Fantasy / Medieval RPG Wages and Money
Fantasy role-playing game money systems and currencies are typically based on real-world historical values and statistics, usually from the “Medieval” era, also known as the Middle Ages, as opposed to the earlier classical civilization of the “Age of Antiquity” (the height of the Greeks and Romans) and the latter “Modern Age” , though some games borrow from pre- and post-Medieval periods for their fantasy currency systems.
MEDIEVAL AGES
The Middle Ages span from about 476 to 1500 AD, and are broken down as follows:
Before 476 AD Classic Antiquity (Pre-Medieval)
476 – 1000 AD Early Middle Ages / Dark Ages / Late Antiquity
1000 – 1300 AD High Middle Ages
1300 – 1500 AD Late Middle Ages
After 1500 AD Renaissance / Early Modern (Post-Medieval)
Casually, the Middle Ages are said to have begun with the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th Century, and ended with the rise of nation-states, European overseas expansion and the division and Reformation of Christianity in the early 16th Century.This work will use the Late Middle Ages, about 1400-1500, as a general baseline for all values and measurements.
LIVING WAGES
One day’s work tended to be the average measure of “basic payment” for most “common” roles in any ancient time, be it civilian or military, but since there were far more peasants than anything else, we’ll use the common peasant and all of his related values as our baseline for wages and money.
PEASANTS: FREEMEN AND SERFS
About 90% of the people of the Middle Ages would be considered peasants:
Freemen – fully independent individuals who worked only for themselves and owned or rented land from a Lord
Serfs – essentially indentured servants (but not slaves).Usually because of a large debt, they agreed to this indentured servitude until they could get themselves out of debt (few ever succeeded). Serfs were given a plot of land and some basic supplies by a Lord and they would work and maintain the Lord’s property (land, animals, fences, etc) and pay taxes, in exchange for security and minimal wages.
Slaves – Technically a sub-class of peasant that was treated more like property; although some slavery existed in the Early Middle Ages, the practice was slowly dying out even then and was rare or unknown by the Late Middle Ages.
PEASANT WORKDAY
Most medieval peasants, Freeman and Serf alike, worked approximately the same number of hours as a modern day hourly minimum-wage employee in 2008, about 2,000 hours a year, out of the 4,370 hours available, assuming a total availability of 12 hours a day, 364 days a year. This could be averaged out to 40 hours per week, at more or less 6 hours per day, 7 days per week. Exceptions to this average are certain, and 10 and 12 hour days were not unheard of, though part of the reason the workday was so long was because there was usually plenty of breaks for meals and naps.
Because most work was season-dependent, most peasants did not always work day-in and day-out year-round, but rather their schedule depended on the type of work they did. Peasants usually made all of their annual wage off of one or two major harvests or other seasonal yields, leaving them with more “free time” than one might think – this accounts for their seemingly “lax” work schedules.
WAGES AND PAYMENT
Since peasants generally self-governed their own work schedules, their wages were figured per day (though they were rarely paid daily), week or month, and almost never by the hour, and a minimum amount of work, or quota, was usually required for a peasant to earn his complete wage. To a great extent, the same was true for Freemen who worked for themselves, as there was no point in dragging their feet, as it was THEIR fences that needed mending, animals that needed herding, crops that needed harvesting, etc.
In general, unskilled laborers, peasants without some sort of professional or artistic ability, who simply worked the land, made about 3d per day, and 1s per week, about 4s per month – 5s or 1 crown (1/4L) if they were really industrious. Those who served in the military in basic service in peacetime usually made 1s per day (this also applies to ship’s crews etc.), and usually didn’t even see battle, though the more likely the combat and the closer to the action and the more seasoned the soldier, the more he would earn.
REQUIREMENTS OF A SERF
The serf, who was not permitted to leave his Lord’s land, typically was required to work his Lord’s land 1-2 days a week, fixing fences, harvesting crops and anything else that needed done, before tending to his own farming and livelihood.
Related: http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/history/middleages/peasant.html
TYPES OF PAYMENT / CURRENCY
The “coin of the realm” was, for peasants, rarely a coin, at least not much of one.
FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAME MONEY SYSTEM: COINS
As most fantasy games’ historical equivalent seems to be Europe’s Middle Ages, a simplified and consistent summarized version of the European (English) currency systems in place in that era is the most reasonable and useful template for near-real-world valuation of money.
The Roman-based “Lsd” (Pounds (L), Shillings(s), Pence(d)) system is probably England’s oldest, most consistent and longest-lived currency system, being in use until as recently as 1970. The L (Pound) is taken from the Roman Libra or Lira, the s (Shilling) is taken from the Solidus, or shilling, and d (Pence) from Dinarius.
