Now that I am, how do I have? (or, Stuff) <- More rules.

Now that I am, how do I have? (or, Stuff)



Oh Yeah.  Throw in a mask, and I'll drive it off the lot !

If you need something that isn’t permanently linked to your character, you need to roll enough successes, which vary by the value & scarcity.  The career you use is citizen, unless your adventuring career would be more appropriate. As a guide, your social class is defined by your CITIZEN career.

Night Train Rockafeller,
Millionaire Hobo
(rejected player character)

Class                                         CITIZEN

·        RICH                                   5

·        UPPER                                 4

·        WORKING                             3

·        POOR                                   2

·        BUM                                     1

·        DESTITUTE                         0

 

Forobtaining  stuff, determine how many successes it costs from the table below:

·        If your CITIZEN is greater, you have it (until it gets blown up) !

·        If your CITIZEN is equal, you can be assumed to be renting it, but have to make a single success citizen roll each adventure to keep it.  If it is blown up, you now have a new hobby –paying it off !

Ha !  Thought you were safe up here !
Luckily I have
MY VERY OWN HELICOPTER !

·        Otherwise, roll the above number of dice, adding the citizen rating to each.  Yes, the rich can have it all.   As ever, each 7+ is a success.  If you have enough successes, you have it till you don’t

You can only roll if it is possible to succeed.  However,  if the item requires more successes than possible, a player can gain one free success before rolling by reducing your Citizen by one . Two successes requires lowering it by  TWO levels. OUCH ! If you get it, you lose it between adventures, but regain your CITIZEN points.  

While lots of common stuff is bought using your CITIZEN skill, career specific stuff can be different.  Any time you need to roll for an item, instead of your CITIZEN, you can use an appropriate CAREER . The adds are still the citizen rating, but the number of dice rolled is determined by the career.  Thus, a BUM (1) would normally  be unable to obtain a pistol (cost 2) as he can only roll one dice at +1 (CITIZEN dice +CITIZEN) ; however, an ex Army (3) BUM rolls three dice for +1 (ARMY dice +CITIZEN).  Two successes and hes a Hobo with a pistol !

NOTE that in a major pinch, you can reduce the career you substitute as if it was CITIZEN.

If you have NATURE instead of CITIZEN, your effective CITIZEN is BUM.  Use careers where you can, Tarzan.   In his case “RICH BASTARD HEIR” turned out to be his career.

Cost of stuff with some examples, or, everything has its price, sweetheart !

NOTE: that Items rated at 6+ require either being WEALTHY, or reducing you CITIZEN or CAREER, or being an NPC villan or patron, who can have a citizen higher than 5. Characters, never.

Free/dumpster divings      0             Rags. Old butts.  Ketchup and chickenbone soup. Squirrel.  Shank. Club. Beano.

Cheap/Ubiquitous               1            Old clothing, gum, shiv, smokes, Poison Liquor. flop

Inexpensive/common           2            Zip gun, , Cheap Booze, Old Car. hardscrabble, apartment

Affordable/uncommon         3            Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun Sm House, Car,  good stuff Booze, farm    

costly/Unusual                    4            Lg House, fancier car, sm airplane,country estate Military arms (BAR, Grenade) top                                                               shelf Booze:

Luxury/uncommon               5            Mansion,Yacht, fighter, race car, lab, big/new plane, tank, plantation,  best Booze

Ruinous/Rare                      6            Secret base, rocket, flying yacht/HQ

Priceless/Unique               7+           Hope Diamond, The Mona Lisa, Battle cruiser, Spy army

Examples of transport:  match with value (hints: one is 0, one is 6)

 

 

Back and Blathering about Bullion !

I’m back from vacation ! Six days lounging around a pool with refreshing beverages friends and family was great ! Okay, lets finish up money.

My idea is that money types tend to correspond with what they buy. Cheap stuff needs cheap coins, expensive stuff needs high value coinage. In the first case, providing change is a real issue if you have gold coins, and in the second, gathering a wagon of small value coins is the issue.

