A good while back, I had a productive and interesting series of discussions with Alex of Autarch regarding economics and game design. You can see these here
ground-up literally
starting-ground-part-ii
and
The Blackmoor base
In the latter, Alex wrote this about income in Blackmoor according to the 3rd Coot invasion data in the FFC:
"the City of Maus, it has a budget of 80,000gp, which comes from one city of 30,000 men (generating 30,000gp from 30,000 men), 20 villages (generating 2,000gp each from 3,000 men each), and various trading vessels, generating 10,000gp. That's the entire 80,000gp income, accounted for – there’s no need to assume Imperial funding, etc.
We know from the listing for Duchy of Ten (p8) and Egg of Coot (p9) that the income stated is income every 4 months. Therefore we are talking about a revenue stream of 80,000gp per 4 months. To compare this to ACKS values, we need to divide them by 4, to make them monthly. Therefore, Maus earns 20,000gp per month, and each FFC village of 3,000 yields (2,000/4) 500gp per month.
It wasn’t initially clear to me whether "men" in FFC means "adult men" or "people". However, the rules state that a a Fyrd of 450 men is available per 3,000 (p7, p8, p9). If "men" means "adult men" then the Fyrd is 15% of the adult men. If "men" means "people", and we assume 1 able-bodied man per 5 people (the historical norm), then 3,000 people would yield 600 men and the Fyrd of 450 would represent 75% of the adult men. Neither Greece nor Rome ever managed to have more than 33% of their adult men under arms, even during the Punic Wars, so we have to conclude that a 75% military participation ratio is unlikely to be what FFC intends. Therefore I have to conclude that "men" means "adult men". Therefore, 3,000 men in FFC is comparable to 3,000 families in ACKS, which have 1 adult man per family.
FFC therefore provides that 3,000 families yields 500gp per month, or 1/6gp per family"
That 1/6 GP figure per family represents what the Lord collects in taxes, Fascinating, I thought, and this has stuck in the back of my mind for a long time. Turns out Alex wasn't quite right in his calculation because of what looks to be a typo in the Maus data. That 2000 GP from 3000 men (fyrd 450), should have read 3000 GP. Notice the previous line says 30000 men generates 30000 GP (Fyrd 4500).
That 's 1 GP per able bodied man (family) every 4 months and it is a pattern repeated in the other holdings:
Earl of Vestfold - 2000 GP per village, (15 villages = 30,000 "people" = 2000 per village)
"Also, two small forts with one village (10,000 men) and
10,000 GP income, fyrd of 150 each."
Minor Holding Duchy of Ten: 3000 GP per village every 4 months,.. (population) 3000 each village
Egg of Coot: "3000 GP per village/4 months....population of 3000 per village (450 turn out for fyrd)."
And in the Investment section on Farming: 20 GP invested yields 10-20% return (taxes) from 1 family of 5 persons, one of which is armed with a club and can fight. In other words, 1 able bodied male farmer equals 2-4 GP a year in taxes, average of 3GP, i.e.1 GP per 4 months.
So I think it's clear that Arneson was collecting 1 gp per "person" (family - 1 able bodied adult male average) per 4 months or 1/4 GP per family each month.
That amount of income from taxation fits relatively well with the rest of Blackmoor's economy, but there is a problem, and it is one that Alex had pointed out in the posts cited above. The issue is the pay that troops earn, which must be some subset of their cost. It doesn't begin to meet basic needs according to the price lists for goods and services.
Lets take a single Heavy Footman as an example. Heavy Foot, which is basically your run of the mill, leather or chainmail wearing infantryman, cost 25 GP to purchase according to the Coot Invasion tables. "Upkeep" for soldiers in the Twin cities Napoleonics campaign was generally 5% of their purchase cost per year, plus a support cost that averaged also around 5% but would be doubled for cavalry or raised even more for some specialists and special equipment. For and infantryman at Blackmoor prices, 10% a year works out to slightly less than a measly 2.1SP a month.
Now even if the Heavy Footman were paid the whole 2.1 SP, he would have to save his entire pay for a year and three months to buy a simple wooden club (3gp) or 2 years for a weeks worth of food (5 gp) or a dagger (5gp), according to the price lists found in the FFC. We could assume Blackmoor was different, and, like D&D has a monthly support and upkeep tax instead of a yearly one. That would give our Heavy Footman 2.5 GP a month, but as you can see, it would still take him two months to buy a weeks worth of food.
Wages were equally low for laborers. In an otherwise unexplained footnote among some very old FFC material more or less contemporary with the Coot Invasion phase of the game, we find "1/10 GP per day (8 hours) to hire workers."
(77:36) That works out to less than 3gp
a month, and is right in line with the miserable pay the Heavy Footman
receives.
