Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

[Deepbluediver]

I've got another odd question that I figured I'd throw out there, since this thread is extremely helpful.

Has anyone got any good resources they could link me about the historical costs of weapons and armor? Specifically anything that relates it to a sort-of equivalent cost in modern terms? What I mean is, telling me that something cost 12 shillings and 4 pence in 1500 doesn't give much information at all, since I don't have any frame of reference to compare that to. I know that a lot of the stuff you see in museums, especially plate-armor, was the most ornate examples and at least sometimes designed only for display and parades, and not really intended for combat. And common soldiers used many varieties of weapons and armor that were passed down, or acquired second-hand, and/or weren't manufactured to custom standards. What kind of investment might someone make if they wanted to buy a serviceable, average sword, spear, mace, shield, gamebeson, leather cuirass, mail hauberk, etc.

What I'd really love, if anyone has any idea, is some sort of cost in terms of hours or days of labor you'd have to work to buy something. I realize the whole concept is clashing in weird ways, and modern labor standards don't really apply to medieval settings, but I'm trying to base a fictional economy on a sort of universal minimum wage, and then I can estimate what might be appropriate prices for equipment at various socio-economy strata.

[rs2excelsior]

I've got another odd question that I figured I'd throw out there, since this thread is extremely helpful.

Has anyone got any good resources they could link me about the historical costs of weapons and armor? Specifically anything that relates it to a sort-of equivalent cost in modern terms? What I mean is, telling me that something cost 12 shillings and 4 pence in 1500 doesn't give much information at all, since I don't have any frame of reference to compare that to. I know that a lot of the stuff you see in museums, especially plate-armor, was the most ornate examples and at least sometimes designed only for display and parades, and not really intended for combat. And common soldiers used many varieties of weapons and armor that were passed down, or acquired second-hand, and/or weren't manufactured to custom standards. What kind of investment might someone make if they wanted to buy a serviceable, average sword, spear, mace, shield, gamebeson, leather cuirass, mail hauberk, etc.

What I'd really love, if anyone has any idea, is some sort of cost in terms of hours or days of labor you'd have to work to buy something. I realize the whole concept is clashing in weird ways, and modern labor standards don't really apply to medieval settings, but I'm trying to base a fictional economy on a sort of universal minimum wage, and then I can estimate what might be appropriate prices for equipment at various socio-economy strata.

As a starting point, there's this post from page 22 on the thread:

A compilation of prices from Czech area, mostly based on Prague goods. It's in Czech, so to make it easier for you, the only relevant table is the first one, the rest are Italian prices for comparision. The prices are converted into gros (gr.) or kopa grosu (kop gr). 1 kop gr == 60 gr, though the exact amount varied, and should be equivalent to 253 g of silver. 1 kop gr was at first enough gros to get you 253 gr of silver, or 1 hrivna, but this being the middle ages, there's an ungodly mess there.

Some highlights:

550 liters of beer, varies due to place and quality = 25 - 42 gr.
36 liters of wheat, bought from farmer directly = 8 - 10 gr
helmet = 30 gr
good cow = 46 gr
helmet with visor = 48 gr
rent for 1 0,173 square kilometer of land = cca 60 gr
stallion = 6 kop gr
warhorse = 20 kop gr
property needed to serve as witness = 10 -12 kop gr
2-story ordinary house in a city = 17 - 22 kop gr
cuirass = 4 kop gr
Milanese cuirass = 8 kop gr
top of the line armor = 75 kop gr
price of a minor noble's (zeman) holdings = 50 - 60 kop gr
sword = 20 kop gr and higher

If we assume that Czechs drank as much beer back then as today (cca 140 liters per capita) - which we probably can, these being Czechs - then one person spent 6.4 - 10.7 gr on beer alone per year, and assuming 2 EUR per liter (for beer in somewhat higher end pubs), we get 1 gr = 28 EUR.

Helmet then costs 840 EUR (my kettle hat cost about 300, but really good helmets are about this expensive today), sword goes from 33 000 upwards (top of the line modern replica goes for about 1 000+ for a simple sword), 2-story city house goes for 28 000 EUR (HA! I wish), and top of the line armor sets you back a steep 63 000 EUR.

