I don't think banks or loans would be a thing for a medieval society, unless you were noble, maybe when a character gets to name level and wants to build that stronghold, and there may also be usury for established religions that forbids it anyway.
In the absence of banks there is only one place to get large sums of cash from someone willing to negotiate for suitable interest rates - perhaps that dragon under the mountain!
In Basic edition, you didn't get xp for magic items and you could not really buy or sell them, although there were rules about pricing magic items in Rules Cyclopaedia, they were seen as a way of helping characters gain future xp rather than treasure.
As regards too many magic items, not an issue in Basic with it's high fatality rate, as possessions would normally perish along with the deceased, in my experience any excess weapons would be stored and given to new characters (of which there were many) to jump start them in adventuring.
glad you enjoyed it. Yeah I found the idea of a loans a tad weird of a subject to cover, but I guess it came up in Gary's game at some point? who knows. I never once had a character ask for a loan, or even ask for one myself when I was playing a character. I COULD SEE it being a thing as a campaign starting points.. maybe the story starts you in a little farm town, and things got bad, your family took a loan out to help save the farm and now they can't pay it so you decide to go out adventuring to help get some coin to pay the loan.
A great deep dive into this subject.
I don't think banks or loans would be a thing for a medieval society, unless you were noble, maybe when a character gets to name level and wants to build that stronghold, and there may also be usury for established religions that forbids it anyway.
In the absence of banks there is only one place to get large sums of cash from someone willing to negotiate for suitable interest rates - perhaps that dragon under the mountain!
In Basic edition, you didn't get xp for magic items and you could not really buy or sell them, although there were rules about pricing magic items in Rules Cyclopaedia, they were seen as a way of helping characters gain future xp rather than treasure.
As regards too many magic items, not an issue in Basic with it's high fatality rate, as possessions would normally perish along with the deceased, in my experience any excess weapons would be stored and given to new characters (of which there were many) to jump start them in adventuring.
glad you enjoyed it. Yeah I found the idea of a loans a tad weird of a subject to cover, but I guess it came up in Gary's game at some point? who knows. I never once had a character ask for a loan, or even ask for one myself when I was playing a character. I COULD SEE it being a thing as a campaign starting points.. maybe the story starts you in a little farm town, and things got bad, your family took a loan out to help save the farm and now they can't pay it so you decide to go out adventuring to help get some coin to pay the loan.