Topic: HARP economics

[Turbs]

having just read the Rolemaster thread on a similar topic http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=13751.0

I am curious to if I can get some form of gauge on economics in the HARP rules setting.
specifically, thoughts on how much a farmer earns a month or how much it would cost to buy a business in a city or tiny village etc.
basically the costs that a day to day average citizen would have to contend with during their lives.

Its always hard to gauge these things in a fantasy game were things like a bale of hay can cost 1 copper piece and a sword can cost 20 gold. 

It always surprises me that games never include this information in GM chapters as I for one find them crucial in setting immersion.

EDIT : fixed link

[dagorhir]

The economics in a fantasy setting can be quite complicated and is very much specific to the setting. But I found that the more you try to get an economic system that makes sense, the less the rules and prices make sense.

To try to get a proper economy for my setting I took some time to research the medieval economy and here's what I came up with.

A typical cottage would cost about 192sp. Renting the same house would cost around 24sp/year.
A craftsmen house, including workshop, can cost up to 144gp. But renting the same house would cost around 96sp/year.
An unbound and unskilled laborer can expect around 16cp per day of work, if he's lucky.
The amount any craftsmen will make depends on quite a lot of factors, but it boils down how much they sell what the produce less how much it cost them to make it. But they can make between 2sp to 100gp per day of work depending on their crafts.
Not all transactions are monetary. For instance, the miller will actually not charge any coin for milling grain, instead he keeps a portion of the grain for himself as payment.
Lords and land owners tend to pay much less for items because they have craftsmen in their service that provide the work. These craftsmen are given room and board plus a small amount (depending on their work) in payment.
Landowners can be exceedingly wealthy. In medieval Britain, some landowners were wealthier then the king.
Serfs don't get paid anything beyond the food and lodging given to them by their lord. Which is probably why lords can get so wealthy.

This makes magical items extremely expensive with the prices given in the standard rules.

As a note, I don't use the standard harp coinage in my setting. There are only silver and gold coins and most commerce is made with silver coins. The coins are also smaller (and worth less) than standard Harp coins. I have 292 coins per pound (1.555g per coin). A gold coin is worth 24 silver coins (24d). 1 Harp sp converts to about 2.5 silver coins. I've created my own equipment lists and adjusted prices where needed to balance it out with the economy in mind.

[Alwyn]

If remember correctly, Gary Gygax's  World Builder and ICE's/TGC's Castles & Ruins had information on the costs of building and maintaining various structures.  Gary's Living Fastasy had good information on what the various laborers, craftsmen, etc hads for income, as well as information on assumed average incomes by class, plus how they lived and costs for various services. 

I think the information in these books should be able to support HARP as well, although finding the ones by Mr. Gygax might prove to be difficult since they can no longer be published by Troll Lord Games. 

I have all three of these and I have found them quite useful over the years.   

[GrumpyOldFart]

As a note, I don't use the standard harp coinage in my setting. There are only silver and gold coins and most commerce is made with silver coins. The coins are also smaller (and worth less) than standard Harp coins.

I'm in the process of rethinking coinage (and wealth, and economics) in my game. I kinda have to, because I'm using the western US as my game map. Unless I have a backstory saying it's all mined out, I feel like I have to assume the relative values of copper, silver, gold and platinum in the central Rockies or the basin and range country of Nevada are going to be nowhere near the norm. Swords and such will be relatively cheap, things like food for the people and hay for the horses will be what's hideously expensive. There's a fair amount of magical talent devoted to soil fertility, and they charge all the traffic will bear, too.

[Old Man]

At some point (perhaps C&R reference or Harn or such) I came up with roughly a SP a day for average craftsman wages (likely high compared to some). I then equated that to roughly $50 american (current, based on $7-8 min wage * 8 hours) and used that so the players could have a sense of cost (and so we could translate real world items such say a box of crayons ... ).

[pyrotech]

I've referenced my method of estimating daily living costs in previous posts:


It boils down to comparing the cheap daily rate of a hotel/inn as a guideline for the common laborer's daily living costs (housing, food, and everyday consumables).  Add in to that clothing and entertainment costs (which vary a lot).