Keep in mind that, when smaller goods are concerned, these are prices for brand new items made by licensed craftsmen (they were taken from a city's guild records for the most part), you could and did find many of these made by not so great craftsmen or re-sold on second-hand market for much, much lower price.

There was quite a bit of discussion on the topic as well on the next few pages, you can go back and look through that yourself. As far as hours worked, I can't help you there, but I'm sure some of the knowledgeable folks here can dig up information on wages and whatnot that you can compare.

[Deepbluediver]

There was quite a bit of discussion on the topic as well on the next few pages, you can go back and look through that yourself. As far as hours worked, I can't help you there, but I'm sure some of the knowledgeable folks here can dig up information on wages and whatnot that you can compare.

Thank you- I'm reading through it in detail right now. I might have to start looking up conversion tables and historical interest rates though, since groschens and marks and florens don't really mean much to me.

I know the whole question is a bit weird since even during the renaissance period the vast majority of people were farmers and didn't really earn a wage in the modern sense, and a lot of exchange was still done on the barter system.

[snowblizz]

Thank you- I'm reading through it in detail right now. I might have to start looking up conversion tables and historical interest rates though, since groschens and marks and florens don't really mean much to me.

I know the whole question is a bit weird since even during the renaissance period the vast majority of people were farmers and didn't really earn a wage in the modern sense, and a lot of exchange was still done on the barter system.

It's not really weird. It's just very difficult to answer in any broader sense. You'd be surprised how much monetization of the economy there was. It was one of the major moves any up and coming king would try and do, money is better than taxes inkind. It's something of a trope that people used to barter until Adam Smith invented capitalism.

Generally speaking you are going to have a lot of work trying to get pricelists. Since what information exists is hard to get and covers very local circumstances. And keep in mind money value changes a lot, not just in exchange rates but as a function of how much precious metal existed in the European economy. There was a large drain towards the East of silver and gold, though not always constantly.
Most lists posted here do tend to have some normal stuff to compare to, say livestock and sometimes wages.
I think you are going to spend a lot of effort figuring out something that ultimately won't give you much in return. Am sorry to say. It sorta gets into that "too much detail to be useful" again.

[Deepbluediver]

It's not really weird. It's just very difficult to answer in any broader sense.
....
It sorta gets into that "too much detail to be useful" again.

Oh, well, at least I don't have to worry about anyone else in the game figuring it out and telling me I'm wrong then :P
I'll keep looking though.

[gkathellar]

It's not really weird. It's just very difficult to answer in any broader sense. You'd be surprised how much monetization of the economy there was. It was one of the major moves any up and coming king would try and do, money is better than taxes inkind. It's something of a trope that people used to barter until Adam Smith invented capitalism.

Adding to this: barter systems can function at a much higher level of abstraction than we give them credit for. If Farmer Ezekiel is thinking, "well, I'll trade three sheep for two wheat, because I can then trade two wheat for the four bricks that I actually want," you've got the rudiments of money right there. So long as Ezekiel believes that the value of precious metals (or paper notes, or even raw credit) is guaranteed, not a ton immediately changes when he takes those in place of the wheat. Money doesn't immediately replace barter so much as place goods in the abstract, and all this actually requires is that the value of some objects be seen as a truism.

Oh, well, at least I don't have to worry about anyone else in the game figuring it out and telling me I'm wrong then :P
I'll keep looking though.

It becomes a question of relative supply vs. relative demand as measured against the socially accepted baseline (which may be dollars, silver pieces, acres of land, head of cattle, etc) just as in the modern world.

[Lapak]

It's not really weird. It's just very difficult to answer in any broader sense. You'd be surprised how much monetization of the economy there was. It was one of the major moves any up and coming king would try and do, money is better than taxes inkind. It's something of a trope that people used to barter until Adam Smith invented capitalism.

If you have the opportunity, the coin display in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in Rome is an amazing way to see this in action. It’s a giant room with a chronological array of every coin minted in Italy from the early Roman republic to the late Renaissance, including context and the circumstances of their creation, and it’s extremely educational.

And unintentionally hilarious/depressing when you see how every third leader comes along and debases the currency to solve a financial crisis. Seriously, it’s like clockwork.

[Deepbluediver]

It becomes a question of relative supply vs. relative demand as measured against the socially accepted baseline (which may be dollars, silver pieces, acres of land, head of cattle, etc) just as in the modern world.

