This is a nice reading. Thank you for taking the time to share it with us.
The funny, very funny thing in retrospect, is that I’m not sure if I’m well placed to answer that. Not only have my previous campaigns been using a magical moving merchand call Xoblub, but in the campaign that I’ve been heading for more than 2 years now, there is no money. They can find shinies, they certainly find items, but their tribe has a magical weapon, armor and item shop that is there to trade away and get rewards from their objectives. And since there is no civilisation to speak of, no money. It’s Barter Town.
Last games, the players actually managed, as they say in John Wick, “an impossible task”. After 4 encounters draining their resources away and no rest, they found a Lich wanting to rob the store from ALL of it. Meaning if they didn’t somehow stopped it, they wouldn’t be able to trade away or get rewards anymore.
They did it. They fucking did it.
There was even a harry potter moment, where a player used a magical item to reverse Power Word Kill on the Lich itself and was saved because of that.
Fucking amazing.
Sorry, I got taken over. But all this to say, like you said, it’s all about what you want in your games and for your players.
Both as a DM and player, I’m into the generous type. I like magical items, and money, and means to buy magical shit. It’s fun. Gold becomes a secondary XP meter that they can orient to a certain point. And if they are more challenging, then you get to use the 7 undead units I got to try in that last adventure.
So, I quite literally have an economy of magical items. And honor. And reputation. Making the numbers and economy behind it VERY fluctuent.
So fluctuent that, you know what their master will give them for saving the magical store and tens of citizens ? Any magical item. Anything. If it were a normal economy and world it might shatter from it, but mine ? Well, I’ll tell you later. I don’t know yet what they will pick :)
But yeah. Once this one is done, I might try a more down to earth campaign with lower starting point. See how it is when it’s more survival-esq.