Quote from: RPGPundit on May 25, 2023, 12:48:08 AM
As a rule, D&D based games are ridiculously over-inflated.

Compared to the actual value of silver & gold in medieval Europe, yes.

ACKS economics seems based around the Classical world, where the numbers for silver and gold aren't massively off. Classical Athens had tons of silver. From what I recall, rowers did get paid 1 silver/day or even 2 silver/day. When Athens warred with Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, and the Persians sent lots of gold to Sparta in suppport, the value of gold to silver in Greece fell from 20:1 to 10:1.

If I'm getting my Roman LSD currency right (it's early), a Denarius was a silver coin, at one point 20 to the gold Solidus and 240 to the literal pound (Libra). And people did get paid 1 Denarius/day. Ofc the Roman silver coins were massively debased over time. The gold Solidus stayed pure, AIR because it was used differently - there were modern style shenanigans where the mint issued debased Denarii you had to accept at face value, but taxes had to be paid in Solidii.

Quote from: S'mon on May 25, 2023, 01:53:18 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 25, 2023, 12:48:08 AM
As a rule, D&D based games are ridiculously over-inflated.

Compared to the actual value of silver & gold in medieval Europe, yes.

ACKS economics seems based around the Classical world, where the numbers for silver and gold aren't massively off. Classical Athens had tons of silver. From what I recall, rowers did get paid 1 silver/day or even 2 silver/day. When Athens warred with Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, and the Persians sent lots of gold to Sparta in suppport, the value of gold to silver in Greece fell from 20:1 to 10:1.

If I'm getting my Roman LSD currency right (it's early), a Denarius was a silver coin, at one point 20 to the gold Solidus and 240 to the literal pound (Libra). And people did get paid 1 Denarius/day. Ofc the Roman silver coins were massively debased over time. The gold Solidus stayed pure, AIR because it was used differently - there were modern style shenanigans where the mint issued debased Denarii you had to accept at face value, but taxes had to be paid in Solidii.

To expound that, as I'm sure many of you know:

That's why if you want to monkey with exchange rates, it's the purity and size of the coins you want to change.  If I understand the research correctly, very rarely in the ancient and medieval periods of Europe did the silver:gold ratio vary outside 10:1 to 16:1--and it was usually closer to the former than the latter.  That's 1 pound of acceptably pure silver compared to 1 pound of acceptably pure gold.

From a D&D perspective, it's copper (and platinum) that are out of sync, assuming coins of about the same size and purity.  Not only have those inflated rates driven copper out of most meaning, but also it's a rare place that used both copper and silver currency at the same time.  For one thing, copper would seldom be so poor a value as 1:10 with silver, if for no other reason because of all the practical uses the copper has other than currency. 

I really like the suggestion from Delta's D&D blog to arrange copper at 5:1 with silver.  It's still not accurate, but it's edging up to accurate.  Doubling the value of copper means, among other things, that you can now start paying wages in some places in copper and have it sound plausible.  If there's a lot of people making 3 cp or 4 cp a day--or 6 or 7, it gives easy room to adjust around that 1 sp day.  It also implies enough lower-end trade that is in currency instead of barter (or room and board or whatever) to take your domain rules away from accuracy too, but that's not necessarily a bug.

The trick is to convert everything to a 1 dram (256 to a pound) silver coin. You can make it more playable by stating it is 250 silver coins to a pound.

Then you need to set the ratio of copper to silver and gold to silver for the same weight. Personally, I use 4 copper to 1 silver and 20 silver to 1 gold.

Then you can make other coins by playing around with coin weight. For example, I have a gold crown which is a 1 oz gold coins worth 320 silver pennies. A gold penny when used is worth 20 silver pennies. I also have a nearly 1 lb silver mark used by the viking based cultures of my setting worth 240d.  It is a small rectangular bar with a mint mark on it.

For pricing, I generally stick with the early medieval period as represented by Harn. ACKS aligns pretty well with Harn so I use some of my economic pricing from their product ranges as well.

As supply of precious metals and economic factors changed over the centuries I view it as a fool's errand to try to come up with something "accurate". Instead, I would go with something consistent based on the relationship of agriculture, industry, and trading in the classical and medieval eras. Something that ACKS excels at exposing. Then plug in your own values based on those relationships and that is your price and wage list.

Equipment and Hireling List
https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MW%20Equipment%20Rev%202.pdf

Full Price List
https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MajesticWilderlandsPrice%20List.pdf

Herbs and Potions
https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MW%20Herbs%20and%20Potions%20Rev_02.pdf

Merchant Adventures
https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MW%20Merchant%20Adventures%20Rev%2004.pdf

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 25, 2023, 07:36:03 AM
From a D&D perspective, it's copper (and platinum) that are out of sync, assuming coins of about the same size and purity.  Not only have those inflated rates driven copper out of most meaning, but also it's a rare place that used both copper and silver currency at the same time.  For one thing, copper would seldom be so poor a value as 1:10 with silver, if for no other reason because of all the practical uses the copper has other than currency. 