Yeah, I think I'm just going to set a minimum effective wage of something like 1 or 1/2 a unit of currency per hour, have skilled labor be some multiple of that, and go from there based on how long I expect something to take. Part of it is that I'm not actually trying to make a medieval economy- I want something that's a bit more like a cross between the gilded age and the roaring twenties, just with swords-and-sorcery. Magic takes the place of technology, and there's less mass-manufacturing, but things like airships and long-range communication are available (if expensive for common folk). And of course there will still be places set firmly in every time period right back to the stone age.

And unintentionally hilarious/depressing when you see how every third leader comes along and debases the currency to solve a financial crisis. Seriously, it’s like clockwork.

Yeah, I've read a lot of the wikipedia articles on hyperinflation in modern countries. I kinda want to work currency-forging into a plot at some point.

I don't really want to get super-complicated overall though, and I admit the one-world currency most settings have going on would be incredibly unrealistic for a variety of reasons. But this is supposed to be D&D, not Accountants and Audits.

[Haighus]

Fascinating documentary about wootz damascus steel. The whole thing is based upon years of experiemental archaeology, and they are providing a strong suggestion that Damascus actually had local production of wootz steel, not just imported material from India. The whole process, and the effects on the metallurgy of the steel, are very interesting to watch. The labour required is enormous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP8PCkcBZU4

[Martin Greywolf]

Yeah, I think I'm just going to set a minimum effective wage of something like 1 or 1/2 a unit of currency per hour, have skilled labor be some multiple of that, and go from there based on how long I expect something to take. Part of it is that I'm not actually trying to make a medieval economy- I want something that's a bit more like a cross between the gilded age and the roaring twenties, just with swords-and-sorcery. Magic takes the place of technology, and there's less mass-manufacturing, but things like airships and long-range communication are available (if expensive for common folk). And of course there will still be places set firmly in every time period right back to the stone age.

If you want to convert medieval currency to modern day equivalent, there's one hard truth to accept - you can't. You can recalculate them based on various things (property values, bread, beer, etc) but the problem is that medieval price ratios were completely different - food prices fluctuated a lot more, spices were hell of a lot more expensive, purp0le color was so rare it was only affordable by emperors etc etc.

If you want roaring twenties, my advice is to use that and reskin the dollar. If you make 1 dollar == 1 sp, you can easily convert even modern day prices by calculating inflation. Last 100 years did see some price ratio changes, but not as dramatic ones as when comparing it to 1300, seeing as both 20s and modern day are post-industrial.

Last caveat is that mass manufacture isn't a matter of technology, merely organization (which technology makes easier). Venetian Arsenal could build a galley in a day by having spare parts pre-made, and Roman empire had workshops churning out chain mail.

Yeah, I've read a lot of the wikipedia articles on hyperinflation in modern countries. I kinda want to work currency-forging into a plot at some point.

Ah, this one is easy even with medieval currency, and was a massive problem - as an example, Hungary (in c1350) had the penalty of death and loss of all titles and posessions of you and your family to the third degree for doing this. The way this was done was simple - you mixed something other than silver or gold into the coins. Take 200 sp, melt them into silver, add some lead and remake them into 400 sp. The actual pictures were usually carved by hand (and pretty obviously at times - I suspect these were in a bottom half of a chest for large transaction).

Another way to do this is if you don't have a central (or big enough) banking system - you can forge checks or letters of debt/credit. These were used from about 1200 by pretty much all merchants, both locally and internationally.

[Brother Oni]

I don't really want to get super-complicated overall though, and I admit the one-world currency most settings have going on would be incredibly unrealistic for a variety of reasons. But this is supposed to be D&D, not Accountants and Audits.

Surprisingly there's a fantasy anime series based on this - Spice and Wolf, where a travelling merchant ends up getting involved with a forgotten animist wolf god.

If you could narrow down the time period you're interested in, we can provide more detailed information. I did some translation work for wages and costs of some goods in early Edo era Japan in this thread if you want to dig through it: link.

