Are D&D Economics Medieval? | 5e Dungeons and Dragons | Web DM
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- čas přidán 2. 07. 2019
- We're following up on HOW TO SPEND YOUR GOLD ( • How to Spend Your Gold... ) with more talk about economics in 5e D&D: Is it medieval? A lotta people say it is but what does that even mean? And how do the gods and magic of Dungeons and Dragons change it? Who knows? Actually, we know A LOT about that, and we're gonna dish about how to use it to make your gaming better.
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Still great video
Agreed; this is still very useful information and Jim is still understandable pretty easily. Thanks again for putting this information out for all of us!!!
The funny thing is, there is a historical equivalence you can make with Waterdeep: VENICE! Yeup! It was a nation that formed around a trade culture that owned a chunk of the area (Until rest of Europe hit The Enlightenment and decided they want a piece of Venice's action). Overly Sarcastic Productions has a good miniseries on Venice: czcams.com/video/86PybilU7k0/video.html
Also, it wasn't like there wasn't coinage around. Coins predate ancient Greek, Phoenicians, and Mesopotamians. Medieval societies did have coins, but it was mostly a currency used by the ruling classes and sometimes the traders. They also had currency equivalents, like the Romans' use of salt. So, it wouldn't be totally unheard of. BUT, the little towns and villages would have been on the barter system. But for the higher ups, it was much easier to pay in coins than a few stones worth (and a stone is around 7 to 14 pounds, depending on WHAT is being weighed) of grain.
Fun fact, the ridged edges on coins (like the US Quarter and Dime) were a preventative measure to stop people from shaving down coins back when the coins were supposed to be a specific weight of either gold or silver.
@@jackielinde7568 They used primarily barter because the reality as he kind of mentioned and glossed past a bit. Most people couldn't actually afford the things to do their jobs and live their lives. So they bartered things to make that possible. And more than a few knew how to make the tools they used to some extent for themselves rather than going to dedicated crafters of those items. With the exception of certain kinds of items like some of them that needed to be smithed.
Glad I saw this. I thought my earphones were broken!
I love how Jim’s history background means he can take such a holistic view of how an economy is so integrally tied to the way of life in a setting.
Thank you! Economies don't exist in a vacuum, and that's part of what we're trying to get at with this miniseries (yes, that means there will be more!)
@@WebDM Characterizing the medieval economy as based on barter seems to ignore the use of accounts, credit, and notes of credit within the medieval society.
Honestly Jim's history background is what puts this channel head and shoulders above a lot of the other talking head dnd shows on youtube, at least for me
@@PhantomPhoton The Templars literally issued something that resembled "traveler's cheques" and could secure your money to be safely drawn upon once you arrived at your destination. It wouldn't shock me if they became bankers rather than just vanishing or traveling to someplace far away to start over.
In an actual medieval economy based on (for example) England as late as the founding of the Bank of England (1694, when powerful merchant families loaned money to the kind of england, and whose loans traded around and became the foundation of the Pound) you ought to learn about the Tally Stick. Tally sticks were used in England for 700 years to track debts between people. The Bank of England's vaults were filled with not just gold and silver, but physical wooden sticks representing hundreds of thousands of pounds that the King had borrowed from the Bank.
The principal of the tally stick is that you take a stick, and you mark tallies across the grain for what one person owes another person, you write your agreement on the stick, and then you split the stick in half. It's impossible to forge the literal split edges of a piece of wood along with the tally marks, so it becomes an easy way to make a permanent record. One person holds the longer part of the stick (called the stock) and they are owed what the tally stick represents. The person who holds a stock was called a "stock holder", a term we still use today for people who own assets. People would literally "trade stocks" like a currency. When you repaid a debt, the stock holder would join the two pieces of the tally stick back together, verify they matched, and then physically break the stick to eliminate the debt.
True story: taxes in England were collected in the forms of tally sticks. To pay off your taxes you could go work or provide some service for the king at an agreed upon rate, and having fulfilled your obligation your debt was fulfilled. You could work for and pay taxes in silver without having seen a single coin in your whole life, just accruing and paying off debts much like we use credit cards today.
