Quote from: jibbajibba;634730The D&D economy is broken the starting money for PCs is equally broken and so are mercenary wages.

Ah. Circular logic. Nice.

Quote from: jibbajibba;634730in 1346 an english bowman earned 3d a day - ie 3 copper in British curreny 12 copper pennies to a silver schilling - 20 schillings to a pound  (240cp = 20sp = 1gp)  = 91sp per year
A knight with his horse and armour charged 4 schillings  = 73gp

Yes but everyone supplemented their incomes with looting, ransoming and pillaging.

Quote from: The Traveller;634743Yes but everyone supplemented their incomes with looting, ransoming and pillaging.

possibly but as the wage referenced from the DMG to get 36gp a year only assumed hireling rates per day its kind of moot ...

Quote from: Justin Alexander;634741Ah. Circular logic. Nice.

Just pointing out that saying an adventurer needs 3 times the average annual wage to start adventuring is only valid if you accept the price guide in the PHB and the wage guide in the DMG have any bearing to either a reality or each other which they don't.

As you can see from the historical price list I referenced a man at arms could actually buy a sword for a weeks wages not 6 months (1e D&D longsword is 15gp if I recall) so the extrapolation you made is moot.

Not circular logic just logical logic.....

OK, for clarity, I actually tabulate room and board into debit/credit social framework with "wage" being the discretionary income above and beyond room and board net average. So, for example, the wage one is paid to be on retainer does not count the additional wealth going into keeping them alive.

i.e. An irregular footman of 1GP/mo. might cost an additional 19GP/mo. r&b. Someone pays that; socially he needs to belong somewhere. He is essentially credited land use/herd/housing/etc. in exchange for service with a retainable 'wage' largess of 1GP/mo. after taxes/obligation/fealty/etc., or some other setting appropriate analogous method. Given that people can then leverage/free agent/etc. themselves accordingly, thus explaining starting funds, training costs and other such things.

It's just players are assumed to not want to role play all those gritty details to know exactly where there GP is coming from or how training is grinded out.

That said, I now want to run a game where players' starting GP is actually leveraged with interest. Which it does not have to be exactly interest as we know it per se, but represented as expected return on favors, future boons, obliged gifts, etc. It may suck to have your PC called to stop adventuring and instead go home to crush a silly goblin lair so as to reimburse your neighbors the cost of your first sword, but it'd make for a great player choice.

Quote from: jibbajibba;634730But you are equating 2 things that don't equate

The D&D economy is broken the starting money for PCs is equally broken and so are mercenary wages.

So your point is somewhat moot.

You can either struggle to make a 'medieval' economy, factoring in the effect of magic and the economic impact of adventurers.

Or you can try to roughly mirror a modern ecomony, based on the premise that at least its real and all your players are familiar with it.

I prefer the later becuase its easier.

A real medieval economy - http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medprice.htm

in 1346 an english bowman earned 3d a day - ie 3 copper in British curreny 12 copper pennies to a silver schilling - 20 schillings to a pound  (240cp = 20sp = 1gp)  = 91sp per year
A knight with his horse and armour charged 4 schillings  = 73gp


However unlike the price lists in D&D which are at best bollocks and at worst used to limit power (An Enlish bowman would make his own bow and arrows and would not pay 60gp for a longbow) can be ignored.

Examples

Wine - best Gascon Red in London - 4pence a Gallon
Masons tool  - 3 pence
Spinning wheel - 10 pence
War Horse - UPTO 80 pounds - typical knights warhorse 10 pounds
draught horse - 10 - 20 schillings
To build a stone gate house - 30 pounds

Suit of Chainmail 100 schillings
Plate armour c 9 pounds
Cheap sword - 6 pence

You can look on the list for more detail

So to kit a guy to adventure would not cost 3 years salary ...probably

My point is that the Pcs are familiar with prices today. Why break the role play and make everyone have to reference a list and compare to average earnings to work out prices. Easier just to say 1USD = 1cp (or 1 sp it matters not) and work out all your prices in modern terms.

In which case an adventurere would need to spend about $2000 to get a mail shirt, a decect Axe, tools, helmet, backpack, rolpe etc etc ...
Basing your economy on a modern day one is just far easier because it stays out of the way and all the players get it immediately.

I think my issue here is the fundamantal duality you start with.
"You can either struggle to make a 'medieval' economy, factoring in the effect of magic and the economic impact of adventurers.

Or you can try to roughly mirror a modern ecomony, based on the premise that at least its real and all your players are familiar with it. "

Thre are many, many other places to start from, in terms of setting design, ain terms of the affects of magic on society, availability of resources and political, cultural and social factors.  

