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Message: <blockquote data-quote="painandgreed" data-source="post: 1850680" data-attributes="member: 24969">Although having a realistic world isn't possible in a fantasy game by definition, I'd like to have at least a well thought out and rational world. That and wondering how much PCs cacrrying in that dragon's loot would actually disrupt the local economy and how rich they are compared to lords and kings of the land, I decided to figure out how much money those lords and kings had access to.By researching the production of medieval peasants, the costs in D&D of such trade goods as wheat, and assuming the use of heavy plow and three field crop rotation, I came out with the product of a peasant being about 10-15 GP per acre per year. I'm reducing everything to a GP value for simplicity and don't really care how much barley verus flax an individual peasant grows. This represents the average values of food as well as trade crops such as wheat, barley, flax, thistle, dye plants, etc. An acre is roughly (originally defined as) the amount of land a man can plow in one day. Given a one month planting season the max amount one man can plant would be about 30 acres, but we'll assume an average of 20 acrres per peasant family (four people).We'll take what is probably a small kingdom by D&D standards as our example: a large city of 20,000 surrounded by smaller towns making up 90% of the total population (DMG, p.137). This gives a total population of 200,000 which, if the average income equates to our average peasant, then you end up with 50,000 working families. Those times 20 acres times 13 Gp per acre equals a total economy of 13 million GP for our kingdom. We'll assume we have 100 lords that all tax 3/7 of this in revenue, half of which goes to a king. This gives the king an annual income of 2.8 million GP value and each lord an income of 28k GP.Of course, much of this is going to go to feed and support the king and lords (as well as servants and such) to begin with an will never actually be in GP form. Assuming 10Gp/day for a lord (about what my characters spend when in town), thats 3.6k GP a year to feed and clothe his family. I would imagine that the king, his family and close servants could go through half a million GP a year in upkeep. then they have to pay standing armies and their horses, upkeep on castles, etc. There is still could be a decent amount left over, espeically if they saved up money from year to year, or had a specific goal, or even special taxes. It pretty much puts just about any magic item in the range of the king or a lord by straight market price.Make what you will of the above. I'd encourage any comments or suggestions as well as mention of 3rd party products that might examine the same topics. I'm especially intersted in costs to build and upkeep castles and such.</blockquote>

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