You might also decide to use a more realistic version of a gold (or silver) standard, in which case you should realize that every gold standard ever was essentially the same as what we call "Fiat" currency today, except that it also meant the King effectively owned your money and you were just holding it. That is: each coin represented a value higher than its actual precious metal content, and it was always issued by a government who was backing it at that value. Governments would periodically change the value of the currency by sending town criers out to "cry up" the currency by proclaiming that the exchange rate of the currency vs gold or silver had changed. They would also periodically collect the gold and silver in circulation and melt it down, creating new coins with more base metal so that there were more coins in circulation. Then they'd pay you back with new devalued coins. Isn't it fun to be a medieval peasant? I mean, the whole thing just SOUNDS like a plot that would motivate a team of adventurers.
Being paid back in less valuable coins is similar to how inflationary theft works today. You have $1000, I print some more money, causing all the existing dollars to become a little less valuable, now your $1000 is worth about as much as $990 used to be worth. I just stole $10 from you without ever having to have you hand anything over. Of course I'll spend the newly printed money now, before everyone realizes the money is worth less than it was, so I'll get to spend it at its old value.
Inflation today is a kind of hipster definition of theft, where you get mad if something was rare and precious and you were special for having it, but now it’s common and cheap. If you buy shares of a company and they issue more shares, they didn’t steal anything from you. If holding a currency yields 0% per year and it declines in value by 2% per year, and it’s been doing this for 100 years, it’s not theft if you decide to hold money that is becoming more common over time.
If you don’t like it, don’t participate in that economy. If you do, you only have yourself to blame. In the olden days they’d take your gold. Also in the olden day’s of 1933 USA under the gold standard, when it became illegal to own gold as an American because the government felt a hard money system was more important than people’s property. These days the money is all decree, backed by itself and nothing else except other people’s desires to have it for themselves. It’s a much better system, and an expanding money supply is just part of an expanding economy.
dnd economy is pretty much italy with mercs and all
1694 is well outside of the medieval period by a couple hundred years.
@@willtcox The power of a nations currency is based on the strength of its labor. It should be, anyway.
A little fact that most of you may not realize, the Non Magical Spyglass in the PHB costs more than several elephants, most uncommon magic items, and the diamonds needed for the lower level resurrection spells.
Thats to imply to difficulty of making perfectly clear glass that is perfectly shapped. But yeah it being 1000gp is alittle overboard, I usually brop it to be 500gp.
For the price of a warband, you can have THIS SPYGLASS.
*Adventurers*
"But why tho?"
I've always thought that's dumb. You've got a society with magic. You can figure it out.
@@SilentscufflE Agreed, magic would often get employed to make production easier, I'm sure there are many spells that have mechanically useful effects but aren't in the books.
I’ve always assumed it was a misprint that’s never been corrected. It’s become increasingly ridiculous considering the number of canonical characters who wear corrective lenses of some variety.
Also, I refuse to believe that in Waterdeep, the City of Splendours itself, a Drow can’t just buy a decent pair of sunglasses.
"How are you going to be an adventurer?"
This is one reason people distrusted mercenaries in the middle ages. They did not work, or at least it was seen that way, and benefited off the labors of others in exchange for acts of violence performed on behalf of authorities they did not actually believe in.
second is mosters if you dont get stuff monsters stole or prevent em from stealing you starve
Distrusted, certainly, but they hired 'em in droves and quite a number of mercenary commanders ended up as nobility.
" How are you going to be an adventurer ?"
Your fighter was part of the Baron's village militia.
So was the rogue.
Kind of like cops
I'm guessing Jim's mic had a failure or the audio didn't record or save for jims mic, so to save the recording, they used the cameras or a backup boom mic to pick up jims audio.
Fantasy Economics Part 2: Electrum Boogaloo
Edit: Well done! Y'all have taken my favorite episode of the podcast and turned it into my new favorite episode of the Wednesday show. :D
@TheThoughtGuy and 1d4 psychic damage from Pruitt, God of Puns
I listened to that midieval podcast episode so many times. The amount of campaign ideas alone. Really great when you're in a world building mindset
Which podcast? I am trying to look that up.
@@JoshVrl which medieval podcast episode? I’m trying to look it up and find it
Don't worry too much about the audio. Shit happens every once in a while and I had no trouble understanding what was said.
Crusader Kings 2 has had a massive effect on how I'm treating my next campaign when it comes to societal structure.
Same. The idea of titles, vassalage, and de jure historical claim is a huge role in the setting I'm writing.
DnD economics and politics are so off because the fantasy novels they're based on are only superficially medieval. Tolkeins Hobbits, for example, have access to basically all the resources of a well off Englishman in the early 20th century short of firearms and electricity.
KaiGonGinn steamboats cars planes
To be precise, Tolkien himself (who knew medieval history very well) compared it to the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee - which is 1897
Hobbits were Anarcho communists
Obligatory _Spice and Wolf_ did this fantastically comment.
