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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 4294452" data-attributes="member: 30001">I would think a generalization like "peasants all over Europe" would require a more rigorous definition before one could have an opinion for or against.  "Peasant" is usually meant as a social class, and peasants were sometimes rich beyond their station.  There is an account somewhere recently that a peasant bragged that he lent his lord money in one instance, so I would think that at least *some* peasants did buy books, especially after they were printed.FWIW I recall that cheese was looked down on by the aristocracy as peasant food.  (Obviously it's reputation has improved in modern times.)Piers Plowman, IIRC is a particularly grim portrait of the period and those on the "romantic" side of things will insinuate that the author had a particular political axe to grind and an interest in showing things in a harsh light.  "Glass half empty" doesn't mean that it isn't though.Hopefully my demographics in the above post might help to clarify all of this.  At the risk of biting off more than I can chew, my impression was that those from Scandanavia who went viking were actually rich.Yes, on gamist grounds alone - and if commoners did have 900 gp on the average, then the monsters and humanoids that preyed upon them would be correspondingly richer.  As I said, the best technique I think is to have the total value of portable goods be set equal to the commoner's EL-appropriate treasure value - and then supply the details (proportion of livestock to tools, types of tools, etc.) from historical sources - although I try to incorporate and element of fantasy as well.I'm not sure how the untouchables work or compare to cottars.  IMO nobody has really done any work in this area because the core DnD experience doesn't really care about these factors.  Exhibit A is the fact that you and I are the only ones discussing this.  I just don't think TSR/WoTC gave much thought to it, and examing the rules it appears that prices were migrated forward through editions, with a small proportion made up from scratch with every edition of DnD until you get the mis-mash that is the current system.Yea, if by "scythe" you mean the farming tool, then it's completely weird.  My reasoning for 3E was to create a set of iron non-military scythes and axes sold for more reasonable prices.  Then I described the Scythe in the PHB as a superior steel one used for war by the druids, not by peasants for their fields - at least IMC.  There's a D20 book (something like "Stone to Steel") that discusses various weapon materials (like iron, copper, etc.) for different historical time periods with various DnD stats given.No, not in itself.  I was referring to the poverty/population density issue.  I will advocate here on behalf of fantasy and propose that you could consider that many "monsters" within the game could fill the same ecological niche as a wolf or wild-cat, but that's entirely dependant on the magic-level of the campaign.  I personally try to force myself to add more fantasy just because I have a tendency to be too mundane in my first designs.  IMO it helps me to read folktales and such as well as history to really put myself in the mind of the more imaginative inhabitants of the period.I would equate the Mongols with the Roman legions and not really class them as a "bandit threat".  Then again I might be being unfair to the vikings - obvious examples of their settlement (Danelaw, Normandy, Dublin etc.) noted.IMC a mid level party would pretty easily destroy a thorpe.  Then again, they'd get an uninspiring amount of treasure for their efforts.  What I'd really concentrate on is the follow-up.  A region on hightened alert would be extremely wary of strangers (and would be normally wary historically) and bands of armed persons spotted wandering through the fields would raise an alarm.  It may take several days of tracking but I would expect the real confrontation with the evil PCs would occur several days after the burning of their first thorpe.  I really think it is up to the DM to figure it out though - I think WotC has focused on other areas of adventure.  For a long time, actual history has really not been of interest to the designers of DnD the way that you see glimpses of it in the 1E DMG.  A much more gamist, and less simulationist philosophy has been the norm, so I wouldn't expect much from that quarter.Final thoughts - there are the 3E demographics that if you take a certain perspective on will give you a high level person every once-in-a-while living within thorpe - maybe a high level cleric that has retreated to the solitude of a small church in the countryside.  (There's an old Dragon article that goes into detail on this).  Also, since you appear to have been a 1E gamer at some point, then I would also point out Village of Hommlet (which you probably own and have already thought of).  The occasional odd-balls that appear in that roster of "peasants" is inspirational for me to throw in such characters in my villages as well.  All-in-all, I find as a general rule (not just with village-dungeons) that all it takes is a little bit of strangeness to keep the players on their toes and anxious about what they're doing.  I really can't recommend brownies enough <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=":-)" /></blockquote>

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