The price of a horse.

[Celebrim]

I used those two rules to come up with a basic tax system. Most nobles want to get as much as they can out of their peasants. So they set the taxation rate at a level where the peasants can live at a subsistence level. This is common, but not monolithic.

Common, true, but typically not monolithic.

England was restive and independent, and tended to have low taxes.

The western end of the continent tended to be slightly higher taxes, while the eastern end had slightly higher than that.

The worst cases were Eastern Europe in the 19th century, were taxes rose to 80% of peasant income leaving the peasants in essentially perpetual starvation.

While nobles wanted to maximize taxes, if you set them too high you ended up with poor peasants or dead peasants. Some time before that, you had angry peasants who can and did go into revolt, become bandits, complain to the bishop or the king, and otherwise become a hassle. If you set them lower, your regime in the long run tended to be more successful - the peasants would make investments (build apiaries, dove coots, clear and farm more land, etc.) and become wealthier (letting you charge more taxes), and the peasants would tend to not die off as quickly following a bad harvest (because they had savings) meaning you had more people to tax over time. However, if you set them too low, then you couldn't field an army and your neighbor would come and take your stuff (since Knights were often little more than bandits with a license).

Cost of living depends on both your expectations regarding your lifestyle (you eat meat 7 times a week, you have more than two changes of clothing), and the maintenance on your property (you have a horse to feed, taxes to pay, a roof to thatch, and armor that has to be cleaned with vinegar and tumbled in a barrel of fine sand and then coated in rapeseed oil on a regular basis if it isn't to become rusty). In general, for PC's, I tend to make cost of living a function of character level, and then add sundry costs if they decide to purchase a steed, etc. For most campaigns this is mostly ignored, but if you run a dynastic campaign where the focus of play is building up institutions it becomes a huge concern and time sink.

 

[Antonlowe]

Common, true, but typically not monolithic.

England was restive and independent, and tended to have low taxes.

The western end of the continent tended to be slightly higher taxes, while the eastern end had slightly higher than that.

The worst cases were Eastern Europe in the 19th century, were taxes rose to 80% of peasant income leaving the peasants in essentially perpetual starvation.

While nobles wanted to maximize taxes, if you set them too high you ended up with poor peasants or dead peasants. Some time before that, you had angry peasants who can and did go into revolt, become bandits, complain to the bishop or the king, and otherwise become a hassle. If you set them lower, your regime in the long run tended to be more successful - the peasants would make investments (build apiaries, dove coots, clear and farm more land, etc.) and become wealthier (letting you charge more taxes), and the peasants would tend to not die off as quickly following a bad harvest (because they had savings) meaning you had more people to tax over time. However, if you set them too low, then you couldn't field an army and your neighbor would come and take your stuff (since Knights were often little more than bandits with a license).

Cost of living depends on both your expectations regarding your lifestyle (you eat meat 7 times a week, you have more than two changes of clothing), and the maintenance on your property (you have a horse to feed, taxes to pay, a roof to thatch, and armor that has to be cleaned with vinegar and tumbled in a barrel of fine sand and then coated in rapeseed oil on a regular basis if it isn't to become rusty). In general, for PC's, I tend to make cost of living a function of character level, and then add sundry costs if they decide to purchase a steed, etc. For most campaigns this is mostly ignored, but if you run a dynastic campaign where the focus of play is building up institutions it becomes a huge concern and time sink.

Celebrim, I don't understand what you are trying to say. I pointed out that the 7cp tax was not monolithic. The guidelines I posted take into account diminishing returns for taxation and the possibility of capital investment on the part of peasants.

Is there something I am missing??? Or are you just agreeing with me???

 

[aramis erak]

Most sources of information on the medieval age are wrong, I am sorry to say. Sometimes grossly so.

It is possible that it is Wikipedia that is wrong in this case, but as far as I know, external testing has validated Wikipedia's factual accuracy in the sciences.

Do you even know what Domesday was?

It was a tax record and census of England. It's documentary history. I've checked the prices in the 1976 printing of D&D against sources I know were available to Gygax, and the correlation is sufficiently high that we can use those same 11th century PRIMARY SOURCES as viable inputs for source information. And the value of horses in Domesday is 1-2 £ on the low end to 100 £ on the high.

The currency in use in that era is VERY WELL DOCUMENTED. Multiple primary sources, including legal specifications issued by the crown. (and enough surviving copies of coins to establish that the mints were ripping people off...)

It's quite easy to reverse engineer Gygaxian prices.

 

[Random Bystander]

Do you even know what Domesday was?

