@TheEdVerse I've been wondering, is there any kind of established sense of economics beyond basic markets and etc in the Forgotten Realms? Like are aristocrats in Waterdeep investing in stocks and futures?
— World's Okayest DM (@ThirstinDurstin) August 11, 2021
1)
“Advanced” economics in the Realms is a matter of those in power arranging shortages (and so, high prices) and exploiting them with ready goods to make increased profits. Aristocrats and other wealthy “players” invest in urban real estate, mines, and sponsor…
#Realmslore 2)
…shipping voyages in return for rents or a percentage of the take. The ruthless engineer wars and/or sponsor brigands and border skirmishes to hurt rivals and manipulate demands and prices.
Stocks and futures are fictions our world came up with so people who…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 11, 2021
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…lack funds to do what they want to do can call on the funds of others. This isn’t a direction the Realms has yet taken, with one exception: temples of Chauntea and temples of Waukeen have offered the equivalent of crop insurance/voyage insurance: you buy a… 4)
…"blessing" from them, and if things go wrong, can redeem it for a set (higher than your purchase price, which is styled as an "offering" to the deity) monetary amount, and so avoid disaster. Many large temples of other deities are now quietly offering similar…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 11, 2021
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…services, quietly, to “friends of the temple” faithful. For instance, merchants who’ve often made offerings to a temple or worked with the clergy of that temple. If, however, you tried to offer “futures” in the Realms, most clerics would regard it as a scam, … 6)
…as "not even the gods can see the future" and blasphemous to boot (you're trying to offer something that is rightly within the purview of the gods and anointed holy servants) and would loudly say so. Whereas "voyage insurance" is something that in the Realms…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 11, 2021
7)
…accepted as normal and prudent if one can afford it. No one publicly trades stocks on an exchange, but many offer “shares” of business enterprises to investors (city guilds handle shares for smallholders rather than “a cabal of cronies”). Are there any other type of insurances in the Realms? I was talking with one of my players and they were asking if money lenders that do keepsafe (keepsafeing?) offer insurance. They also found it ridiculous that you had to pay them to hold your money.— Alex McClay (@AlexMcclay2000) August 11, 2021
Has your player never used a bank? And paid bank fees? It may be ridiculous to pay someone to hold your money, but it's the way more than one world works. ;}
There are many godsfrown shields (insurance) available in the Realms, usually from temples + big guilds.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 12, 2021