>We're getting more organized and standardizing things. An
>obvious goal for any economy project is that money has to be
>coveted/meaningful, but it also has to reflect the value of
>what it is exchanged for. Sometimes this makes things easier
> price comes down), sometimes it makes it harder (price goes
>up). People bitch about the latter, and tend to conveniently
>forget about the former.

What about the concept of supply and demand? Given, shoppies are only going to accept one or two or three types of items, but what if a weaponsmith shoppie's just getting swords, for instance, and can't move 'em because there's a glut in supply? If merchants actually did some degree of business outside the game's mechanics of PCs buying and selling stuff, perhaps this would make it even easier to generate the concept of a "real-time" economy regardless of whether the PCs are purchasing from that shoppie or not.

An example, then:

Thorne's selling tons and tons of swords to the jaettes because he's not making too many of his own. Thus, he's requiring swords to buy. However, Thorne is a master axesmith, and therefore makes a whole lot of axes. Business hasn't been good lately for the axes so he's not buying any other types of axes.

I'm sure variations could arise from this, but that's the basic idea.