Converting $D&D to $DFRPG

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Anthony

[...] the price difference between swords and other weapons in D&D is much smaller than it is in DF.

Yep. Which points up something important to grasp:

Prices in the DFRPG come from GURPS. GURPS tries to do its homework and derive prices from historical values for things like labor and loaves of bread. It doesn't always do a great job with this – in fact, it often falls flat – but at least it tries.

Prices in D&D are based on game-mechanical effectiveness: meta-game concerns like weapon damage and armor protection. Gold is used to maintain game balance, not to simulate an economy which encompasses such things as materials scarcity, sumptuary laws, and the value of labor.

Which leads to a conclusion that others have already come to: The D&D gp fills a role closer to the DFRPG character point than to the DFRPG $. Any conversion would be very uneven because you're comparing apples to oranges.

There are other factors at work, too.

If you decide to ignore all that and try the basket-of-goods approach, this will be unduly biased by big-ticket items like swords and armor, which are almost irrelevant to the overall economy. In the modern world, few economists would include rifles, ammo, and body armor in inflation calculations or cost-of-living comparisons. Comparing staples for ordinary folk – like rations and lamp oil – would be the "right" way to do this.

If you decide to ignore that and focus on stuff adventurers care about, the fact that D&D dwells on meta-game factors means you must look at differences in how the two games rate effectiveness. This is especially an issue for weapons, as D&D makes damage inherent to the weapon and modifies it for the user, while the DFRPG makes damage a property of the user and modifies it for the weapon.

All told, I wouldn't convert currencies. I'd port over items by name and let the chips (coins) fall where they may. This will result well-equipped DFRPG heroes having huge $ values in gear because they walk around with items that in a quasi-realistic economy are the specialist tools of an elite warrior class, paid for by the labor of ordinary people those warriors protect. So I'd charge a character point per $500 until the gear is covered . . . which is actually closer to what D&D does with its habit of using gp to balance character power, not as the basis for any plausible economic system.