Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;281406Here's what I'm using: Philotomy's OD&D price list.  In this price system, you can think of a CP as being $2, a SP as being $10, and a GP as being $100 (all very roughly, of course).  It helps in estimating prices.  Not perfect, of course, but I like it better than the standard prices, and the monthly hireling prices help put things into perspective.

Thanks for sharing that! [I missed that link on your site ;-) ]

Using that list have you found it greatly changed the gear your players choose for their 1st level characters?

QuoteThanks for sharing that! [I missed that link on your site ;-) ]

You're welcome; I hope it's useful.  It's a fairly new thing, for me; I don't think I actually have it linked on my site, even though the document is "out there."

QuoteUsing that list have you found it greatly changed the gear your players choose for their 1st level characters?

No, not so far.  That could be because OD&D starting money (i.e. 3d6 x 10 gp) works out as pretty generous: if you get a 10, that's 100 gp, which is kinda like $10,000.  Also, many of the prices didn't change (or didn't change much) under this valuation of gold.  One way to address this would be to alter the starting money, but I haven't felt any great need to do so.  

One thing it *has* done is alter the way I arm NPCs, because weapons like swords and bows are quite valuable.  Good gear tends to indicate success (e.g. a capable and probably dangerous mercenary), wealthy backing (e.g. a guard armed and equipped by his merchant employer), or nobility.  A common man-at-arms or brigand is more likely to have a spear instead of a longsword.  Et cetera.

The main thing I like about it is that there's at least some baseline for prices, and for coming up with prices in-game.  It also makes the "I slip the bartender a gold piece" have more meaning when you think of the gold piece as kinda like $100 bill.  A fantasy world's economy and prices aren't directly convertible to modern prices, but at least it gives the DM and players something to go on, and some idea of what an appropriate price might be.

Interesting.  I like the list, but it doesn't jive with what I remember from the 80's and how Gygax made his AD&D monetary system.  The reason why he could do coin conversions in his head, while others had difficulty with the AD&D conversion rates is because he wasn't thinking of them in terms of AD&D.  He just used real American dollars.  

Here is the breakdown both ways.  It's simple once you see it laid out according to how Gygax used it. I've tossed in some low end Greyhawk currency too..

5 Platinum Pieces (pp)
1 Gold Pieces (gp)
2 Electrum Pieces (ep)
20 Silver Pieces (sp)
200 Copper Pieces (cp)
400 Brass Pieces (bp)
2000 Lead Pieces (lp)

$100 pp
$20 gp
$10 ep
$1 sp
$0.10 cp
$0.05 bp
$0.01 lp

Bronze is in there too somewhere.  I think it's equivalent to brass.  And no $5 bill / metal pieces were used to my knowledge.  But once you get the formula, it isn't hard at all to do conversions.

QuoteI like the list, but it doesn't jive with what I remember from the 80's and how Gygax made his AD&D monetary system.

Interesting.  I didn't know EGG did that with D&D currency.  I know he followed a similar, but probably more holistic or top-down approach to currency and economics (e.g. wages and incomes by social class) in Mythus and Lejendary Adventure.  (FWIW, I didn't put much consideration into the approach in AD&D; I was mainly referencing the coinage and prices in OD&D.)

I considered applying this approach to the existing D&D price list and hireling/wage information, but I couldn't get a satisfying consistency*, so I decided to start with the precious metal valuation and then go from there, altering price and wage lists to fit (which is basically what EGG did in Lejendary Adventure, although his valuation of gold is 5x higher than what I chose).


* - This kind of thing probably wouldn't bother most people and may not be worth worrying about, in that case.  It's just one of those things, for me.

That's very interesting.  So was Gary converting the cost of a meal in a fast-food joint in the 70s (say $5) into fantasy money ($5 --> 5 sp) to say how much a meal cost in a tavern?

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;281646Interesting.  I didn't know EGG did that with D&D currency.  I know he followed a similar, but probably more holistic or top-down approach to currency and economics (e.g. wages and incomes by social class) in Mythus and Lejendary Adventure.  (FWIW, I didn't put much consideration into the approach in AD&D; I was mainly referencing the coinage and prices in OD&D.)

I considered applying this approach to the existing D&D price list and hireling/wage information, but I couldn't get a satisfying consistency*, so I decided to start with the precious metal valuation and then go from there, altering price and wage lists to fit (which is basically what EGG did in Lejendary Adventure, although his valuation of gold is 5x higher than what I chose).


* - This kind of thing probably wouldn't bother most people and may not be worth worrying about, in that case.  It's just one of those things, for me.

That's cool.  I don't think any of this is stickler stuff. It's about how easy it is on the DM.  I believe Gary was going more and more to a realistic depiction of medieval Europe as he progressed in his setting and system creation.  LA was based on real world metal availability, but, yeah, I don't know why he went with the weird gold evaluation.  For DJ, read below.

Quote from: Stuart;281657That's very interesting.  So was Gary converting the cost of a meal in a fast-food joint in the 70s (say $5) into fantasy money ($5 --> 5 sp) to say how much a meal cost in a tavern?

In all likelihood he did just that.  If you ever read the Dangerous Journeys gamebooks, his monetary system there was called the BUC System.  Base Unit Coin.

The idea was, who ever used the game could change their real world currency to game prices and game currency using how many BUCs the coins were worth.  All game prices were listed in BUCs and a BUC was worth whatever base currency you wanted to use from the real world.  So, in effect, a BUC equaled a buck.  And if the DM ever needed to figure out how much something cost, he recalled the real world price and did the conversion.  Or just said 50 BUCs.

There were some other interesting things from DJ I liked too, like the SHADOWS system, but a lot of it I don't care for.  Not a fan of skill mechanics myself.