I think you may have got confused re copper because for some reason they typically compare the copper price per pound with the silver price per troy ounce - https://seekingalpha.com/article/4181917-copper-silver-ratio-range-for-thousands-of-years

Copper is much more common and much less valuable than silver.

At these metal weights and values, we can calculate that 1 gram of gold was valued as equivalent to about 11 grams of silver. And 1 gram of silver was valued as equivalent to about 112 grams of copper.

When we convert these values into pounds of copper and troy ounces of silver (1 pound = 14.5833 troy ounces), we find that in the 14th century Byzantine Empire, the ratio of 1 pound of copper to 1 troy ounce of silver was about 0.13.

A reasonable historical approach would be 100 copper to the silver, 10 silver to the gold, and no platinum currency. Copper currency though was fairly uncommon. If you've ever seen the size of a real Victorian penny (at 12 copper pennies per silver shilling, 20 shillings per gold sovereign), you can see why.

Breakdown of English coinage during the late Middle Ages.  Weights are in grams and I have the ratio of silver to gold in there.

Coins were very, very thin (under 1mm).

Year     Name                 Weight     Pure Silver     Pure gold     Pence     Ratio     Coins/LB     Diam(mm)   Thick(mm)
1158     Penny                1.458         1.349                                            311.11      15.00       0.73
1344     Penny                1.312         1.214                                            345.73         
1344     Gold Double Leopard  6.998                        6.962         72      12.55       64.82         
1344     Gold Noble                                                      80                              34.00     
         Gold Half Noble                                                 40                              25.50     
         Gold Quarter Noble                                              20                              20.00     
1346     Gold Noble                                                      80                              34.00     
         Gold Half Noble                                                 40                              25.50     
         Gold Quarter Noble                                              20                              20.00     
1351     Penny                1.200         1.110                                            377.99         
1351     Gold Noble           7.776                        7.736         80      11.48       58.33       34.00       0.81
         Gold Half Noble                                                 40                              25.50     
         Gold Quarter Noble                                              20                              20.00     
1412     Penny                0.972         0.899                                            466.67         
1412     Gold Half Noble      3.499                        3.481         40      10.33       129.63         
         Gold Quarter Noble                                              20                   
1464     Penny                0.777         0.719                                            583.55         
1464     Gold Half Angel      2.591                        2.578         40      11.16       175.03         

Quote from: S'mon on May 21, 2023, 06:18:20 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on May 21, 2023, 06:08:57 PM
I'm pretty sure I couldn't in any way closely calculate a....World peasant average for...GP output?

You couldn't nowadays, at least it wouldn't mean much, but the pre-industrial numbers are amazingly consistent over time, just a very very slow uptick in productivity (due to a few innovations such as mouldboard ploughs, horseshoes, harness that doesn't choke the horse, better metallurgy et all).

One thing that's very clear from pre-industrial numbers is that no one lived in "dollar a day" poverty - though they may have died in dollar a day poverty. People were producing in the region of $20-$25 dollars a day consistently across thousands of years.

For the most part you're right. Though most peasants in most of the Medieval period would almost never have had any kind of coin money at all, everything was in barter. Also, there were definitely people who lived at the level of subsistence poverty: the underclass in the cities.

A few options for domain management:
-Godbound: mostly abstract, speaking in terms of what features and problems a faction has and how that affects die rolls for projects.
-Worlds Without Number: more detailed, with specific assets like a smuggling group or a logistics mage group.
-Crowns & Castles: described as "play D&D as a 4x empire strategy game".
-A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe: detailed models of medieval manors (noting that "medieval" is a broad term) and talking about how magic would affect things like taxes and construction.

Re: gold/silver, I'd read in a good book on Roman economics that they generally went with a 10 silver : 1 gold ratio, but this shifted toward 12:1 due to heavy export of both (esp. gold) to Arabia and India. Also they debased their coinage over time. (They were trading extensively and directly with India c. 100 AD, and Africa. Neither of which bothered exploring much for the next thousand-plus years.) Standard RPG coinage is silly with GP inflation but would make a little more sense if you just call all the "gold pieces" silver.

Quote from: KrisSnow on May 27, 2023, 11:19:52 AM
Standard RPG coinage is silly with GP inflation but would make a little more sense if you just call all the "gold pieces" silver.