Fundamentally, your goal is to create an economy that is setting-consistent, so that it makes sense within itself, and one that stands up to long-term use and allows for the accrual of wealth that comes from  longer term play.  Making it model well from any historical basis actually is a negative for me unless your setting is that historical time and geography you are modeling.

Rob mentions Harn, and I think it a good example for this reason.
My PCs in the Igbarians know all the taxes in Igbar, and I consider this a good thing, and even with that decade-long campaign, no one is closed to really stockpiling money.

Quote from: LordVreeg;634775I think my issue here is the fundamantal duality you start with.
"You can either struggle to make a 'medieval' economy, factoring in the effect of magic and the economic impact of adventurers.

Or you can try to roughly mirror a modern ecomony, based on the premise that at least its real and all your players are familiar with it. "

Thre are many, many other places to start from, in terms of setting design, ain terms of the affects of magic on society, availability of resources and political, cultural and social factors.  

Fundamentally, your goal is to create an economy that is setting-consistent, so that it makes sense within itself, and one that stands up to long-term use and allows for the accrual of wealth that comes from  longer term play.  Making it model well from any historical basis actually is a negative for me unless your setting is that historical time and geography you are modeling.

Rob mentions Harn, and I think it a good example for this reason.
My PCs in the Igbarians know all the taxes in Igbar, and I consider this a good thing, and even with that decade-long campaign, no one is closed to really stockpiling money.

I agree with you but ... the problem you hit is that knowledge of the economy which PCs would have by default the players have to acquire.
In your setting which you have been playing for 20 + years that's fine.
If you want a shorthand way then saying "1 silver piece is worth about a dollar at today's prices" and suddenly all the players who have been in your setting for 20 minutes not 20 years know that when a guy says that mug of vinigary wine is 60 sp please they know he is taking the piss, when the dark wizard says "I  will pay you 10,000 silver to fetch me the giant's head and anything you find you can keep apart from an old lamp...." they can immediatey relate that to their experience and so they can make a decision based on knowledge.

To most of us the economy is transparent. We know how much stuff costs, we don't know what macro economic factors lead to an increase of 56% in the prices of maize. Most of the PCs would be in a similar position.
If you do IT for example you know that a training course to learn Oracle 11g system tuning will last 5 days and cost about $4,000 that is a great extrapolation for PC training in esoteric skills.
Etc etc.
If you build a unique economy then the game starts to feel like a Cudgle the Clever adventure, nothing wrong with that, but the economy becomes a character in the game. This works when the PCs arrive in a new place but if they are locals its much trickier.

Quote from: jibbajibba;634785I agree with you but ... the problem you hit is that knowledge of the economy which PCs would have by default the players have to acquire.
In your setting which you have been playing for 20 + years that's fine.
If you want a shorthand way then saying "1 silver piece is worth about a dollar at today's prices" and suddenly all the players who have been in your setting for 20 minutes not 20 years know that when a guy says that mug of vinigary wine is 60 sp please they know he is taking the piss, when the dark wizard says "I  will pay you 10,000 silver to fetch me the giant's head and anything you find you can keep apart from an old lamp...." they can immediatey relate that to their experience and so they can make a decision based on knowledge.

To most of us the economy is transparent. We know how much stuff costs, we don't know what macro economic factors lead to an increase of 56% in the prices of maize. Most of the PCs would be in a similar position.
If you do IT for example you know that a training course to learn Oracle 11g system tuning will last 5 days and cost about $4,000 that is a great extrapolation for PC training in esoteric skills.
Etc etc.
If you build a unique economy then the game starts to feel like a Cudgle the Clever adventure, nothing wrong with that, but the economy becomes a character in the game. This works when the PCs arrive in a new place but if they are locals its much trickier.

You just have to give them the right data...
http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/14956687/what%20money%20can%20buy
http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/44074324/More%20on%20the%20Economy%20of%20the%20Cradle
http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/14955581/General%20Costing%20of%20Spells
http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/14955580/General%20Costing%20of%20Skill%20Kits
http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/14956537/Transport%20in%20Celtricia


But to your point in relatating to players, I agree that having this stuff in front of them early helps them relate.

"The Scarlet Pilum's Militia pay their beginning recruits 13 silver children a day, and a buck seargent makes 3-5 Goodwives a day.   Remember that the military houses and feeds these people, as well.  There is no tax on income in Trabler or the Grey March, so I always use a rule of thumb for income only think of an electrum as being 50 american dollars. It's 6.25 per hour in todays world (literally.  50 dollars a day, *5 days, *52 weeks is 13k per year. 250 for a week/40 hours is 6.25).  It is also very important that the normal Celtrician Work week is 5.5 days in town of the 8 day hawaak, though that is for the upper working class.  Business owners and blue collar workers put in 7 out of 8 days (reserving Fastak only), and the truly poor of course work everyday.