An important note - before cultures went to a fiat currency, they often went by the actual metallurgical value of the coinage, particularly when trading between cultures. As Lapak said, this was a problem where they debased coinage to sort out financial crisis (at one time, during the Edo period, Japan went from 80% silver content coinage to 20% silver content coinage, which increase the internal price of imported goods by fourfold - this actually helped with the isolationist policies the government were instituting at the time).
Japan also had odd coins, the mameita-gin and the cho-gin, which were lumps of silver stamped with the coin's weight as proof of their worth.

[Blackhawk748]

Got a question about some LARP armor. In NERO LARPing we have a costume armor we call chip plate, what it is is basically a surcoat with a bunch of pockets on the inside and in each pocket is a poker chip. Now, I know a poker chip sized piece of metal wouldn't work for armor, but would the basic concept?

My idea is this: Take the pocket coat and instead if poker chips put in 3x3 inch metal square in each pocket and have each line of pockets be one layer deeper than the last, so you can overlap the plates. Would this work as armor?

[Max_Killjoy]

Got a question about some LARP armor. In NERO LARPing we have a costume armor we call chip plate, what it is is basically a surcoat with a bunch of pockets on the inside and in each pocket is a poker chip. Now, I know a poker chip sized piece of metal wouldn't work for armor, but would the basic concept?

My idea is this: Take the pocket coat and instead if poker chips put in 3x3 inch metal square in each pocket and have each line of pockets be one layer deeper than the last, so you can overlap the plates. Would this work as armor?

If done right and using resilient materials for the coat and pockets, and stitched together correctly, this might work something like "coat of plates", or lamellar armor.

[Martin Greywolf]

Got a question about some LARP armor. In NERO LARPing we have a costume armor we call chip plate, what it is is basically a surcoat with a bunch of pockets on the inside and in each pocket is a poker chip. Now, I know a poker chip sized piece of metal wouldn't work for armor, but would the basic concept?

My idea is this: Take the pocket coat and instead if poker chips put in 3x3 inch metal square in each pocket and have each line of pockets be one layer deeper than the last, so you can overlap the plates. Would this work as armor?

This is almost exactly coat of plates or brigandine - the difference between the two is a matter of size of individual plates more than anything.

Your exact idea has one problem - it's heavy. You will already need a gambeson on you, so what you're doing is creating an alternative or addition to chain mail. However, with your design (if I understand in correctly), you basically have double the plates per area of body when compared to a plate. Not only that, you have a lot of fabric there needed to make proper pockets.

It would take anyone about five minutes to come up with an idea of just riveting the plates on a layer of fabric with slight overlap at the edges and... well, what we have here now is coat of plates.

So, it's not that your armor is unable to stop strikes or too heavy to use, it's just that we already have an armor type offering comparable protection with less weight. Think an assault rifle with wooden furniture vs plastic furniture.

[snowblizz]

And unintentionally hilarious/depressing when you see how every third leader comes along and debases the currency to solve a financial crisis. Seriously, it’s like clockwork.

Indeed, it has bene pitched as the reason the Roman empire fell. This exactly what happens when you have a coinage tied to a commodity and can't expand the money base as the economy grows.
Something all the goldstandard proponents seem collectively unable to grasp.

Adding to this: barter systems can function at a much higher level of abstraction than we give them credit for. If Farmer Ezekiel is thinking, "well, I'll trade three sheep for two wheat, because I can then trade two wheat for the four bricks that I actually want," you've got the rudiments of money right there. So long as Ezekiel believes that the value of precious metals (or paper notes, or even raw credit) is guaranteed, not a ton immediately changes when he takes those in place of the wheat. Money doesn't immediately replace barter so much as place goods in the abstract, and all this actually requires is that the value of some objects be seen as a truism.

Well that's more of a credit system which was common in more local cultures where there was societal trust and you could keep track of transactions communally. Barter and later monetary economies is for when you can't trust the other party. I can't remember who it was but I've read a quite nice put down of Adam Smith's work which totally missed the point and saw barter as inherently more primitive than a monetary economy.

Yeah, I think I'm just going to set a minimum effective wage of something like 1 or 1/2 a unit of currency per hour, have skilled labor be some multiple of that, and go from there based on how long I expect something to take. Part of it is that I'm not actually trying to make a medieval economy- I want something that's a bit more like a cross between the gilded age and the roaring twenties, just with swords-and-sorcery. Magic takes the place of technology, and there's less mass-manufacturing, but things like airships and long-range communication are available (if expensive for common folk). And of course there will still be places set firmly in every time period right back to the stone age.

