There's no denying that the D&D economy doesn't make sense. Some things cost way too much, others cost way too little. There's no real way for a normal person to actually make a living in a D&D world - the whole thing's just broken.
Unless, of course, it isn't meant to model a stable economy at all. See, what we have is a situation where some daring folk are willing and able to risk life and limb for fabulous wealth. They require specialised equipment and services, and the influx of treasure provokes immense inflation, coupled with the rise of a whole set of service industries catering to those individuals.
Which is exactly what happens when towns are hit with a Gold Rush.
Throughout the US, there are ghost towns, the remnants of that particular period in their history when gold was found in the region. Suddenly, a once-small town was the site of a sudden influx of prospectors and those who cater to them, all in search of lovely, lovely gold. Inflation ran rampant, the town rapidly swelled (with all the crime and other stuff that that entails). And then, when the gold vanished, the town died a sudden and tragic death.
So, here's an easy way to build a quick and easy, and entirely realistic D&D campaign model:
The 'base area' of the setting is initially a small, largely unremarkable village - preferably the home town for the human members of the adventuring party.
Some weeks before the first session, the area is hit by a contraction of the Mythic Underworld, resulting in a small earth tremor in the region. And some of the local kids (possibly even the PCs), who were out during the tremor, happen to stumble on a revealed cache of gold, now forced to the surface.
And Gold Fever hits. As news gets out, adventurers start to flock to the town, intent on entering the newly-opened gateways to the Mythic Underworld, to face the terrors, and extract the gold. But, of course, travel isn't instantaneous, so...
In the first phase of the campaign, the PC party represent the first adventurers to reach the town. Their starting funds represent what they've managed to scrape together, rather than a bunch of money that they've just bought at "D&D costs". As indicated above, the human PCs are locals, who have been recruited by the slightly-more-experienced (but still 1st level) non-human PCs to round out their party, and to provide local knowledge.
So, they have their first couple of quests. And all is good. Shortly thereafter, though, other adventuring groups start to arrive in town. New businesses shoot up. Inflation runs rampant (establishing the "D&D economy"), and a whole new breed of social problems start appearing - theft and muggings, banditry and lawlessness, and so on.
The second phase of the campaign, then, has the PCs combining some deeper (and more dangerous) delves with them dealing with the various local problems. They have the motivation, since this is their home, after all; they have the resources; and anyway, who else is going to do it.
And then, in the third phase, probably as the PCs hit around 7th level (in 3e, 11th level in 4e, or 9th level in 1st/2nd Ed), one of the rival adventuring parties releases something that was slumbering in the deep. Perhaps an ancient Elemental Evil, or a slumbering lich, or the obvious demon lord, or whatever.
(Even better, build the nearby wilderness as a hex-crawl, build the nearby regions of the Mythic Underworld as a Megadungeon, and run the whole thing as an Open Tabletop, and you've got years of gaming with a minimum of effort. After all, what I've just described is probably far too vanilla to hold the interest of the players as a full-time campaign, since we've all done essentially that dozens of times, but as the game to play when you're not running anything else, it's good.)
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