So the most common coin in the central Cradle are is the electrum goodwife, followed by the silver Child, followed by the Gold Horn, followed by the copper Strip. Bars, restaurants, and most normal businesses use Electrum Goodwives and Silver Children almost exclusively.  Northern use the Orbic or Marcher coinage more often.  Though I still price things in my head automatically in gold, I have gotten better at responding to all price inquiries in terms of Goodwives, when they are speaking to a merchant. After once glass of wine too many, it gets hard, but answering that 'a new suit of Studded Leather will cost a hundred Goodwives, less 19 goodwives for the ripped-up old suit you are trading in' is the way to go.

It also important to take a partially Age of Reason, partially gilded age approach to money, in that there is a tremendous range of incomes, a tremendous range of prices, and a lot of people trying to make money.  At first glance, those two time periods are far apart, but the cradle area of Celtricia has a huge lower and lower middle class, a new and growing middle class, but still, 95% of the wealth of the world is placed in 1% of the population.

So while 750 Goodwives in a  year is the low end for a houshold income in Trabler, the actual average Household income is probably around 1800 goodwives.  Furthermore, in Igbar , it is probably closer to 2500 goodwives of actual income per family due to the communication, the proximity to trade, and the concentration of Factions.  Understand that in the math, the paragraph above affects this average.

And if an 'average' family makes 55-56 goodwives in a hawaak, that means someone making 100 goodwives in a hawwak is pretty well off, and a shopkeeper who makes 150-200 goodwives a hawaak is doing very well.  A lesser landed nobleman who has estates might find his estate income nets him 400-1500 goodwives a hawaak, if it is well run and profitable, and the ROI for a large caravan can be a loss, up to 100,000 Goodwives.

These numbers are most useful to a GM when a group of PC's wander into Igbar or SteelIsleTown with 500, 2000, even 5000 goodwives a piece.

There are flophouses in Igbar, places where a bed is paid for by the night, where they pack 6-10 beds in a room and charge between 5 copper strips and a silver child per bed per night. A crappy room rented for a hawwak (the eight day week) near the docks will be a 10-15 Silver children for the week (1-1.5 electrum goodwives).  Beers in a low end place, Like Baywick (a cheap rice beer) from Strakford may run a strip per class, while at the Sweet Retreat you might buy a bottle of Castle Ellis Burqunt Red (from the GreyMarch, 13% Red Chias/Chervendel blend) which might run 120 goodwives.

A decent Teque Guild Inn rents rooms (with 2 beds) for 5-10 silver Children per night, Hostem's House of Hospitality has rooms from one to seven Goodwives a night, and the Upper Crust's room rates are between ten and forty goodwives a night."

One reason the Harn economy worked out for me is that is basically boiled down to two coins. A low value silver penny used for everyday transactions and a high value gold crown worth 320 silver pennies. There are some other coins but I use those for exotic treasures and they are all equated to their value in silver pennies.

The advantage of this is that the players really don't get lost knowing the value of items. One silver penny is like a cheap meal or a drink or two and it goes up from there. When they get to the point of managing estates and making commercial deals then they use gold crowns.

The other benefit of a low coin/very high coin system is that when gold crowns (or whatever high value equivalent) are found it is nearly always appreciated. The players feel like that gained something of great worth. AD&D's 20 sp to 1 gp setup doesn't do that not even with the occasional platinum piece.

Quote from: estar;634827One reason the Harn economy worked out for me is that is basically boiled down to two coins. A low value silver penny used for everyday transactions and a high value gold crown worth 320 silver pennies. There are some other coins but I use those for exotic treasures and they are all equated to their value in silver pennies.

The advantage of this is that the players really don't get lost knowing the value of items. One silver penny is like a cheap meal or a drink or two and it goes up from there. When they get to the point of managing estates and making commercial deals then they use gold crowns.

The other benefit of a low coin/very high coin system is that when gold crowns (or whatever high value equivalent) are found it is nearly always appreciated. The players feel like that gained something of great worth. AD&D's 20 sp to 1 gp setup doesn't do that not even with the occasional platinum piece.

It's actually one of the reasons I hate systems that handwave/partially handwave wealth.  In Igbar, the New Legion (syndicated through the Grounds of Dismissal) are really rock stars.  Yes, there are wealthy families, trading syndicates, etc, but when a crew of adventurers start saving the twon and come in spending a normal family's yearly income in a night (and tipping well), hell, yes, the people note it.