I was gonna put in a mention not to make the mistake that a farmer is dirt poor.
However since you mention the late 1800 to- early-1900s I must point out anything regarding medieaval prices has no bearing on that, what so ever. It also becomes much easier because there's actual statistics for that. Also a medieval price ons words woudl not translate into turn of the century. Be much easier to just look at what a decent handgun goes for and use that as a base for what peopel could afford.

As Brother Oni says "universal" currencies are less silly than one would think. In the times before fiat currency there was one effectively. In that gold and silver values/weights were used. It's actually not until we are off the goldstandard in the 1970s that's finally buried. And in a sense US dollars work that way today.

not Accountants and Audits.

To quote Varsaavius: "And what would the problem with that be?"

[Lapak]

As Brother Oni says "universal" currencies are leess silly than one would think. In the times before fiat currency there was one effectively. In that gold and silver values/weights were used. It's actually not until we are off the goldstandard in the 1970s that's finally buried. And in a sense US dollars work that way today

Less silly but still maybe worth considering for the very reason we talked about and potentially fun to model in a game. People see you’re flashing Czech crowns in the period where the silver mines at Kutna Hora were running full steam and they take them without question, but they see you offering old Roman coins and they need to do some examination to see if it was Diocletian or Constantine who minted them. At any given time there are probably a few different currencies that people will accept on sight (even if they are foreign) and some which they’ll be skeptical about (even if they are local.)

[Brother Oni]

Less silly but still maybe worth considering for the very reason we talked about and potentially fun to model in a game. People see you’re flashing Czech crowns in the period where the silver mines at Kutna Hora were running full steam and they take them without question, but they see you offering old Roman coins and they need to do some examination to see if it was Diocletian or Constantine who minted them. At any given time there are probably a few different currencies that people will accept on sight (even if they are foreign) and some which they’ll be skeptical about (even if they are local.)

During the Sengoku period of Japan, all the major clans minted their own currency. Off the top of my head, the Takeda koban (gold coin) was the most prestigious as the Takeda holdings had gold mines with highest purity ore, while the Oda koban was the lowest purity of gold.
Technically speaking, they all had the face value of 1 ryo of gold (~15g), but in practicality, the worth of a coin was dependent on where you were spending it. One overlooked factor these days, is tracking spies and other foreigners by the coinage they're spending.


As an aside, don't be too worried about making your monetary system too complicated - you're unlikely to beat the British system:

Spoiler: Tudor money and shorthand earnings

Show

Farthing = 1/4 penny
Half penny = 1/2 penny
Threefarthing = 3/4 penny
Penny = 1 penny = 1d
Half groat = 2 pennies = 2d
Groat = 4 pennies = 4d
Sixpence = 6 pennies = 6d
Shilling = 12 pennies = 1s
Half crown = 30 pennnies = 2s 6d
Quarter angel = 30 pennies = 2s 6d
Crown = 60 pennies = 5s
Half angel = 60 pennies = 5s
Angel = 120 pennies = 10s
Half pound = 120 pennies = 10s
Pound = 240 pence = 20s = £1
Fine Sovereign = 360 pence = 30s = £1 10s

Note that some denominations are worth the same value, but are different coins (the various angel and crown denominations).

A nobleman would earn wages between £1500 to £3000 per annum
A merchant would earn wages of £100 per annum
A parson would earn wages of £20 per annum
A carpenter would earn wages of £13 per annum
A labourer would earn wages of £5 - £10 per annum

[gkathellar]

As an aside, don't be too worried about making your monetary system too complicated - you're unlikely to beat the British system:

Spoiler: Tudor money and shorthand earnings

Show

Farthing = 1/4 penny
Half penny = 1/2 penny
Threefarthing = 3/4 penny
Penny = 1 penny = 1d
Half groat = 2 pennies = 2d
Groat = 4 pennies = 4d
Sixpence = 6 pennies = 6d
Shilling = 12 pennies = 1s
Half crown = 30 pennnies = 2s 6d
Quarter angel = 30 pennies = 2s 6d
Crown = 60 pennies = 5s
Half angel = 60 pennies = 5s
Angel = 120 pennies = 10s
Half pound = 120 pennies = 10s
Pound = 240 pence = 20s = £1
Fine Sovereign = 360 pence = 30s = £1 10s

Note that some denominations are worth the same value, but are different coins (the various angel and crown denominations).