Arneson himself seems to have at least partially grasped the discrepancy. As mentioned above the costs for the services of specialists, even low status specialists like hunters, fit within a reasonable range. Hunters, for example would earn an average of about 11 GP a month. We can see it even more clearly in the aforementioned Investments section of the FFC. This section was prepared sometime after D&D had already been published - possibly as part of the material prepared for Supplement II that got cut. We can tell this because of the use of the terms Cleric, and Paladin as proper D&D class names, post dating the publication of Supplement I Greyhawk in 1975. In the Investments section we are told road workers will be paid 1-10 sp a day. Assuming an average of 5.5 sp being paid 6 days a week for a month, the typical road laborer will be earning 13.2 GP a month, and that fits pretty well with a low wage peasant job in an economy were it would cost you 5 GP a week to buy all your food from a vendor, or a month's pay to buy a decent sword. Similarly, 12 GP a month is the figure Alex settled on for the monthly cost of a Heavy Footman in ACKS, for example.
Now, I grant you, troop pay will be supplemented with food and housing, but
these guys couldn't afford to buy a single round of drinks at a tavern.
What to make of it? It is
very clear that Arneson is modeling his taxation and income economy on the conventions developed in his Napoleonics campaign and the wargames he played at the time. If we look at some of the wargaming club
notes of his and those of his fellow gamers, we see exactly tho sort of troop
costs and population figures given for the Blackmoor Coot Invasion. We can see Canada, for example, with an
income of 80,000 Pounds and a manpower of 21,644, and elsewhere we see troops,
such as line infantry at a cost of 5 Pounds and Lancers at a cost of 13 Pounds plus upkeep.
That all works fine for costs of manpower and taxation in
wargames, however roleplaying introduced the need to come up with prices for
all sorts of things not normally dealt with in wargames, such as the cost of
torches, backpacks, and ten foot poles.
These sort of costs also bear directly on the value of a treasure. Just what will a bag of 100 GP get you at the
marketplace?
That's where there seems to be a real disconnect in the Blackmoor
system. No doubt, Arneson had some real world model in mind, possibly Napoleonic, when he assigned prices to goods and services, but regardless of how Arneson came
up with the cost of a barrel or a cudgel, its obviously unrelated to the
income of common individuals, be they a soldier or a worker. (Note that I'm stressing soldiers and laborers here - Arnesons FFC costs for the wages of specialist actually do fit the cost of goods)
The problem isn't entirely an obscure one for OD&D
players. The prices of goods and
services are only slightly adjusted from the original Blackmoor lists. If we take bows for example, in OD&D we
have these prices: Short Bow 25, Long Bow 40, Composite Bow 50. and in
Blackmoor we have: Standard Bow 25, Longbow 40, Composite 40. At the same time we see troop and labor costs
in OD&D increased only slightly in most cases. On the troop cost table on page 23 of Underworld and Wilderness Adventure, Light foot costs but 1 GP a month and Heavy Foot costs but 3 gp - an increase of only one GP over the price found in Blackmoor and CHAINMAIL. That means a heavy footman would spend a
month's wages to buy a set of 3 stakes
and a mallet, and nearly two months' pay would be required for a weeks worth of
rations. How is it, in any economy where
a laborer ("non-fighter" U&WA p23) earns only a single GP a
month, that every starting character is carrying around 3d6 x10 GP? That's the equvalent of 3 to 15 YEARS worth
of earnings for a peasant laborer!
Arneson himself seems to have at least partially grasped the discrepancy. As mentioned above the costs for the services of specialists, even low status specialists like hunters, fit within a reasonable range. Hunters, for example would earn an average of about 11 GP a month. We can see it even more clearly in the aforementioned Investments section of the FFC. This section was prepared sometime after D&D had already been published - possibly as part of the material prepared for Supplement II that got cut. We can tell this because of the use of the terms Cleric, and Paladin as proper D&D class names, post dating the publication of Supplement I Greyhawk in 1975. In the Investments section we are told road workers will be paid 1-10 sp a day. Assuming an average of 5.5 sp being paid 6 days a week for a month, the typical road laborer will be earning 13.2 GP a month, and that fits pretty well with a low wage peasant job in an economy were it would cost you 5 GP a week to buy all your food from a vendor, or a month's pay to buy a decent sword. Similarly, 12 GP a month is the figure Alex settled on for the monthly cost of a Heavy Footman in ACKS, for example.
Okay, if we think about how to fix the situation to where wages match reasonable well with expenses and the values of treasures in D&D, it should be obvious that reworking wages is a much easier and less impactful change than adjusting prices and treasure values. That's pretty much what Alex did for ACKS, but I of course wanted to stay true to the OD&D and FFC numbers to the extent I could.
The easiest solution by far, I believe, is to change the frequency of "support and upkeep" pay. If instead of being paid monthly, our Heavy Footman were paid weekly, his pay per month would increase by a factor of 4 from 2GP to 8 GP.
I think that works well enough; problem solved. It's actually not even a new idea. In the BTPbD manuscript it says "Players must pay living expenses and wages for themselves
and hirelings. Costs in the Underworld are assessed on a weekly basis, but in
the Upper Land the same cost applies on a monthly basis.." (Book II:7) What I'm suggesting is that we drop the "upper land" half of that rule and go with a weekly assessment all the time.
We can even backport this idea into the tax and income model provided by the Blackmoor Coot Invasion. Instead of collecting 1GP per family every 4 months, to derive the income of any given polity, 1 GP can be collected each month.
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