Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 17 May 2003 to 20 May 2003 (#2003-131) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 21/05/2003, 17:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 5 messages totalling 309 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Price list v.2 (4) 2. Islandia Campaign ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 10:51:28 +0300 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ville_V_L=E4hde?= Subject: Price list v.2 Here is a new version of the price list. I added the prices for city buildings. How do these sound to you? Too high? Too low? For example IMC the PCs bought many houses in Darokin city after the war. They got pretty good houses with measley 2000 gp each, as many people had to realize their assets in order to get through the troubled times. (Also, they had to pay 4000-5000 if they used daros, since the Darokin currency had lost its credibility during the war... this annoyed them to now end. Especially the thief PC who had managed to acquire a big DDC cloc [20 000 daros].) ----------------------------------- Rented room (1 month): - beggars and such 4 - peasant, poor student 8 - middle class 12-15 - rich 30 - extravagant - 50 to 200 or higher Note 1: "extravagant" lodgings can be found only in capitol-level cities. They include good meals, servants and such. Note 2: Other prices can of course range depending on whether the room includes other services like food, laundry, security (guards) and such. For example, a beggar could make do with 2 gp (20 sp) per month, using his/her remaining coppers for some food. Buildings - A small low-cost house for one family 500 (one common room, kitchen, storeroom) - A larger low-cost house 1000 (two-three rooms, kitchen, storeroom, attic, cellar) - A middle-class building 1500-3000 - A high-class building 5000-10 000 or higher - An inn or a pub 2000-4000 - A low-cost tenement house (10 rooms) 2000 (see Note 2) - A business establishment 1000-3000 (the lowest cost is for one ground-level room and a small storeroom) Note 1: These prices are for already existing buildings in cities. The prices vary depending on the quality of the house, the nature of the city and the general economic situation. After a war, for example, real estate is a lot cheaper. Note 2: This is the lowest of the low, with no comforts whatsover. If all rooms are rented, the yearly income is about 480 gp/year. Acceptable maintenance costs are 100 gp/year. With the yearly net income of 380 it will take 5 years to get return on you investment. Many landlords of course skim on maintenance costs, take higher rent and threaten their tenants. A room in an inn (1 day, 1 person, with horse and 1 meal) - peasant 0,5 - middle class 1 - rich 2 - extravagant 5-10 (large cities only) Note: Again the prices may range depending on the service level of the establishment. Inn prices also vary greatly due to their location: inns that are close to heavily used trade routes in wilderness or borderland areas tend to tax their customers greatly. A bed in the common room - 0,05-0.1 Foodstuffs for one day (examples) - poor 0.03-0.05 (oatmeal, beans, fat of pork, some potatoes or turnips) - common 0.1-0.2 (as above, plus some vegetables bread, cheese, fish and/or eggs, with occasional meat) - middle class/rich 0.3-2 (price can go up if you prefer to) Breakfast - poor to middle class 0.01-0.2 - rich 0.5-1 Lunch or dinner - poor to middle class 0.03-0.5 - rich 1-3 - extravagant 5-10 A feast - normal 0.5-10 /person - extravagant 20-30 Wine -common 0.03 a glass or 0.2 a bottle (plus .5-1 for the bottle) -good 0.1-0.3 -excellent 0.2-1 - rare 3-10 Ale - common 0.01-0.03 a pint - good 0.05-0.1 - excellent 0.2-0.3 Hard liquor - regular moonshine 0.05 - run-of-the-mill 0.1 - brandy,whiskey, vodka 0.2-0.5 (regular quality) - the good stuff 1-2 (imported or rare - like dwarven spirits outside Rockhome) A pipe-full of tobacco - poor 0.01 - average 0.02-0.1 - good 0.2 - exquisite 0.3-0.5 (halfling tobacco, Ylari tobacco, spiced varieties) Trail rations - normal 2-4 a week - iron 8-15 a week Note: You can survive with 1 gp or less/week if you are content with oatmeal and stuff Clothing Normal clothes -beggar 0.01-0.1 -peasant 0.1-1 -middle class 1-15 -rich 10-100 Services Mundane help: - dagger/sword sharpening 0.01-0.2 - messenger boy 0.01-1 - shaving 0.01-0.2 - haircut 0.1-1 - bath 0.1-0.5 ("Thyatian baths" are much more expensive of course) - clothes washed 0.03-1 - foretelling 0.1-5 - cleaning 0.05-0.1 - grooming a horse 0.01-0.05 - cleaning shoes 0.01-0.05 (also a form of beggary, so prices vary, especially if "the lad knows many rumours") - guide in a city 0.01-0.5 (depending on the area visited, the legality of actions etc.) - sexual services 0.03-0.1 (backalley) 0.1-0.5 (prostitute) 1-50 (courtisan) Note: Sorry if the last one offends anyone, but it is a sad fact of live in many Mystaran societies. Professional works: - wounds bandaged 0.1-5 - horse shoed 0.1-2 - letter written 0.1-10 - legal services 1-100 - armour tended 0.5-50 Special Help: - Wounds tended by a cleric 10-500 - magical item identified 10-500 - with commands told etc 100-1000 - Foretelling 10-100 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 06:17:27 -0600 From: John Hare Subject: Re: Price list v.2 > Here is a new version of the price list. I added the prices for city > buildings. How do these sound