Worldbuilding Blueprints

4 Ways to Build Richer Economies in Fantasy Worlds

• Marie M. Mullany from Just In Time Worlds • Season 1 • Episode 18

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What if I told you that inflation collapsed the Spanish Empire despite the fact that they used metal coins made of silver and gold? There was no digital currency, no paper notes, and yet inflation brought the entire thing down. It sounds impossible, counterintuitive even, but it happened because resilience in an economy isn't about riches. It is about structure. And sometimes that structure cracks under its own weight.

Today, in this final episode of Season 1, we're going to discuss what that means for your fantasy world and its history. As always, we're going to look at some real-world civilizations that rose or fell based on their ability to adapt, and how you can use those same forces to shape believable and yet dramatic turning points in your fantasy world.

Welcome to the finale of Worldbuilding Blueprints Season 1 with your host, Marie Mullany from Just in Time Worldbuilding.

Before we dive into today's episode, I have an incredible update for you. Worldbuilding Blueprints Volume 1 is live on Kickstarter right now, and we're in the final stretch. There are only 10 days left to back the project before the campaign closes. I'm honestly blown away by the responses to this project. We funded in under four hours and have already unlocked the second stretch goal, which means the book will now include 10 pieces of original fantasy art. Kickstarter has even selected us as a Project We Love, which is incredibly exciting.

This book brings together everything from Season 1 of this podcast. All the theory, all the worksheets, now beautifully revised and laid out. The worksheets have been removed from my Ko-fi store. So, the only way to get them now is either by becoming a channel member or by backing the Kickstarter. You can choose your format: a digital copy, an audiobook, a paperback with black and white interior, or a gorgeous full-color hardcover. Whichever one you pick, you'll also receive a printable pack of all the worksheets in black and white, ready to drop straight into your worldbuilding bible.

If this podcast has helped you shape your world, if it's given you a north star to guide your creativity, I would love for you to be part of this project. The link is in the description. Head over and grab your copy today before the campaign ends.

All right, enough of that. Let's dive into today's episode.

Trade networks in fantasy often get reduced to ships, caravans, portals, maybe a trade route or two, and some bandits attacking a merchant. But honestly, trade isn't just about goods. I mean, yes, trade moves goods and goods are important, but trade is actually about a system of mutual dependencies. The deeper and more sophisticated your world's trade becomes, the more fragile those networks can be.

And nowhere is this more obvious than in the Late Bronze Age Collapse, which happened around 1200 BCE. At this point in our history, trade was civilization.

Let's explore this moment and zoom in to the Eastern Mediterranean world. Egypt thrived on its farming economy, which was built around the annual flooding of the Nile. Mycenaean Greece had built its wealth on trade in olive oil, wine, and textiles. Ugarit, modern-day Ras Shamra in Syria, acted as a coastal hub. It received tin from what is now Afghanistan, copper from Cyprus, and exported weapons and purple dye.

That dye, by the way, was one of the most sought-after commodities in the Bronze Age and became associated with royalty because it was incredibly expensive to produce. The dye was made from murex sea snails found only along specific stretches of the Syrian coast. There's a reason the phrase "born to the purple" exists.

Anyway, the Canaanite cities were rich in gold, lapis lazuli, and papyrus on the Levant. They had access to abundant mineral resources, and their armies were equipped with bronze weapons from the same Syrian regions. Their elite cavalry rode in chariots, and all of that required bronze.

This system of trade functioned because of stable diplomatic alliances. In fact, the world's first known peace treaty—the Treaty of Kadesh—was signed between Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II and the Hittite king Hattusili III.

These kingdoms also had strong palace economies. Centralized monarchies managed much of the manufacturing, farming, and resource distribution. I'm not saying they were all strict command economies, but most had strong command elements. The central authority—whether pharaoh, priest, king, or another ruler—controlled significant portions of the economic output.

They also had standardized weights, shared languages, and accounting systems. We know they spoke each other's languages because we found treaties and correspondence written in multiple languages to ensure clear communication. Altogether, this created a massive trade network.

But around 1175 BCE, it all began to fall apart, and the reason comes down to the destruction of the economic reality around them.

First, there was climate change. A prolonged drought led to starvation, mass migration, and conflict over arable land. Then came a series of earthquakes that destroyed infrastructure, caused chaos, and demanded reinvestments. These events likely contributed to the arrival—or invasion—of the so-called Sea Peoples.

Now, who these Sea Peoples were is still debated. Some historians believe that they were climate refugees migrating because their homelands had become uninhabitable. Others think they were an organized military force. Either way, they destabilized the region further.