It was a tax record and census of England. It's documentary history. I've checked the prices in the 1976 printing of D&D against sources I know were available to Gygax, and the correlation is sufficiently high that we can use those same 11th century PRIMARY SOURCES as viable inputs for source information. And the value of horses in Domesday is 1-2 £ on the low end to 100 £ on the high.

The currency in use in that era is VERY WELL DOCUMENTED. Multiple primary sources, including legal specifications issued by the crown. (and enough surviving copies of coins to establish that the mints were ripping people off...)

It's quite easy to reverse engineer Gygaxian prices.

I am aware of what the Doomsday Census was. However, you incorrectly stated that the Shilling was a gold coin. My quote from Wikipedia stated that the shilling was a silver coin. To narrow it down to only the most relevant pieces of information:

Note that a typical 1 shilling coin was the gold penny... gp. ...

The English shilling was a silver coin of the Kingdom of England, ...

Edit: My apologies for the tone of this post, and I mean no offence by contradiction. I am posting this edit here rather than in a new post to avoid cluttering up the thread.

 

[Celebrim]

Celebrim, I don't understand what you are trying to say. I pointed out that the 7cp tax was not monolithic.

The 'tl;dr version' is that a greater than 50% taxation rate is far from common, and in fact would only be associated with actual slave states. The majority of European serfs endured lower taxation rates, and societies where economic output was garnished by 50% or more were extreme cases. The effective increase in taxation from about 30% to about 42% by Prince John to raise King Richard's ransom very nearly brought about general revolt, and is remembered in story to this day. Similar periods of increased taxation in different periods - such as the 1377 tax reform - brought about actual peasant revolts, or revolts by nobility, or both.

Gygax's 9 s.p. in tax per 30 s.p. in income outlined in the 1e AD&D is probably closer to the historical mode. It was extremely unusual for the government to actually control more than about 10th of the economy. (For example, in medieval England, the king's share was 1/13th part of income and a great many competing institutions - churches, cities, major lords - and the lands they held were exempt.) Your idea of 7 portions out of every 12.5 being taken as tax is simply unbelievable except for an ancient society practicing near universal and unregulated slavery, and the usual method then is to keep everything and give back the 5 s.p. worth of economic output needed for subsistence rather than trying to extort that much from people with some sort of rights.

Put it this way, while Gygax was not above imposing taxes on the PC's to drain excess wealth out of their coffers, he also understood that the flow of cash could go both ways, with PC lords taxing their subjects. And he would have - quite rightly - invoked an instant insurrection on any PC lord that tried to raise taxes to the sort of rates you are calling common.

 

[aramis erak]

I am aware of what the Doomsday Census was. However, you incorrectly stated that the Shilling was a gold coin. My quote from Wikipedia stated that the shilling was a silver coin. To narrow it down to only the most relevant pieces of information:



Edit: My apologies for the tone of this post, and I mean no offence by contradiction. I am posting this edit here rather than in a new post to avoid cluttering up the thread.

The Gold penny was commonly used with a value of a schilling, tho technically it was specie, and depending upon debasement, varied between 10 and 20 d in value.

There are a dozen better refs online, including the UK Mints' websites. .

It's clear from the sources available at the time Gygax was researching that the use of the gold penny as a shilling was mentioned - one of the library books I ILL'd in the 90's was a copy of a book on Domesday's prices from the U of Wisconsin... which had duedate stamps from the early 70's... and mentions the nominal value for the gold penny as about a shilling.

Right or wrong, Gygax noted the silver penny, and the gold penny, as the correct denominations and got the relative value, then decimalized for convenience. (that the farthing was copper was later, but the relative valuation of a 5 dwt copper coin as 1/4th the value of a 1 dwt silver one is still in the realm of fiat coin rather than specie - the lowest conversion I've found for relative value by mass is about 50:Copper:Silver, 10:silver:8kt gold. (peak values in the medieval era seem to be about 70:copper:silver and 24:Silver:14 Kt gold The D&D gold piece is clearly based upon the early gold penny in a low purity. And the conversion of early sources to D&D style gp/sp/cp is best fit at D&D 1gp=12 d silver aka 1gp = 1 s. Which is, by the way, consistent with roman coin... tho' roman coingold was around 12-16 kt, and valued at 20x the silver denarius nominally.

But I've mentioned, repeatedly, that it was valued at a shilling, not that it was the primary shilling coin. (That would be the 12 dwt silver coin... which weighs 12x the silver penny's 1 dwt of silver... Then again, historically, most people used hacked bits of silver, and few ever saw shilling-value coins in either metal. And trade was by weight and fineness, not face value, until into the 17th C, and even into the 19th C in many places.)

