In-game rp economics

[Ghost]

It's been a while since i've been active in forum rping, but i'm thinking about jumping back in. One thing that's always interested me is in game economics, as in your character starts with some money and can earn more/buy and sell things etc, and I've seen such things done successfully in in-person rp sorts of things (such as D&D) but I don't really have a lot of experience with such things in forum based rps.

I was wondering if anyone here had, and if they'd be willing to share about their experience? Any thoughts about what worked and what didn't in your opinion?

It seems like it'd be a lot of work to manage? But I also think it could be fun, not sure if that's just me though. 

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My members earn 2 coins per post. So when I am setting the price of something, I try to think about it in terms of how much effort it'd be to earn that amount through posts. They have many additional ways to earn money, but thinking about it in terms of posts helps me visualize it.

Another way I wrap my head around it is to always view it as my own money IRL. 100 coins to them is $100 to me. It helps me value every coin. It is so easy to feel like "ugh it's just 5 coins, it doesn't matter unless it's 500 coins," but IRL I am happy to get $5 and $500 makes me ecstatic, not just happy. Keeping it in perspective helps me avoid inflation.

Cuz my first site... I inflated that economy. Oh god, it was so bad. Even $1,000 was unexciting. I wound up with well over $1,000,000 on my admin account. The worth of a coin became utterly meaningless and people who had thousands in their account still felt poor and inadequate compared to others. Newbies felt discouraged because they were so behind the senior members, it felt like they could never catch up and would always be the bottom rung.

So as best you can... avoid inflation. xD

I'll note that I also made it way too easy to earn the super rare and powerful items - also a mistake and another form of inflation.

I'm planning to make a large spreadsheet or some other form of documentation and cross-reference everything that lets you earn money and everything you spend money on, to make sure it all seems fair and adequately difficult in relation to the intended rarity.

I'm still learning how to balance an economy. I suck at it. I'm excited to see if other experienced admins post here about it with more advice!

[Ghost]

Thanks for sharing! That's all great insight.

I definitely think keeping things balanced is going to be hard, maybe thats why in my experience D&D ones have been successful, since theres an existing framework thats been tried and tested. 

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Perhaps you will be able to use that framework to base your rp economy off of?