Believable Trade Without the Spreadsheet
Codex Cryptica for TTRPG Economy & Trade
Build believable prices, trade, scarcity, wealth, and economic pressures without simulating an entire economy.
Why campaigns get complicated
Economies in most campaigns fail in one of two directions: everything costs the same everywhere and nothing can run short, or the game master keeps a price spreadsheet no player will ever check. Neither produces play. What produces play is dependence: one town needs what only another can supply, moving it costs something, someone takes a share, and the whole arrangement is one blocked pass away from trouble.
Why Codex Cryptica?
Prices That Mean Something
Trace what each region produces, how goods move, who takes a share, and what strains the arrangement, so a changed price always tells a story.
Settlements With a Trade Identity
Derive what a town makes, what it must import, and what it can export from its land, people, tools, and neighbours rather than picking goods at will.
Routes That Enrich and Endanger
Place toll towns, garrisons, and rivalries where goods must pass a narrow point, and know exactly who loses if the flow stops.
Shortages the Table Can Feel
Run scarcity through rationing, hoarding, substitutes, and competing claims, so a missing good arrives as behaviour before it arrives as arithmetic.
Pressures That Become Hooks
Turn every strain into an open situation with winners, losers, a single prize, and at least two doors the party can walk through.
Where the Iron Goes
One mountain town's export, and everyone with a hand on it: the buyer downriver, the guild at the narrows, the pass that could close, and the grain debt that must be fed.
Featured Tools
Settlement Generator
Give each trading town its surroundings, people, and tensions, then fill in the trade ledger.
Faction Generator
Create the guilds, houses, and crews that tax exchange and squeeze dependencies.
World Generator
Lay out regions, resources, and neighbours so every import has somewhere to come from.
Rumour Generator
Carry news of missed deliveries, closed passes, and price disputes between towns.
How Do I Build a Believable Economy for a Fantasy World?
AnswerThe six-link framework the whole cluster stands on: resources, production, exchange, control, pressure, consequences.
What Does a Settlement Produce, Import, and Export?
AnswerA six-step method for deriving a town's trade ledger from its land, hands, tools, and neighbours.
How Do Trade Routes Shape Cities and Kingdoms?
AnswerFive map-placing questions that turn a drawn route into toll towns, garrisons, and rivalries.
How Do Scarcity and Shortages Affect Prices and Conflict?
AnswerRun shortages through behaviour and competing claims rather than price maths.
How Do I Turn Economic Pressures into Adventure Hooks?
AnswerConvert any strain into an open situation with winners, losers, a prize, and two doors in.
Run an Economy That Pushes Back
Connect your towns, factions, routes, and shortages in one place, so every price tells the truth about your world.
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