Fantasy Economics: Beyond Gold Pieces
Your world is full of dragons, wonder, and ancient magic. So why does its economy run on "I guess 10 gold sounds right..."?
Most fantasy money is just a prop: it sits in bags, in price lists, and it can’t buy anything besides better armor or weapons. But in our own history, the golden coin shaped history and determined who was the ruler, and who was doomed.
Fantasy Economics: Beyond Gold Pieces puts that power in your hands: price any item in 30 seconds, design a currency in ten minutes, build an entire economy from a one-page worksheet — and describe markets so alive your audience can hear and smell them.
What you'll be able to do
- Answer any "how much?" instantly — the Three-Modifier Rule, anchor prices, and regional price matrices replace guesswork
- Answer the magic question — if magic is real, why is the world still medieval? A full framework for low-, middle-, and high-magic economies
- Write scenes that breathe — the marketplace hour by hour, its sounds, smells and crowds, price as characterisation instead of infodump
- Build merchants people remember — how a trader dresses, signs, lies, what keeps him awake, and the four registers of his speech
- Turn ledgers into drama — economic plots that need no villain: debts, dowries, inheritances, crashes, and the eight story shapes money makes
- Run trade at the table — a ready 10-session trading campaign, market generators, 20+ reference tables, drop-in merchant NPCs
- Go beyond the market — 8 fully-built alternative economies (gift, tribute, magical welfare, post-scarcity…), each with its own story engine
For worldbuilders, fiction writers, and game masters. Theory in Part I, applied craft in Part II — and every chapter ends with something you can use tonight.
New in the Second Edition
Nearly twice the chapters, more than triple the pages. Six brand-new chapters — including The Economics of Magic and the alternative-economies system — plus original interior illustrations, real economist epigraphs, and a full two-part restructure.
Written, argued over, and illustrated the old way — by people.
Built for Your World
Explore a curated selection of digital books, token frames, and tools made to fit effortlessly into any 5e campaign. Whether you’re building lore, prepping sessions, or customizing encounters, everything here is designed to save you time and spark creativity—so you can focus on what matters: telling great stories at the table.
