Silly economics of DnD

[SableWyvern]

If the d&d worlds are swamped in poverty, who exactly hangs out in inns? The prices are exorbitant. I don't recall hearing about any campaigns were only the rich hung out at an inn. They're always full of locals.

A labourer (note: Labourer, not farmer) earns enough to provide himself one poor meal every two days (too bad if he has kids). Obviously, he feeds himself and family by thieving. So what happens when the local lord brings in a thousand-strong work force to build a castle or his mausoleum? They'll end up burning down his town.

Try to defend the system's intrinsic economy as you like, it doesn't work.

Personally, I just ignore the inconsistencies. It's D&D folks. It doesn't make sense. That's the nature of the game. HPs are crazy, economies don't work and adventurers get insanely rich and powerful.

 

[Sammael99]

I know that I am probably the ony person in the world who is bothered by the things like this but...

You're not actually. I'm very bothered about the fact that in awarding less than usual amounts of treasure, my PCs are still running around with upwards of 000's of gold in cash at Lvl 6... They're not big spenders, granted, and since there are very few if any magic items for sale in my campaign, they don't have much to spend the cash on.

I would sure love for someone to dig into the economics issue seriously and rework the various price lists and indicative amounts...

 

[bramadan]

So poor that it takes them 20 days of work to buy an empty barell ?
Not even third world has so low product/labour value ratios and keep in mind that in third world price of "product" is greatly inflated by the 1st world know-how and technology that goes into it, which was not situation in middle ages.

As to the chain/mail discussion:
Assume arbitrary number of smiths. Assume PHB prices. They imply that *provided they can sell their goods* smiths who make chain earn something like at least 50 times hourly wage of ones that make mail. Assume however that the demand for mail is 100 times greater then that for chain and that therefore only 1% of smiths can sell it. What this does is force competition everybody tries to be in this 1% because it is just so lucrative; they undercut each other and price drops bit by bit untill it is no longer incredibly lucrative to pander to this market - that is until the return on investment (in terms of working hours) is same order of magnitude in both cases. Works exactly as you described but only when demand is low because when demand is high loosing business is not a big danger. This is why wages go up when unemployment is low and vice versa.
I agree that in special cases a nieche item can command a high price due to its rarity but we are talking common chain here not handwowen angora earmuffs. Enough chain is used on daily basis that no matter how high demand for other items it is not ever going to be a nieche product.

Writing about this stuff prompted me to take a look at the net and I found this realy cool site, check it out people:
http://home.mira.net/~tosh/text/general/medievalprices.htm

 

[Numion]

It is really ridiculous how little labor is valued compared to its products. For an example that actually happened in a game I played, our party (with way too much deus ex machina help) beat a dragon in its lair and used the (lower than usual amount, for a dragon) treasure to buy an entire country. We then paid off that countries' debts, and lowered taxes enough that all the citizens able to move to our new country would do so. To top it all off, we threw a huge festival to let everyone know how great our new country was. And we still had enough in the bank to finance the country for years without charging any taxes.

When all the nations were about to go to war over some lizards money in the Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, I too was like 'Puh-leeze'. This is so unreal! [/sarcasm]

 

[SableWyvern]

Re: Re: Silly economics of DnD

You're not actually. I'm very bothered about the fact that in awarding less than usual amounts of treasure, my PCs are still running around with upwards of 000's of gold in cash at Lvl 6... They're not big spenders, granted, and since there are very few if any magic items for sale in my campaign, they don't have much to spend the cash on.

I would sure love for someone to dig into the economics issue seriously and rework the various price lists and indicative amounts...

Rolemaster has a far more workable economic system. If you can get hold of it, ...And a 10 Foot Pole has some comprehensive equipment and price lists. Also, GM Law not only includes a worthy discussion on medieval economies and their relationship to the RM monetary system, but a wealth of invaluable information for GMs of any system. Oh yeah, and it also includes wage-rates that mesh with the pricing system.

The system also greatly reduces the sheer volume of coins that are handed out (a rich party might have 1000gp between them).

 

[SableWyvern]

When all the nations were about to go to war over some lizards money in the Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, I too was like 'Puh-leeze'. This is so unreal! [/sarcasm]

Actually, those were relatively small, nearby nations, warring for the accumulated wealth of a fallen dwarven kingdom.

 

[LostSoul]

A labourer (note: Labourer, not farmer) earns enough to provide himself one poor meal every two days (too bad if he has kids).

I would say that he lives with his wife, and if he's lucky, some children. They pool thier production and hopefully they can feed themselves after the local lord takes his cut.

Note that the price of a "Poor Meal" is (I'd imagine) a meal sold at an inn or tavern, where you are paying for service, land, and protection of that inn. Considering a chicken is worth 2 copper (page 96, Tabe 7-3: Trade Goods) I think he'd be able to feed himself just fine.

In my game I switched things around so that 1 silver piece was equal to the amount of food needed for one adult (male) to survive for two weeks. The average person makes 30 silver a year. In a family unit, surplus goes to taxes, land, and household goods. All members of the village get together to build homes (which deteriorate every generation or so) so the cost of building a home is spread across the whole community.

In contrast to the average agricultural labourer, a local Baron in my campaign grosses about 120 thousand silver pieces a year. (Most of that is in the form of goods and services - the cooper might come to the castle two days out of the week and work on the Baron's men's footwear; the farmer might deliver foodstuffs; the artist may have to perform at the Baron's whim.) His forces cost him nearly 100 thousand silver a year; upkeep to his castle and the repayment of debt pretty much take care of the rest of it.

 

[jasper]

From "The Great Household in Late Medieval England " by C. M. Woolgar

Table 2 page 16 Average daily cost per person in the household

Name gross income average cost
Of household per person per day

Joan de valence 1296 -7 414 pd 2 pennies
Tomas of Lancaster 1318-9 4,800 pd 4.5 pennies
Edward Plantagenet 1409-10 1,127 8.1 pennies
Duke of York


This does not include the cost of feeding the person or clothing. It just their salaries.

Remember Chain is a construction or job tool. Chain Mail is armour. Or to put another way chain is a laptop and Chain Mail is the yugo I drive to work. I need one but not the other however the top of line laptop will cost as much as my Yugo.


Why don't you post the new costs here?
Also an armour not smith will make chainmail. The smith will make chain and be a jack of all trades (maybe) in armour, sword making, etc.

The laborer will have a small garden worked by his family and him.
Feel free to post a new price list.
Also if your players are not spending money. Reduce the treasure hoards in the next monsters.

 

[Tiefling]

What I find funny is that they say fifty gold pieces makes a pound of gold, and in the FRCS they say the average gold coin is 1 and 1/4 inches in diameter and 1/8 inches thick. With some simple calculations we can see that fifty of those equals approximately 7.66 cubic inches of gold.

Yeah. 7.66 cubic inches of gold weigh only a pound. Really!

 

[Col_Pladoh]

It is really my fault...

The original systems in D&D and AD&D were developed for the PC adventurer, done without reference to the economics of the various societies.

Of course the chaps redesigning 2E should have picked that up and solved the problem--done rather easily. I've mentioned it before, but in the LA game system I've fixed gold at $500 per o8unce, silver at $10, and copper at $1. Basically, wages and prices are assumed to be those comprable to the US in c. 2000, save for the special items listed on price lists--mainly swords, war horses and the like. Anyway, with relatively current standards to serve as a guide, managing wages and prices and wealth/treasure is pretty easy.

Cheerio,
Gary