With drought, earthquakes, and foreign invasion all hitting at once, the trade routes collapsed. And when the trade routes fell apart, bronze production ground to a halt. No tin and copper meant no bronze, which meant no weapons. No weapons meant no armies, no defense, and ultimately no food security. People turned on the rulers who had failed them. Palaces burned. Writing systems disappeared—some for nearly 300 years.

Society shrank into small, localized economies centered on villages and subsistence living. It was in many ways an apocalyptic economic collapse, and the root cause was a disruption in the trade network that had made civilization possible.
So here's the question for your fantasy world: If you have a rare magical reagent—something essential to your civilization's functioning like tin was to the Bronze Age—what happens if that reagent is disrupted? What if it's found in a couple of mountainous regions, or if production is tied to a specific culture or a specific magical creature, and something happens to that region, creature, or culture?

Does your civilization have any backup plan? Or does it collapse?

And here's where it can get really interesting in your world's history. Maybe there was a time in your setting's past when something like this happened. A civilization-wide dependence on a rare metal or magical element—and then a sudden collapse. Maybe your world used to have a vast, interconnected empire that fell back into isolated village economies. If that's the case—when did it happen? What caused the collapse? And what do people know about it now?

Think about how little we know about the Sea Peoples. Some historians even speculate they weren't a distinct group at all—just a catchall term for multiple migrating cultures, or even a misinterpretation of the historical records. What we do know is that the collapse happened, and eventually, out of that collapse came the Iron Age, which led to the Classical Period and the re-expansion of civilization.

So if there was such a collapse in your world, what happened next? Did something new rise from the ashes? Did a new kind of magic, technology, or political structure emerge? And how did that shape the world going forward?

Okay, so that’s your collapse due to collapsing trade networks.

But it’s not always doom and gloom when it comes to changes. Sometimes a crisis can actually build resilience. And that’s what we’ll talk about next in “Resilience Through Crisis,” where we look at the Black Death.

One of the worst pandemics in human history was, without a doubt, the Black Death. It raged from 1347 to 1351, with periodic flare-ups continuing for years afterward. It had a mortality rate of somewhere between 30 and 60% across Europe. It was devastating. Entire villages were wiped out. In some places, it looked like civilization had just vanished.

But the Black Death didn’t just destroy. It also reshaped Europe in dramatic ways, especially economically. So, let’s talk about what Europe looked like before the Black Plague—and what it looked like after.

Before, Europe was locked into the feudal structure. Land was owned by nobles, and peasants were tied to the land. They couldn’t just pack up and leave. They weren’t quite slaves, but they were serfs. And the line between serfdom and slavery is pretty thin.

I sometimes refer to feudalism as the Ponzi scheme of politics. Think about it: the guy at the top owns everything, and everyone below him funnels a little value upward. Knights owed their lords military service. Lords owed their barons. Barons owed their counts. Counts owed their dukes. And dukes owed their king. And the peasants at the very bottom? Well, they owed everyone.

Even in the cities where some people were tradesmen or freemen, they were still tightly controlled by nobility and aristocratic power structures. Wages were low. Labor was cheap. And while urban economies were growing, cities were precarious—susceptible to war, taxation, and upheaval at a moment’s notice.

Then came the plague.

As I said, entire villages vanished. Fields went untended. Cities emptied. It was a disaster.

But one of the massive side effects of this disaster was that labor became extremely scarce. If you suddenly lose 60% of your workforce, there just isn’t enough manpower to keep things running.

Now, basic economics tells us that when demand is high and supply is low, prices go up. That applies even in a feudal economy. Heck, even in a command economy, this law applies—at least on the black market if nowhere else.

So, after the plague, workers suddenly had bargaining power. Before, peasants had no leverage. Power was held in the armored fist of the nobility, and there was nothing peasants could do. But now a peasant could say: “What if I don’t work your field, my lord? What are you going to do? Push the plow yourself?”

This led to rising wages. Even though governments tried to stop it. In England, they passed the Statute of Labourers in 1351 to freeze wages at pre-plague levels. But economic reality doesn’t care about your legislation. If the demand is high and the supply is low, prices and wages will rise.

Serfs started fleeing their lords and heading to towns in search of better pay. Before, they hadn’t really had any other options. The entire countryside ran on the same system, and fleeing to a city without any money or skills usually just meant starving in a different location. But now towns were desperate for labor. And not only would they pay handsomely, but they’d also protect you from your lord’s claims—because now you were a valuable commodity.

This led to a massive weakening of the feudal bonds. The whole feudal Ponzi scheme started to crack.

At the same time, the guild system began rising. An imperfect replacement, for sure—but still a step forward. I’m not saying it was a good thing replacing a bad thing—more like a slightly less awful thing taking over. Progress, but in painfully slow increments.

