http://www.dnd.starflung.com/rules.html#economics
For about a week now, I have been trying to convert the old dominion administration rules and have run into all sorts of problems:
1) The value of a gp is no longer the same as in 0D&D, retainers are cheaper, mercenaries and construction of castles more expensive.
2) I never really liked the Standard Income because it was unclear to me exactely how it was to be used
3) It never made sense to me that a peasant family of 5 could work up to 12 different resources in a dominion at the same time!
4) The old rules had no way of calculating that there was actually enough food for all the people who lives there.
Bruce's excel file changes all that. First of all, the population total is calculated from terrain type, degree of civilization and features such as rivers, trails and other stuff. Very neat. You don't have to adjust the population 1-5% every month and recalculate everything.
Furthermore, you can create a budget based on whether you prioritise military, new construction or your treasury. The file includes an easy-to-use spread sheet for figuring out how many troop you budget allows - and you can adjust the cost of the individual mercenary type to suit your campaign!!
The file has a built-in feature ensuring that unless 80% of the population grows agricultural products, your urban population and troops will starve! It is great to e.g. figure out how many peasants are needed to keep a border garison supplied.
The file has a ton of other features including how to calculate the cost of building port facilities or a trail or road. (for Bruce's calculations on port tax income see here:
http://www.dnd.starflung.com/porttax.html)
But one of the things I like best about Bruce's excel file is that it simply calculates that a fixed percentage of the income pays for retainers and hirelings so you do not even have to figure out the pay for every provost, sheriff, forest warden or scribe. And you can calculate extra income from trade, mining activity and plenty of other stuff.
If you want to use it in 3E D&D and you think the numbers are wrong, you can adjust them. It is all very simple.
I recommend it warmly!
:-) Jesper
But one of the easiest, yet major changes we've made, is we increased the value of money - if something costs 10 gp in the rule books, it costs 10 sp in our game. A gold piece buys more and copper is more common. This also creates a more earthy feel barter system for items that now cost less than a copper - use chickens, flour, craft goods, trade goods, etc.
We often have a good laugh when one of my players characters holds out a Karameikian gold Royal and says "Look lads, we could either put this to good use OR feed a peasant family for whole month! Right, lets go shopping!"
Originally posted by Hugin
But one of the easiest, yet major changes we've made, is we increased the value of money - if something costs 10 gp in the rule books, it costs 10 sp in our game.
We did the same in an earlier campaign of mine, substituted all gp prices with sp. Actually, it was the players who suggested that a gold piece should be worth more - it should be a real treasure!
One of my players exclaimed: "I fancy the notion that a secret agent on a mission can carry a king's ransom in his saddlebags!"
The downside, as I saw it, was that all the piles of treasure had to be decreased in size to avoid Monty Hall campaigns. (or we had to change everything to silver, but a pile of golden treasure is a lot more pretty :D ) Ind the end I found it a bit un-epic to find a pile of 5,000 gold pieces instead of 50,000 gold pieces!
:-) Jesper