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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 396387" data-attributes="member: 5724">Well, from a systemic viewpoint, your solution is very elegant.  Everyone playing today in america understands the value of our money system and its appropriate purchasing powers.  But, as others have mentioned, our purchasing power is based upon a mondern economy, not an agrarian one.  In order to not restate what others have said let me do a quick rundown of how i think the system you propose is not an accurate solution, though it may be a useable and elegant one.1. the buying power of the system you propose changes.  a $ in 1980 is different than a $ in 2002.  Unless you plan to revamp your prices every decade or two there is one flaw.  2. the relative value of a $ vrs. any other currancy in the world.. ie. euro, yen, rupee, baht.. etc can change even more dramatically. and i think this game transcends the US border enough now to justifiy not having a purchasing system based upon dollars.3. What we have as social classes is very very different than what the social classes were like during the medieval period.  This point is my main sticker... honestly we are all filthy stinking rich compared to most of the world.3a. The things we consider as necessary are really most often luxuries.  ie... car, tv, radio, air conditioning, books, education, computers, more than two sets of clothing, shoes, health care, carpet, refrigerated food, electricity.. etc are all really luxuries.  anything that does more than protect us from the elements and each other, feed and water us, and provide us solace in times of trouble (religion) is a luxury.4.  Our food production is stable and fairly predictable, preventing massive fluctuations of grain price that was common during the medieval period.  All other item's worth during the medieval period fluctuated around similiar difficulties.  It was possible to have a villiage starving not more than 20 miles from a surplus of grain in another villiage. 5. Pricing something as simple as bread at 1$ is tremendously problamatic.  It is a good rough price for developed countries, but it is obviously incorrect for others.  I understand you are trying to say that relatively the price is similiar, but i even dissagree with that.  The % of an average american's income that that 1$ loaf of bread consumes is drastically less then the % a similiar item consumes of a socio-economicly similiar class in the middle ages.  At different times, grain was anywhere from 4s a quarter (8 bushels, roughly 480lbs depending on grain humidity) to 14s a quarter in the period 1208-1308 in england. an average construction labourer during that period earned roughly 2d a day.  (thats 12d(penny)=1s(shilling) conversion rate.)  a quarter of wheat can be ground down to make (after all taxes, ie miller's fee, lords 13th of all ground grain) roughly 350 1lbs loaves of bread.  After giving the baker his due you'll end up with around 340 1lbs loaves of bread.  Each day a laborer with 2d (laborers were actually well paid, but their job stability was low) would need around 2500 calories, (its hard work) so he'd need about 2lbs of bread to make his intake daily.  so for a month the guy earns 52d and he must spend 8-9d a month on bread alone in the good year and 28d-31d on the bad year.  As you can see the guy is spending 16% to 57% of his income on bread.  And this is assuming the guy works the entire year, most construction stopped during the winter.6. I fully understand the difficulty in trying to price items.  im currently working on a product and i've been pulling out my hair trying to figure out the prices of stuff in D&D terms.  but those terms have been simplified to promote the core of the game (adventurers) to the detriment of everything else.  A nice decimal exchange rate is great for players, but it is far from reality where a single small gold coin was worth 60 or so silvers.Anyway, thanks for listening.  I understand your desire to  represent $ in a medieval world, but i just dont think it is possible and i think it is detrimental because i believe it fosters a continued basic misunderstanding of wants/needs that we have today vrs. what occured in medieval times.  But again, im not saying its not elegant... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />joe b.edit: i got my info from "building in england down to 1540" by salzman.. its an amazing book.. if you can find it get it.  I also got some info from "the great wave" by fischer.  its another good book, better for the medieval period than the latter period as the author has some bias.. but its a good read anyway, price fluctuations etc.  [scholor mode OFF] <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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