My hypothesis is that the cost of 1 nights stay equates roughly to how much it cost someone to live for a day.  So someone living in a rented hovel, eating two poor meals a day would have a daily expense roughly equal to the cost to stay one night in the common room of a low quality inn.  You need to add in larger infrequent expenses like clothing and celebrations and the like to this.

But if I remember correctly my estimates came to within a factor of 2 of Old Man's figure.

....

I just checked against my campaign document (which uses the standard HARP Fantasy price charts) and the number I use is that a common laborer makes about 1.1sp a day, while a skilled craftsman typically makes about 4 times that.

Here is the text from my campaign document on the subject:

A common laborer could expect to earn the equivalent of about 50 gold pieces per year.  However after taxes and tithes would only have 40 to "spend".  A typical adult requires about one gold per week in living expenses (for goods, housing, food and required services they can’t do themselves).  This means a common laborer must scimp, save, and gather as much food on their own as they can just to get by.  Raising a family requires the whole family to work to make ends meet. 

A skilled tradesman is in much better shape.  Most skilled trades earn about 200 gold per year.  This is enough to raise a family without expecting them to do more than just help out around the business and house, and live in a degree of comfort.

Your results are very likely to vary.

I remember some articles from S. John Ross that went into the population and living cost of people in medieval Europe, and I know HARN and Chivalry and Sorcery get brought up when these kinds of discussions come up in Fantasy games.  Unfortunately I don't have any of these sources handy at the moment (but I think the S. John Ross article is still out there on the web somewhere).

I hope this helps if only a little.

-Pyrotech

[dagorhir]

It boils down to comparing the cheap daily rate of a hotel/inn as a guideline for the common laborer's daily living costs (housing, food, and everyday consumables).  Add in to that clothing and entertainment costs (which vary a lot).

My hypothesis is that the cost of 1 nights stay equates roughly to how much it cost someone to live for a day.  So someone living in a rented hovel, eating two poor meals a day would have a daily expense roughly equal to the cost to stay one night in the common room of a low quality inn.  You need to add in larger infrequent expenses like clothing and celebrations and the like to this.

I think this over estimates the cost of living. Inns are business that try to made a profit so their prices are well above the cost of living. A common laborer could never live in an inn, even the common room eating the cheapest meal. Renting a flat in someones house will cost less and buying food and preparing it themselves will also cost less them the cheapest meal at an Inn.

[John Duffield]

Try this link - http://www.medievalcoinage.com/prices/medievalprices.htm - it may help

[dagorhir]

Try this link - http://www.medievalcoinage.com/prices/medievalprices.htm - it may help

Or this one http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medprice.htm

Those are two of the sources that I used in my research for the economy of my setting.

[Bruce]

Try this link - http://www.medievalcoinage.com/prices/medievalprices.htm - it may help

Or this one http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medprice.htm

Those are two of the sources that I used in my research for the economy of my setting.

Those are both great links. I know of a great book "The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England" is an excellent book to give one an idea of what life was actually like back in "those days". It has some stuff on economy and loads of other interesting tidbits that could be used to bring a different kind of life into a campaign setting. All I can say is life in England back then really sucked, not as much for the nobility (or the clergy for that matter).
I have an idea for a new topic....

Bruce

[dagorhir]

Those are both great links. I know of a great book "The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England" is an excellent book to give one an idea of what life was actually like back in "those days". It has some stuff on economy and loads of other interesting tidbits that could be used to bring a different kind of life into a campaign setting. All I can say is life in England back then really sucked, not as much for the nobility (or the clergy for that matter).
I have an idea for a new topic....

Bruce

That book is actually on my wish list.

[Bruce]

That book is actually on my wish list.

A little warning then, the last chapter is all about art and a little literature. The way it is presented makes it easy to get bored.

Bruce

[dagorhir]

That book is actually on my wish list.

A little warning then, the last chapter is all about art and a little literature. The way it is presented makes it easy to get bored.

Bruce

Considering that I already books on medieval art and literature (all excellent cures for insomnia), I don't think it will be a problem.

[Old Man]

My favorite Ross article is http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

[dagorhir]

My favorite Ross article is http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

This is an excellent article.