These urban guilds gained influence. The old feudal order eroded. And this shift laid the groundwork for the Renaissance, the boom of the European economy, and eventually the Age of Exploration—and yes, unfortunately, the age of colonization. Because, you know, we’re apex predators, and apex predators just can’t have nice things.

Anyway, this shift in class and economic structure happened without a single revolutionary war. Yes, there were wars raging at the time—the Hundred Years’ War being the big one—but they weren’t the thing that reshaped the system. The shift happened because of a massive population crash. 
On a side note, this is why I have no fear of the so-called imminent population collapse that people say is coming due to the so-called fertility crisis. We're a resilient species. Even if these people are right and a population collapse is coming—which is doubtful to my mind—but let's grant it, it will be a very gentle collapse since it's literally just old people dying of natural causes. So, we're not talking war or plague or a refugee crisis or anything like that. And the end result of this population crash is a reduced labor force, which can negotiate better with capital owners.

Show me the downside.

Anyway, let's bring this back to your worldbuilding. Has this kind of population collapse happened in your world? Has there been a massive population downshift? And did that cause the old system to fall apart? And what rose in its place?

And here's a second, slightly more speculative question. What if you have healing magic? What if you've got like a D&D-style magical healing—something that allows priests or mages to prevent or cure plagues? Would a population crash like the Black Death even be possible in that kind of world?

If your society can magically stabilize its population, does that prevent these kinds of revolutionary shifts?

Because here's the thing: feudalism is amazing for the people at the top. For the nobles, the lords, and the kings, it's a fantastic system. Their part of the economy went gangbusters. For the church, it's even better. In fact, the Catholic Church made out like a bandit in Europe during the Middle Ages. Between the nobles and the clergy, most of the power was well claimed in Europe.

In French politics, you had these estates. The First Estate—the clergy. The Second Estate—the nobility. And everyone else was in the Third Estate—the commoners. And this basically just locked commoners out of any kind of power.

Guilds eventually clawed their way into the picture, but that was thanks to the Black Death. Before that, there was really no way up for anyone in the Third Estate.

So, if your world has effective magical healing, do you ever get a Black Death? And if you don't, do you just stay locked in that feudal system forever?

I told you we can't have nice things—at least not without great cost.

Side note: this sort of happened with Russia. Not that they had magical healing, but they never got rid of the feudal system under the Tsars, and they never freed their peasants. And as a result, their economy fell dramatically behind, especially during the Industrial Revolution. And then, as a further result of a lack of reforms, this situation led to the revolution of 1917 and the rise of the Soviet Union.

So watch out for maintained feudalism, kids. It leads to Soviet communism.

Joking. Mostly.

Anyway, it's an interesting thought when you're building your fantasy world. Who survives such a population collapse? Who doesn't? And how does that shape the future of your setting?

Okay, so that was gaining resilience through disaster. Because as awful as the Black Death was, the economy that came after it was far more resilient and far more inclusive.

I mean, personally, I would never want to go back to the feudal period. Let's be real—I’d be a peasant. I'd be tied to the land. I'd be asking a noble for permission to leave the village. And frankly, no thank you. That is not on my list of life goals.

So, yeah. I'm glad we went through the horror of the plague and came out the other side with a system that—while still flawed—no longer let a handful of people own literally everyone else.

And that brings us to our next topic. I opened this episode talking about the collapse of the Spanish Empire. So let’s look at a very different kind of collapse. One caused not by failure—but by overwhelming success.

In 1492, two entire worlds collided. Maize, potatoes, and tomatoes flowed from the Americas to Europe. Horses, cattle, wheat, and freaking smallpox flowed from Europe to the Americas.

One of the most significant effects of this collision—especially for the Spanish Empire—was the silver mines of Potosí. These mines, located in what is today Bolivia, absolutely flooded Spain with wealth.

So what changed for the European economy at this point?

First, Europe's population boomed. Suddenly, the continent was being fed with new high-calorie crops like the potato. Agricultural practices shifted dramatically.

Let’s pause for a second and remember—the potato is not native to Europe. So Samwise Gamgee and his “boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew” might be charming, but the potato only made its way to Europe after 1492. And yet, it became the primary crop of Ireland. It became one of the staple crops in England.

Why? Because potatoes are amazing. You stick them in the ground, they pop out of the dirt, ready to eat. One decent-sized potato is practically a whole meal. They're like a super vegetable.

In addition, fields that couldn’t support wheat could suddenly grow maize. Marginal land could now support high-yield, calorie-dense crops like the potato. This changed the entire agricultural landscape of Europe—especially when you consider how naturally fertile and productive European farmland already was. Tons of water. Rich soils. Moderate climate.

