Anyone has tips on fantasy eco?

[Juia_Darkcrest]

It wouldn't be a fantasy economy if everything was so metric. Your advice would be better suited for a sci-fi economy.

/shrug

Its the D&D economy except on 100s instead of 10s.

 

[Anonjohn20]

D&D

Did you know in D&D 3.5, players could be a futa gnoll. HAWT!

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

anyway, OP

Your stones should reflect their rarity. Some very common ones would probably be like a commoner trying to buy a nice pair of boots, not impossible for them to get, but they would need to save some money to do so, so maybe 10-20 silver in the economy I mentioned, then move up from there to make a mid tier one out of reach for the average commoner, but say technical trades or business owners could probably afford them with some savings. The higher tier ones, nobles and merchants... anything beyond that its either royals, rich nobles or extremely rich merchants... or for some dumb reason a band of thugs that your young master just bitch slapped and they had it in their pocket.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Want realism? Ignore...

Real historical currencies were rarely ever so metric before the modern world. Let me show you British currency in medieval times: A pound sterling was worth 20 shillings, and a shilling was worth 12 pence (the medieval British used silver pennies, not copper pennies as we would see much later in history), so one pound was worth the equivalent of 240 pence. A mark was worth two-thirds of a pound, and there were half marks running around. While nobles and merchants were dealing in marks, and royals interacting with other royals would deal in pounds, most peasants were earning 1-4 pence a day.
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The most unrealistic thing you could do is have your characters paying for meals and stays at an inn with gold coins. In the 14th century: Ale was around 1 to 1.5 pence a gallon, so you could get around 8 pints for a day’s wages. A penny could get you two dozen eggs, two chickens, or a pillow. A cottage cost 60 pence a year to rent. A craftsman’s house was around 240 pence a year, and a wealthy merchant’s home could be 2 pounds or 3 pounds a year (so it wouldn't be unrealistic for a stay at an inn to be 3-10 pence a day depending on the quality of the inn).

In Leo Frantkowski's The Crosstime Engineer, there was a kind of cool moment where Conrad Stargaard tries to introduce a base ten/metric system to the merchants of medieval Poland, and they instead talk him into a base 12 one, because base 10 can only be broken up into 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s, while base 12 can be broken up into 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 6s and 12s and they find that better for making change.

Oh, something at one of my jobs showed me that fantasy economies are fundamentally whacked anyway. We sell karambits - basically small, curved blades based very loosely on disemboweling knives. The variety of these blades, however, comes from a video game, and the blades are insanely valuable there, with more powerful blades costing a ton of money, and the "prettier" blades being in the middle of the pack. Ironically, the physical versions of these blades cost between US$12 and US$50 - but the in-game ones cost up to 400x that in real money and even more in in-game currency (which can be bought with real money or found)...

 

[CheertheSecond]

So on average he can barely even buy 1 of his own buns a day, i understand meat is normaly a luxury in fantasy worlds with monsters and a lack of real animal farming but that seems a bit to low imo.

Yup, which is why lower class and lower middle class do not buy food to feed themselves. They grow their own food or forage since those things aren't taxed. There are lots of tariff which pushes the price in a city really high. The general mentality of the regime is to keep the commoners poor so they don't complain. Since there isn't whistle blower, they can keep exploiting the average joe and jane. There are also a lot of herd mentality. We are poor, everyone is poor, so everything is right.

 

[Anonjohn20]

They grow their own food

That was taxed too. Anyone who produced anything had to pay a small portion to the lord.

 

[Alski]

Since this is a fantasy world with ki/magic ( and therefore monsters) I would assume most settlements have some form of walls and the likely hood of anyone in the lower class having enough space to feed a family with safe farm land is basicly 0.

 

[CheertheSecond]

Since this is a fantasy world with ki/magic ( and therefore monsters) I would assume most settlements have some form of walls and the likely hood of anyone in the lower class having enough space to feed a family with safe farm land is basicly 0.

Monsters occupied most of the areas, yes. However, where people live and make daily commute are pockets of space that had been cleared out of monsters.

For trans-regional journeys, only a conjoint of multiple caravans travel with many securities. These trips do cut through the unsafe zones but regular monster clearing along these routes do occur.

Sometimes, there are zones that are territories of auspicious beasts and people worship them as gods to be allowed to live inside.

Talking about the food issue, yes. Commoners here don't get as much food as typical medieval commoners and they also had to eat less too. Their body evolved to adapt to this lifestyle by absorbing qi to make up for the lack of food. Of course, this phenotypic expression isn't that impressive in comparison to us normal folks. They can survive with 10% less food than us but that's it and had shorter lifespan.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Monsters occupied most of the areas, yes. However, where people live and make daily commute are pockets of space that had been cleared out of monsters.

For trans-regional journeys, only a conjoint of multiple caravans travel with many securities. These trips do cut through the unsafe zones but regular monster clearing along these routes do occur.

Sometimes, there are zones that are territories of auspicious beasts and people worship them as gods to be allowed to live inside.

Talking about the food issue, yes. Commoners here don't get as much food as typical medieval commoners and they also had to eat less too. Their body evolved to adapt to this lifestyle by absorbing qi to make up for the lack of food. Of course, this phenotypic expression isn't that impressive in comparison to us normal folks. They can survive with 10% less food than us but that's it and had shorter lifespan.

That sounds a lot (except the tech level was ... strange... some stuff was 1920s era, some stuff barely feudal) like the setting for West End's old Bloodshadows RPG. There even was some fiction set there (have a short story collection somewhere around here and there was at least one novel) that might be worth tracking down. Each city was, essentially, its own little kingdom with allies and enemies in the neighboring ones and patrols that protected the outlaying farm and mining areas.

 

[seavmun88]

The only item I set as the benchmark is meat bun.

Meat bun is a staple food although it is still in the pricey part of the food basket.

A street vendor in a relatively medium-sized city (which is located in a region that primarily produces wheat) sold 1 meat bun at the price of 15 coins. The tax is 20% and after the cost of goods and tax, a vendor nets in average 1 coin of profit.

1 meat bun = 15 coins
30 coins = 1 big coins
100 big coins = 1 tael (50g) of silver
8 taels of silver = 1 tael of gold

Ditch the coins and just have the economy based on meat buns, duh