Inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods. Based on anecdotal evidence, I believe inflation to be a problem on the POTM server:
* Players who are more knowledgeable than I have told me that money is worthless.
* Players who are more experienced than I are free and easy with their money, paying me sums carelessly that it would take me as an inexperienced player a long time to accumulate.
* I've attended several auction-type events and been astounded by the fang offered for relatively low-powered items.
* Herbs, which I know something about, seem as raw materials excessively valued compared to the finished goods produced from them (potions).
* I can look through older posts and see that many items cost much more than they once did. For example, the Ring of the Hierophant is currently being sought at a price of 150,000 fang. Only two months ago, someone offered 50,000, and in March someone offered 20,000.
Also from reading many forum threads, I see that the Powers That Be do not think such inflation is a good thing and would prefer it not occur. Therefore, this post looks at what might be the cause of the hyper-inflation and what changes could arrest it.
Given the cause of inflation, the two ways to fix it are by increasing the supply of desired goods or decreasing the supply of money. Some factors on this server that affect each:
1) Crafting: Consumes money and increases the supply of goods. Thus, encouraging more crafting would reduce inflation.
2) Adventuring: Increases the supply of goods *and* of money. But undesirable items in loot also increase money supply rather than consumer goods, as these are sold off to NPC merchants, and no PC wants to buy them. Removing unusable or seldom-retained loot items, devaluing them, or decreasing their frequency would also, therefore, decrease inflationary pressure. Second, reduce the markup NPC merchants make so that PCs have increased incentive to buy these goods. Otherwise, server resets destroy them so they are no longer purchasable, but the money they were sold for is retained by PCs...again leading to inflation. Items that accumulate in Petre's inventory unsold, furs, rat corpses, transit jobs, bounties...all produce fang but nothing any PC wants to--or can--buy.
However, many of these are necessary for newbies to get started, so see number 4.
3) Death: Making death more expensive would help decrease the money supply, but high level people are also more likely to be able to avoid paying for death via PC resurrection and more likely to avoid it in the first place. So this is a regressive remedy unless tweaked (such as, 100 fang per 1,000 XP accumulated, rather than 100 fang per level).
4) Finally, I believe the small-level economies around Vallaki are distorted by few barriers to economic trade with high-level areas. Gary Gygax said that adventuring areas were like Gold Rush towns, which also had hyper-inflation, and this is compounded when high-level people transport large sums or valuable items into areas where wealth should be scarce. One idea to reduce this distortion is to have a tariff system in place on the Vistani wagons such that a character carrying goods or fang of great value into a realm must pay more money to use the caravans (pass through customs) than a "tourist" character who is just seeing the sights in the new realm.
In any case, any remedy for the devaluing of the Fang ought to put most of its burden on those most able to pay, rather than making life more economically difficult for beginning characters. Without new characters, the server will inevitably wither.
Thoughts and comments welcome.
