for example, the domain game in BECMI D&D isn't that it is 'unrealistic', it is that it doesn't really work - wealth baloons out of control (though articles in Dragon fixed some of it). DCC RPG isn't really a game of resource attrition in the same way as low level D&D, or a game in which the poverty of PCs is an essential part of the flavour of the game (WFRP), and it doesn't involve an 'XP for gold' mechanic that demands that the fantasy economy be built on certain principles.

Now, I'd rather have price lists that were internally consistent, but I'm not going to sweat it for a game such as DCC RPG. Given that I own ACKS (in .pdf - $10), I'll use the equipment lists and, probably never, the domain game. If I didn't own ACKS, I'd just get on with dungeoneering with DCC RPG.
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by ecz »

I like the idea to figure 1cp = 1 $.
BTW it's the same idea Steve Jackson had for his first RPG system, The Fantasy Trip in late '70s, although he used the equation 1 Silver coin = 1 Dollar.

I also noticed the economic system in DCC does not work for the reason outlined above and some other that is not the case to discuss here, so I was thinking to use prices and wages from other RPG.

It's difficult create a fantasy-medieval economic system starting from zero. Much better take something from here and there and try to balance everything taking in account playability that is also important.

The basic idea should be that ordinary people work tipically to survive, NOT to ammass money. Thus big and expansive objects (horses, decent stone-houses, plate armor) should be out of range for the bottom class forever. On the opposite basic items as arrows, not-metal weapons and armor should be very cheap and clearly available to everyone.
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by cthulhudarren »

Soooo....
I went ahead and got the ACK PDF just for the commerce/economy prices sections; the gear costs are too high! A peasant should be able to afford some arrows. Considering 1-2cp a day for daily wages, 20 arrows cost a 1gp, which is several months of wages. It's okay for plate mail to be out of range, but not a handaxe, arrows, etc that a peasant needs for daily life. There is something to be said for having axes be more expensive for military purposes, but I can't see that for arrows. Then there's the fact that the 20 arrows come with a quiver. But a club costs 1gp also.

And perusing the rest of the book, it looks like everything, from monster loot to commerce is priced at OD&D levels, way too high for DCC RPG use. :(

I think the best part of the book is the stuff covering campaigns, domains, etc.
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by PretentiousMoniker »

I finally registered what was nagging at me... well, one of the things - why must a peasant be able to afford arrows?

There's a reason that for millennia, peasants, shepherds, and even footsoldiers used slings. Pause a moment and think about what goes into making an arrow. You could spend an entire day (or more), where you wouldn't be hunting, harvesting, or caring for your livestock, just to make a single quiver of them. Finding and selecting (or buying) the wood, shaping each shaft, finding and selecting (or buying) the feathers, splitting the feathers, wrapping and gluing them to the shaft. Are you going to forge the arrowheads from metal? Or buy them? Are you going to chip yours from stone? Are you going to fire-harden the points instead? Are you tired yet? Ready to pay someone else for a full day's work, plus acquiring materials, plus their hard-earned expertise?

Ready to look around the house and take that woven string, that scrap of leather, and some river stones and settle for a sling?

How long does it take a smith to forge an iron axe-head? How long does it take to make the haft? How much is the mark-up, so the craftsman can afford to buy or barter for essentials?

Labor ain't cheap.
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by imperialus »

Here is the process required to make an arrow...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxeFvDgXE54

And he's got power tools. All of a sudden 5cp per arrow sounds like a bargain. Hell, at 5cp per arrow the fletcher is likely almost starving considering he's gotta pay for his materials.

One other thing to remember is that for the lower classes, a lot of the time they simply didn't get by, nevermind have the disposable income to buy tools and livestock. I mean France suffered almost a dozen major famines during the 14th century. England suffered a half dozen or so between 1315 and 1370 and England had a reputation for having a fairly well off peasantry.

Also figure that under the manorial system working livestock like oxen would likely be communally owned. Every familiy didn't need an ox. Hell every family couldn't afford to feed an ox. Tools like plows and the like would probably outlive their owners several times over, I'm sure every peasant on the planet would know know to whittle an axe handle, fix a pot, make a clay plate, sew a shirt, and all sorts of other day to day items that PC's pay the book price for.

