From: tjz6090@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Ted Zuvich)
Subject: Re: Basic Economics in the AD&D 2nd Ed. World
Organization: Boeing
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 16:38:56 GMT

In article <1992Dec18.064036.21315@athena.mit.edu> eyemax@athena.mit.edu (Christopher J Sarton) writes:
>
>What I am looking for is a *simple* system for an AD&D World.
>	What I am trying to get to is this:  the farmer.  Feudal society was
>based (for the large part) on a farmer's labors.  His product enabled the lord
>to hire those troops.  Using the prices of the 2nd Ed. Handbook, what would
>be a reasonable salary (before taxes and all that) for your average farmer?  
>This assumes good farmland, and average family of five with two workers.  Based
>on this, what would be a reasonable tax rate for the lord?
>	All I really need are some basic numbers--a farmer can produce enough

     Here's a diatribe I wrote concerning economics and the silver piece standard.  It should help get you started.

     It's easier to get the fantasy economy to work if it is at least loosely
based on a real economy.  This is why its important to have a conversion from
fantasy money to modern day money.  I've assumed a rate of 1 sp (mark, or
crown) = $10.   This rate is based on the assumption that 1 troy oz gold =
$400 US.  Discussion on the net indicates that this rate may not be very
accurate.  A more historically accurate conversion might be $40 per ounce.
Try it and see.You can use whatever conversion rate you want (i.e. 1 gp = $25,
1 sp = $100, etc.) as long as you are consistent and the conversion rate makes
sense to YOU.  Use whatever coin you are using as a standard, i.e. coin used
in large numbers of everyday financial transactions (thanks to Seawasp).
     To start the conversion process, pick a few staple items and see if their
prices make sense when you convert.  I chose beer and bread, reasoning that
just about every society would have these items as 'staples.'  No flames about
beer being a staple, please.  It is.  Honest.  The 'beer standard' is among the
best ways to calculate real exchange values between foriegn currencies.  Now
convert these 'staples' over to AD&D.  An expensive loaf of bread (AD&D world
production costs are probably much higher than ours) costs about $1.50 = 0.15 sp
= 1.5 cp.  A cheap pint of beer in the US costs about $2 = 0.2 sp = 2cp.  Then
do everything by ratios.  According to the PH, a pint of ale costs 4 cp, and a
long sword costs 15 gp.  A longsword costs 375*more than a pint of ale.  So
2 cp*375 = 750cp = 75 sp, instead of the 15 sp you would get if you did a
straight conversion of the PH price.  It turns out that you can apply this
conversion process to just about everything in the PH.  Weapons and armor are
about 5 x more expensive, and food is relatively cheap.
     Recent discussion on the net suggests writing your own price list.  That's
what I did.  Work with your players to decide what is reasonable.  My players
were eager to help with this project; they even did some of the research.
From the discussion on the newsgroup, I take it that just about any consistent
conversion will work, as long as you make food cheaper, and arms and armor more
expensive.
     You can even figure out how much a farmer 'makes' in a year, and how much
money his lord could collect from him in taxes, etc.  When you do this, it is
important to remember that a farmer grows most of his own food, and this food
is counted as income.  Right now, in the US, the average family income for 4
people is about $34K.  Ours is a very wealthy society, however.  So figure
that an AD&D farmer in a wealthy country would be below poverty level for
the US, so his income would conver to $34K * 1/4 = $8.5K = 850 sp per year.
If each member of his family requires 3 sp worth of food per week ($30),
total food costs = 720 sp.  He actually produces the food, but it counts as
income.  So the farmer has 130 sp left for the year to pay taxes with, buy
fuel, go down to the pub and have a pint, buy clothes (if he doesn't produce
them himself), etc.  This means that farmers typically won't have much cash!
     The next step is to figure out where the farmer's taxes go, and how much
food he can produce.  My players and I spent a lot of time digging through
books to figure out how much food a medieval farmer produced.  Our endeavors
where aided by the fact that one of my players grew up on a farm.  She provided
a unique perspective.  The old farms were very inefficient compared to modern
day farms.  A medieval farmer could get 5-6 bushels of wheat out of an acre of
land.  A modern day farmer in the midwest averages about 32 bushels/acre.
Other places get up to 50.  We used a production rate about halfway between
the medieval rates and modern day rates (19-20).  There were reasons for this.
The presence of magic (druids, and farmer-priests).  My campaign also assumes
that the humans/elves/dwarves know just a bit more about farming, engineering,
and medicine than they did in the middle ages.  In another campaign, it might
be fair to assume a production rate closer to the medieval standard.
     From this information, you can calculate how many farmers are required to
support a fighting man, knight, noble, kingdom, etc.  The money propagates
pretty well, too.