Now you add in American crops—boom. Agricultural output goes through the roof.

And then, on top of that, Spain was importing mountains of silver. Everybody had silver. Everyone had money. There was food in abundance.

Sounds like a golden age, right?

But remember—we cannot have nice things.

Prices skyrocketed. And this time, it wasn’t because of scarcity. It was the opposite. Everybody had money, so demand went up across the board.

This is what we call demand-driven inflation. Spain had no tools for handling this. No central bank. No economic policy to manage inflation. No regulatory mechanisms.

The economy just overheated. Prices went through the roof, and the bulk of the population was priced out of basic goods.

The Spanish Empire collapsed—not because of enemies at the gate—but because of too much wealth and no way to manage it. It was a collapse caused by overwhelming success. 
And I want you to keep in mind—this wasn’t some minor empire. This wasn’t a fringe player. This was Spain at its absolute height. The Spanish crown controlled most of the Americas. Spain was so powerful they literally divided the world between themselves and Portugal with the blessing of the Church. The rest of Europe basically just grumbled and went along with it.

And none of it mattered in the face of their own runaway inflation. Because inflation is a killer.

Success literally killed them.

Well—success and losing the Spanish Armada—but that’s a story for another day.

Now, let’s talk about the other side of the Columbian Exchange.

The effect of colonization on Indigenous economies in the Americas was horrific. Their local systems, based on trade, communal labor, and reciprocal alliances, were dismantled. Entire economic structures were ripped out and replaced with plantation systems designed for exporting goods to Europe. They weren’t farming for themselves anymore. They were farming to feed a global economy they had no control over. They were turned from sovereign regions into dependent exporters.

And that, to be blunt, destroyed the functioning of their local economies and their societies.

So if you’re setting up such a colonial situation in your world, consider carefully what happens to those who are colonized—and the effect on their economies, societies, and cultures.

Okay, let’s bring this back to worldbuilding.

What happens in your world when a new realm is discovered? What happens when a massive influx of something—wealth, magic, materials, food, or labor—hits your existing economic system?

This is fantasy. So, it doesn’t have to be New World crops or silver mines. It could be a portal opening. A trade deal with a newly discovered plane. Or a sudden flood of magical energy.

What happens to your economy?

I’m dealing with this exact question right now in Sangwheel Chronicles, my epic fantasy series. At the end of the first series, there’s a massive change that unleashes a transformative wave through my world. And because my saga continues past that point, I’m having to really dig into the economic and political consequences of that shift.

What’s happening to my labor force? How is wealth redistribution affecting class dynamics? What’s happening with the politics of the empire?

And if you’re curious about that, sign up for my newsletter, because subscribers to my newsletter get a free novella every year in December. And this year, the novella is dealing specifically with some of the consequences of that political and economic shift.

Anyway—so that is the challenge and the opportunity for you in your worldbuilding.

Maybe the change in your setting is happening right now in your story and is part of the fabric of your plot. Or maybe it happened in the past and it caused the collapse of a once-mighty empire. Maybe the current powers in your world rose from the bones of that collapse.

So think about it.

What happens when there is a massive input of wealth, power, or magic?

What happens when the system can’t handle that kind of growth?

All righty. So far, we’ve looked at a lot of historical examples from the distant past. Okay, 1492 isn’t that long ago compared to the Bronze Age. But still, this episode wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t talk about one of the most world-altering forces in economic history—one driven not by crops, not by plague, not by portals, but by technology.

Which means it’s time to talk about the Industrial Revolution.

So: the steam engine, coal, mass textile production, automation—all of these things came together to create the Industrial Revolution. And with it came one of the most profound economic transformations in human history.

One major result was massive urban migration. People left farms and moved to cities seeking work in factories.

But the Industrial Revolution wasn’t just about machines. It was caused by machines, yes—but it was about something deeper. A fundamental change in how economies worked.

Let’s break that down.

Before industrialization, you had weavers, blacksmiths, potters—skilled individuals working in home-based or village industries. These local craftspeople were the backbone of rural economies.

But suddenly, mass production outcompeted them completely.

This is the hard truth of automation. A single pair of jeans requires so much thread that a person would need to spin for a year to make it. After the Industrial Revolution, machines could spin that much thread in a day. Machines could weave. Machines could stitch.

And when one factory could produce what it used to take an entire region of craftspeople to make, local industries collapsed. People lost their work. And so they went to where the work was—to the cities.

Cities ballooned in size while villages hollowed out.

