How much does an inn cost to buy?

[The Gryphon]

But some of the prices are unreasonably cheap.

Your rock stars are paying triple for bread but getting chicken at an 87.5% discount.

/snip/

Moreover, when players discover something silly in the rules it often spoils the mood. "Frank, if you were a mediaeval peasant, would you rather eat half a chicken or half a pound of bread?" "Easy, Tony, I'd rather have the chicken." "Righto then--they're cheaper, too. From now on our henchmen dine on chook." And throughout the rest of the campaign players are making chicken jokes, and whenever the characters have to be silent players will make clucking sounds.

The game doesn't have to be unworkable in the dungeon. But it shouldn't be laughable outside of it.

Only one small problem I can see with this arguement. The chicken at 4cp is still alive, not ready for consumption...while the bread at 2cp is ready to eat.

So you're comparing a wholesale product with a retail product [if you want to buy bread components wholesale I bet they're a lot cheaper as well]. A better comparison would be your bread at 2cp, with a chunk of meat at 3sp [both weigh in at 1/2 lb.] both listed under food, drink, and lodging on pg. 129 in the 3.5 PHB.

Now how is the chicken [meat] priced compared to the bread?

 

[S'mon]

...At all places, when the choice was give on the rules or give on the medievalesque feel, the feel had to give...

Thanks Joe, you've been very patient and have justified your approach in MMS: WE very well. Your approach wasn't what I had expected or wanted when I bought the book - I was expecting something that would support me in creating the feel of a (magic-influenced) Medieval setting, even if that meant deviating from certain d20 assumptions (re Craft skill, cost of buidings, and such). Hence my dissatisfaction with the product. If that's anyone's fault though, it's the fault of the reviewers who didn't make this clear enough while they were giving their ***** ratings.

I do think your approach retains the distinct difficulty that your 'mundane' costs are so high, magic approaches like Daern's Instant Fortress appear a reasonable alternative. I don't think that fits w Greyhawk or w many other campaign worlds, inc mine, but might work for areas like Glantri & Alphatia on Mystara, or maybe parts of the Forgotten Realms, a setting which in many ways culturally resembles modern America & Canada more closely than medieval Europe. My own setting is much much closer to a medieval European paradigm - living in Britain I'm surrounded by vestiges of feudalism and the middle ages, so it's much more familiar to me & easier for me, perhaps.

 

[jgbrowning]

Thanks Joe, you've been very patient and have justified your approach in MMS: WE very well. Your approach wasn't what I had expected or wanted when I bought the book - I was expecting something that would support me in creating the feel of a (magic-influenced) Medieval setting, even if that meant deviating from certain d20 assumptions (re Craft skill, cost of buidings, and such). Hence my dissatisfaction with the product. If that's anyone's fault though, it's the fault of the reviewers who didn't make this clear enough while they were giving their ***** ratings.

Sadly enough, I don't have Green Ronin's recent medieval book. I've heard good things about it and it may be more of what you're looking for.

I do think your approach retains the distinct difficulty that your 'mundane' costs are so high, magic approaches like Daern's Instant Fortress appear a reasonable alternative. I don't think that fits w Greyhawk or w many other campaign worlds, inc mine, but might work for areas like Glantri & Alphatia on Mystara, or maybe parts of the Forgotten Realms, a setting which in many ways culturally resembles modern America & Canada more closely than medieval Europe.

I can see how that would come across that way, but to be honest, I think it's also an effect of the increased level of 3e magic. In old Greyhawk we wouldn't be talking about price comparisons between an Instant Fortress and an Inn. (Which by the way if you didn't see my post, I screwed the pooch on when I did the pricing. Should have been only 26k in stead of 42k. Big difference and an embarrising mistake.) In old greyhawk you simple didn't buy those level of items.

My own setting is much much closer to a medieval European paradigm - living in Britain I'm surrounded by vestiges of feudalism and the middle ages, so it's much more familiar to me & easier for me, perhaps.

I can just image that would make it much easier to grasp at a gutteral level that most americans simply have no ability or reason to understand. Outside of some basic history course, all my knowledge has come from college level and private studies. Most people aren't that interested.

joe b.

 

[S'mon]

I have tried my best to be polite thoughout this rather agressive thread...

...There isn't a reason to get heated.

joe b.

Sorry, I wasn't aiming that at you, I wasn't heated, it just came out badly. Should have put a smiley I guess. I think in fact your earlier post indicates you actually do agree w my analysis though - your approach is that the DMG hireling costs are too low, and you base your system off a 1gp/day paradigm, rather than a 1sp/day paradigm. That's fine.

I understand you put a lot of work into the book, are (justifiably) proud of it, and don't like to see it criticised. I'd be annoyed if someone slagged off my PhD thesis without really understanding it. And until this morning I didn't really understand MMS:WE, what you were trying to achieve with it, and why that differed from what I wanted IMC.

It's all cool.

