Chapter Ten

Dragon Hoards & Tiny Towns: The Macroeconomics of Campaigns

Adventurers don’t explore a world devoid of anything but hostile monsters. (Well, some might, but this book will do very little to help run those campaigns.) It’s full of people, towns, and cultures which react to what goes on around them, including what the adventurers do to help, or harm, their interests.

Much of that has nothing to do with money and economics. If the party overthrows the local baron and creates a power struggle, that’s part of D&D life. But you, the DM, know how to handle that already. What you (presumably) want if you’re reading this, and what this section of the book seeks to provide, are systems that help provide a greater verisimilitude to the financial aspects of your D&D world.

As with the last several chapters of Part One, everything you see here is optional. You can use the basic concept of markets to help guide your PCs towards meaningful choices they can make with the gold they’ve earned without touching this part of the book. However, unlike the optional chapters in Part One, some of what you’ll see here builds layers of complexity into the economic functions of the game world, so that early concepts lead into the content of later chapters. For example, you may think inflation is dumb and not use it, but certain parts that come afterwards may work better if you’re willing to at least consider the possibility of inflation.

As with everything else thus far, the systems that follow are designed to be as easy to use as possible. Nothing will ask you to nitpick over a couple of copper or silver unless you really want to do that. Although everything in this part involves money and its impact on the world around the PCs, it’s really about how NPCs react to what’s happening with that money—what they do if they get it, what they’ll do if someone else gets it, or what happens if a bunch of money gets spread around fairly evenly.

Also, keep in mind that this part is based on economic concepts applied to a D&D world, not the D&D rules as written. The logic behind the choices made here will be explained as thoroughly as possible, both so you can feel comfortable using the numbers you’ll find here and so, if you don’t like those numbers, you understand where they came from and can change them while maintaining the coherence of the system.