Medieval economy and production, plus some equipment listings

I'm not a historian. If you want real knowledge, go to a historian. If you want something gameable, read on.

The market in medieval times was not the supermarket of today. Obviously!

People brought goods to market in market towns, about twice a week. On such days you can buy any common good, straight off, from a stall. If it's not a market day, you can still buy food, but you'll have to order other items from workshops.

(Small towns have markets every week or every two weeks.)

Prices are generally static throughout the medieval period, for a few reasons -- constant deflation from the trade balance with Asia, relative stagnation in the productivity of labor, and, most importantly, laws setting price ceilings on common goods, and trade unions setting prices for everything else. So you don't need to worry about modelling dynamic prices for goods. You do have to worry about the availability of goods, and the time it takes to produce them.

Basic price list

So if the gang wants to buy some armor, instead of just picking a set up at ye old Walmarte, players will have to order it and wait:

Basic armor sets. Cost in pennies, weight in pounds, time in days

Prices here and throughout the post come from The Marketplace by Phillip McGregor.

(You may wonder about the system of currency here. Silver standard, obviously. 4 silver pennies is 1 silver groat. 20 silver groats is 1 gold noble. 1 groat is worth 1 xp. Players start with 3d6*40 pennies.)

You can pay half again as much to slice off a quarter of the production time, or twice as much to slice off half.

(You may be wondering, what's the difference between an aketon and cloth armor? And a mail shirt and full mail? And where are the AC values? I'm using an experimental AC system from Eero Tuovinen. As far as I know, his system isn't published anywhere, so I'll probably do a writeup on it later, explaining it. If you are familiar with Eero's system, an aketon set is as cloth with -3, and a mail shirt set is as full mail with -2. If you don't want to use Eero's system, delete the aketon and mail shirt from the table. Cloth is ac 7, mail is 5, and plate is 3.)

And here's melee weapons:

Melee weapons. Price in pennies

I don't list weights, because pretty much every one-handed weapon weighs 3 pounds, and pretty much every two-handed weapon weighs 6 pounds. Lances are 10 pounds.

Note also that there's no damage listed, because this is OD&D, and everything does 1d6. Hell yeah!

And ranged weapons:

Ranged weapons. Price in pennies

Thrown weapons don't have a range listed, because they can all be thrown about 60 feet. Every ranged weapon takes -1 to hit for every 10 feet from the target. (This is a model based on Dan Collin's work on archery.)

Generally a ranged weapon will only get a shot in every 3 to 6 melee rounds, because they have to be aimed. So I don't bother listing a rate of fire.

An arbalest weighs 18 pounds and a heavy crossbow weighs 9. Everything else is 3 pounds, including bundles of arrows and bolts.

And let's not forget shields:

Shields. Cost in pennies, weight in pounds, time in days

(Again, AC values are hinky because of Eero's armor system. If you aren't interested in the alternate AC values, every shield gives +1 AC, but a round shield protects against 1 attack, a heater against 2, and a kite shield against 3.)

Nerding out and getting fancy

If you're interested in a certain sort of number-crunching min-maxing character optimization, you might want to customize your armor kit. Instead of buying full sets of armor, you can buy individual pieces and combine them. You can also pay more to get lighter, better crafted armor, that will take longer to make.

 

Detailed armor components. Price in pennies, weight in pounds, time in days.

In the table above, pay the lesser amount to get a heavier item in a shorter period of time, or the greater amount to get a lighter item in a longer period of time.

I derived the prices, weights, and production times from this detailed listing, assuming that adventurers not interested in min-maxing would choose the cheapest items available.

Component pieces for default armor loadouts

Any loadout with a mail coif can have its coif replaced with an aventail built into its helmet. More expensive but lighter.

This system is not particularly deep or enlightening, since you can solve it with a spreadsheet, but it's fun in a certain way. More importantly, it's totally opt-in; anybody can ignore it if they want.

Economic changes

Anybody who remembers high school econ will tell you that if you set a price ceiling below the equilibrium price of a good, the availability of the good will fall. Recall from above that guilds and lords did set price ceilings, on practically every end good. So during inflationary periods (for instance, times when adventurers are bringing cart-loads of gold into frontier towns) everything will cost the same, but there will be less of it to go round.

Here's a supply-demand curve I copied from an internet search

 

In that case, production time for every item should be increased by a quarter or half, depending on the severity of the shortage, and some common items may no longer be available on market days.

Labor, meanwhile, will increase in price directly. Increase the cost of hirelings by half, or double it, in inflationary periods.