Talk:Cost of Living
Questions regarding the Cost of Living
A few questions 1) How many people are supported by a household ? 2) Assuming construction of a house, how much does this lower the day to day cost of a household ? 3) Could the guild lodging be included in the list 4) Are there lower standards of living
Poverty
in the players guide - poor common room in an inn = 1sp per night ( so possibly live on 2sp per day one large and two small poor meals a day) or guild rations & live in a tent in the common for 1Sp per day
Abject Poverty
even cheaper, share slum hut with six others @260 per year rent = 44SP per year rent each food cold gruel 2lb of rye grain ( and get free halucinations when it goes manky) per day and water = ( 4sp/50lb ) = 59SP per year food No new clothes, a loincloth for decency = 103SP per year per person
Cheers Noel
Hi Noel,
- a household is undefined but intended to cover the average family of a pseudo-medieval-ish period, so, Mum, Dad, couple of older kids, some younger kids, a baby, perhaps a couple of in-laws and a grandparent. 6-8? 10 at the outside? Fewer people will live better, more less so.
- There's a couple of different original documents mixed together here. The original Cost of Living assumed either renting or paying off a loan. If you built a house (owned it freehold), then I'd suggest you deduct the annual rent (last column of the bottom table) from the annual cost of living (some maintenance will be needed but just for ease...)
- Good idea.
- Lower and still healthy? Lower and still adventuring? It comes down to what the document is for -- costs of living for PCs. There were levels above Rich in the original that aren't here, dropped as generally not much use for players... I suppose there could be levels lower than subsistence... but again, use to players, or for GMs tring to figure out economy, or what the starving folk do/don't eat?
One possibility is to set a money = minimum living point; like a Koku being the amount of rice to feed someone for one day... I'd suggest a penny. BTW, your diet of rye and water is going to start killing you from scurvy in about a month and a half. :)
Martin Dickson 19:14, 19 Jul 2005 (NZST)
Hi Noel & Martin
The other sister documents which I intend to post also which cover:
- Real Estate - Home Sweet Home
- Manors - Manorial economics and fief management
- Household - Living Like a King, For a Price
These are all largely based on Harn documents by the same name. I picked Harn when I first put them out, as the conversion to DQ was simpler than what other generic systems had to offer at the time.
Jono 00:02, 20 Jul 2005 (NZST)
No worries -- they just all need to synch up for costs. The Cost of Living and Construction Costs were docs that I originally adapted from Runequest (later off-Glorantha edition). Lodgings and Renting must have been added later.
Martin Dickson 00:49, 20 Jul 2005 (NZST)
Real Estate page and link added from Household page as I dont know where it should go.
Jono 01:44, 20 Jul 2005 (NZST)
Thanks Martin
Thanks for the comments martin
Living in a tent and eating guild rations @1SP per day is normal for adventuring with no ill effects, so this should be OK for outside adventuring time. since the guild rations are preserved (expensive) travel rations, buying cheap fresh and in season foods should be cheaper again.
This is a viable option: 1) Rather than loosing half your training time as a bunny adventurer if you get little or no money from your first adventure or two. 2) If you are training ranger ( ie living in the wilds - possibly no cost if R5+ ranger, like thief). 3) Have taken a vow of poverty and donate significant other income to church / poor etc
Living costs much over 10K per year seem extreme and unlikey to be used by anyone, adventuring just doesn't pay that well even at mid & high levels. The only characters ive encountered with these high living costs don't pay for them ( ie married or became barons so get them without costing adventuring income). I believe even Silverfoam only uses around 15K per year, Arnaud around 10K.
In regards to the table 577sp/day for a large common villa seems a little pricey. I agree the rent on a good large villa would be high but 577 seems pretty excessive.
- Mandos 20/07/05 1522
Construction Costs
As an aside for construction costs...
These seem to assume a non-magical or low magic environment, which for adventurers is not the case.
Earth Mage: Earth elemental gives cheap underground complexes and earthworks.
Ice Mage: Ice construction made permanent gives cheap ice buildings
Water Mage: Ship strength can make livable structure for a time
Necromancers: Warp wood can make tree houses & bone construction towers of bone
Binders: Should be able to make a building using mould elements & such.
Fire mage: buildings of fire using goblins for permanency - warm but not very solid
- Noel
Noel: Yes, costs are assuming standard building -- many of the magical methods assume are only really viable if you have a mage on tap... in which case negotiate with them and perhaps a GM. Actually, for any outlay this big I'd probably advise running it past a GM -- make a writeup of what you're buying and get some GM to sign off on it... makes it more like an item and less character fluff.
BTW, I reckon a penny a day to live at Subsistence by yourself seems about right. I'd be a bit wary about extrapolating from iron rations -- looks like some of the numbers there are screwy / though convenient -- 1 pound of food per day is nice for working out encumberance, but pretty silly unless there's magic involved -- or we consider the average to include anorexic elves, but exclude halflings. :-) Assuming strenuous level exercise a large human male needs about 4000 calories per day (based off some calculators and on-line hiking info). 4000 calories / 16 oz = 250 calories per oz. Modern, high energy trail rations clock in between 125-150 calories per oz. 250 would require magic. One the other hand, a small human woman can manage the same activity on maybe 2200 calories, at which point the per oz amount = 138... still pretty high, but maybe doable.
Martin Dickson 16:55, 20 Jul 2005 (NZST)
Household Spreadsheets
I have a spreadsheet made up that works out household costs based on the incomplete documents in the GM's Guide (Chris found the missing tables). What standard do we want to use for uploading files and spreadhseets? Should they be zipped, tested against Open office etc?
Mandos
Spreadsheets
Testing against OpenOffice and Zipping sound like excellent standards.
While I think the Wiki is the best place for indexing such documents, it's not intended as a file storage tool.
I think we are better off uploading them to a web server and then putting the URL in the appropriate place in the wiki.
Stephen 15:33, 20 Jul 2005 (NZST)
I was looking at using the dragonquest.org.nz site for file storage with links from the Wiki. Over the next few weeks I will be dismantling the old site and placing all the content on the Wiki.
Mandos 10:04, 21 Jul 2005 (NZST)
Magic in construction
Magical constructions are fine of impressing the natives but most only last days or making them perminant is costly, either in sacrafices (is this really the first impression you want to give your new neibours) or in ritual componants. So it becomes impractitical for long term residents. The Use of Magic in construction? well most spells have definded limits on volume and on duration and on materials. To make fancy curvey window frames a necro would still need the artisan skill to do so, most seem to be undertakers not carpenters, Molding elements is good for carving fancy stone work but it doesn't lay one stone on another. Even using golems or elementals as a work force is limited they are just dumb grunts, unskilled labour, the Adept controling them needs to have the proper skills for the job, and unless the Adpet is constructing their own residents, well mages don't work for 30 sp a day not when earth elementals are involved. On the whole unless you are the Adept, using Spells just does things faster not cheeper, and using non human labour takes just as long and would only work out cheeper on large projects, hiring one binder of several months or 50 work men type stuff.
Helen
