The Campaign: The Hidden Economic Aspect To Successful Play

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition is known for the rules where the Gold Piece value of treasure translates directly into Experience Point awards for the character that recovered it.

Gold Pieces: Convert all metal and gems and jewelry to a total value in gold pieces. If the relative value of the monster(s) or guardian device fought equals or exceeds that of the party which took the treature, experience is awarded on a 1 for 1 basis. (...) Treasure must be physically taken out of the dungeon or lair and turned into a transportable medium or stored in the player's stronghold to be counted for experience points. (Dungeon Master's Guide, pg. 84)

This is one of the biggest drivers for player behavior to focus upon actions that lead to a profitable return on the time and material spent in action. It is not the only one; Training is another, with DMG pg. 86 spelling out the formula for calculating those costs- costs measured in thousands of Gold Pieces.

But there is another, one that a lot of naysayers miss: ongoing upkeep costs.

Page 25 of the DMG details the rules and procedures to account for and enforce upkeep costs for player-characters in the campaign.

Each player character will automatically expend not less than 100 gold pieces per level of experience per month. This is simply support, upkeep, equipment, and entertainment expense. These costs are to be deducted by the Dungeon Master automatically, and any further spending by the PC is to be added to these costs.

Stronghold maintenance is 1% of the total cost per month, and Henchmen cost 100gp/level/month. This is part of those "additional costs".

There is more than just the promise of power or glory to spur adventuring- there's the need to pay the bills. This forces changes in behavior.

The successful character, regardless of Race, Class, Alignment, or Level, is the character that focuses his actions on those that are most likely to prove profitable- how this is done, and what comes of it, will show the virtue of the victorious (and show how to secure the peace after the fact).

Now we have a serious economic element to proper play. It's not as simple as "Back up the wagon full of gold, hire an army, and pay to win." Every gold piece spent on hirelings, on Henchmen, on gear, on spell research, on item creation, on strongholds, on training, etc. must be considered an investment AND INVESTMENTS DEMAND RETURNS!

It is not enough to become proficient at assessing the difficulty of the objectives before you against the resources at your disposal. You must also learn how to discern which of your options promises the greatest return on investment, which means learning how to assess risks well before sitting at the table and estimating profit vs. loss before you sortie and then running down actual profit and loss upon return.

The goal, of course, is to make enough of a profit to (a) pay the maintenance costs and (b) finance further character advancement (i.e. Training, Research, Creation, Expansion)- just like any other enterprise. As your man levels up, he has to expand the scale and scope of operations to meet the increased demands upon him. No wonder so many high-level characters get into the Domain Game; once established, you can set up passive income streams to offset the need to bust open another dragon hoard (or wage war upon others to loot their treasuries).

This, by itself, is guaranteed to drive conflict in a campaign and conflict generates gameplay. Combine it with all the other things that generate conflict, and you have--built into the rules--the fulfillment of the design goals Gary set out to satisfy. The implications are fantastic, and also answers a few questions along the way.

This is brilliant game design. Absolutely brilliant. Anyone that can't see the value is this shouldn't be in this hobby anyway. So many other games are starting to pale by comparison to this.