I was just wondering if anyone remembered the name of the source Adam had been using to determine inflation effects on town economies in a fantasy setting?
I was wondering more like “how can a drop of a few thousand gold in basicaly one place have that of a severe effect on the entire town … that fast …?”
I think Adam’s source was GM horse shit 
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He said that he had used something he had read as the inspiration for it, I’m interested in finding that thing.
Since several thousand gold would’ve been the equivant of Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders walking into an 1800’s-1900’s gold rush town and dropping several hundred thousand dollars during that time period, it would severely inflate the economy as everyone raised prices to try and collect the money so they could try and improve their own stores so that way when prices went down, they’d have increased stock hopefully.
It isn’t too different from any other video game where you sink money into a town to upgrade it, other than you get to see the market fluctuations that come from the fact the place being upgraded has to affect the supply and demand of the town in order to upgrade and that the upgrade is more “the blacksmith has more supplies” rather than “the blacksmith upgraded to tier II”.
Triple prices in the entire town over night? What could the blacksmith possibly have done to generate that outcome, when the majority of that money should be material cost?
Bear in mind she’s a blacksmith that was currently working on something (ergo she was in business). Being commissioned to make a piece of armor and a half should not be a sudden surprise for a blacksmith.
If they had ordered 10 or more full plate armors, decorated with ornate brass roses and golden spikes on the shoulders… I could understand the type of mad inflation they brought about. But they ordered a piece of armor and a half, and a weapon. In my mind such an order is mediocre at best ~ for a blacksmith who is in business in a town that is buzzing.
You could argue that the special thing about that order was the “get it done faster” part, where they dropped a little extra. But “upgrading to level 2” with an order that should come in every month or so? I doubt that.
Adam wanted to jangle their nerves somehow and drain their income in the process (which a GM needs to do all the time to keep the party grounded). This was a fun way to do it, but also !
P.S.: If they had visited 10 stores and dropped 300-500 gold in each… I could understand that inflation a lot easier 
It wasn’t the blacksmith. Them throwing down a couple thousand gold at the Blacksmith just confirmed everyone’s suspicions that these weird dudes who just walked out of the jungle on their own personal ELEPHANT are stinking rich. The entire town saw it, so the entire town is going to treat them as marks. Everyone else probably gets normal prices.
Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if Grasping Hands had some input on them getting treated poorly across town to try to squeeze out this new game in town. I assume he’s got his feelers in every business in town some way or another.
The inflation is only for them, the dudes flush wish cash.
I interpreted as that as well. The fact the town sees these guys casually dropping a bunch of gold and everyone thinking “well they’re new here, I can say X item is 10x the cost and they’ll have no idea or no problem paying!” means an easy payout for the shopkeeps there.
I imagine Grasping Hands has his…grasping hands in every pocket in town so definitely possible he’s told his contacts about these new folks who seem to have some power/money but aren’t savvy to how things are done around here.
That’s incorrect he said it was inflation from the money spent at the blacksmith.
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Worst. Analogy. Ever.
That would imply some NPC hivemind conspiracy. Not sying it’s impossible, just unlikely. Also why would you want to piss off the rich dudes by over-charging them? JP and crew already said they were going to spend their gold somewhere else because the villagers were being unreasonable with prices.
I’m pretty sure it was Nightmares Underneath
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Ah, well, I didn’t consider their “Prince Ali” entrance to the town… only the money spent.
I can see that.
I feel like it just feel punishing for them to get loot now, or are they getting so much gold that otherwise the prices of things would be trivial?
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The system itself does come from Nightmares Underneath, the free edition of which can be found here.
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it’s not simply economic, it’s reputation. people aren’t charging EACH OTHER triple price, just the PCs because they know the PCs have a shit ton of money.
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