the poor unwashed masses are revolting, thats historically accurate especially as they didnt like bathing or swimming.
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.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.
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.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.
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!Damn, are we figuring out the rules for Bankers & Bookekeepers again?
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?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.
Whoa. So I misread this in a very Tyrion Lannister way.My players might hire some laborers to handle camp chores . . .
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.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.
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.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!