Quote from: jibbajibba;634785If you want a shorthand way then saying "1 silver piece is worth about a dollar at today's prices" [...] they can immediatey relate that to their experience and so they can make a decision based on knowledge.

This is something GURPS (3e, at least) made ubiquitous. Everything was priced in $, even in fantasy worlds.

I prefer your approach, doing the same thing one step removed. 60 silver lucre may be 60$, but "silver lucre" is more interesting and evocative than $$ (or sp).

Of course, I also like Hell on Earth's "bullets as currency" approach. I've never seen an economic analysis of that, but it'd be worth reading at least once.

(Metro 2033, the video game, did something similar, with respect to pre-apocalypse bullets, which were superior to post-apocalypse shells.)

Quote from: estar;634827One reason the Harn economy worked out for me is that is basically boiled down to two coins. A low value silver penny used for everyday transactions and a high value gold crown worth 320 silver pennies. There are some other coins but I use those for exotic treasures and they are all equated to their value in silver pennies.

The advantage of this is that the players really don't get lost knowing the value of items. One silver penny is like a cheap meal or a drink or two and it goes up from there. When they get to the point of managing estates and making commercial deals then they use gold crowns.

The other benefit of a low coin/very high coin system is that when gold crowns (or whatever high value equivalent) are found it is nearly always appreciated. The players feel like that gained something of great worth. AD&D's 20 sp to 1 gp setup doesn't do that not even with the occasional platinum piece.

Since I base things in a copper abstraction base economy, the gold and platinum abstractions work out fine for me. That and Birthright has Gold Bars, where 1 GB equals 2000 GP, something only landed-level movers and shakers deal in. That would be the nearest D&D analogy to Hârn that I can think of offhand.

But your point, which corresponds to jibbajabba's, is important. Without meaningful and obvious differentiation it's all just a bunch of shifting decimal places and inflation (as noted price progression through D&D editions show). It becomes like Final Fantasy where you have to explode the planet to deal 500 HP, to a creature that has tens of thousands HP. Detached abstractions tend to devalue meaning.

Quote from: One Horse Town;634641One word - Inflation.

Yes, exactly. Any local region where a group of adventurers come back with chestfuls of thousands of gp is a region that will go through some serious economic instability and price-raising (unless the economy is already made to build that in...of course in that case, a sudden absence of adventurer-treasure would be a trigger for economic collapse..

RPGpundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;635329Yes, exactly. Any local region where a group of adventurers come back with chestfuls of thousands of gp is a region that will go through some serious economic instability and price-raising (unless the economy is already made to build that in...of course in that case, a sudden absence of adventurer-treasure would be a trigger for economic collapse..

RPGpundit

No, I thought like that too but then someone else made the very good point that groups of adventurers often did come back with chestfuls of gold in the real world - large scale raids and wars were commonplace in medieval times, and these were accompanied by looting on an industrial scale. All of the events leading up to the battle of Agincourt were basically the English pillaging French countryside for money.

Maybe the missing link is that there was less gold looted than valuable objects, trade goods, and livestock, so currency inflation wouldn't have been as much of an issue. Still though, even if it was all gold the amounts adventurers could return would pale in comparison to the influx of wealth injected into an economy by returning armies (if victorious).

Quote from: The Traveller;635342No, I thought like that too but then someone else made the very good point that groups of adventurers often did come back with chestfuls of gold in the real world - large scale raids and wars were commonplace in medieval times, and these were accompanied by looting on an industrial scale. All of the events leading up to the battle of Agincourt were basically the English pillaging French countryside for money.

Maybe the missing link is that there was less gold looted than valuable objects, trade goods, and livestock, so currency inflation wouldn't have been as much of an issue. Still though, even if it was all gold the amounts adventurers could return would pale in comparison to the influx of wealth injected into an economy by returning armies (if victorious).

No there was actually massive inflation.
The prices in Venice for everything skyrocketed because it was the location where knights heading the holy land went to equip and where knights coming back landed with all the treasure they had pinched.
Of course very quickly they were hauling nothing back from the holy land except mud, dead relatives and the true blood line of jesus.
Then the templars stepped in and suddenly you could cash all your chips in in Jerusalem get a promisary note to the sum of XXX then cash it in in London or Paris or  whereever without the risk of getting fleeced by every two bit grifter from Damascus to Avingon.

One of my points in using real modern values for your base economy as opposed to trying to mimic a hisotrical period is that your PCs know when inflation hits. Suddenly a bed in the inn's shared dorm cost 200sp a night (10gp - $200 modern ) If there is no point of reference they might think that was totally fine, and off course once they have 200,000 gp (aka $4M) they will think so again and so inflation.