I was thinking about economy after reading a few posts here. We don't usually spend too much time on it, but I would like to simplify the process of handling the cost of living for adventurers. It should be an average taking into account that sometimes it would be more expensive and sometimes less, but just using set values as an average. Something along these lines:

Living costs per day
Base: 20b
Travelling: +5b (not taking travel costs for boats, coach etc. into account)
Horse (including wagon/cart etc.): +10b
Armor/shield: +3b per soak and defense
Blackpowder weapon: +5b
Wounds taken in combat: +1b per wound taken

Not paying the cost for living will impose a penalty of 1-5 misfortune dice on all rolls

Example:

A fully decked out iron breaker with a blunderbuss and a horse+cart travelling = 70b or 2s and 20b

Add to that any wounds taken that day.

With a mercenary salary of for example 10s each day that would leave over 5s profit.

I've tried this in the past, and my players hated me.

If you had to, you could try something really simple like: Do you wear metal armour? Do you have a horse? What Tier do you live (brass, silver, or gold)? I think tracking brass bits might just tick-off your players.

An even simpler option might be to say that you're "taking it out of their loot & pay." This is vague enough and requires no tracking at all.

jh

Emirikol said:

Yeah you can always balance the loot as you want it. It's just when playing with poor characters, lacking money could lead to all kinds of exciting things

But you're right. Tracking all that stuff would get old. It needs to be super simple and just be there to make the players feel they need to make money... which could lead to criminal activity or taking less desirable jobs.

I had some though about that subject too. I tried to take into account the 3 Tiers of wealth and the revenues given in the book to get some ideas. (i based the 1st couple jobs's pay on the Mercenary 10s per day)

It started with the minimum cost for food per day. The book mentions 5 brass per day (3 to survive but with consequences on the medium run)

That minimum would be the bare one, stew made with left overs, not fresh venetables & bread. A "Brass Tiers" low. So player wishing to pay that much eat because they have to, and it's not good at all. The "image" they have is of poor guys, etc. Inside that same tiers, you can spend more, to get better stuff (fresh meat, vegetables, bread, milk products, etc) and it could go as far as 5 times the basic cost (25b=1s, could include some beer, fruits, etc). I would highly suggest that noone in their right mind would stay on the bare minimum if they had the financial possibility.

For the Silver Tier, i'd start at 3 times the cost of the high brass tiers limit (3s) per day, reflecting the Silver Status (service, setting, etc) up to 15s per day for the high end Silver. The extra cost is more about service, settings & locals, than the food itself, it would include some wine too. The high end would include some extravagant/uncommon stuff too.

For the Gold Tiers, i'd also start at 3 times the high end Silver Tiers (45s) up to no real limits, but as the Core book says, a single dish at a banquet could fetch 1 gold crown ... (so 1 gold a day would be common enough among gold tier people)

According to those figures, i'd ask the player what they want to spend per day to place them in a "Tier" and telling them why/how, or maybe influence them to fit in one depending on the revenues / purse they have. Also, to make it simple, i'd double the food costs to add lodging at an appropriate level.

That way, you don't have to track each PC stuff separatly and could just make it 3 times instead of 2 if you want to add some extra care like mount(s), carriage, blackpowder stuff, etc.