The primary currency in the D&D world is gold. Gold comes from gold mines. People love mining gold. It’s like free money. If gold is constantly being mined, then the money supply is always increasing, so inflation should be rampant. And yet, if you look in the Player’s Handbook, the prices of things are constant. Why is this? There must be some force that is artificially reducing the money supply to combat inflation.
Dragons. Dragons are a vital and necessary part of the D&D economic world. They raid villages and steal their treasure, and then hoard it for themselves back at their lair. Dragons never spend this money, they just love sitting on it, removing it from the money supply. Dragons are the reason that there is no crippling inflation in D&D.
Let’s assume for a moment that this gold somehow re-entered the world’s money supply.
(09:32:23) JakeTwo3: so say, hypothetically, there’s a legion of 20th level dragon slayers
(09:32:49) JakeTwo3: their greed could plummet the economy into depression
(09:33:28) DavTheGook: I mean, they’re gonna slay all these dragons, and find like hundreds of thousands of gold pieces, what are they gonna do? Probably try to buy castles or magical items
(09:33:41) DavTheGook: so the prices of castles are gonna shoot way up due to increased demand
(09:34:00) JakeTwo3: well, they need to construct the castle
(09:34:05) JakeTwo3: so that’ll provide jobs
(09:34:36) DavTheGook: okay, so the price of stone and construction labor will go way up
(09:34:45) DavTheGook: meaning that the lower middle class can’t afford to build new shops
(09:34:55) DavTheGook: stifling growth
(09:35:12) JakeTwo3: ah yes. so thats why reaganomics doesnt work
All that gold coming into the world at once would crash the economy! Sure, they may only spend their money on stone and labor. But then the stonemasons and the laborers are going to want to buy food and clothing, so the prices of those things are going to shoot up… it’s a vicious cycle of inflation. It’s a good thing dragons are so freaking powerful. The well-being of the entire world rests in their ability to keep their treasure from greedy adventurers.