[PnP] Economics -- looking for help

[J Hooten]

PnP Economics like all fantasy games fall apart quickly
Its can be worth a villages yearly income to mug even lower level 
characters, or pretty close!

So lets look at costs?
Do you farm by hand?
Or do you use a plow and animal?
What does an Ox cost to pull that plow? 12sc, Draft horse? 10sc, mule 
5sc, donkey 1sc
For 5 acres of farm that cost 5sc, sure costs a lot to farm it?
then you need harness 1sc, a wagon 1-5sc to haul grain to town
And you need to do that as you do not eat a large amount of the grain

Its better if you breed some animals to eat more of the grain, animals 
sell for more than grain does?

tiny farm should have small vegetable garden, chickens, goats or pigs etc

Now the part I dislike!
They made a few GOLD of that land that cost 5sc, so they should buy even 
more land?
Larger farms make more profit as the various costs do not climb as fast
OR they can travel a little further to sell the grain and get more money

Hauling companies and traders tend to take the cheap produce to larger 
towns for high profits, usually making more than the farmer did!

In general that produce was multiplied in price a few times before it 
became a city good

So your farm, far from a town makes less than one close to a town

So the economics varies depending on where you are modeling it
General rule is the farmer sells it cheap at a village, its bought by 
traders who take it further away to towns, where a trader may take it 
further to a city

BUT PnP values that 10 pound grain at 10bb which is not much mark up 
from your estimates?

Burton Choinski wrote:
> Ok, I have been chewing on this for at least a month now, slowly 
> adding to it, but I'm constantly revising and tweaking and still not 
> 100% happy, so I'm throwing out a line to the list to anyone with 
> experience in economic systems (or at least faking it in an RPG :)
>
> Given the assumptions:
>     1) lowest pay rate is 1BB/day (unskilled labor)
>     2) an average family consists of 2 adults, 3 children
>         a) for simplicity, 3 children = 1 adult in production and 
> resource needs
>
> Ok, starting with farming.  A farm of 5 acres is enough to support a 
> single family, providing food for consumption as well as for barter 
> for other needs and for any reasonable tithes or taxation.  Roman 
> wheat yields were about 20 bushels per acre, of which about 20% was 
> used for next year's seed.  This rounds close enough to about 5,000# 
> for the 5 acres.  If we assume that a family on 5 acres is living at 
> 2BB/day (basically a peasant), that's a need of 2,160BB per year.  
> This results in the estimation that a pure wheat farm gives us a value 
> of .432BB per pound, or 45BB for a hundred-weight sack and 5BB for a 
> 10# bag (buy in bulk, people!).  An adult needing 2FP per day can get 
> by on the "good" grain and have a little margin, or go for the poor 
> quality at HALF price.
>
> This seems to be fine, and it's mainly a matter of defining what the 
> farmers should live at.  If the above farmers live at 1BB/day, this 
> means that grain is half the above figured price, which allows for all 
> 1BB/day people to manage to some degree.  I have dithered back and 
> forth of this, to the point that I have an excel chart to do the 
> calculations incase I change my mind again. :P
>
> Secondary steps are where this all starts to get hairy.  Take 
> charcoal, for instance.  I currently have Lumberjacks figured at 
> 2BB/day (semi-skilled labor), and a team of 10 can produce 450 cords 
> of firewood per month.  This implies that firewood, if just taking 
> labor into account, goes for 0.75 cords per BB.
>
> A charcoaler can convert 10 cords of wood into 2.5 tons of charcoal 
> per month.  Given his income needs (at 2BB/day, or 60BB) plus 
> materials (14BB for wood) = 74BB, it would imply that charcoal goes 
> for about 3CC per ton.  However, that's if you get the wood at the 
> flat cost found above, which is the big question here that I would 
> like some consensus on.
>
> I have tried various ways of handling the costs of needed materials, 
> from taking them at the flat rate, to adding a token 10% to 
> everything, to even a sliding rate (25% for consumables, 50% to soft 
> durable goods like wood and cloth, 100% for hard durable goods like 
> metals and armor).  I've probably revised my numbers 25 or more times, 
> and am still not happy since I'm still just guessing at things in 
> terms of ancient/medieval mercantile rules.
>
> And don't get me started on mining and metals.  Even going with 
> reasonable ore yields, iron ends up dirt cheap when compared to 
> copper, so why isn't everyone working with iron?  The rules seem to 
> imply that iron is relatively uncommon, otherwise why make a special 
> rule for elves about it?   And given average gold/silver yields a 
> 10-man team mining and smelting ore ends up producing about 3500CC of 
> precious metals per month (if coins are 50/#, 1# silver = 500CC, 1# 
> gold = 5,000CC).  I know this does not cover the cost of any security, 
> but is seems like a 100 man team is nearly monty haul with the cash 
> production.  What are reasonable worker counts for small/medium/large 
> ore deposits, given P&P technology to detect and extract ores?
>
>
>
>
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