Equipment Versus Supplies Again

Realized lately that the amount of money that characters start with in classic D&D is kind of obscene. I've attached a screenshot of Fantastic Medieval Campaigns above, which does not account for price variation between the different versions of the game but otherwise illustrates this point. Let's suppose our typical character starts with 100 gold pieces, and they purchase the following starting equipment:

• Backpack (5 gp)
  
• Sword (10 gp)
• Shield (10 gp)
• Shortbow (25 gp)
• Quiver (20 gp)
• Rations (5 gp)
• Waterskin (1 gp)
• Wine (1 gp)
  
• Rope (1 gp)
• Lantern (10 gp)
• Flask of oil (2 gp)
• Pole (1 gp)
• Iron spikes (1 gp)
• Mallet & stakes (3 gp)
• Mirror (5 gp)
  

That's 100 gold pieces, sparing no expense—going out of my way to ball hard and reach that total number. Here's the thing, though: there is a great disparity in costs, especially between "worn" equipment, random adventuring gear, and consumable resources. Since our total is 100, each of the costs listed above also serves as a percentage. Let's split the single-digit costs (each less than 10% of the total) and the double-digit costs (each 10% or more of the total).

Our single-digit costs add up to 25 gold pieces which is 25% of the total; note that we had the option of purchasing iron rations (which persist unlike regular rations) or a silver mirror (which, I think, would allow the user to see if someone is a vampire judging by their reflection or lack thereof).

• Backpack (5 gp)
• Rations (5 gp)
• Waterskin (1 gp)
• Wine (1 gp)
• Rope (1 gp)
• Flask of oil (2 gp)
• Pole (1 gp)
• Iron spikes (1 gp)
  
• Mallet & stakes (3 gp)
• Mirror (5 gp)

Our double-digits cost add up to 75 gold pieces which is 75% of the total.

• Sword (10 gp)
• Shield (10 gp)
• Shortbow (25 gp)
• Quiver (20 gp)
• Lantern (10 gp)

Could I have bought different things? Sure. But some patterns become apparent. First, complex tools (etc.; alternatively, commodities that require what we might call specialized labor to produce) are not only the most expensive items but also the heaviest; except for lanterns, all these items are ones with associated weights which must be tracked to determine the character's encumbrance and speed. Second, items that are cheap tend to be either very simple tools or consumable resources whose costs are basically insignificant, especially as characters grow in experience and accumulate enough treasure to burn; these items also all fall under "miscellaneous equipment" whose weight is not tracked individually, but abstractedly as 8 pounds (or 80 coins). There is no way that a first level party will not start with enough torches to explore a dungeon.

Equipment Costs

I've talked before about how there might be more interesting constraints on resources than cost, but I want to turn around and look at the other side of the equation. Since equipment is the most expensive, couldn't we make it easier to count up what someone starts with? Can't we afford greater simplicity, not to mention more intuitive costs that don't require you to look them up in a book? We've kind of done this with armor, which B/X revised (from OD&D) to cost 10 times its defense bonus. What other shortcuts do we have?

Below are some suggestions. In order to stay basically compatible with D&D economy, all the prices are in the same range as before. They are all also just multiples of 10, which makes things much easier. I also assume certain things, like that a ranged weapon should come with its own quiver or case of ammunition. With that being said, let's say our character still starts with 100 gold pieces. What can they purchase?

Equipment	Cost	Notes
Armor, Light	20 gp	AC 7 [12]
Armor, Medium	40 gp	AC 5 [14]
Armor, Heavy	60 gp	AC 3 [16]
Horse, Light	30 gp
Horse, Medium	40 gp
Horse, Heavy	50 gp
Melee Weapon A	10 gp	1d6 damage, one-handed
Melee Weapon B	10 gp	1d8 damage, two-handed
Melee Weapon C	20 gp	1d8 damage, one-handed
Melee Weapon D	20 gp	1d10 damage, two-handed
Mule	20 gp
Ranged Weapon A	40 gp	1d6 damage
Ranged Weapon B	60 gp	1d8 damage
Shield	10 gp	+1 to AC

Using these costs to purchase the same equipment as before (minus the lantern), we will have spent 60 gold pieces—which is 5 less than we did originally. Now what do we do with the leftover money? We buy more equipment!

