After that brief two
day interlude from the Designing a Planet series now we're back with the
previously planned show. Today we
discuss creating your world's economy and what it is used for and how to make
it (on a basic level, creating an actual economy down to the little details
would suck and probably not be worth your time).
Creating an economy
goes hand in hand with many of the other details that have already been
discussed such as history, powerful factions, and purpose. Economy sets parameters for the style of
people, crimes, and ambitions that everyone has because of their lifestyles and
what the economy allows them to be like.
Of course for the few rich people they in general have the same motives
and characteristics, there just might be more or less of them. I already talked about the nature of crime
based on economy so I can skip that.
What I haven't talked about with economy is how it is where you begin
planning for the future, sort of laying the groundwork for where you want to
take your story or campaign in one direction or another because of all the
potential that is directly connected to the economy. By leaning the economy towards one end of the
spectrum or another you are steering how developments of various elements might
occur, new characters are added to the party/battlefield and what they are
like, certain benefits one side may gain in a campaign from funding or supplies
a party may find in their travels on the planet, this is another element with
nearly unlimited potential.
When creating the
economy you need to keep in mind all those pieces that have already been
mentioned (or don't… you could completely ignore me. But if that’s you're plan why on terra are
you reading this blog?) and the key to the whole thing is the foundation and
where you want to take this. What style
of economy would suit you best? There
are a variety of economies that are obvious with some maybe less obvious ones,
the obvious ones being communism, capitalism, or some mixture in between as
well as the barter system. The not so
obvious economy systems could involve complicated currency forms and conversions
with emphasis on certain items in a sort of barter system based upon the need
of the local industries, the importance of and specifics for any kind of
culture or special religious principles, and problems that a district may be
facing. This special case is, as I
already said, a form of the barter system but what makes it different is that
you set up values that are essentially means or determine the importance of any
actual goods, materials, products, what have you. Remember that fleshing any of your details
out more will never hurt, it will often give further inspiration for more ideas
and can be something that you refer back to and rely upon later on if you feel
like it and are at a dead end - perhaps it will keep you from doing any extra
work later on!
In any case here's a
quick example of all of that. With the
jungle planet it is more communist than anything else because of the rigid
military life style and survivalist, working together attitude that everyone
has that lives there. As a result people
are given credits or so (of an equal amount mostly, determined by their need
and their contributions towards the planet's industries or needs) which is then
spent on food and other items such as promethium for keeping back the
jungle. The economy, because it is so
strictly administrated and watched over is fairly strong but is not booming due
to the lack of profits in much but the black markets where everything is a
barter system so that people can get around the credit system of the
government. This black market mostly
involves illegal goods or just the normal items for much cheaper. Not the worst of black markets, and crime is
not such a problem on the world due to it being fairly prosperous and most
everybody being happy as well as the military keeping the dissent in check by
being such a fascist society (because it is the Imperium of Man). Where I might take this planet from here for
example is that somehow the economy just starts to fall, people revert to crime
more and more, and uprisings and problems begin showing up across the planet as
crime becomes more common and others turn to Chaos because they feel they have
no other way out or they have lost their faith in the God-Emperor. Some of these desperate criminals might join
a party or explain a conscripts squad in an Imperial Guard army in a campaign
or special rule.
So there you have
it. Another post.
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