AD&D 1E What is the cost of one night at an Inn?

[John R Davis]

I meant peek, as in have a look!

 

[AlexofBarbaria]

I build the economy up from wages.

So like @haakon1 I build my assumptions about prices from wages.
[snip]
1 sp to a day's wages allows for all sorts of extrapolation regarding prices, including doing something like 1 sp = $75 worth of largely handmade goods or services in 2025.

I'll note that you can't derive prices directly from wages unless you make assumptions about purchasing power. The purchasing power of an unskilled laborer varied in the Middle Ages, most dramatically before and after the Black Death, which boosted wages 2-3x due to a massive labor shortage. But even in that period, they had less purchasing power than today.

With $75 today one could buy 30 or 40 loaves of bread. As best I can tell, in the late 1300s (post-Black Death) a laborer earned around 3 pence/day, and the price of a loaf of bread was ~1/4 pence (a "farthing loaf"), giving them a purchasing power of 12/day.

If we go with 1 sp/day as a laborer's wage (which I like, as it matches the silver piece to the common groat/grosso/groschen silver coin worth 3-4 pence),1 sp = $25 seems a better figure to match their purchasing power to the Late Middle Ages.

 

[Celebrim]

I'll note that you can't derive prices directly from wages unless you make assumptions about purchasing power. The purchasing power of an unskilled laborer varied in the Middle Ages, most dramatically before and after the Black Death, which boosted wages 2-3x due to a massive labor shortage. But even in that period, they had less purchasing power than today.

With $75 today one could buy 30 or 40 loaves of bread. As best I can tell, in the late 1300s (post-Black Death) a laborer earned around 3 pence/day, and the price of a loaf of bread was ~1/4 pence (a "farthing loaf"), giving them a purchasing power of 12/day.

If we go with 1 sp/day as a laborer's wage (which I like, as it matches the silver piece to the common groat/grosso/groschen silver coin worth 3-4 pence),1 sp = $25 seems a better figure to match their purchasing power to the Late Middle Ages.

You make a good point, and one I was aware of but only addressed indirectly.

So the problem with trying to use purchasing power is it is skewed by industrialization. If you want to get price equivalents, you generally need to use the closest to non-industrial goods you can manage. So, one of the biggest shocks will be the price of clothing. You have to price clothing close to the price of hand tailored clothes, not machine-made clothes. Likewise, for bread, you have to use something close to handmade bakery loaves, not mass-produced grocery store bread. You will note that "artisanal" bread loves come in closer to the $7 to $8 a loaf range, and that will match right up with your calculations. Heck, depending on the grocery store loaf and brand, a better quality loaf can run you $6.75. Handmade furniture works out pretty well. So does for example handmade fight quality armor pieces or weapons, handmade leather saddles, and so forth.

Of course, none of this is perfect, and there are a lot of things that don't translate well, and all of it even the stuff that does work out tends to work out because there are a variety of competing factors that more or less average out.

But as long as you avoid using any sort of cheap manufactured good as a basis of pricing, you'll be surprisingly close and probably much closer than the prices in a typical price list.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

According to the Paston Letters, the cost of a room in an inn in c.15th was around 8 pence. That's about 9g of pure silver.

In D&D, there are 50 coins to a pound, which means a silver coin weighs about 9g.

So, 1sp.

 

[Celebrim]

According to the Paston Letters, the cost of a room in an inn in c.15th was around 8 pence. That's about 9g of pure silver.

In D&D, there are 50 coins to a pound, which means a silver coin weighs about 9g.

So, 1sp.

That would be one way to do it, but only if the relative abundance of precious metals was exactly the same between the two settings. Using wages is a more reliable guide. If we assume a daily wage is 1 s.p., and the daily wage in the 15th century was 3 pence, then we come up with about 3 s.p. for a room in an inn.

Also, I believe the number of coins in a pound has varied over D&D history. Wasn't it like 20 coins to a pound in "earlier times"?

 

[LordBP]

That would be one way to do it, but only if the relative abundance of precious metals was exactly the same between the two settings. Using wages is a more reliable guide. If we assume a daily wage is 1 s.p., and the daily wage in the 15th century was 3 pence, then we come up with about 3 s.p. for a room in an inn.

Also, I believe the number of coins in a pound has varied over D&D history. Wasn't it like 20 coins to a pound in "earlier times"?

B/X was 10 coins per pound.
1E was 10 coins per pound.
2E was 50 coins per pound.

Real life was different.

England had 311-584 silver pence per pound (weight not currency) and 65-175 gold pieces per pound (weight not currency) from 1158 to 1464 (inflation).

Silver pence was about the size of a US dime, but about half the thickness.

 

[AlexofBarbaria]

You make a good point, and one I was aware of but only addressed indirectly.

So the problem with trying to use purchasing power is it is skewed by industrialization. If you want to get price equivalents, you generally need to use the closest to non-industrial goods you can manage. So, one of the biggest shocks will be the price of clothing. You have to price clothing close to the price of hand tailored clothes, not machine-made clothes. Likewise, for bread, you have to use something close to handmade bakery loaves, not mass-produced grocery store bread. You will note that "artisanal" bread loves come in closer to the $7 to $8 a loaf range, and that will match right up with your calculations. Heck, depending on the grocery store loaf and brand, a better quality loaf can run you $6.75. Handmade furniture works out pretty well. So does for example handmade fight quality armor pieces or weapons, handmade leather saddles, and so forth.

