Taking up pig farming

[Tilla the Hun (work)]

A strong economic model for D&D is a product I've yet to see anyone make, which has surprised me. If I had a clue about the middle ages or economics, it's something I'd take on myself... oh well.

Actually, there is such a thing. Forget who made it, but back when I was doing research for my own home brew world (and was semi-knowledgeable that the economics presented in the PHB and DMG were just so much nonsense - prices presented were for -anywhere- with no attention paid to local market variations!) I located a beautiful excel workbook that had multiple pages. The first page requested approximate regional population, number of icties, and etc. It broke down the per square mile population between cities and rural areas according to some commonly used formulas that are in today's statistics (down to how many people a medieval farm could feed with it's per square mile population).

The additional pages broke each region down, and requested typical import/export in each area, gave you the surplus income and local market variation.

The thing was so lovingly detailed (with every step explained in mathematical fomulae) that one could actually get the true cost of raising a chicken and selling it to the local tavern.


As for a pig - domesticated pigs get MUCH bigger than boars. Modern day record sizes approach a full ton (1800 lbs)

Now think about trying to butcher AND store AND throw away offal from this pig as an innkeeper (and no, you can't just throw the trash out back - the smell will drive customers away).

The cost increases dramatically, and suddenly.


I'll see if I can find that excel workbook again. It was a pretty good workup of a working economic model. It even had inputs for catastrophes - i.e. severe droughts in areas, or monsoons, or volcanoes

 

[Praeco]

A strong economic model for D&D is a product I've yet to see anyone make, which has surprised me. If I had a clue about the middle ages or economics, it's something I'd take on myself... oh well.

I'm not sure such a product would ever sell. While people (myself included) certainly like to complain about the broken economics in the D&D world, I seriously doubt most people would be interested in actually keeping track of the complicated mathematics necessary to keep things functional. That is one of those things people do eight hours a day for a real job. I think at best one would have to limit themselves to a very small region to keep the numbers straight.

I've considered going to a trade/barter-based economy in my games, where gold is rarely used and carried. Thus you would see farmers taking there livestock for trade to the craftsman etcetera. This would eliminate the goofiness of having to find random piles of gold in monsters' lairs and make it more complex when deciding what to leave and what to bring back to town.

Anyway. I think the current economic model in D&D is designed for people who want a quick and dirty way to look up values of items. Really I think it is broken up into NPC economy and PC economy. The NPCs get paid squat and have to pay relatively little for the commodities that their lives are based around. This is all meant as a backdrop to provide the illusion of a medieval economy at work.

PCs on the other hand, are in most ways totally separated from that economic backdrop.
PCs are usually filthy rich and have to go into a tavern and pay comparatively massive amounts for their mead and meat. This is because one is more likely to see a PC going into a tavern and ordering a meal while looking for clues than going to the market to spend a day trading pork bellies. The game focuses on the former, while glossing over the latter.


Wow, my first post in like 3 months. Hope it was a decent one.

 

[jgbrowning]

Take into account too that most adventuring types are not cut out for pig farming. Many years back my wife and I picked up a package of 200 little toy pigs, the perfect size for 25mm gaming, and built a convention module around it. The plot was that the adventurers returned the sword of a dead comrade to his widow, only to find out that she was a pig farmer, and with her husband gone she now needed help to bring the animals to market at the regional fair. The characters found that herding 200 pigs on a 100 mile trek was a lot harder than it sounds. The use of wandering monsters took on a whole new meaning.

Ah, this made my day! I'll have to do this to my players next summer.

joe b.

 

[ASH]

Dont you get paid for how much the pig weighs? I mean, isn't it like based on price per pounds?
Well that and what kind of pig it is. I think thats why its hard to mesure in todays standards. We have come to find out that some breeds of pigs produce more meat, or more fat than other breeds. It also makes a big difference what they eat, what sex they are and so on.

Honestly, as far as pork goes an Iowa chop is my favorite.

 

[Torillan]

{geek mode on} I hear that the area around Camelot is very good "pig country". {geek mode off}

 

[Wilphe]

That's not a bad markup, a lot depends on where the inn is. If the inn is in a major town then animals will be being slaughtered all the time and fresh pork will be easy to get hold of. If it's a hamlet in the middle of nowhere the innkeeper might have to slaughter a pig specially if someone's ordered it.
Most fresh meat in that situation would be poultry or game. Pork would almost certainly be preserved bacon, sausage or salt meat.

Of course, 99% of people in a realistic medieval world will have some ability, time and land to spend farming, even the urban craftsmen. Food security is more important, even if you could earn more cash by working as a blacksmith full time.
Orthadox market economics is of no use in such a situation - which is one reason why most 3rd World GDP figures understate the countries' true wealth as it only works out the value of what is traded, rather than what is consumed.

 

[Hypersmurf]

The characters found that herding 200 pigs on a 100 mile trek was a lot harder than it sounds. The use of wandering monsters took on a whole new meaning.

Heh.

DM: "If you reach the fair with any pigs still alive, you win."
Players: "Doesn't sound so hard...?"

-Hyp.