This is an update or rethinking of some of my earlier theorizing of fantasy and medieval coinage and wages, and changes around some values.

Although the difference between the 21st Century and the 1500′s is far too vast to really develop any sort of realistic equivalancy where wages and coin value is concerned, crude guesses can be made based on references available. Also the vagueness of the era in which WFRP takes place causes disagreement between players who place the time somewhere between the mid 1400′s and the late 1500′s for the most part, which muddies the issue even more.

Here are a few different tables of possible fantasy-modern money conversions, depending on how much modern USD you think each coin is worth.

Or let’s take a look at the extreme low value table:

Wages

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.

For this work, I am using a base of a 6 day work week, 8 hours per day (64 hours per week), 4 weeks (24 or so days)  per month, 12 months per year – BUT, typically due to weather, special holidays or various other reasons, the majority of people only worked about 75% of the year, so in a world of 365 days per year I come up with about 275 days (250 if you want to be conservative or use slightly easier math).

For reasons on why I use an 8 hour day, check the link at the bottom of this post, but the short version is that although peasants did work pretty much all day, they had breaks, even naps, and dinner and such in this span of time, which reduces the popular idea of 10-16 hour days to a more reasonable duration.

For a skilled individual (professional craftsman for example) who makes 1 shilling per day (this is a LOT), this gives a wage of 1.5p/hour for an 8 hour day, with an equivalent of $6.25/hour, with each penny being equal to about $5.00. Necessarily, this remands our Unskilled Laborer to $5.00 (1p) per day, or roughly 63 cents USD per hour, making every 2 hours worth of work being worth only about 1 farthing. For weekly wages, you’d simply multiply a worker’s daily income by 6, meaning the Unskilled Laborer makes 6p per week (and 24p or 2s per month), compared with the Skilled Laborer making 6s per week (24s or 1C and 4s per month).

Coin Composition and Weights

The Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game and others approach things in what I feel is a confusing way (accuracy wise), making Pennies be made of brass, a metal much less valuable than silver, for the sake of easy differentiation of coins – gold crowns, silver shillings, brass pennies – I understand it but for the purpose of this work, Pennies will remain silver because otherwise if you put 12 brass pennies together, they equal 1 silver shilling, which would nmean the brass pennies are worth the same as silver pennies (the shilling broken into 12 coins), which makes no sense.

Notice the Gold Crown (worth 5s), at 7.5 grams,  is actually lighter and smaller than a silver Shilling, because gold is worth more than silver. Crowns are basically quarters of the gold Noble, which is a whoppingly large gold coin, weighing in at a hefty 30 grams and being worth 20 silver Shillings or, as noted, 4 gold Crowns.

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 Tower pound” of silver (this unit was abolished about 1525 and Troy became the standard), split up into 240 pieces or pence, about 1.45 grams each. Twelve Pence made up 1 silver Shilling, therefore a Shilling was a larger coin, at its most primitive form, a bit over 17 grams, and lastly, 20 Shillings made up the “pound” of silver. The Noble was extremely rare and exclusive and equated to the Tower Pound (2o Shillings) in value, while the largest valued reasonably attainable coin was the gold Crown, worth 5 Shillings – uncommon except for in the heands of merchants, nobles and wealthy farmers/serfs.

Astute readers may realize that (1.45 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 325 to 350 grams, depending on which historian you ask – for my purposes and math, I’m setting the weight of a Tower Pound at roughly 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 even less.

Coin Sizes

Historically, coins varied widely in size and weight, as already mentioned, with standard sizes suitable for a fantasy mediveal/renaissance being between 15 millimeter and 40mm across. For comparison, a US dime is 18mm,  a penny is 19mm, a nickel is 21mm, a quarter is 24mm, a traditional 50 cent/half-dollar is 31mm, while the modern US dollar is only 27mm, though there were dollar coins measuring up to 38mm. Obviously, the thickness and diameter of a coin will depend on what it’s made of and how much it is supposed to be worth – some coins might be very large but quite thin while others will be smaller and thicker, etc.

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.

Also see Medieval Coinage for RPGs | Up With Role Playing Games.

Similar Posts:

• Medieval Coin Worth Using Modern Day Costs
• Medieval Coinage for RPGs
• Fantasy/Medieval Coinage & Modern Equivalency Charts
• Fantasy / Medieval RPG Wages and Money
• One RPG Group’s 1 Year Campaign Had More Gold Than Was Ever Mined

Related posts:

1. Medieval Coinage for RPGs
2. Fantasy / Medieval RPG Wages and Money
3. Medieval Coin Worth Using Modern Day Costs
4. Historical Armor

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This entry was posted by J P on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 3:06 am and is filed under General RPG. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.