I was preparing material for an intrigue game taking place in Renaissance Italy, and at some point or other I know trade will come into play. I did my homework on the economy of late medieval cities, but most of the texts omitted exact numbers completely. So while, for example, I know that a quarter ton of wheat in XV century somewhere was 6 sou, and that a musket in XVII century somewhere cost around 16 sou, I haven't actually managed to find anything more exact despite trade being extremely well documented in Europe as early as XI century, and more to the point I couldn't find enough data for individual locations to compare values and get a feel for the worth of labour, or at least what was the most profitable under which conditions. Wheat price might as well be arbitrary; for most of the middle ages it depended on weather, rise and fall of urban populations and the value and availability of currency in circulation - a ton and a half of wheat might have been worth 26 sou in Florence at some point, but it's not clear if this price was normal, or high, or low, and WHY. So, roughly speaking, in the Italian city-states, with their developed trade networks, strong influence of various guilds and a lot of experience with both overabundance of food and dire famine, where, roughly, would be some hypothetical 'average' value of basic foodstuffs?
...what the heck's a "sou"?
Capitalist pig
>>44519017
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidus_%28coin%29#France
>>44519017
1/20th of a french livre, which I'm wondering why is relevant in a discussion about italian city-states during the time period where thery were at their highest point of economic power and independence from other nation-states.
>>44519082
Or you could just have called it a Solidus.
Or we could have a discussion about the currency of the United States, the Doll, instead.
Don't forget the russian Bless and the japanese Yeah.
>>44518955
Well, it's not like there was a global price for anything so that doesn't surprise me.
Data is limited obliviously, I suppose that for that kind of period we mostly have non consistent individual bookkeeping and some taxes (historians love dem taxes).
I think those kind of data must be available, but not that much published in non specialised literature since it can't really depict a clear picture.
I can't really answer your question, except by the obvious you certainly know better than me:
> food took most of the budget of most people until way into the 20th century.
> "exotic" food is really expansive. "Exotic" can mean common thing of today, like pepper.
> Also salt is a key goods.
> Every price is much more volatile, being more dependant on good or bad harvest and you can only import so much.
> Speculation is a thing. Fixing the market to raise prices inside a city at the risk of causing scarcity can gain a lot, or cost you your life.
I would say it depend mostly on harvest and on what is produce locally. Then if someone is fucking with prices.
So either you do whatever seems appropriate, or you pre-plan some fictional vague "data": - what can be produced locally, what can be imported, what have to be imported (what happen if PC or NPC anger the representative of the main supplier of [X]?)
- If last/current/next harvest was good/average/bad
- How big your city is
- Is someone fucking with prices, are the authorities in, if the people are aware and mad or not. Maybe up to hunger riots, which happened regularly in big cities.
- Taxes issues on specific key good like salt and imported goods.
That's the best I can do.
Braudels the Mediterranean might have a little bit of useful information.
Though he focuses mostly.on geographical determinism, there are things like trade routes, pastoral migratory routes, and relative wealth of cities and shit. Can't remember much, and it is a huge book to slog through, but the man loved cramming every little bit of information possible (to him, all data was relevant data, what an efficient way to do history).
Fucking Annales.
>>44519098
Most of medieval economy was based off the roman 1 pound of silver = 20 solidus = 240 denarii. Names of the coins got changed, new coinage got introduced, actual silver content varied wildly along with the value of silver itself, but it was more or less the same thing across Europe for centuries.
>>44519698
> food took most of the budget of most people until way into the 20th century.
> "exotic" food is really expansive. "Exotic" can mean common thing of today, like pepper.
> Also salt is a key goods.
> Every price is much more volatile, being more dependant on good or bad harvest and you can only import so much.
All of this varied ridiculously not over centuries but over decades. As medieval cities went through cycles of overpopulation and depopulation, price of goods and labour went from skilled craftsmen starving in the streets to unskilled workers being able to feed their entire families and afford fine foods and clothing. The amount of money in circulation back then was always lagging behind economic growth, and they had economic crises as often as we do, but their economies weren't robust enough to weather it. It was literally feast or famine.
> Speculation is a thing. Fixing the market to raise prices inside a city at the risk of causing scarcity can gain a lot, or cost you your life.
Latter being most likely. In times of dearth cities went to great expense to prevent starvation and maintain public order by purchasing wheat and distributing it at low prices. Attempting to speculate in times where wheat speculation could yield significant profit was a good way to went up exiled, excommunicated, or worse. Medieval legislation was based heavily of morality, and taking skin off the backs of your fellow citizens was not looked upon kindly.
Luckily, I've been working on some homebrew for economics for my game. Here's some ideas to determine how prices vary across regions.
http://pastebin.com/HMfaxcv6
As far as AVERAGE price, there is none. You just gotta take historical data as you can, then use arbitrariness and general rule of thumb to figure it out. Your world is never going to be 100% realistic when it comes to pricing but a bit of technique can make it feel real. The important thing is that there's a rational market involved in your pricing with differences between towns so that players can make rational economic decisions.
>>44520380
And there was another fucking thing. People lived off their work, obviously, but wages were regulated relative to living expenses, price of wheat and meat and mean cost of housing mainly. That meant that their purchasing power depended on all the economic and political factors you could imagine, which reflected on prices of goods on the market. So that musket being sold for 16 sou might as well cost 20 sou tomorrow because everyone is buying them, or 6 because no one can afford them.
>>44520433
I am aware of all that. I was considering taking this the other way, arbitrarily deciding a laborers' wage then guestimating his ability to buy food. Humans do need a fairly definite amount of calories to function every day, which decides how many cereal grain a family of four would need to make it through the week. And from that, I can surmise the price of skilled and unskilled labour and the rough value of goods they produced, based on their income per week of work. From there the rest is basically dependent on conditions I can simply set, like Genova freezing trade with Milan because of a dispute, or a guild being a dick, or a master craftsman getting assassinated, or a bad storm sinking an unfortunate number of merchant vessels all involved in shipping of resource X. But it's so... inelegant.
>>44520380
I sort of know about monetary issues, but not that cities populations were that variable.
>Latter being most likely.
I guess it's a question of dosage, maintaining high prices while remaining reasonable enough to not cause to much troubles.
But it still happened occasionally anyway, there is always someone ready to risk big and sometime things go out of control.
Also, it doesn't have to be on all goods.
But it's mostly because it can be a decent plot point.
>>44519037
what are you some kind of fantasy commie
>>44520547
It isn't the most elegant way but it's around the easiest way to do it.
Figure out a basic cost of living for a human and then have that be altered by whatever factors you're modeling for.
It's inelegant but having an arbitrary number then be modified by various factors is far less headache inducing than trying to figure every single thing out about what goes into the price of something.
For example if you try to factor in the final price of finished goods into an artisans wage, then you have to consider how often the artisan can produce goods, the availability of raw material, etc. And it becomes autismally complex for very little reward at the table.
>>44520571
A corrupt grain merchant bribing some officials to look away while he stockpiles foodstuffs he will sell to the city for an inflated price then buy back for much less when granaries are opened, yeah. It's actually how I intend to my players to fuck themselves in the ass and have to go on the run.
City populations varying... Disease, man. Thousands upon thousands of people, all bunched up together, foreign people and animals coming to the markets, fairs and ports, and if city population goes beyond its surrounding lands' ability to feed it, malnutrition. When an epidemic hit, it hit hard. Then you have a city with excess of food production, excess of living space and a shortage of labour, new people move in from rural areas because cheap food, good houses and great wages, more people come, they all have kids, population skyrockets again. Safety and stability are very modern things.