More like, the prices of PC oriented goods & services, and skilled wages derived therefrom, are silly, while basic NPC wages are ok. Eg charging 5 copper for a small beer when a worker's wage is 1 sp.

Quote from: S'mon on May 27, 2023, 05:13:40 PM

Quote from: KrisSnow on May 27, 2023, 11:19:52 AM
Standard RPG coinage is silly with GP inflation but would make a little more sense if you just call all the "gold pieces" silver.

More like, the prices of PC oriented goods & services, and skilled wages derived therefrom, are silly, while basic NPC wages are ok. Eg charging 5 copper for a small beer when a worker's wage is 1 sp.

It's only silly if you presume the NPC bartender is charging the locals he's known all his life the same rate as the guys walking in with more value on their persons than the bartender could earn in his lifetime (even starting gold for most PCs is about 3-4 years worth of wages for a commoner).

The price lists have always presumed "boom town" conditions, where the locals jack up the prices to get a share of all that wealth the PCs pulled out of a hole in the ground.

During the 49 Gold Rush, a meal for two might cost $1200 in today's money and a dozen eggs would cost over $150 in today's money. A pair of boots could go for $3000 adjusted for inflation.

Basically, figure NPC's are marking up the non-specialty goods by 10-20 times and it works starts looking sane (i.e. farmer Joe who comes in every night pays just half a copper for his pint of beer and chuckles as his buddy the barkeep charges the "weirdos" ten times as much).

This, in other words: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0122.html

Quote from: KrisSnow on May 27, 2023, 07:01:13 PM
This, in other words: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0122.html

Exactly that.

Once you accept that the prices are PC-facing elements rather than the actual prices of the day-to-day economy you can make the system work far more smoothly for Domain-scale economics.

My ballpark is that unless its a military weapon, armor or magic/magic adjacent, the price of any given good is reduced by a factor of 10 (or one coin type in D&D's multiples of 10 system of coinage) when it is part of normal day-to-day commerce between locals and normal travelling merchants. So that hemp rope the PCs are paying a gold per 50' for is only a silver per 50' under normal trading conditions.

And with that simple change a laborer earning 1sp per day goes from starving to death in short order to actually making enough to sustain a family on and still have some that could be taxed without ruining him.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 27, 2023, 11:22:55 PM
My ballpark is that unless its a military weapon, armor or magic/magic adjacent

I find that's the main issue - mundane armour & weapon prices are often around x10 where they should be, though this varies a lot by edition. In BX and 4e D&D, plate is around 60gp, which seems fairly reasonable for ca 1400 AD, though BX leather is an excessive 20gp (not that leather was used much for armour in medieval Europe anyway, but in the AC table it's where a heavy Gambeson should be). In 5e plate is an incredible 1500gp. With weapons a longsword is typically 15gp. A sword could cost that or more ofc, but a typical arming sword ca 1400 AD might be ca 15 silver coins (at 240 silver to the lb) not 15 gold coins. Some other things are worse, eg shields are commonly pegged at 10gp, which is around $1000/£1000 in modern money. OK for selling to PC at inflated price, not so ok for working out the economics of equipping an army.

IME the problems come when you're looking at typical manufacturing rates, and what an armour smith should be earning. 5e D&D suggests a production rate of 5gp/day for all mundane manufacturing work, where unskilled workers earn 2 sp/day. 5 gp/day seems ok for a master armourer until you realise it takes them 1500/5 = 300 days to make a suit of plate armour! If production rate is increased then income goes through the roof. And 5e says that materials & modest subsistence take half the net cost so you can't go below 750gp for the suit of plate.

I just say that the pricier weaponry comes with the social licensing to carry that without being considered a menace to society on sight. Everyone can get a club or handful of darts. But to wield military-grade materiel in public without being Most Wanted means you paid your dues *somewhere* and thus you *belong* to *someone or some institution*.  It also means 'good/legal' behavior is encouraged with such a privilege.  Don't abuse it to lose it!

(And yes, magic is similarly licensed. So common philters of Cantrips... sellable to the public if you got the funds and cheaper than you'd think. Slinger of bigger spells & stuff, well, you must have permission from *somewhere*, right? Right? )

The 5E price might be able to reflect something most people don't include with the functionality, without otherwise having to justify the price with enchantments or other magic boons: You're not really buying standard issue plate mail used by an army or watch, so you basically pay for the privalege of owning something that isn't accessible to unenlisted locals who aren't obliged into regular martial training.

Since it's a special order product, a blacksmith has the opportunity to go all out and craft something with style, adding his personal touch with engravings or sculpture that winds up doubling as a billboard of his talents to other adventurers, or in the towns that your own character passes through. Might be point of personal pride for a famous adventurer to be wearing his armor, something he can brag about to other blacksmiths in his guild.