Re: (TFT) Jobs table: 100,000 simulated soldiers and farmers

[CofDublin@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/20/2011 10:07:48 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
mejobo@comcast.net writes:

On Sep  20, 2011, at 11:31 PM, Jay Carlisle wrote:
Well, enough rarity also  helps... regardless of whether or not that 
actually makes its production  labor intensive. You also have the issue where you 
can have a system where  money gets its value from the stamp of approval on 
it, not from any  inherent properties.... in which case its given arbitrary 
value (usually  actually just a percent, based upon total amount of a given 
coin, of the total  wealth of a nation valued non-monetarily).
When money got its start in Lydia in the 600s BCE, the stamp of approval  
was just a way to certify its purity. This was enabled by the discovery  
that, by using schist (touchstone), one could see the purity of gold and  
precious metal alloys. This made it easy to detect forgeries. It gave trade a  
boost, much like every good innovation in the ability to spend money  to this 
day. That's why it caught on & spread to so many places.
 


>  Oak leaves as money makes little sense for a culture living in an oak  
forest as it is too easy to acquire.
And too fragile


>  Oak leaves as money for a culture in a desert may be a  different story.
Still too fragile.
 


>  Over history a myriad of goods have served as money depending  on 
geographical location and time-period but TFT describes a system of  > metallic, 
state issued currency thats pretty specific.
TFT does not  address how much metal there is nor the labor involved in its 
production  and simply gives a cost relative to other goods listed on  
the weapons and gear tables. This doesnt work. The easiest example  involves 
daggers and great swords. I run down to the nearest Cidri-mart  and buy a 
great sword, $150. I take it to a smith and tell him to melt  the thing down 
and make daggers out of it, $100 per week labor.  Thats 7kg for a great 
sword into 0.1kg daggers, 70 of them at $10 a  pop.

An unrealistic weight for a sword... even claymores are only about  2.5 kg
Medieval swords seem to average about 1lb./foot overall. This varied by  
region, with Irish and Arab swords being lighter in general.
 
 

.

Still, making too much surplus isn't good (and it will  drive up your  
prices, though having no wait could be nice for some  more commonly  
sold items).
Too much surplus drives prices down, not up.
 


>  So lets say that old Bilbo has gone on his adventure, dealt with Smaug, 
 but the battle of the Five Armies never happened. So these guys are 
sitting on  a mountain of treasure and the >nearest settlement is Dale.Gold is  
fixing to become very cheap in Dale in that scenario.

Probably not.  Within the context of the whole of Middle Earth, gold is 
still a valuable  commodity... unless they get so much gold that it ruins it 
(like for the  Spanish in real life, to an extent), which would need to be a 
LOT  relative to how much was in Middle Earth before, the effect isn't to 
make  gold cheap in Dale, per se, its to make Dale rich- EVERYTHING will be  
cheap, given how wealthy everyone is (cept, of course, they dont' all get  the 
gold, as I recall).
 
Mansa Musa of Mali went on hajj to Mecca, he devaluated gold for 12 years  
in Egypt and in what is now Saudi Arabia. Price on goods super-inflated as a 
 result of his generosity and wealth.
 
If your campaign is getting unbalanced, 1 way to right things is to make  
taxes and fees and tithes. Then tinker with your economics by introducing a  
change at Court off-stage. Another thing that medieval kings also did was to 
 recall the currency and devaluate it. This was hard on the economy but it 
is a  way to raise prices realistically.
 


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