A nobleman would earn wages between £1500 to £3000 per annum
A merchant would earn wages of £100 per annum
A parson would earn wages of £20 per annum
A carpenter would earn wages of £13 per annum
A labourer would earn wages of £5 - £10 per annum

I don't know whether I should laugh or cry.

[Gnoman]

I don't really want to get super-complicated overall though, and I admit the one-world currency most settings have going on would be incredibly unrealistic for a variety of reasons. But this is supposed to be D&D, not Accountants and Audits.

I've run a game with per-nation currencies. It is absolutely more trouble than it is worth, even with a static exchange rate.

[snowblizz]

Less silly but still maybe worth considering for the very reason we talked about and potentially fun to model in a game. People see you’re flashing Czech crowns in the period where the silver mines at Kutna Hora were running full steam and they take them without question, but they see you offering old Roman coins and they need to do some examination to see if it was Diocletian or Constantine who minted them. At any given time there are probably a few different currencies that people will accept on sight (even if they are foreign) and some which they’ll be skeptical about (even if they are local.)

Any businessman worth his salt would weigh the coins regardles of supposed provenance. Those who didn't would go broke.

Accepting foreign currency was what was done, absolutely (but all coins even domestic would be weighed). E.g. the Florentine florin was almsot defacto standard goldcoin and a similar imitation coin was minted by many European princes and states thoguh these would often be of slightly less high qualtiy and standard.

[Deepbluediver]

If you want to convert medieval currency to modern day equivalent, there's one hard truth to accept - you can't. You can recalculate them based on various things (property values, bread, beer, etc) but the problem is that medieval price ratios were completely different - food prices fluctuated a lot more, spices were hell of a lot more expensive, purp0le color was so rare it was only affordable by emperors etc etc.

Yeah, I was just trying to have some estimate about their relative value/worth to other goods, so I didn't end up with something completely ridiculous. Not that completely ridiculous price-differentials don't exist today. I think as I work on it and develop some more basic rules about what my economy us going to be like, I can base it mostly on the cost of labor.

If you want roaring twenties, my advice is to use that and reskin the dollar. If you make 1 dollar == 1 sp, you can easily convert even modern day prices by calculating inflation. Last 100 years did see some price ratio changes, but not as dramatic ones as when comparing it to 1300, seeing as both 20s and modern day are post-industrial.

I was talking more about the quality-of-life I want to present, because I mainly don't want a dung-ages setting.

Ah, this one is easy even with medieval currency, and was a massive problem - as an example, Hungary (in c1350) had the penalty of death and loss of all titles and posessions of you and your family to the third degree for doing this. The way this was done was simple - you mixed something other than silver or gold into the coins. Take 200 sp, melt them into silver, add some lead and remake them into 400 sp. The actual pictures were usually carved by hand (and pretty obviously at times - I suspect these were in a bottom half of a chest for large transaction).

Another way to do this is if you don't have a central (or big enough) banking system - you can forge checks or letters of debt/credit. These were used from about 1200 by pretty much all merchants, both locally and internationally.

The way I figure I'll frame it is that after several large and very expensive wars, the nations of the world mainly decided that it just wasn't worth it, and mutually agreed to some standards for currency. No one is particularly happy with it, but the penalties someone would risk on both a personal and national level mean you have to be REALLY desperate to consider forgery.

Part of my setting is that I actually want fewer countries and a setup more like city-states; I don't know how that might believably affect things though.

If you could narrow down the time period you're interested in, we can provide more detailed information. I did some translation work for wages and costs of some goods in early Edo era Japan in this thread if you want to dig through it: link.

I'll check it out- thanks.

I wasn't trying to get this thread to off topic, but...

Spoiler: setting

Show

I'm looking to make a more modern (late 1800's to early 1900's) take on the swords-and-sorcery setup, with adventurers as a sizable profession and social class, city-states as the main political model with everything from democracies to dictatorships as their government. Travel is possible but difficult and expensive, especially overland (the large adventurer profession is supported by a frankly ridiculous level of flora and mega-fauna), and outside the civilized areas plenty of humanoids still live in iron or even stone-age conditions.

