While everything you say is true, the worldbuilding kinda needs it to be true. Because, otherwise, even lawful good characters questing out of charity would be idiots for not running a business on the side to fund their adventuring.
These worlds are like comic book worlds in a way. They aren't written to be rational, balanced things. They're written, first and foremost, to make adventuring the rational choice for the players.
Its why there's so many ruins full of gold, why the 'fallen civilizations' of thousands of years ago were so vastly more advanced than current civilization (at least in terms of making magic items).
And yeah, 'adventuring groups' are, pretty inevitably, rich fucks. Money is power, and the players generally gain most or all types of power as they progress from level 1-20.
There are ways around this. You can world-build money to not really be that important to questing (which, a lot of these games have something like a 'vow of poverty' or 'variant automatic progression' if you want to accommodate this). You can remove resurrection magic and maybe other spells that cost gold.
But, like a lot of questions of verisimilitude, its a never ending rabbit hole. Some groups won't be satisfied until they have mapped out continent spanning economic systems and financial schemes, with balanced costs for good. Others are fine with the thinnest veneer of 'the economy works fine, don't worry about it'.
Same thing with, like, survival mechanics. With travel. With carry weight, swim speed, religion.
And, either approach is good and fine, I support groups tailoring their games to their own tastes. But it makes it impossible to write a ttrpg for everyone, since to try to keep a sense of verisimilitude up for as many people as possible is to invite rules bloat, for mechanics that only some groups will care about.
Oh sure, and yeah, we should. I've been playing ICON recently, and I've generally liked it's take on 'economy'. Which is: money is a roleplaying concern, as is gear. Have whatever items you want to represent your stats/abilities. It is besides the point, at least as far as 'combat mechanics' go.
It does have 'Dust' as a 'currency' to enchant/fuel things, but its like crystallized magic found in the ancient empire ruins, more than it is 'money'.
And yeah, ‘adventuring groups’ are, pretty inevitably, rich fucks. Money is power, and the players generally gain most or all types of power as they progress from level 1-20.
This was very much literal in old D&D, where Gold=XP.
Edit:
Its why there’s so many ruins full of gold,
Also, I don't really think this part is entirely unreasonable? There are actually like, a couple of old-ass Spanish treasure-galleons that are still sitting on the floor of the ocean somewhere with gold coins in tow, I'm sure.
If a given society had some kind of spontaneous cataclysmic collapse, that didn't come about due to something like a Migration Period (which is not impossible due to this being a fantasy game), I could definitely see some weird old monarch's treasure vault kind of just getting left for the pilfering later on.
While everything you say is true, the worldbuilding kinda needs it to be true. Because, otherwise, even lawful good characters questing out of charity would be idiots for not running a business on the side to fund their adventuring.
These worlds are like comic book worlds in a way. They aren't written to be rational, balanced things. They're written, first and foremost, to make adventuring the rational choice for the players.
Its why there's so many ruins full of gold, why the 'fallen civilizations' of thousands of years ago were so vastly more advanced than current civilization (at least in terms of making magic items).
And yeah, 'adventuring groups' are, pretty inevitably, rich fucks. Money is power, and the players generally gain most or all types of power as they progress from level 1-20.
There are ways around this. You can world-build money to not really be that important to questing (which, a lot of these games have something like a 'vow of poverty' or 'variant automatic progression' if you want to accommodate this). You can remove resurrection magic and maybe other spells that cost gold.
But, like a lot of questions of verisimilitude, its a never ending rabbit hole. Some groups won't be satisfied until they have mapped out continent spanning economic systems and financial schemes, with balanced costs for good. Others are fine with the thinnest veneer of 'the economy works fine, don't worry about it'.
Same thing with, like, survival mechanics. With travel. With carry weight, swim speed, religion.
And, either approach is good and fine, I support groups tailoring their games to their own tastes. But it makes it impossible to write a ttrpg for everyone, since to try to keep a sense of verisimilitude up for as many people as possible is to invite rules bloat, for mechanics that only some groups will care about.
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Oh sure, and yeah, we should. I've been playing ICON recently, and I've generally liked it's take on 'economy'. Which is: money is a roleplaying concern, as is gear. Have whatever items you want to represent your stats/abilities. It is besides the point, at least as far as 'combat mechanics' go.
It does have 'Dust' as a 'currency' to enchant/fuel things, but its like crystallized magic found in the ancient empire ruins, more than it is 'money'.
This was very much literal in old D&D, where Gold=XP.
Edit:
Also, I don't really think this part is entirely unreasonable? There are actually like, a couple of old-ass Spanish treasure-galleons that are still sitting on the floor of the ocean somewhere with gold coins in tow, I'm sure.
If a given society had some kind of spontaneous cataclysmic collapse, that didn't come about due to something like a Migration Period (which is not impossible due to this being a fantasy game), I could definitely see some weird old monarch's treasure vault kind of just getting left for the pilfering later on.