I actually use the economic system from a PDF I picked up years ago called "Grain into Gold". It is a fantastic (albeit complex) economic system that factors pretty much everything into building a fantasy economy. It starts at the very basics figuring out how much grain a peasant with 30 acres of land produces in a year. From there, they figure out the cost of bread and move their way up through the economy until they're figuring out how much specialists like alchemists and magicians make.
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by imperialus »

Also, a peasant wouldn't be buying an ox. Assuming a certain degree of prosperity he'd likely already own a milk cow. Now in order to keep said cow producing milk she needs to be kept pregnant. This means that each year the peasant would have a bouncing baby cow on his hands. Normally you'd be keeping the cow over the summer while it can graze for cheap, and then sell it for meat at the end of the summer. If however your ox is starting to get long in the tooth then you might keep the cow around if its a boy, geld it, and start training it as a replacement ox over the winter so that it is ready for spring. Therefor the only 'cost' to a peasant is the lost profit he would receive from selling the steer for slaughter since I suspect that an old decrepit ox is worth a lot less to a butcher than a 4 or 5 month old cow.

Now if there was an unexpected death it would be economically devastating. Imagine if someone making minimum wage wrecked their car that they needed to get to work and had no insurance. Planning to replace an important animal like an ox would probably take place over a couple of years.
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by cthulhudarren »

ACKS is great for managing and establishing domains and such, but the price list is still off in the typical OSR way. Way too much gold! I'm almost thinking of converting a lot of costs straight from gold to silver pieces, except for really expensive things like armor.

I remember that a broadsword represented a weeks work of work for a blacksmith.

Money goes as follows:
1 pound (L) = 20 shillings (s)
1 crown = 5 shillings
1 shilling = 12 pence (d)
1 penny = 4 farthings

The question is how to translate this into copper/silver/gold/plat!!!

Some wage info:

Profession Wage
Mercenaries:
knight banneret 4s/day
knight 2s/day
man-at-arms or squire 1s/day
Regular Army
Esquires, constables, and
centenars 1s/day
Mounted archers, armored
infantry, hobilars,
vintenars 6d/day
Welsh vintenars 4d/day
Archers 3d/day
Welsh infantry 2d/day
Captain 8s/day
Lieutenant 4s/day
Ensign 2s/day
Drummer or trumpeter 20d/day
cavalryman 18d/day
infantry 8d/day
Laborer L2/year max
Barons per year L200-500+
Earls per year L400-L11000
Chief armorer 30s/month
Other armorers in same shop 24s/month
Apprentices in same shop 6d/day
Master mason 4d/day
Master carpenter 3d/day
Carpenters' Guild stipend to
a sick member 14d/week
Weavers 5d/day
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by cthulhudarren »

Thanks to imperialus. I looked at 'Grains To Gold' and it reconciles closely with DCC RPG prices. The only thing is that the idea that all characters have never held a gold coin is not 100%, as wages of most folks are around 5-7 silvers a day. Now I know a lot of pay may be paid in non-coin/barter, but still that's a gold every two days worth of earnings.

You know what, I can live with this. I only needed to make a few price adjustments.
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by VengerSatanis »

This blog post showed me that the campaign world should be broken down into (at least) two separate economies: surface and underground. The two only intersect occasionally, during successful goblin raids and adventurers delving deep into monstrous territory.

http://shamsgrog.blogspot.com/2010/01/g ... world.html

For me, it opened my eyes, allowing me to reconcile the discrepancy. Thoughts?

VS
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by imperialus »

cthulhudarren wrote:Thanks to imperialus. I looked at 'Grains To Gold' and it reconciles closely with DCC RPG prices. The only thing is that the idea that all characters have never held a gold coin is not 100%, as wages of most folks are around 5-7 silvers a day. Now I know a lot of pay may be paid in non-coin/barter, but still that's a gold every two days worth of earnings.

You know what, I can live with this. I only needed to make a few price adjustments.
It really is a fantastic supplement. I printed out the entire thing and bound it at Staples. One thing I like about it is that gold is still not common. Someone is much more likely to pay for something with a fistful of silver rather than a gold coin, sorta like how people today (or lets say back in the 70's and 80's before plastic replaced everything) would be more likely to have 5 or 6 20 dollar bills in their wallet rather than a pair of 100's.

One of the other cool things is that by dividing just about any item into the time required to make it, and figuring out how many of those days would require skilled/semi-skilled/highly skilled labour you can price just about anything.