One of the major differences is that because of the profusion of plant and animal-life, traditional agriculture didn't really develop. The cities are supported by hunting & gathering, which sometimes overlaps a bit with the more standard adventurers, plus a small amount of high-intensity agriculture for certain high-value crops, like spices and vices (tobacco, etc).

Well that's more of a credit system which was common in more local cultures where there was societal trust and you could keep track of transactions communally. Barter and later monetary economies is for when you can't trust the other party. I can't remember who it was but I've read a quite nice put down of Adam Smith's work which totally missed the point and saw barter as inherently more primitive than a monetary economy.

The biggest issue I see with basing more of the economy on barter is the issue of non-durable goods. Salt will last if you keep it dry, but things like sheep or wheat have a definite best-used-by date. I think most food will be produced locally, and trade will be for raw materials and for manufactured goods.

I was gonna put in a mention not to make the mistake that a farmer is dirt poor.

No, on the contrary, I want my populous to have lots of money to spend. The jobs may be hard and dangerous, but if you're strong enough, smart enough, or just plain lucky enough, you'll be able to eventually live in comfort, possibly even luxury. Of course it runs the other way to- screw up enough and nothing will protect you from losing the family fortune. I want to emphasize the meritocracy factors.

Be much easier to just look at what a decent handgun goes for and use that as a base for what people could afford.

That's a good idea- as soon as I figure out exactly what to put into google, I'm sure I'll start finding more stuff like this.

As Brother Oni says "universal" currencies are less silly than one would think. In the times before fiat currency there was one effectively. In that gold and silver values/weights were used. It's actually not until we are off the goldstandard in the 1970s that's finally buried. And in a sense US dollars work that way today.

I figured the coin-sizes will be standardized, and each producer will stamp them with their own face, flag, family-seal, emblem, racial mark, etc.

To quote Varsaavius: "And what would the problem with that be?"

Some people do that every day as their JOB, and when they come home to relax all they really want to think about is how awesome it will be to punch a dragon in the face.

As an aside, don't be too worried about making your monetary system too complicated - you're unlikely to beat the British system:

I think I'm gonna take Martin Greywolf's and make it like the dollar, where each coin is just worth a different amount. So a copper penny is 1, a copper piece is 5, a silver penny is 10, etc etc etc. Then all the prices will just be listed as numbers, and you don't have to convert between denominations.

As an aside, most game systems seem to use the 1:10:100 metric because it's easy to do the math for, but when you look at it closely it seems completely ridiculous. It's like a monetary system where the smallest bill is $1 and the largest is $100- imagine trying to buy cars (or horses) and houses with bags full of $100 bills and nothing large.
The ancient Babylonians (and a few other cultures) had a unit of currency called the Talent, which was equal to 60 Minaes, which was equal to 60 Shekels. That puts the ratio at 1:3600; a whole order of magnitude and then some above the 1:100 setup. I think I'll have more than 3 denominations of currency, but that's the kind of scale I'm looking at.

[Brother Oni]

As an aside, most game systems seem to use the 1:10:100 metric because it's easy to do the math for, but when you look at it closely it seems completely ridiculous. It's like a monetary system where the smallest bill is $1 and the largest is $100- imagine trying to buy cars (or horses) and houses with bags full of $100 bills and nothing large.

Which is why letters of credit and other methods of transferring currency were introduced, which evolved into a proper banking system.

Before the introduction of a banking system, transferring wealth from one country (or even town in another county) was done on a personal level, with someone you know giving you a letter of introduction to an associate of theirs in the new location. The Knights Templar expanded this letter of credit system so that a traveller could withdraw deposited funds from any Templar house.

These days, bank notes are technically worth nothing as they're merely promissory notes; in the UK, these are backed by the Governor of the Bank of England with a statement "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of" and the amount. Before the change to fiat currency, you could technically go to the Bank of England and exchange the note for the equivalent value of gold.

My D&D knowledge is a bit out of date, but even they had the copper:silver:electrum:gold:platinum system of 1:10:50:100:500 relative value.

[Deepbluediver]

My D&D knowledge is a bit out of date, but even they had the copper:silver:electrum:gold:platinum system of 1:10:50:100:500 relative value.

