Anyone has tips on fantasy eco?

I need to work out the price tag for qi stones, artifacts and other items.

Is there any guideline to follow?

CheertheSecond said:

I need to work out the price tag for qi stones, artifacts and other items.

Is there any guideline to follow?

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Consult historical pricing and adjust for inflation.

CheertheSecond said:

I need to work out the price tag for qi stones, artifacts and other items.

Is there any guideline to follow?

Click to expand...

First work out what you average commoner earns and spends and then set you prices for those items according to how easily accessable they are to the general populous.

Have you considered referencing the d&d Dungeon Master's Guide and/or Player's Handbook for inspiration, then maybe scaling up or down and tweaking the currency itself to fit your vision and setting?

Alski said:

First work out what you average commoner earns and spends and then set you prices for those items according to how easily accessable they are to the general populous.

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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

CheertheSecond said:

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.

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How many is he expected to sell on a regular day?
Is being a street vendor above or below the average commoner?
Is he the only one earning for his family?

extrapolate from there.

Just do the usual cultivation BS and use the lifetime earnings of a normal 'mortal' and multiply it by your favored squared number times ten.

I find that Grain Into Gold, a resource for building a realistic, well-crafted fantasy economy within TTRPGs, works more than well enough for novels.

Alski said:

How many is he expected to sell on a regular day?
Is being a street vendor above or below the average commoner?
Is he the only one earning for his family?

extrapolate from there.

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Most common families in this city subsist on in-house farming (small gardens of vegetable and maybe raising some chickens).
All people in the family are expected to work to earn money either by being hired, self-employed business or tending to the chores at home. Those that do not have these opportunities departs early into the nearby greenery every morning to forage for food or something that can be traded or hunt animals.

Street vendor is considered a higher job than some other commoners. The jobs aren't fixed into a hierarchy and can be overlapping depending on the city and region too. In certain regions, fishery is near the top of the food chain for commoners but not in others. In the particular example I am using to discuss, a meat-bun street vendor is higher than foragers and beggars but nothing else. Meat-bun vendors are on equal footing with storage workers and most of other small street vendors ("small street vendors" merely means low total inventory value and daily profit).

Note: small street vendors and labours are either lower middle class or lower class. Lower middle class = has a house in a city. Upper Lower class = shelter in a town. Lower class has a shelter in a village. Lowest of lower class are vagabonds and beggars.

Village = A collection of households in a geographic location
Town = A collection of households in a geographic location with significant enough population to have a government official stays there to keep watch of tax and population registration. A fence is automatically required to be erected by the government official.
City = Need a wall. Need a building for government operation. Establishment of the city guards and a government post to manage the guard.

Village, town and city have different level of tax. Grain relief will also prioritise city then town then village.

A meat-bun seller can sell from 11 to 20 depending on seasons with low day (can happen 3-4 times a year) can be as low as only 8 being sold. A full cart is 30 buns which is rarely ever prepared except for festive events and even in those days, he can expect to only sell out 1-2 times a decade. Most of the time he prepares around 12-21 buns (according to the day of the year or by sale record of previous days). Old buns are sold near the middle of the next day to avoid selling bad stuff to early customers and cause bad blood (a form of superstitions that says a bad opening = a bad day).

I leave that to my reader's imagination.

IWILLDEFYTHEHEAVENS said:

I leave that to my reader's imagination.

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That's good and all but I need a tip to make a real system and not a loose line of footnote.

Joyager2 said:

I find that Grain Into Gold, a resource for building a realistic, well-crafted fantasy economy within TTRPGs, works more than well enough for novels.

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Cool link.

What kind of scale are you talking here? Continental? City? Country? Region?
Really, unless you have some level of OCD for realism or expect to turn your fiction into a game, you don't need to worry about the actual prices of things - just figure out if they're easy or hard for the character(s) to acquire, and then how easy or hard they were for the person supplying them to obtain. If it feels right to you, it IS right, even if someone else says: "Oh, a peasant only earns about twelve cents a month, and could never afford that;" that may be how it worked in the real world (a place without magic, or dungeons or systems or whatnot), but it does not have to be how it works in YOUR world.

Whatever you want. You only need to worry when you start introducing items that would be worth a house.

CheertheSecond said:

A meat-bun seller can sell from 11 to 20 depending on seasons with low day (can happen 3-4 times a year) can be as low as only 8 being sold. A full cart is 30 buns which is rarely ever prepared except for festive events and even in those days, he can expect to only sell out 1-2 times a decade. Most of the time he prepares around 12-21 buns (according to the day of the year or by sale record of previous days). Old buns are sold near the middle of the next day to avoid selling bad stuff to early customers and cause bad blood (a form of superstitions that says a bad opening = a bad day).

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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.

CheertheSecond said:

I need to work out the price tag for qi stones, artifacts and other items.

Is there any guideline to follow?

Click to expand...

Not a guide, but I suggest watching Spice and Wolf for some minor inspiration too. Again, it's minor, but it is entertaining.

CheertheSecond said:

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

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Ahh, yes, the good ol' meat bun economy. Definitely beat the Turnip economics.


depends on how normal people live day to day in this world. Is it a decent life, considering they are peasants? Are they struggling even to get the basics?

Using the base ten system is usually best for anything, instead of making weird 30 of these = 1 of those, and 8 of those = 1 of these.


copper, silver, gold, platinum

100 copper = 1 silver, etc.

Change the names to be more unique if you wish

Assume your regular everyday people can survive, but maybe not save up a whole bunch. So your dishwashers, maids, stablehands, can all earn a 'living' wage

estimate food cost at 20 copper a day, maybe housing at five silver a month if they are renting. So maybe a general low wage would look like 12-15 silver a month, leaving them just enough to grab some nonessentials, or save for the cobbler to make them a new pair of boots.

CheertheSecond said:

Is there any guideline to follow?

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Want realism? Ignore...

Juia_Darkcrest said:

Using the base ten system is usually best for anything, instead of making weird 30 of these = 1 of those, and 8 of those = 1 of these.


copper, silver, gold, platinum

100 copper = 1 silver, etc.

Click to expand...

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.


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).

Anonjohn20 said:

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).

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I wasn't going for realism here, just ease of calculation for the writer, so you don't confuse the fuck out of yourself when you are trying to follow that chart you just linked. You are writing a story, not worrying about medieval accounting practices.

Like a coin minted from one nation could be worth more than a coin minted from another nation.

I remember Robert Jordan going on about that for WAY too much in the Wheel of Time series, even describing shaved coins, their thicknesses and a bunch of other things. Unless coinage is one of the focuses of your book, it's not really necessary

Juia_Darkcrest said:

You are writing a story, not worrying about medieval accounting practices.

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