View Single Post
Old 01-15-2018, 11:59 AM   #308
JLV
 
JLV's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Arizona
Default Re: The Fantasy Trip

On the economics situation, I never really questioned the details of the economic system as published. However, if we split economics into a micro and macro scale of things, where the micro level is the jobs, salaries and costs part of the equation (what's actually in ITL), and the macro level provides information about the overall economic system...

On a macro level, I've said elsewhere that I use the mercantilistic economic model from Trailblazer (another Metagaming Microgame, and one of the last they published) to establish certain goods as the major items of trade -- about 20 commodities in the old days -- but I suppose it would be very easy to expand that if it were considered desirable. I had things like leather, salt, spices, cloth, smelted metals, wood, charcoal, horses, luxury goods, wines, liquors, finished products (e.g., clothing, armor, weapons, etc.) -- that are in demand in specific localities (usually a large town or bigger urban area), or which are produced to excess in those same localities. The number of such goods was tied in general terms to the local population -- a town of 2500 people has a lot fewer commodities in either excess or demand to deal with than a city of 15,000 does. That then establishes some logical trade routes between the various localities. One place has a lot of smelted metal -- iron, copper, whatever, but not much in the way of finished cloth; while another wants that metal (no nearby mines), but does produce finished cloth by the ton and needs to get rid of the excess -- voila! A trade route is born... This allows me to set up excuses for trade caravans and merchant shipping (and raiders and pirates, obviously!), which in turn implies other things about the local economy in terms of local jobs available, potential for hiring out as a caravan guard or deckhand, etc., etc., plus gives me built in plot hooks for when inspiration (or time) is short. It also allows me to adjust local prices for certain commodities -- if metal is in short supply, weapons and armor are gonna cost more...

I always felt a good macro-economic model helped explain a LOT about the local prices/jobs/etc. And also let me adjust them according to some sort of logical reasoning instead of arbitrarily (um...disclaimer: I don't mean to even imply anyone else is being arbitrary, just that I was until I came up with a system that let me do things in a more reasoned manner!). I think it helped add to the verisimilitude of the game world, which in turn helped the players feel like it really WAS a living, breathing world. And, about once a quarter, I would go through and run the "supply and demand tables" from Trailblazer to see how the commodity prices and availability adjusted themselves (rolling randomly for unit price) in order to have things change a bit from time to time -- which always helped with roleplaying the locals and their interactions with the player characters... All of this actually took about as much time to DO as it has taken to type out this brief explanation. The most time-consuming part was at the very beginning where I assigned specific commodities (both for supply and demand) to the individual locality, and that usually just involved looking at the map, and thinking about things for a few minutes before picking a few of each (the number being picked depending on the population of the trade hub, and, to a much lesser extent, of the surrounding area).

Anyway, to me, a macro-economic model (a simple one, thank you very much!) is a major help in developing play in that it answers a lot of questions the players might have and allows you to easily develop related plot elements and explain adjusted prices in a specific region.

Last edited by JLV; 01-15-2018 at 12:04 PM.
JLV is offline   Reply With Quote