Meanwhile, farming also began to automate. This meant even fewer jobs in rural areas. So you get this double effect—declining farmwork, collapsing cottage industries, and cities filling up with workers.

And of course, as the cities grew and pollution worsened, class tensions exploded.

Everything changed.
Workers stopped being people with skills. They became numbers. Factory owners didn’t care if you were a master weaver. They needed X number of hands to run machines for Y hours a day. Craftsmanship gave way to labor. And the people who owned the capital—who built the factories—became the new economic power class.

And from this we get the rise of the capitalist class.

The capital-owning class replaced the landed nobility as the primary holders of power—economic power, at least. And this is important. By this point, military and economic power had split. The state held military power. The capitalists held economic power.

This division created fertile ground for revolutionary ideas. Marx wrote Das Kapital during this period. The conditions for workers were horrific during this period—unsafe, unregulated, dehumanizing. There was no OSHA. Children as young as 10 worked in factories.

So Marx’s idea was simple: if workers withheld their labor, capital couldn’t function. Power still resided in labor—but now it had to be organized. His vision was for the workers to rise and deny capital their labor, reshaping the system entirely.

Now, here’s where Marx misjudged things a little. What he didn’t fully account for was how reform could change the system without revolution. Over time, states began to regulate capital. They introduced safety standards, labor laws, minimum working ages. Especially after World War II, there was a deliberate push to build a middle class.

And this is key: the middle class is not a naturally occurring societal phenomenon. Left to its own devices, most societies split into a rich elite and a poor underclass. A middle class has to be built and maintained. It takes policy, effort, and long-term investment to keep it going.

But if you do get a middle class, it gives you stability.

And if you don’t, your society polarizes. And when things get bad enough, it collapses or reshuffles violently.

That’s my little side note on political economic theory. And you do not have to agree with me at all—but it’s something to think about.

Anyway, back to worldbuilding.

The Industrial Revolution moved the economy away from craft and toward labor versus capital. That’s the real shift. And this kind of shift can absolutely happen in your fantasy world.

Let’s say magic becomes capable of automating production. Let’s say someone invents a spell that replaces dozens of skilled artisans. What happens to your labor force?

Or maybe technology replaces magic. Maybe previously only mages could shoot explosive spells—and now suddenly anyone with a fire wand can do it.

Do your mages get angry? Do they rebel? Or do they go extinct as a class?

These kinds of labor shifts are economic lightning rods. They fundamentally alter how your world functions.

And if you map these kinds of events that we’ve discussed in this podcast across your world’s history, you will get a deep and believable economic timeline just by tracking your lightning rods and what has happened to your economy because of them.

So let’s summarize the economic lightning rods we’ve covered in this episode:

First, trade collapse caused by climate change, invasion, or instability. 
Second, labor force disruption due to plague, disaster, or population collapse. 
Third, resource flooding due to events such as colonization or opening a portal to a new realm or magical blossoming.
And lastly, technological or magical shifts in the production base which change how labor, power, and production work.

The big takeaway here is this:

Trade isn’t just moving goods across a map. It’s about relationships. It’s about power. It’s about the vulnerability of your society.

And economic resilience isn’t about the strength of your economy. It’s about the flexibility of both your economy and your society. It’s about whether your people, your institutions, and your cultures can adapt when the lightning rods hit—whether they can hold together socially and respond to change or whether they shatter apart into a post-apocalyptic mess.

And when you weave that kind of economic resilience and collapse into your setting, your world feels real. It feels lived in. It feels like it has a past that shaped the present of your story.

And that is the conclusion of Season 1 of Worldbuilding Blueprints.

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. It has been amazing. And as you can no doubt tell, there will be a Season 2.

Backers of the Kickstarter project will get to vote on what I cover next season and on the subject matter of Worldbuilding Blueprints Volume 2. So, if you’d like to help shape the next leg of the journey, head over to Kickstarter and back the project. The poll will go up in the final week of the campaign.

A huge thank you to my channel members for sponsoring this podcast. A special shout out to A. Wellyard, Neil Buckley, Necromancer JM, Epic, Katy KofeMug, Tony LaManna of the Build It in Stone tier, and Patricio, Joaquin Moreira, Jackmeowmeow Meow, Moxain, Nicholas Ammann, Max Dozzo, husoyo, Michelle Fleck, pablo barrios, Glacier Maniac, Carrie, Aya Shameimaru, Tiffiny Felix, Dylan Buttera of the Build It in Wood tier—and also to all of the amazing Just in Timers in the Build It in Straw tier.

Your support makes this podcast possible, and I’m so grateful.

And on that note, I will see you soon for another episode.

Remember—build what you need when you need it.

And happy worldbuilding.

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