1 Pound = 20 Shillings = 240 Pence
The reason for the names and divisions are still somewhat debatable, but essentially:
Pound – exactly one Troy pound (373.24 grams) of sterling silver (in most ancient times and cultures, including the Middle Ages, silver, not gold, was the standard currency base). There was originally, no coin or other physical item (other than an actual Troy pound of silver) called a “Pound” – it was simply a convenient hypothetical unit of bulk currency, useful for accounting and record-keeping. Coins that were worth a Pound, however, existed, but were fairly uncommon.
Shilling – when the above Pound of silver was carved up to create individual coins (silver shillings, one of which is thought to have represented the value of one cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere), you got about 20s to the Pound, so the division was more one of weight and substance than intentional assignation. Although some medieval weights were figured differently, we can generally say that a silver shilling weighed just a little less than 19 grams.
Pence – Following the Age of Antiquity’s Greek and Roman and other currency systems’ divisions for smaller units of currency, each shilling could be broken down, literally, into 12 silver pence (pennies), which were much smaller and thinner than the shillings – a shilling was worth 12 pence because you would get 12 pence if you carved up one silver shilling – again, this is more a measurement of weight than of intentional monetary value, with each penny weighing just slightly under 1.6 grams.
Ha’Penny - Valued at 1/2 of one pence, the Ha’Penny, like the Farthing below, was never common but did see use from time to time.
Farthing – Infrequently used, the Farthing was the further subdivision of the penny, with four Farthings equaling one penny. Rather than an official coin, the Farthing was usually an actual silver penny, cut into four equal pieces – not very practical to carry around but it let you work in increments smaller than one penny. This is about the most miniscule subdivision of currency ever needed and a lot of people tend to forego using such a small unit of currency.
Gold Talent = 6,250L (25 Silver Talents)
Silver Talent = 250L (50 Minas)
Mina = 100s (50 Shekels)
Sovereign/Lira/Guinea/Gold Florin = 20s or 200d or 1L
Angel = 15s or 150d or 3/4L
Mark of Note/Silver Noble/Electrum Lion = 10s or 100d or 1/2L (1 month basic Laborer wages)
Crown = 5s or 50d or 1/4L
Shekel/Half-Crown/Gold Penny/Double Florin/Ducat/Gelder/Ecu = 2s or 20d or 1/10L (1 week basic Laborer wages)
Denarius/Drachma/Silver Florin = 1s or 10d or 1/20L (1 cow or 1 day Military wage)
Groat = 1/2s or 5d (1 day skilled Laborer wage)
Threepence = 3d (1 day basic Laborer wage)
Ha’Penny/Obol = 1/2d or 2f
MODIFYING THE MONEY
For simplicity, we’ll keep the Pound and Shillings at the original 1:20 ratio, but reapportion the Pence into a Pound-to-Pence ratio of 1:200 (keeping the pence valuation near the original but smoothing it out for easier math) by resizing the pennies, chunking a 1 Troy pound of silver into 200 pieces, with each piece (pence) weighing just under 2 grams. Alternately, we could divide the pound into 100 pence, which would make the conversion math more reminiscent of modern currency, but at the risk of any real-world Medieval price/wage values in pence not even being close to our system’s pence, so let’s go with the 200 Pence per Pound ratio instead.
While we’re at it, let’s fudge up the weight just for the sticklers who keep track of minutae, such as how much coins weigh, and raise the Troy pound of silver to a more even 400 grams (the difference between 400 and 373.24 grams is 26.7 grams, or less than 1 Troy ounce), which divides into 20 Shillings weighing 20 grams each, or 200 Pence, weighing 2 grams each. By changing Pence from 240 to 200 per Pound, this also makes 1 Shilling worth 10 Pence. Isn’t this all handy?
NEW POUND:SHILLING:PENCE RATIO
So now we have a 1:20:200 ratio for our money system:
1 Pound (weighing 400 grams) = 20 Shillings (20 grams ea) = 200 Pence (2 grams ea)
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About The Author
My daughter wanted to know how much a silver coin, shilling, and a pence in 1400 a.d. was worth in today’s time. Such as, a pence in 1400 would have been worth _________ [3.50, 5.00, 8.00?] A silver coin would equal in today’s markey _________. I am curious about how much a gold coin was worth. Thanks for your reply. Signed- Yes Dear, parents don’t know it all!
I am SO sorry for not seeing and responding to this earlier – this wordpress setup wasn’t showing any recent comments etc so I just lucked upon your comment.
