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Old 01-11-2019, 05:16 PM   #1
Refplace
 
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Default Adventurer Economy

So I have a setting and I'm looking for ways for adventurers to be able to make a living doing it. Dungeons and ancient ruins tend to be few and far between.

Adventurers can earn money in town using spells and skills.
A bounty system by local nobles where adventurers get paid for clearing out monsters. Most monsters are beasts created by evil spirits.
Blasted Lands is a place of ancient ruins and warring factions, overrun by Elder Things and such.
There is a Vampire kingdom on a border that raids human lands and they could be killed for bounty or ransomed back.
Some research or safari type stuff.

So how much is reasonable for the above and what are ideas for implementation or other ideas?
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Old 01-11-2019, 06:14 PM   #2
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Default Re: Adventurer Economy

Letter and package deliver is a possibility, if there is an "adventurer's guild" to keep track of who is trustworthy and provide references. This is probably necessary in any case for "adventurer" to exist as an identifiable trade or class.

Straight-up mercenary work, including specialist support corps (medical, magical, etc.). Note that this makes the Adventurer's Guild a powerful political force, to balance the nobility and the priesthood. Some kind of official neutrality on their part is probably required. Their power is limited by the inherent independence of the adventurers themselves, who don't play well in big groups.

Convoy/caravan guards.

Anti-bandit missions (edit: including Guild-sanctioned anti-Adventurer missions, if some members get out of hand).

Last edited by thrash; 01-11-2019 at 06:19 PM.
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Old 01-11-2019, 06:16 PM   #3
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Default Re: Adventurer Economy

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Originally Posted by thrash View Post
Convoy/caravan guards.

Anti-bandit missions.
"It would be terrible if your caravan was to say, get attacked by bandits..."
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Old 01-11-2019, 06:47 PM   #4
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Default Re: Adventurer Economy

You could borrow a lot of the jobs/tropes from Traveller to be honest. "Rare dungeons" pretty well describes the scarcity of Ancient ship crash sites/strange caves/etc.
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Old 01-11-2019, 06:59 PM   #5
Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2
 
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Default Re: Adventurer Economy

How decadent and corrupt are the aristocracy?

A decadent aristocracy will want rare and gaudy things from far away to show off at their rich-bastard parties. This involves sending adventurers to distant lands (and occasionally to the treasure vaults of fellow aristos) to plunder treasures. Needing adventurer-bodyguards for safaris will be a good money-maker, too.

A corrupt aristocracy will wand to gain power. This would make adventurers straight-up mercenaries and assassins, waging private wars for their ambitious employers.

Of course there's a lot of overlap. A corrupt society with gladiatorial games (Romans used to score political points with stables of gladiators) can employ adventurers to acquire rare beasts or powerful galdiators, train or assassinate said gladiators, or fight in the arena themselves. That's along with the other stuff.
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Old 01-11-2019, 07:01 PM   #6
maximara
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Default Re: Adventurer Economy

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Originally Posted by cptbutton View Post
"It would be terrible if your caravan was to say, get attacked by bandits..."
This is the heart of Caravan to Ein Arris a 4e version of the 3e adventure that was in the main 3e book.
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Old 01-11-2019, 08:41 PM   #7
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Default Re: Adventurer Economy

The last time I played in a "murder hobo" game that had a "realistic" economy, the party mostly took commissions from wealth nobles and guilds to go to specific ruins and hunt for specific treasures... and then made extra bank on the other lott we acquired. We actually had the skills to do anthropology and archaeology and such, but it was completely Indiana Jones archaeology, not grid squares and brushes.

Also the occasional bounty hunt by going to areas that suffered from bandits or raiders and bringing in ears or bandits in chains.
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Old 01-11-2019, 10:04 PM   #8
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Default Re: Adventurer Economy

Well, the majority of people in any pre-industrial society are involved in food production (farmers, fishers, herders, hunters, etc), so the value of the loot gained will actual depend on the food production of a society (everything pretty much becomes relative to a bushel of grain). Depending on the metaphysics, magic increases the productivity of wealthy farmers, probably focusing on high value crops such as orchards and vineyards, so magic pretty much just lowers the value of higher value crops. Adventurers occupy the same niche as smugglers, they acquire luxuries for the wealthy elites, though their legalities and moralitied vary according to thir specialty.

For example, adventurers who acquire exotic virgin girls for their clients are going to be treated differently by most societies than ones who purcure rare wines. In certain societies, the slave trade will be more acceptable than the alcohol trade due to cultural or religious reasons. Of course, other adventurers may object to their practices, which is where conflict arises between adventures.

For example, let us say that a group of adventures comes upon another group of adventurers smuggling a true rarity, beautiful identical triplet girls. A complete set could easily be worth their weight in gold, 360 pounds, the equivalent of $7.2 million (one might only be worth $120,000). Do the adventures steal the girls to sell them to the original buyer or do they take them back home? Depending on where they are from, being the sex slaves of an elderly wealthy man might be better than being the sex slaves of a band of mercenaries. Of course, the adventurers could agree to share their sell price with the girls, meaning that the girls would have assets when they gained their freedom, but that depends of the group.
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Old 01-11-2019, 11:05 PM   #9
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Default Re: Adventurer Economy

I mean if you want to play F.A.T.A.L....

Going back. Magic makes all crops more productive. Even the most oppressive feudal lord knows that he will make more money if he hires a wizard to do some spellwork on his peasant's crops, and that includes even the grain and roots.

Magic also makes travel easier, so mundane plants like potatoes are transplanted sooner. And it implies there may be magical plants that might have miraculous healing powers or other useful attributes that can be used by non-mages.

In time, that accelerates the growth of the society and makes more populated cities. A kingdom with magic that is at all put to agricultural ends will be at +1 or more to effective TL, to put it in game terms.
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Old 01-12-2019, 12:56 AM   #10
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Default Re: Adventurer Economy

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Originally Posted by PTTG View Post
Going back. Magic makes all crops more productive. Even the most oppressive feudal lord knows that he will make more money if he hires a wizard to do some spellwork on his peasant's crops, and that includes even the grain and roots.
A 40-point Bless Plants covers an acre, takes 50 minutes to cast, and the mages plus 37 common peasants can provide the energy with 10 minutes rest, so they can cast one per hour. That's ten acres a day, and probably ten households' land in a month, taking holidays, etc.

As Bless Plants double crop returns, and all the extra is surplus, this changes the "90% are farmers" rules of thumb to "45% are farmers", and you have an urban revolution on your hands, assuming you have about one plant mage per 400-or so people.
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