Medieval Coinage for RPGs
Divining ideas about medieval currency and coinage for role-playing game purposes must come from, necessarily, historical references. As a simple armchair hobbyist, I, like a lot of gamers have maybe a few books and what we can squeeze from the internet, with of course, Fordham’s Internet Medieval Sourcebook being one of the oldest and most referenced works. A great many people have also done similar research online and presented their own findings and theories of fantasy RPG economics, such as the following: http://www.newsfrombree.co.uk/m_econ.htm.
The first consideration when dealing with just money in general, in the aspect of medieval use, is that barter and practical goods and services were often traded much more than coin, especially for peasants and serfs, so any approximation of worth or modern equivelancy must be understood to be at best, rough translations of man-hours and abstract provisions (room and board, food, clothing, etc) as well as actual value of currency.
As far as role-playing games, first and foremost, the reasons for needing information about coins, currency and wages are for the player-characters to buy stuff. Naturally, this can be easily glossed over using either a simple system or making presumptions based on a character’s wealth level, etc. More detailed wage information is really only a necessity for die-hard simulationist approaches and completists, and while that’s fine, I myself only go so far into such an arena until I am satisfied for my own purposes, so this work will focus on coins and typical wages in the late 1300s to late 1400s, which covers a lot of ground and must be understood to therefore present a very wide gap of economic fluctuation.
Wages
Most people, nobility and royalty and others holding higher offices, didn’t make all that much in most cases, with even artisans and craftsman making only a few shillings per day. This work will assume, due to various online references too numerous to mention or link, the following:
Total Work Days Per Year: 250
Total Work Hours Per Day: 8
Total Work Days Per Week: 6
Historical references and varying theories by countless learned academians place the medieval total workdays anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of a year (4-8 months). This reflects mostly active labor in the elements, such as farming and otherwise working and maintaining the land, but also to some extent, even military activity, as even armies would camp to wait out bad winters. The 8 hours a day reflects what was likely worked, though some estimates place actual work anywhere from about 5 real hours of work per day (seems low) to up to 12 (seems high), plus (theoretically unpaid) breaks for meals and naps – so while averaging the vast amount of educated guesses would probably put the workday at about 10 hours, that again, does not account for breaks, which most accounts indicate peasants and serfs did receive.
People who worked out of structures, however, such as artisans, craftsmen and merchants and servants wouldn’t necessarily get “winter breaks”, but usually also were provided with additional benefits (room and board) or sometimes would have “dead days” for self-employed individuals – if you don’t work, you don’t get money and if you don’t get money, you don’t eat. It is decided for the purpose of this work that all professions across the board will use the above 250 work day model.
There really is no such thing as an “average peasant”, anymore than there is an “average person” in any society today. Some peasants were tradesmen, some were landed farmers, some serfs and laborers. We look first at an Unskilled Laborer, someone who could tote and lift and shovel, as our base, with a fairly established (by differing sources) base of about 1 penny per day, with only pages and some servants and slaves making less, usually 1-3 farthings.
Although the difference between the 21st Century and the 1400′s is far too vast to really develop any sort of realistic equivelancy, crude guesses could be made based on references available.
| MEDIEVAL COIN | METAL | VALUE | WEIGHT | U$D ’09 |
| Noble | Gold | 20s or 1 pound sterling or 240p | 30g | $960.00 |
| Crown | Gold | 5s | 20g | $240.00 |
| Shilling | Silver | 12p | 19g | $48.00 |
| Penny | Silver | 4f | 1.6g | $4.00 |
| Farthing | Silver | 1f | .40g | $1.00 |
For a skilled individual who makes 1 shilling per day, this gives a wage of 1.5p/hour for an 8 hour day, with an equivalent of $6.00/hour, with each penny being equal to about $4.00. Necessarily, this remands our Unskilled Laborer to $4.00 (1p) per day, or roughly 50 cents USD per hour, making every 2 hours worth of work being worth only 1 farthing.
Coin Weights
Coin weights varied widely, a little more than today, from impractically small and light coins, some less than 1 or 2 grams (especially true for Farthings which were pennies literally cut into fourths) and pence, which were basically “one pound sterling” of silver, split up into 240 pieces or pence, about 1.55 grams each. Twelve pence made up 1 silver shilling, therefore a shilling was a larger coin, at its most primitive form, close to 19 grams, and lastly, 20 shillings made up the pound of silver.
Astute readers may realize that (1.55 x 240) doesn’t come out close to 500 or 454 grams (one av. pound), nor does it even come out to 373 grams (one troy pound); the original silver pound sterling was based on the much older and more coin-specific Tower Pound, slightly smaller than a troy pound, coming in at only about 350 grams.
So what does this mean? It means a “pound” of medieval coins doesn’t weigh anywhere near a “normal” or even troy pound from our time, but less.
Lastly…
Also note that this and other information on this site regarding values and coin types does not take into account or address coin “shaving”, debasement or assigned monetary value, but is based on the idea of pure bullion value, although this isn’t necessarily the best way to approach the subject, as Charlemagne, who established the first Paladins, actually standardized coinage and values under his rule.
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