So, it occurs to me that the money can be broadly assumed to relate to broad categories of goods. I have four categories of money based on roman(esque) values, and they correspond to Gold, Silver, bronze(or Small silver ) and copper. All are to some extent adulterated (thus the concept of intrinsic value: money is circulated at greater than its precious content), and interestingly, with non-debased money (in which the precious content is what it always has been and is well known), a low ratio of precious to base content is much more tolerable in the least valueable currency. This is because a base coin of low value is close to the everyday purchase lots of the cheapest and most basic goods – which allows less cheap currency required to circulate as change. If this seems odd, consider that at the fringes of the roman empire, inflation often occurred as a result of a lack of low value coinage –as it became harder to make change, merchants raised prices to avoid hassle and legal issues regarding value for cost and change. In many cases, this was because the local army was the main source of coinage, and they were notorious for paying in the highest coinage possible to save on transport. So one needs lots of tiny coins, or the historical solution of cutting coins –which makes their value less precise, and thus less desirable than uncut coins, which also contributes to inflation via devaluation. But enough of that.

Four categories, four coin families: Each coin family is based on one of the four(copper As, bronze Sestercii, silver Denarius, gold Solidus). Each of the categories had coinage running from ¼ to 4x the base coin to allow change and higher value purchases within the associated type of goods. As Silver, Bronze and copper follow a 4:1 progression, the smallest Denarii based coin(a ¼ d in silver ) is equal to the largest sestercii based coin(4 sestercii bronze); in general, the physically larger coin is preferred by consumers and small merchants as it is hard to lose or swipe, so these “bottom edge coins” ¼ silver, ¼ bronze are generally rarer and replaced by the largest issue of the next lowest based coinage.

Okay, so heres the jump: I'm going to assume that each family of coin has an associated social class that uses it day to day –with bigger purchases coming from the next coin family up. For my own dogheaded purposes, I’ll specify that Copper = poor; Bronze = getting by; Silver = well to do, Gold =wealthy.

Remember too, that 1 Solidus = 25 Denarii =100 sesterci =400 As.

Unlike the lesser metal coins, the jump to Gold is 25:1, which, to me, suggests that there is natural division in goods when the gold items are considered. Most people, even peasants, could buy things on the bottom three groupings, even if they had to save for it –and often, even if they could, they wouldn't bother, simply because while a sword is affordable, its about the same cost as another donkey or a couple of goats, and which is more useful day in and out to a dirt farmer? Gold stuff is a major investment for the Silver classes, and has to have immediate use. A basic riding horse may cost the same as a milk cow, but there is no return for a farmer on his gold, whereas a the milk cow is a productive asset –and one which might only be replaced (or added to) every few years. So, such a purchase is a huge hardship for the bronze classes, and unreachable for the copper.
Thus, Gold items, are the items that would bankrupt most people. And when I say most people, it's probably worth pointing out that something like 90% of most preindustrial populations are either rural farmers or laboring poor in the cities –the ones using copper and bronze day to day. ; The well to do and up were very small portions of the population:. In fact, looking at the gold/copper ratio, assuming about 400 poor subsistance farmers or labourors (copper class)to 1 wealthy farmer or merchant (gold class) is a pretty good approximation of preindustrial demographics; as is 1 rich bugger for every 25 well off merchants(silver) or farm owners to 100 "getting by" workers and small/sharecrop farmers (bronze) to 400 peasants/working poor labor or slaves(copper). Interesting, that.

So, looking at actual prices for Stuff (loosely defined) mainly usiong classical sources, but filling in with byzantine and early medieval prices, here seems to be the categories of coins and what they buy.

Witin each category, the prices range from about 1/2 to double or triple the basic coins, with really cheap items (due to quality or quantity) out to 1/4 to 4x.

