If Our Lives Be Short, Let Our Fame Be Great

Before launching into a long post about economics of the ancient world, let's put the exciting part at the top, the random treasure hoard generator. These are going to be significantly smaller than typical fantasy adventure hoards, but I've tried to callibrate them to generate the kidns of hoards people actually find from the bronze and iron ages:

Now, for the less flashy stuff. Before we can really talk about economics, let's establish some units of measurement. These are going to be largely based on historical units of mesopotamia and the eastern mediterannean in antiquity. My sources are kind of all over the place on these so I'm not going to be citing much, but the system I'm giving here hews pretty close to the coins and measures used in Talmudic literature.

A talent (kikar, if you prefer) weighs sixty pounds (maneh), each of which is fifty weights (shekel) of about eight and a half grams; this makes a pound of about 425 grams rather than the 453.59 of the avoirdupois pound, but that's close enough to use the familiar word in my book. A wet measure or dry measure are both a unit of capacity approximately equal to 144 medium-sized eggs (about nine quarts).

goods and their prices

The basic unit of money is a weight of silver. Although actual prices vary by place and season, most people will say that a silverweight should buy:

 This is by way of a companion post to my earlier post about "Target 20" Modern, since I've been chewing over some thinks about TTRPGs set in the "modern" era. The most direct way I can put the problem that's been eating at me is thus:

Now, one can probably argue the point that fantasy settings don't have capitalism; they certainly have much larger and more universal cash economies than were present in the historical periods they tend to be based on. However the players' characters are not generally expected to work for wages and pay rents. In a modern setting it would be extremely strange if the players' characters did not do these things.

d20 Modern's method of dealing with this problem was...not to? The d20 system's abstract mechanic of Wealth checks has very little to do with the actual mechanics of wage work and paying bills. WotC either didn't give the question much thought or they thought that representing capitalism with more fidelity would take away from the cinematic mood of the game. So, in cinematic fashion, our actual economic system is more or less not represented.

The same can be said for modern or universal games like GURPS that, in an effort not to bog down play with fiduciary details or require players to take up double-entry accounting, abstract everything away to fixed lifestyle costs that are deducted from your income.

I felt that a financial mechanic could make the game feel more grounded in the modern day. So, I've endeavored to create a mechanic to use wages and rents to mark the passage of in-game time, somewhat after the fashion of what is described in this excellent blog post, but with an emphasis on finances instead of noteworthy events. What follows is an economics system with only the bookkeeping elements (and those greatly simplified); you won't find any price lists for consumer goods and services.