 

[Antonlowe]

The 'tl;dr version' is that a greater than 50% taxation rate is far from common, and in fact would only be associated with actual slave states. The majority of European serfs endured lower taxation rates, and societies where economic output was garnished by 50% or more were extreme cases. The effective increase in taxation from about 30% to about 42% by Prince John to raise King Richard's ransom very nearly brought about general revolt, and is remembered in story to this day. Similar periods of increased taxation in different periods - such as the 1377 tax reform - brought about actual peasant revolts, or revolts by nobility, or both.

Gygax's 9 s.p. in tax per 30 s.p. in income outlined in the 1e AD&D is probably closer to the historical mode. It was extremely unusual for the government to actually control more than about 10th of the economy. (For example, in medieval England, the king's share was 1/13th part of income and a great many competing institutions - churches, cities, major lords - and the lands they held were exempt.) Your idea of 7 portions out of every 12.5 being taken as tax is simply unbelievable except for an ancient society practicing near universal and unregulated slavery, and the usual method then is to keep everything and give back the 5 s.p. worth of economic output needed for subsistence rather than trying to extort that much from people with some sort of rights.

Put it this way, while Gygax was not above imposing taxes on the PC's to drain excess wealth out of their coffers, he also understood that the flow of cash could go both ways, with PC lords taxing their subjects. And he would have - quite rightly - invoked an instant insurrection on any PC lord that tried to raise taxes to the sort of rates you are calling common.

Ok. Now I understand where you are coming from. Thanks for the reply.

I still disagree. You seem to be arguing that peasents will rebel and the economy will collapse at a given tax rate. 35%, 50%, 70%, the actual rate doesn't matter.

I take the position that peasants will rebel and the economy will collapse only if people cannot afford a certain lifestyle. the 7cp tax rate is the MAXIMUM a noble could tax his peasants before the economy would reach that level. No one is happy about it, but they are not starving either.

You could argue that one of my base assumptions are wrong. Peasants are too productive, Lifestyle thresholds are set wrong, or something else.

But simply doing a historical comparison of what tax rates actually were is not enough to make me change anything.

 

[Brandegoris]

You are of course correct. I didn't want to make the post longer than it had to be. One of the essential features of a true medieval economy is that it is a barter economy because there is insufficient coin to reflect all the economic activity that the society is engaged in. Not only are they paid in goods, but they make payment in goods. So for example, they don't have to pay taxes of some amount of coins. They pay taxes in some amount of bushels of wheat, some amount of wooden staves, some amount of cut firewood, some amount of time spent working the Lord's land, and some amount of spun wool. Each householder would individually negotiate taxes with the land lord based on the perceived productivity of the property and the skills of the householder.

The Doomsday Book is extremely enlightening in this regard, because it often lists out the individual contracts and so gives us far more insight into the lives of the people than a simple census would. So we find example of serfs who are independently wealthy and possibly wealthier in some cases than the landlord, women who have higher legal status than their husbands and are so treated as heads of household, and so on and so forth. The real world is incredibly more complex than any simple model of it.

Europe exits the medieval economy when it acquires enough coin that lords can start dispensing with those private contractual obligations, and simply ask each householder to pay a lump sum of coin. Likewise, lords no longer had to collect taxes from lesser lords by forcing them to serve in the army, but could instead just ask them to send money to pay for an army. This lead to centralization of power in the hands of the monarchies, and the end of the feudal system (although, it wouldn't completely die for centuries). Of course, this is also a vast simplification, as we've said nothing of the role of cities and monasteries in revolutionizing the economy.

Absolutely. It would be a hellavu RPG game if I had to figure out how many cabbages I need to buy a Horse

 

[Celebrim]

Absolutely. It would be a hellavu RPG game if I had to figure out how many cabbages I need to buy a Horse

When I was younger, like so many GMs of my era, I had fetishized 'realism' as the ultimate goal of a game that would (in my mind) solve table conflicts, create game balance, serve all player aesthetics, create literary narrative, wash the dishes and make me a sandwich.

I decided that I would implement realistic coinage in my game world, with each nation minting its own denominations and there be rates of exchange between currencies and so forth. That lasted two or three sessions before I de facto began ignoring my own setting details and was using simplified coinage.

There are a lot of things that sound cool, but unless your bookkeeping is being handled by a computer, they definitely aren't worth it (and might not be worth it even then).

 

[Lwaxy]

Tehee.. but in some worlds it is fun to see what gold you have from which country. Assome enemy country would not want you to pay with any given currency.