Of course, none of this is perfect, and there are a lot of things that don't translate well, and all of it even the stuff that does work out tends to work out because there are a variety of competing factors that more or less average out.

But as long as you avoid using any sort of cheap manufactured good as a basis of pricing, you'll be surprisingly close and probably much closer than the prices in a typical price list.

$7-8 for bread?! I can get a decent sourdough loaf baked in-store for $2.20 here.

Clothing is an outlier though, yes -- even at $25/day, you have to think handmade/designer wool sweater to get a relative price close to what they paid for a wool tunic.

It seems better to just reduce the currency conversion peg rather than use less familiar handmade/artisanal prices for everything (defeats the purpose of a quick conversion guideline if I can't use prices already in my head), but either way works if they result in broadly similar purchasing power.

 

[Celebrim]

Real life was different.

England had 311-584 silver pence per pound (weight not currency) and 65-175 gold pieces per pound (weight not currency) from 1158 to 1464 (inflation).

Silver pence was about the size of a US dime, but about half the thickness.

Yes, I'm aware. D&D has always assumed that precious metals are relatively abundant, occurring in large coins that suitably fill up vast chests that looks impressive in pictures and movies.

My take is that the intention was that the "silver piece" was meant in the system to be a day's wages for unskilled labor and was a roughly schilling sized silver coin. A "gold piece" is to me a similar sized coin worth roughly 1 lb. of silver (or 20 silver pieces). Silver pennies probably existed (10-12 to the silver piece) but governments more commonly seemed to take silver pennies out of circulation in favor of copper coinage "copper piece" that could be produced cheaply at below the value of the metal. Peasants of course then want to be paid in silver but are forced to use copper for most small transactions. Fortunately for the peasants, inflation doesn't seem to exist in setting, probably because it would make things too freaking complicated.

Gygax then screwed things up by creating a "gold piece" standard for players in order to have his cake and eat it to. He also wanted to have vast fantasy chests filled with gold coinage because well, rule of cool. But he didn't want PC's to get ahead so easily so he priced everything he thought PC's would want to buy as if the gold piece was the standard of exchange, while retaining more historic and realistic price lists for food, commodities, and other things he thought peasants would want to buy as well as pricing taxes collected (but not taxes paid!) in silver pieces. The idea was to make trade have profits in silver, while expenses would always be in gold, forcing the PC's to stay adventuring to pay the upkeeps.

And while all of this has interesting gamest reasoning, it makes for dysfunctional economies when you start trying to do anything or having any situation Gygax didn't envision as being part of normal play.

 

[Celebrim]

$7-8 for bread?! I can get a decent sourdough loaf baked in-store for $2.20 here.

Where are you that you can get sourdough loves for $2.20? That would run around $5.75 around here. (Columbus OH). $2.20 is in the price range for the most generic, softest, mass-produced sliced sandwich bread of the sort that no medieval had access to and no one living in Europe would eat by choice.

It seems better to just reduce the currency conversion peg rather than use less familiar handmade/artisanal prices for everything (defeats the purpose of a quick conversion guideline if I can't use prices already in my head)

Google is awesome for quick price look ups of things that aren't in the price list or which you rarely buy. How much for a hand made chest-of-drawers, for example? The Amish can help with that. The higher standard of living (expected wages) tends to balance against the reduced cost of labor and materials (even the Amish are using industrial wood and power tools).

 

[LordBP]

Yes, I'm aware. D&D has always assumed that precious metals are relatively abundant, occurring in large coins that suitably fill up vast chests that looks impressive in pictures and movies.

My take is that the intention was that the "silver piece" was meant in the system to be a day's wages for unskilled labor and was a roughly schilling sized silver coin. A "gold piece" is to me a similar sized coin worth roughly 1 lb. of silver (or 20 silver pieces). Silver pennies probably existed (10-12 to the silver piece) but governments more commonly seemed to take silver pennies out of circulation in favor of copper coinage "copper piece" that could be produced cheaply at below the value of the metal. Peasants of course then want to be paid in silver but are forced to use copper for most small transactions. Fortunately for the peasants, inflation doesn't seem to exist in setting, probably because it would make things too freaking complicated.

Gygax then screwed things up by creating a "gold piece" standard for players in order to have his cake and eat it to. He also wanted to have vast fantasy chests filled with gold coinage because well, rule of cool. But he didn't want PC's to get ahead so easily so he priced everything he thought PC's would want to buy as if the gold piece was the standard of exchange, while retaining more historic and realistic price lists for food, commodities, and other things he thought peasants would want to buy as well as pricing taxes collected (but not taxes paid!) in silver pieces. The idea was to make trade have profits in silver, while expenses would always be in gold, forcing the PC's to stay adventuring to pay the upkeeps.

And while all of this has interesting gamest reasoning, it makes for dysfunctional economies when you start trying to do anything or having any situation Gygax didn't envision as being part of normal play.

He used a different currency system in his Gord novels which was interesting. Don't think he mentioned how heavy they were though.

Iron Drab	1
Brass Bit	5
Bronze Zee	50
Copper Common	250
Silver Noble	1000
Electrum Lucky	5000
Gold Orb	50000
Platinum Plate	55000