D&D 5E 5E economics -The Peasants are revolting!

[Ancalagon]

Hey, just because peasants can't spend a lot of money on fancy clothes and beauty treatment doesn't mean you get to call them revolting!

 

[Oofta]

the poor unwashed masses are revolting, thats historically accurate especially as they didnt like bathing or swimming.

Just want to point out that this is a myth(1). Just like the idea that all their clothes were dull brown or gray. They bathed whenever possible, communal baths were a big thing. Same thing with wearing brightly colored clothing.

I have no issue with peasant revolts, but they were actually quite uncommon until the late medieval period and often happened during time of plagues or significant political upheaval like a king consolidating power into a central state.

 

[Kurotowa]

I have no issue with peasant revolts, but they were actually quite uncommon until the late medieval period and often happened during time of plagues or significant political upheaval like a king consolidating power into a central state.

From my reading, it feels like nine times out of ten it was food shortages. Said shortage could be due to exorbitant taxes, the collapse of trade routes, or major crop failure among the major causes. Peasants will suffer through a lot of hard times with just the hope of making it through okay, figuring that it's better to keep your head down. But put someone up against imminent starvation for themselves and their family, and even the terrible odds of surviving a revolt looks like a better deal.

A whole lot of revolts start with food riots and snowball into something bigger.

 

[MGibster]

I separate economics and how well off common folk are from the pay scale and costs listed in the book, they have little to do with each other.

This is the best course of action I think. I don't believe the economy has ever made sense for D&D and that's fine. I'm playing Dungeons & Dragons not Ledgers & Liens. I only need the economy to work in broad strokes as they related to adventuring.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Damn, are we figuring out the rules for Bankers & Bookekeepers again?

Yes, silly me, looking to the rule book for information on how my character should interact with the world as written and drawing the most fundamental conclusions from what it contains. What a fool I am!

This looks to me like a deliberate choice. Unskilled laborers in a "standard" setting do indeed live hand to mouth, in squalid conditions, with little in the way of savings or a cushion for hard times.

I think it gets to the idea of "ordinary". Which are the "ordinary people" that get to live a "modest" lifestyle in a city? The skilled workers likely in a guild, or the unskilled workers who do the fetching, carrying and digging of ditches?

Or are urban poor considered insignificant even if they make up a majority of a city? Historically doing so was a mistake, as they had the numbers, density and proximity needed to threaten leaders. Most urban revolts were crushed but not before causing significant property damage and general loss of life. A few even managed to topple the French & Russians nobility and drag Roman emperors through the streets. (Hence "bread and circus" as Roman policy)

There are times PC rules should be different from NPCs but....a bard is a minstrel is a traveler. How much it costs for either to eat and drink at the bottom end should be irrelevant. Overcharge the adventurer wearing golden doodads for sure, but these are the type with dirt under their nails. If the rules are going to be different, the hirelings should overcharge the PCs for services.

"It's normally 3sp/day for scut work but for you scary travelers and your strange ways its 5sp/day"

 

[GMMichael]

My players might hire some laborers to handle camp chores . . .

Whoa. So I misread this in a very Tyrion Lannister way.

Anyway, 2 sp sounds like a buttload for a peasant. And as many posters have noted, peasants don't have daily expenses. They have daily chores (what I should have read from the quote), and a tribute to pay one or more times a year.

 

[Oofta]

From my reading, it feels like nine times out of ten it was food shortages. Said shortage could be due to exorbitant taxes, the collapse of trade routes, or major crop failure among the major causes. Peasants will suffer through a lot of hard times with just the hope of making it through okay, figuring that it's better to keep your head down. But put someone up against imminent starvation for themselves and their family, and even the terrible odds of surviving a revolt looks like a better deal.

A whole lot of revolts start with food riots and snowball into something bigger.

I think it really comes down to a disruption of daily life - famine as you mention, plagues, major changes to the governmental order, etc.. Like all things there wasn't just one thing.

 

[Blue Orange]

There's always a bunch of people trying to do the math on this with medieval population demographics and the size of the average farm and it rarely works out.

A while ago I was trying to look up medieval Gini coefficients (a measure of inequality) and they were something like 0.6-0.8, significantly higher than even high-inequality modern rich countries like the USA with 0.41 or the UK with 0.35. (France and Germany, the other likely inspirations, are at 0.32 and Italy at 0.36; highest country is South Africa with 0.63, lowest is Slovenia with 0.25).
Got my data from https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coefficient-by-country, which gives them as percentages for some reason.

So...yeah, the Middle Ages were even more unequal than the modern day. So I think if you want to run a peasant revolt you have a great campaign hook, honestly. Lots of high-level enemies in the nobility, and trying to get provisions is extra hard once you've started doing well and the king's after you. Maybe with magic you don't have to pass through capitalism to get socialism.

 

[Clint_L]

This is one of those areas that I just don't think too hard about. I think the impact of magic, of hundreds if not thousands of sentient species, of vast treasure troves constantly being accumulated and unearthed...all of the base assumptions of a D&D world would so warp its economics that I don't have anything like the expertise to know what would be a remotely realistic outcome. So I just sort of assume a quasi-Renaissance standard, with a healthy sprinkling of modernism, and run with it. I guess Disc World is my basic model.

 

[MGibster]

es, silly me, looking to the rule book for information on how my character should interact with the world as written and drawing the most fundamental conclusions from what it contains. What a fool I am!

It's not silly, but I find very often the fiction of the setting and the rules have a tenuous connection at best and it seems especially true when the economy is the subject. We've had threads here about the economics of the Continual Flame spell.