to you? Too high? Too low? For example IMC > the PCs bought many houses in Darokin city after the war. They got pretty > good houses with measley 2000 gp each, as many people had to realize their > assets in order to get through the troubled times. (Also, they had to pay > 4000-5000 if they used daros, since the Darokin currency had lost its > credibility during the war... this annoyed them to now end. Especially the > thief PC who had managed to acquire a big DDC cloc [20 000 daros].) > - Ville V Lahde The only thing that may have lost credibility would be DDC Clocs not actually Daros themselves as the Daros are still gold. Now if Darokin started minting new coins with less gold, then you would have the increased cost value when using Daros, and it would be restricted to those mintings. Old Daros (mintings before the war, pure gold) = 1gp New Daros (mintings after the war, 1/2 gold + 1/2 something else) = 1/2 gp Thus you will require twice as many New Daros to make an equivalent value of Old Daros. Additionally inflation for useful items and perishables will increase dramatically while value of 'hard' property will fall. Add in the possibility of bad harvests due to the war, along with the loss of harvesters will have the price of grain skyrocket, and the price of farms that can't be worked to plummet. Clocs would be devalued as they most likely do not state equivalent of Old Daros, just Daros thus any Clocs outstanding will probably be worth 1/2 or so of the original price. John Hare "My good fortune is your good fortune." - Q ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 16:09:46 -0400 From: Geoff Gander Subject: Re: Price list v.2 > > Here is a new version of the price list. *snip* This is really good! IMC, I also had a rule for rush jobs - say the PCs enter a city, and want their armour fixed in a hurry. I'd usually let them find someone who would be willing to do the work overnight, but the premiums often doubled (sometimes tripled) the cost of the job. I also had costs for armour adjustments/refittings, adding scrollwork and other adornments to weapons and armour, as well as basic services such as custom built backpacks and boxes (one fellow had a small, rectangular wooden hinged box built to hold his most valuable potions, the interior of which was done in cushioned silk. Cost him a pretty penny, but it saved his potions a number of times. Finally, in line with your prices for "negotiable affection" (ie: prostitution), I ended up having basic prices for the more common drugs. Not that my PCs ever took them, but they *did* end up acquiring some during a brawl in the rough-and-tumble West End of Darokin City (loot and all that). Hearing that the possession of opium and certain brands of Shires tobacco were dimly viewed by most authorities in Darokin, the PCs frantically tried to get rid of the stuff - and eventually succeeded. Geoff -- Geoff Gander, BA 97, MPA 02 Carnifex Loremaster/Mad Roleplayer Master of the Elemental Plane of Bureaucracy au998@freenet.carleton.ca : www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Realm/2091 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 13:13:42 -0700 From: Daniel Gioffre Subject: Islandia Campaign All, I know the Islandia Campaign for the Hollow World never made it to market (indeed, from what I can tell, it never made much progress in the design department either), but does anybody know what it was SUPPOSED to be about? -Dan __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 09:21:33 +0300 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ville_V_L=E4hde?= Subject: Re: Price list v.2 Thanks for comments, John. We had a longish discussion on inflation on the list a while ago, where we debated the effects of a devastating war and the end of war economy on Darokin. IMC the Darokin currency is pretty much dependent on clocs (issued by 1) The Merchants' Guild 2) the Great Houses 3) Individual Merchants 4) Credit Houses 5) DDC). Many of these lost credibility during the war. As for the hard currency, gold coins, yes indeed the state did mint "diluted" coins during the war and that is another main cause for the inflation. However, I thought about this for a long time and came to the conclusion that this would also influence the older coins. Sure, you might get some better coins from a customer, but it would be harder to prove this, since there are now minting year markings in daros IMC. Most of all, since minting of coins and ANY goldcraft is striclty controlled, you don't get much out of the "better" coins. - The Darokinian economy is so developed, and a coin is much more a marker of currency than just a piece of gold, so a straight matematical gold=value formula won't work. (There are real-world historical precedents of this in gold-based economies.) You are absolutely right about the effects on prices. Consumable prices skyrocketed in Darokin (threefold), and real estate prices plummeted. As you can see from the earlier postings, the Darokin solution IMC was to sell some land to gain foreign currency to back up some of the clocs, mint a New Daro and take the old ones out of circulation, and freeze prices and wages. This was accomplished by a new Vocator (basically a dictator in the Roman sense). Ville ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 17 May 2003 to 20 May 2003 (#2003-131) ****************************************************************