 

[Agemegos]

The "Normal" inn is now quite a bit better investment than what It was appearing to be. It looks like 10 to 15 years and it would be scot free.

Assuming that running costs, maintenance, and depreciation account for 50% of turnover, leaving the rest for rent?

About 10 year's rent is a reasonable purchase price in the sort of capital-starved economy that produces mediaeval-like technology and industrial organisation.

 

[jgbrowning]

It's all cool.

Heh, yah. I had written a long angry post and then remembered that, in my experience, I've never improved a situation I didn't like by being a jerk so I didn't post it.

It was then of course that I discovered my calculation error. Heh. I'm glad it's not storming right now because I think If it was, I would have gotten another more direct method informing me to stop being an idiot.

Lightning or looking like a fool? Hrm.. I'll take the latter please......

joe b.

 

[jgbrowning]

Assuming that running costs, maintenance, and depreciation account for 50% of turnover, leaving the rest for rent?

About 10 year's rent is a reasonable purchase price in the sort of capital-starved economy that produces mediaeval-like technology and industrial organisation.

Yeah, the price is much better. The earlier one with 20-25 years was a bit on the high side for my liking, but it didn't seem outrageous enough to worry about it. Considering now that the 42k is for a much better style of inn, the result will come in favorably as well.

When designing the system I mostly used a whole bunch of building records from a book called Building in England Down to 1540: A documentary History by L.F. Salsman. It had a massive appendix of (thankfully translated) building contracts. It's a great book, goes into prices for nails, labor, liming, all sorts of building materials and their various processes. If you haven't read it, I heartily reccomend it.

joe b.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I'll say it is a bit much! Even at 1 gp per day it is the price of three years' labour.

*sigh* I have one word:

FURNISHINGS.

Virtually all the building systems account for tables, chairs, pots, pans, dishes, utensils, stoves, blankets, cabinets, beds, chests, dressers, book cases, wall hangings, rugs, etc. Those things are *expensive,* moreso in a medieval world where flatware has to be handmade and not churned out of a mill.

IIRC, both MMS:WE and SBG deal with furnishings between the purpose and style level of the construction. SBG is per-room while MMS:WE is per-structure.

You could in fact buy a well-built row-house in York (including the real estate it was built on) for three year's labourer's wages..

My house cost me 3 year's wages raw cost but after mortgage & interest fees, I'll be spending closer to 4 years income and that is without furnishings. IIRC, I have insurance equal to about a third the house' value on my possessions, meaning that it would take 4-5 years income to buy the house+stuff.

And that's a house, not an inn. I don't need the big kitchen, plenty of serving gear, tons of pots & plates required.

So if you assume a home is 4-5 years income then an inn, being a business, should cost more, yes? Especially since the inn will also house the inkeeper & family. And since the innkeeper will be more of a professional than a common laborer, the 1gp/day value is quite reasonable, if perhaps, a little low.

 

[Agemegos]

Only one small problem I can see with this arguement. The chicken at 4cp is still alive, not ready for consumption...while the bread at 2cp is ready to eat.

That wouldn't stop players from making clucking noises.

So you're comparing a wholesale product with a retail product [if you want to buy bread components wholesale I bet they're a lot cheaper as well]. A better comparison would be your bread at 2cp, with a chunk of meat at 3sp [both weigh in at 1/2 lb.] both listed under food, drink, and lodging on pg. 129 in the 3.5 PHB.

In fact not, since I am basing my criticism on the (or rather, as jgbrowning points out, a) mediaeval price ratio of bread and a live chicken.

Now how is the chicken [meat] priced compared to the bread?

I don't have a retail price for a dead chicken, and indeed I don't think people bought them dead very often. But I have killed and cleaned chooks, and the labour involved is small compared with the mediaeval price of a chicken, which was more than a day's labour.

As for the price of meat, in times when the population was very small in comparison to the capacity of the land it was sometimes as cheap as wheat bread. But in extensively cultivated countries (such as required the manorial system) it was (for reasons that Adam Smith expalins in The Wealth of Nations Book I chapter ix part b) necessarily three or four times as expensive as wheaten bread. The PHB makes it about five times an historical cost in comparison to bread (and therefore about fifteen times an historical cost in comparison to labour). Butchering must be very expensive in a D&D world to turn chickens 8 times too cheap into meat fifteen times too dear.

In short the ratio between the price of live chickens and the price of meat in the PHB is out by a factor of one hundred and twenty.

 

[Agemegos]

*sigh* I have one word:

FURNISHINGS.

If you look at post #15 in this thread you will see that I have already posted a list of the prices of typical mediaeval furnishings. They aren't going to do the job.

On another point you raise: if you start measuring the cost of a inn in terms of a wealth innkeeper instead of the wages of labourer, I will be free to start measuring the prices of mediaeval buildings in comparable terms, and the comparison will go right back where it was.

Nice sigh, anyway. Now go teach your grandmother to suck eggs.