For example, my DCC campaign has guns in it. Guns ranging from relatively primitive muzzle loaders, through to breech loading rifles like the Martini-Henry... To be fair there are also lasers and ray guns but nobody know how to make those so they don't factor in. At any rate, by breaking down the time to make it, using sources for early firearm manufacture from the 30 years war since cultural considerations have prevented industrialization I was able to rough out the manufacturing time and came up with some pretty reasonable prices. A basic muzzle loader might set someone back 100gp, a military issue single shot carbine would cost around 500gp, while a finely made revolver intended for the upper classes costs around 5000gp.
Last edited by imperialus on Thu Feb 14, 2013 8:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by beermotor »

Hey dude I'd love to see your gun rules. Are they posted anywhere?
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by Raven_Crowking »

beermotor wrote:Hey dude I'd love to see your gun rules. Are they posted anywhere?
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

Post by imperialus »

beermotor wrote:Hey dude I'd love to see your gun rules. Are they posted anywhere?
Well advanced tech weapons haven't made an appearance yet, but for regular weapons I actually chunks of the idea from someone else, (though I can't remember where I read it).

A lot of it is rather campaign specific too. From a cultural standpoint guns are considered to be semi-magical in nature (they arn't, but that's what people think) and their ownership and use is extremely restricted. It's also a pre-industrial society in most respects. Everything is made by hand, and gunsmiths work in small family clans known as Arsenals, and these are some of the most secretive organizations in the world. They're one part business enterprise, two parts secret society. The techniques they use, particularly the formulas for gunpowder do not leave the family, and they will spend astronomical amounts of money, and spill a metric ton of blood to ensure that their secrets stay safe. The prices I mentioned above are the prices if you're dealing directly with an Arsenal. The catch is that they have an extremely short list of clients that they will deal with. If a PC wants to purchase a gun he's looking at a 200-300% markup.

Ammo doesn't come cheap either. This is mostly because the primary users of guns are reskinned elves who form the ruling class of the society. The whole aversion to base metals thing means that for all intents and purposes bullets are made from starmetal (the campaign equivalent of mithril). Not only is starmetal a lot tougher to work with than lead, but it's worth a small fortune in and of itself.

From a rules standpoint a gun can be fired once a round like any other weapon. Reloading a gun takes a single action whether it is removing a spent cartridge and inserting a new one, or popping in a stripper clip, or changing a magazine. If you are loading individual rounds into a revolver or a tube magazine you can load 1+your agility bonus per round. The exception to this is a muzzle loader. To reload a muzzle loader requires a successful agility test with a DC of 25. Each failure subtracts 5 from the DC the next round. Generally speaking you're looking at 2-4 rounds to reload before you can fire again.

As far as damage goes the big difference is that damage dice explode when maximum damage is rolled. The number, and size of dice varies. Generally speaking higher quality guns will roll a greater number of smaller dice whereas cheaper, 'mass' produced guns would roll fewer large dice.

A muzzle loading percussion cap musket for example which is one of the most common weapons does 1d10 damage. Good for an opening salvo in an encounter, but after that you're falling back to blades. These are popular among elite soldiers, and the personal guards for powerful families. They're expensive weapons, and you need connections to get a large supply of them but they are the closest thing you'll find to 'mass produced' guns.

An officer's carbine though would be breech loading and might roll 2d5 or 2d6 damage depending on its quality. It would use rolled metal cartridges and can be loaded from the breech. A good weapon for someone who spends most of their time in the rear ranks since it can keep up a pretty steady rate of fire.

The same carbine from a master gunsmith, the gunsmithing equivalent of Maramusa might roll 3d4 or 4d3. Some of these might even offer a to hit bonus to represent their effectiveness against armour.

I haven't even started trying to muck about with advanced weapons since the PC's are a long way away from dealing with them yet.
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beermotor
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Re: The DCC RPG Economy. I think the prices are off.

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Thanks for the folks who recommended Grain into Gold. HOLY CRAP. This thing is awesome. It's everything I wanted in a nice quick table, sufficiently detailed enough to be used on the fly. Which is perfect, because I really want a certain level of realism/predictability with respect to the world itself, to build verisimilitude, without having to be a computer and keep track of a ton of crap in my head or in some spreadsheet.

Seriously awesome system-neutral PDF, well worth the price. Highly recommend it.
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