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This is a huge topic and one I probably shouldn’t be broaching in a short blog piece, but in the midst of some crazy days dealing with my day job it’s been nice to just come home and bleed my brain into a video game, absorbing someone else’s world building rather than having to dwell upon my own. You might recognize the above screenshot as coming from Baldur’s Gate 3, which recently released… and of course here I was somehow stumbling across a zombie reference — not just any zombie reference but a dude trying to sell one and a potential customer being confused what to look for in terms of zombie value.
The above is out of context enough it shouldn’t be any sort of spoiler, and yet I felt it a good example for discussion. Behold fantasy economics, where writers do their best to either handwave or make educated guesses at the worth of goods and services that have no real-world equivalents. The Dungeons & Dragons setting of Forgotten Realms which BG3 utilizes not only has this particular bit of practical necromancy but all sorts of other magic including the actual raising of the dead back to life, prompting the question: “What is the worth of a single mortal’s life?”
No really, that question gets asked in-game, and you can give various answers to it but in the end it’s basically “it depends.” Most people in the game that are killed stay dead. In D&D this is usually waved off as resurrection magic being expensive so that it’s out of the price range of the common rank-and-file. Same for magical curing of ailments and diseases. If we trot on over to Zombie Ranch for a moment I have a similar conceit going on where the cure for cancer exists but not everyone can afford it, including (ironically) most of the Ranchers bringing the raw materials necessary to market, the way a Forgotten Realms herb merchant might deliver their wares to an alchemist shop’s back door but can’t really afford the miracle elixirs being brewed and offered in the front. It’s all still a matter of supply, demand, and circumstance in the end.
Well, except for one thing, which might have made an even better topic for discussion here, and that would be something I could call Narrative Economics. Probably someone smarter than me has essayed about this already and called it something else, but here I’m just thinking how bottom line, having everyone just able to come back to life really screws with stories requiring dramatic deaths. Like *boop*, hey there’s Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru back, good as new, no need for Luke to go haring off into space with that weird hermit. A supply and demand of death. If a mortal life has infinite or near infinite supply, wouldn’t it become nearly worthless in the balance?
That last discussion is probably worthy of a whole book chapter of dialog from Plato and Socrates, but I think for writers the answer is much simpler which is that you either have to come up with some reason your characters can’t just call the healer for the sick grandma or ignore the fact Cure Disease exists and hope none of your audience really cares. At least you get to be the arbiter of your own question. Welcome to Team Paranoid, Oscar! Spoiler alert: they really are out to getcha!