I had forgotten about Platinum- if I recall rightly in 3.5 it's just 10 times the gold coin, so it's 1:10:100:1000. Except everything is still listed in it's price in gold, and I don't recall ever seeing anything about electrum coins.

[Blackhawk748]

I had forgotten about Platinum- if I recall rightly in 3.5 it's just 10 times the gold coin, so it's 1:10:100:1000. Except everything is still listed in it's price in gold, and I don't recall ever seeing anything about electrum coins.

I think Electrum is from Planescape. Kingdoms of Kalamar has a glass coin thats worth 5 GP, which i always thought is neat.

This is almost exactly coat of plates or brigandine - the difference between the two is a matter of size of individual plates more than anything.

Your exact idea has one problem - it's heavy. You will already need a gambeson on you, so what you're doing is creating an alternative or addition to chain mail. However, with your design (if I understand in correctly), you basically have double the plates per area of body when compared to a plate. Not only that, you have a lot of fabric there needed to make proper pockets.

It would take anyone about five minutes to come up with an idea of just riveting the plates on a layer of fabric with slight overlap at the edges and... well, what we have here now is coat of plates.

So, it's not that your armor is unable to stop strikes or too heavy to use, it's just that we already have an armor type offering comparable protection with less weight. Think an assault rifle with wooden furniture vs plastic furniture.

I think you have it more or less correct, though im not sure what you mean by "double the amount of plates" They overlap, but not a ton. Mostly its just to make sure a blade tip can't get caught in between the plates, which is something i think could happen with a coat of plates.

[Deepbluediver]

I think Electrum is from Planescape. Kingdoms of Kalamar has a glass coin thats worth 5 GP, which i always thought is neat.

I'll try to look both of those up, particularly the glass coins which sound really neat; I want to know if the setting keeps them from being mass-forged. It also got me wondering if something like glass beads might be a more durable shape.
I figured I'd use the standard precious metals, copper, silver, gold, & platinum, with platinum coins being a non-standard shape to help differentiate them from silver. Only the smallest denomination coins, iron bits, where going to be made from a base-metal so that it wasn't worthwhile to forge them.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think Electrum is from Planescape.

Electrum coins in D&D date back to at least the original edition of AD&D, and were listed in the PHB as standard currency.

[Blackhawk748]

I'll try to look both of those up, particularly the glass coins which sound really neat; I want to know if the setting keeps them from being mass-forged. It also got me wondering if something like glass beads might be a more durable shape.
I figured I'd use the standard precious metals, copper, silver, gold, & platinum, with platinum coins being a non-standard shape to help differentiate them from silver. Only the smallest denomination coins, iron bits, where going to be made from a base-metal so that it wasn't worthwhile to forge them.

Ya in KoK its one city state in Renaria Bay that makes them, though the coin is honored regionally. Also i dont think its actually a coin shape, but i cant be bothered to go look it up

Electrum coins in D&D date back to at least the original edition of AD&D, and were listed in the PHB as standard currency.

Huh, guess 3.5 dropped that

[Mr Beer]

D&D got round the problem of insufficiently high denomination coins by using gems for large transactions. Makes me think that there could be an analogy to the real world 1ct diamond trade. So maybe the standardised 1,000gp gem complete with assay certificate.

A particular type of D&D economy could also run on a standard magic item currency unit e.g. the Standard Magic Longsword (SML-backed currency).

[Vinyadan]

Aes signatum FTW

BTW, they recently found Roman coins from the time of Constantine the Great beneath a medieval castle in Japan. I guess that they got around.

https://www.google.de/amp/world.gree...-in-japan/amp/

[rs2excelsior]

Regarding coinage in D&D, I typically don't worry about the exact coins/denominations. When you're walking into a mage's guild and commissioning a magic item for 50,000 gp, I assume you aren't carrying that many gold coins around; but you have that amount of coins/gems/precious metals/whatever, so long as it is in a form that works reasonably well as currency. By the time you're up to that point the exact coinage doesn't matter that much.

I was thinking of a setting where different city states minted their own coins and depending on the reputation would be accepted either at face value or for less outside of that city (or maybe even in the city, if the rulers had a particular habit of debasing currency). But it probably would be a lot more work than it's worth. Much easier to just say "you find a bag of coins worth X amount of Y standard currency." Has the same effect in the long term with a lot less hassle.