Thanks

[Turbs]

My favorite Ross article is http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

This is an excellent article.

Thanks

Thanks very useful!

[pyrotech]

That is the very article I was thinking of Old Man.

It is one of my favorites as well.  I have saved it to my hard drive and break it out anytime I get to designing a fantasy world.  One of my pet peeves in many fantasy worlds is just how many sentient people are around - people forget how much lower the population density was in medieval times.

One of my favorite sections is the distribution of types of professions found in a city as well.  It is based on a single data point, but that is better than nothing.

As for Dagorhir's concern that my approximation overestimates the cost of living, My estimate isn't just for the price of housing.  I use the cost of a nights stay in an inn as I rough guide for the cost of living a day (which includes housing, food, and everyday expenses and consumables).  So while an inn does need to markup the cost of housing when it "resells" it, I guestimate the markup roughly equals the cost of ingredients for home cooked meals, fuel costs, thread and wool costs, thatch costs, and other everyday consumables.  In medieval times clothing (a highly worked product) was a borderline capital expense, so I divide the costs of a suit of clothing or two over the days of the year and add it to the cost of an inn.  I also know that even desperate people will "waste" some effort and perhaps even money for basic entertainment in the long run, so add a small amount (usually just enough to round things out to a convenient number) as a bit of a "fudge" factor.

I have checked it against some "real" numbers as best as I can for a few fantasy systems and it hasn't proven completely unreasonable so far.  So I continue to use it for a rough guess.

Another assumption I make with this system is that most of the "income" or "cost of living" isn't going to be in the form of money for much of the fantasy setting's population.  The actual "wage" someone earns is likely to be significantly less than this number with the difference made up in barter and self-made/grown goods.  This number is just the cash equivalent of those incomes.

It also seems to work OK for Sci-fi games as well (I've used this to convert credits to $/euros for Harp Sci-Fi as well and again reality checks against specific items seemed pretty close).

But as is almost always the case, someone else's results may differ.

-Pyrotech

[dagorhir]

Here is a farm example to get a sense of how much money a farmer can expect per harvest:

The farm has 10 acres of arable land.
The farmer can expect 330 bushels of wheat at harvest if all goes well.
33 bushels are given to the local lord as taxes (10% tax rate).
10 bushels are reserved for planting the next harvest.
20 bushels are kept as the food store for the farm. (This assumes that other sources of food are also available, i.e. vegetables, livestock etc)
This leaves 267 bushels of wheat the farmer can sell.
At market, he can expect 5d per bushel of wheat for a total of 1335d of money (L5 11s 3d).

With that money he must pay any laborers that worked for him and any other expenses that he may have. Those are too variable to estimate.

[dagorhir]

Here is a farm example to get a sense of how much money a farmer can expect per harvest:

The farm has 10 acres of arable land.
The farmer can expect 330 bushels of wheat at harvest if all goes well.
33 bushels are given to the local lord as taxes (10% tax rate).
10 bushels are reserved for planting the next harvest.
20 bushels are kept as the food store for the farm. (This assumes that other sources of food are also available, i.e. vegetables, livestock etc)
This leaves 267 bushels of wheat the farmer can sell.
At market, he can expect 5d per bushel of wheat for a total of 1335d of money (L5 11s 3d).

With that money he must pay any laborers that worked for him and any other expenses that he may have. Those are too variable to estimate.

There was an error in converting liters to bushels that made this farm rather exceptional in yield (33 bushels per acre). A more appropriate yield would be 8 bushels per acre with that the total value is 210d of money from what remains. Much less. 

Often laborers were paid in food instead of coin, 1 bushel in every 22 threshed and winnowed per worker. This would effectively reduce the total moneys above.

[Zhaleskra]

I admit I've never been too interested in the economics of a game world. Though over time, while I could accept that all D&D worlds had a Copper/Silver/Gold/Platinum system for convenience, I found the idea of every world being on a 10:1 ratio a bit too unbelievable. Same metals, fine. Same exchange rate? No way. This is why I like the Diomin setting's exchange rate, too bad I lost my conversion when I was having my motherboard replaced.