• RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    6 hours ago

    I’ve always struggled with Gold Coins in D&D. I think it’s because of the roots of the game, where in the earliest editions, Gold was your Experience Points, and you only gained Experience Points if you could get the gold out of the dungeon.

    As the editions came out, the game became less of a dungeon crawl and more of an action movie simulator. Especially with 4E and 5E. I don’t know in what edition they decoupled Experience from Gold, but that is probably when the Gold stopped making any sense. Just try finding an answer to the question “What are the wages of commoners per day/week/year”. You’ll get nowhere.

    Once players have thousands and thousands of gold, most of the time, unless you’ve really invested in making it part of the game, they won’t even spend it. What are they going to buy with gold that’s better or more interesting than the items you’ve placed in the dangerous places? It puts you in this position where you either allow them to buy magic items or not. Being able to buy a +1 weapon has implications for your entire world.

    I could write forever about this. The lack of guidance from Wizards is part of the problem. I think the next time I run a game of “D&D” it’ll be one of these OSR games like Knave or what have you.