Copper/As: unprepared bulk foodstuffs, usually grains. Minimally prepared food (bread,small beer, poor wine) cheapest household goods. day rates for odd jobs by children, slaves, beggars and the destitue or refugees ("here child take this note to that tavern", "okay, sweep the crossing ahead of me"); often a day rate at this level is the value of any dole or relief provided by a guild, church, city or state , delivered in basic grain or bread.

Bronze/small silver/Sestercii; basic prepared food (sizzling weasel-on-a-stick), raw bulk meat, base metal household tools; basic furnishing; non metal weapons (bow, staff,club; common mostly wood weapons (spear, javelin) and shields.. Cheapest food animals (chickens); base living rent; good drink (wine, ale). Day wage for working poor/grunt labor. ("you diggum heap big hole here, throw in much dung from big stink pile there, clean floor under pile much hurry hurry !")

Silver/Denarii: Tools, most metal weapons, clothing*, sit down meal, small food animals (pig, goat, sheep) or base draft animals (oxen in some periods draft horses in another); cheapest owned housing ; good versions of Bronze coin items. Snob drinks. day wage for basic worker, multiples for specialists (carpenter =2x, Jeweler 3x) or basic thug guard(1-3x). In general, Legionaires were paid some where between a basic and specialist depending on the political climate; elites were often paid 2-4x more.

Gold/Solidii; large livestock (Ox, Cow), riding horses, land , Armor**; good quality silver coin items Snob foods. Day rate for Senior Officers/Knights/Experts (architect; fashionable sculptor; high civil service)

* Clothing is surprisingly expensive seen through modern eyes. The material is farmed, but replaces food acreage (as cotton, flax or wool sheep, say) and requires lots of hand labor (spinning by a distaff is a lifetime 24/7 hobby). Both boost the prices, especially in communities with very little excess agricultural land.

** Armor is interesting, and more expensive than D&D would suggest when compared to cost of living. Two interesting constants I found were that a cheap or basic sword cost about the same as a small pack or draft animal, and mail armor cost about 4x a sword. A helmet cost 1/2 sword, as did a set of metal grieves. shields were cheap, as were spears. Bows, too, relative to mainly metal items.

Next up and last:

The actual frikkin price list based on the above.

What next Pt 2: frp money

So, I gather that money systems in D&D is on a par with, say, near lightspeed rocks and jump torpedoes in Traveller: OOOO-VEERRRR discussed. Ooops. Well, if its any consolation, rest assured that I could be writing screeds about planetary atmospheres and empty hex jumps with jump torpedoes, so consider that I'm not doing that to be a win for now.

So, There's bunches of theories about how to organize faux-medieval money and economies: the ale standard, the lunch standard, the cow standard, the biblical standard, the standards of Diocletian, the wereguild standard, and more. And, obviously, they all disagree, 'cause the very meaning of money now is different now from what it was then, and often from what it was in the time we are trying to emulate relative to the time we have references for.

Throw in the fact that back then our fluid metal rates didn't exist, and that there was no use for silver and gold other than coins, bullion and jewlery, and so even the value of them doesn't mean what it used to, and there's no way for a hobbyist, even an obsessive one, to untangle it.

And, then, the whole slavery thing: a slaveholding society is going to mess crap up far more than one can imagine. See, there's this class of workers where most of the expense is up front (and cyclically very cheap) , and the daily wage is just for food for them. The point is, even the value of a days labor cannot be used to value items: what is the real value of a sword when made by slaves vs made by a (not enslaved) blacksmith. Hard to say.


So, why the droning about economics ? Becuase I'm building a rationale for doing it my way and ignoring unsightly contradictions, thats why.

Some few facts that seem to emerge from the morass can be used to gain a grasp on the subject for RPG purposes.

1. Silver < Gold, almost always.
2. Food < crafted goods, almost always.
3. Clothing is surprisingly expensive, actually: Hardware can be industrialized far more efficiently than clothing production.
4. prices change, but basically ratios give a clearer illusion of consistency.
5. A standard days pay should keep you from starving or eating your children. Slavery messes with this, seriously.