Simple tools like crowbars or lanterns can cost 10 gold pieces flat, and we can include other things in that category like mallets or grappling hooks or backpacks—though we’d be better off just saying everyone starts with a backpack, since you’d think that it would be one of the bare necessities.

Toolkits for banditry or makeup or home improvement could cost 20 gold pieces, and could encompass small items that would likely be bought together anyway. I think it was Emmy Verte's 0.6e, now reborn as FLEE, that used to have kits/packs with a limited number of uses. Unfortunately, I don't have that version anymore, so it's lost to my memory (though hopefully not to history lol).

Resources & Boring Supplies

We have options besides penny pinching. Jared Sinclair's 6E introduced gear bubbles, for which you spend 25 gold pieces to refill somewhere from 3-6 slots (standardized to 5 in The Vanilla Game); each "bubble" can be spent to gain one mundane piece of equipment. Ben Milton's Knave 2E standardizes resource costs at 5 gold pieces (or the game's equivalent), or a random cost of 1d10 gold pieces. Emmy Verte's aforementioned FLEE (the current one, not the old 0.6e lost to time) sees characters purchase abstract "supply", and then use supply tokens to create items or replenish how many uses they have by rolling 1d6. I think these are all interesting approaches, but I have minor gripes with each of them. Gear bubbles and supply tokens feel kind of gamey, and random costs feel annoying—especially if the goal is to keep numbers pretty discrete and non-granular.

I'm kind of interested in flipping the script in Knave 2E, taking a cue from FLEE: instead of rolling for cost, why not roll for quantity? Say that you always spend 10 gold pieces, and roll for how many items the vendor will sell in exchange (whether per item type, or in general). I figured out the results for dice from d4 to d12:

Quantity Die	Average Qty.	Virtual Avg. Cost
d4	2.5	5.21 gp
d6	3.5	4.08 gp
d8	4.5	3.40 gp
d10	5.5	2.92 gp
d12	6.5	2.59 gp

We can also associate each die type with different types of settlements: d4 with hamlets, d6 with villages, d8 with towns, d10 with cities, and d12 with metropolises (TIL that the English plural is not "metropoles"?). For example, if you go to a village and spend 10 gold pieces or whatever, you can purchase somewhere from 1 to 6 items (maybe rerolling each visit). This could be done per item type instead of collectively, so maybe 10 gold pieces will get you d6 rations or d6 flasks of oil or d6 tens of feet of rope. Either way, there are weird limitations based on how you define the abstraction's scope. I think that the individual method works best for items that you want to purchase in bulk, but the collective method is quicker and makes it easier to count up what you want to really want (and also means we can include non-supply items).

• Rations (per week)
  
• Flasks of oil (per expedition)
• Rope
• Ammunition (per encounter)
• Caltrops / nails / spikes / whatever the fuck
• Parchment and ink???

This is basically what I suggested in the earlier post about supply, just integrated into a discrete currency system that otherwise works 1:1 with standard D&D currency. You could have an inflation mechanic like in Ava Islam’s Errant where if you spend enough gold pieces, it costs more to purchase additional stuff. But that’s kind of more hardcore and besides the point of this post in particular.

One more thing: I think that if a tool is associated with a supply, it should come with one unit of that supply. This means that each tool is immediately useful, and also creates an understanding that a supply being used is transferred from your inventory to a now-active tool. This means if you’re using the Gamma World ammo rules, you only need to buy extra ammo if you expect you’ll go hard. Otherwise, just don’t worry about it.

Conclusion

So, basically all I’ve done is change all prices to be in multiples of 10 so we can sneakily make currency less granular while being on the same scale as standard D&D. All this amounted to in the case of discrete items, which were already relatively expensive, was rounding up their existing prices. Cheap supply items seem better served, however, by bundling them together while integrating a sort of logistics “game”. Hopefully this makes money less annoying!

I didn’t really cover logistics, but my quick solution: one unit of supplies or whatever just takes up one slot, since it's assumed that one unit is in itself a bundle of smaller things.

One last note: I had the idea that weapons could cost an amount equal to their damage die, since that would approximate their typical costs while not needing to be memorized, but that didn’t make the numbers easier to work with.

Update: Sam Seer of Old School Reviews had a really cool idea of treating the supply dice above as usage dice, so that towns have decreasing quantities of goods as you purchase them!