I had found a site that tells the relative worth of current coins in the past, but it only went back to the 1900s.
From all the reading I did, it would seem to me that a typical peasant who made about one silver shilling per day would be like a modern “wage slave”, burger-flipper/store clerk, etc.
This would make that one penny his day’s wages, and for us in modern times, typical day wages are about $48.00 USD if you go with approximately $6.00/hour minimum wage, which may or may not be adjusted for taxes, etc.
$48.00 per day is probably about as low as you go without getting into part-time and waiters/waitresses whose wages are non-standard.
So as you can see, if you base your criteria solely on daily wage, 1 shilling = $48.00 if you want to keep it really simple. I have seen other more professional and thorough research which indicates most peasants were lucky to make half a silver a day (about 5 pence) but for the sake of argument and a nice even number, I think most of the *free* peasants probably made about a shilling a day, some more.
Now it takes 12 pence to make a shilling, therefore (48/12=) a penny (a 12th of a silver shilling) would have been worth about $4.00 USD, which would also nicely emulate the farthing, which were simply pennies cut into fourths, making each farthing worth $1.00 USD.
Going up to the pound or crown, the 20 silver shillings that make up a pound would equate to (20×48=960) $960.00 USD, which you could, without too much trouble, round down to $950 or up to an even $1,000.00 USD.
Obviously, farthings would be your dollar bill, and nearly everything, especially lesser items, costs at least that much, while pence are next up as more or less the $4.00/$5.00 bill, and are pretty common too, with a chicken or a night at an inn or such costing about one shilling.
Although there were other coins in some eras and cultures between and beyond the shilling and the pound, the standard European currency system was: Farthing, Pence, Shilling, Pound.
The Pound, however, was *never* a regularly produced or minted coin, as only royalty or extremely wealthy nobles would ever have the need for it – instead, the pound or as some people think of it, the crown, was actually an artificial “placeholder” or “hypothetical coin” invented by medieval accountants for large on-paper sums, so the typical fantasy game idea of people walking around with bags full of gold or even silver crowns/pounds is, at best, a product of lack of research.
Thank you for the question, I hope even this late, it was of some interest to you! =) -JP
I did a bit of checking (for similar reasons) and applied the “ale standard” as suggested some years ago in an RPG magazine.
In medieval times, you could get a gallon (8 pints) for a penny (about £20). That works out at £2.25 a pint, expensive, but not unreasonable in Central London!
Actually, I realise that I had a penny as £20, the “measuring worth” site has one shilling =£20!
Still, a gallon of ale for less than £2…
That seems to coincide mainly with some of the values I got while throwing around some numbers. Definitely 1920′s pre-crash prices, at the very least!
I guess I just am intrigued by being able to somehow apply real-world equivalents to RPG stuff, to see how something would equate “in the real world”.
Interesting, thanks for the comments!
Hi, want to say my GM and I really liked this breakdown, especially the dollar equivalents you gave in your reply. It makes so much more sense than the D&D 4e coinage table
On a side note, where would you place the use of gold in this? I’d heard it was used as coinage, but don’t know what it’s equivalent might be.
That’s a good question, and one that has a sort of historical lack of consistency.
I did a rethink of the coins and values here:
http://www.zanysite.com/tabletoprpgfun/2009/04/medieval-coinage-for-rpgs-up-with-role-playing-games/
Note that my weights don’t agree with some historical measures.
Gold almost necessarily (for game considerations) becomes the material for Crowns and above, because historically, Silver Crown values were usually based on their minted face value rather than primarily on their composition, and also for the most part didn’t occur until 1818. If you had a Silver Crown that was worth 5 Silver Shillings, it would (leaving debasement, shaving, etc. aside) have to weigh what five shillings do – while a Gold Crown would weigh only a fraction of that, due to Gold being worth more than Silver. Also, some pennies were struck out of bronze or copper or similar metal but that is also much later in history and their value was based on their legal denomination rather than composition.
For people who aren’t terribly concerned about each coin type’s individual weight and find it easier to have all coins weigh about the same and only one coin type for each value, Pennies could be Bronze but were originally Silver, Shillings were Silver, and Crowns were Gold. For further detail, there were Half-Crowns, Soverigns, Half-Sovereigns, Nobles and Half-Nobles, etc. – these were also almost always made out of Gold though a few were made of Electrum or other unusual and precious metal.
I found these to be great resources: http://herve.sors.free.fr/history.of.british.coins.htm and http://chestofbooks.com/finance/banking/English-Manual/Coins-Part-10.html