Whilst the economic game is often a huge part of fest LARPs, so much so that Profound Decisions own Empire system has incorporated it as a distinct ‘section’ of the game, it is a much more difficult thing to apply to smaller systems.
Small player numbers generally means a low IC cash threshold. Unless specifically plotted in, the players are unlikely to come across large sums of cash at all – and if there are IC items for sale then they will be priced accordingly. Either items are low cost to go with low cash levels, or high cost to go with high cash levels – so devaluing the currency.
These items, then are usually of low importance – arbitrary items with little relevance to the plot or mechanics. Important items would necessarily cost more, and therefore out of reach to the players, or ignored in favour of more immediately helpful things.
When big cash sums are granted to players in otherwise low-cash systems, it is usually in relation to a big-value item that are not necessarily directly accessible IC; means of transport during the down-time, guarantees of survival and so on. The in-game economy stays balanced as big cash pools are immediately sunk into the big cash prize.
Small items, then, are most likely arbitrary in nature. Food, drink, trinkets and other knickknacks. Players will most likely pay what they think is fair (“What is that in relation to a pint?”) and the economy flows relatively naturally. Accompanied by mundane but important items – bullets or bandages – and there are economic targets to work towards.
Items like these, and the currency used to buy them, are more like a form of set dressing. They add to the immersion of the setting rather than trying to shoehorn in an economic game on-top of the existing plotlines.
Obviously, never expect the players to buy into all this. Hoarding is second nature to both dragons and LARPers.
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So, by default, you’re right (though I think all game economies are largely arbitrary anyway). However, we put a lot of thought into this for Insurrection (40-50 players, 11 event campaign, 2008-2014). We realised that the way to get a functioning in-game economy was firstly to make sure that every single item with a meaningful in-game existence needed to be purchased IC (which, we decided, meant lammying all the things), and secondly to give the PCs the freedom to mess about with pricing.
So we had one faction who were the traders. We gave them a spreadsheet of “cost prices” for things (calculated using the price of labour – slavery was a key factor in the system so this was actually just the price of food – and our crafting rules) and their stock levels (in later events this was adjusted to reflect what sold and what didn’t). They made a profit by buying stuff off other PCs for less than cost price, and selling it to other players for more than cost price.
The economy was anything but arbitrary at that point, and the currency became critically important (as did looting). I wouldn’t do it again, partly because I’ve already done it, and partly because it was incredibly lammy-intensive and I am done with that*, but it absolutely did what we wanted it to do.
*: on that scale. I still think some lammies are useful, especially show-me lammies.
At the risk of sounding critical, the result was that new characters either had to sell off their family land in order to buy potions and basic equipment (which were then used up by consumption or degradation), or for those lacking said land just start play without basic equipment. And that’s assuming the shop actually had the things needed, which it didn’t always. If that’s what you wanted… great? But from my perspective it was counter-immersive (my faction had no supplies and there are literally no other shops in the world), a waste of my OOC time as I made kit I couldn’t use, and really bad for my planning because I had no idea pre-event whether I’d have a functional character or not.
The result is that if I found another event that ran like that, I just wouldn’t go to it.
I’m pretty comfortable with criticism on this stuff, there’s a lot I’ve learnt from Insurrection.
Certainly the game rewarded specialisation – there was a faction whose whole thing was trade, and they certainly seemed to do very well out of it when they engaged with it. And that reinforced one of the key themes of the game, so it served double duty. The PCs were largely terrorists/insurgents/freedom fighters and thus were cut off from the majority of legal distribution channels (so you mainly traded with other PCs).
I don’t doubt that we could more clearly have badged the pitfalls to attempting to engage with the macroeconomic game from outside that faction, or to doing so without the Economics skill which improved your prices if you traded with NPCs in downtime. And I don’t think I’d want to run a game in that particular way again.
Of note, however, is that it wasn’t _family_ land in terms of how it was sourced – it was an allocation from the Commonwealth Government (the “CWE” before the four-letter location code stood for “Commonwealth Endowment”, IIRC) given to people who’d spent the requisite XP on Rank (or gotten it free for being an elf).