Obligatory Spice and Wolf is the best show ever responce.
@@jerroldsmith2489 Obligatory Spice and Wolf furry fan fic jab.
@@joshanderson3961 obligatory what if that's my fettish? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) comment
You hit on another take on this subject at the end that would make for a good sister video: "Are D&D Economics Frontier/Western-like?" Where you might talk about resolving other aspects in an American Western approach to match some of D&D's existing assumptions (eg. the liberties adventurers take in the wilderness, a codified but otherwise sparse authority structure, and common usage of money instead of trade)
If you want your 5e D&D setting to look medieval, you're going to have to radically scale back how common magic is in society. This doesn't mean taking magic away from the PCs (if you want to do that, play a different system), but rather making magic and spellcaster NPCs rarer. Given how useful magic would be if it really worked - and remembering that medieval society looked like it did _because_ magic doesn't work - this in turn means some kind of taboo against magic, or - at a minimum - strict rules governing it's practice and use (ie. a Magician's Guild or some such).
To put it another way, if every village has a spellcaster, the setting isn't going to look medieval. But if every village _doesn't_ have a spellcaster, why not? Even access to _cantrips_ would radically alter a medieval person's life for the better.
And of course, Jim brings up the most important thing: do you and your players really _want_ your setting to be "more medieval"? I don't think most people do. I think that most players and DMs are quite comfortable with a cash economy, a society _not_ ravaged by disease and hunger and a much more egalitarian outlook.
Another point he brings up is the idea that most nobles would dabble a bit in magic. I've thought for a while myself that Bardic training would probably be very popular with noble families. History, rhetoric, music, fencing and a bit of magic: the perfect education for a young noble.
The "wizards vs sorcerers" dynamic they mention could be very interesting, either the rulers maintain power through hereditary magic sorcery powers and quash anyone trying to learn wizard magic, or the nobles can all learn magic because they can afford tutors and quash any commoners trying to study wizard magic or showing inherent sorcery ability. Either could be a good reason why magic is powerful but rare.
The WHFRP tries to addr as this with magic being dangerous to use due to possibility of.possession by chaos creatures, which caused a societal bias against magic, leading to forced government regulation and guild system training and oversight of mages. Thus, fewer wizards, less use of magic, and wizards being heavily centralized in major cities where they can be monitored, which allows/causes much of the rest of the kingdom being typical middle ages, but big cities looking more Renaissance.
As a fan of economics and history I tried to create at least a vernier of a pseudo-medieval economic system to my worlds. I wasn't trying to create an actuate medieval economy but I wanted it to feel different so that players felt like they were in a different world where things worked differently. Generally I split gold/silver/copper usage by class (gold for upper, silver for middle, copper for lower class). Currency conversion wasn't really common (in my world), so while you technically could use gold in an tavern that catered to lowly farmers you would get ripped off and it would be extremely suspicious (in fact the barkeepers would be afraid to take gold because it would make the guards very suspicious of them to carry gold around). A nobleman wouldn't generally go to an inn and buy a meal worth 20cps, he (actually one of his servants) would pay several gold to a supplier and hire a cook to prepare a full feast, or go to an elite establishment where the prices were ridiculous. Most of the lower class would have few if any coins, generally they would simply barter among themselves and mostly make everything they used themselves. They would only really use coins when they went into town (they would go into town to sell some crops and then use it to get drunk and buy some stuff they couldn't make themselves).
Prices in my world were also not known to the public (price tags didn't exist), my merchants would alter prices based on how much they thought the person had. To buy a cloak one merchant might accept 50cp/7sp/1gp, while another might accept 120cp/5sp/2gp for the same cloak, but shops (in my world) typically didn't have the same stuff so you couldn't go price match. In fact you probably couldn't by much in a town (except food), you would have to travel to a big city to really buy things (and that would be a mini adventure, my pcs didn't buy all the gear they needed between adventurers). Often the price they would offer would be based on how well the PCs were dressed, so if they came in with gleaming armor they mercants might say, 'its only 6 gold my lord.' If they came in dressed as beggars and tried to offer gold the merchant would probably secretly let the city watch know that you are probably cutthroats and to keep a close eye on you and might refuse to do business with you. And if you were dressed as a beggar and trying to buy from a nice shop they probably wouldn't even let you in the door. The whole thing was intentionally designed to seem esoteric so the players really didn't understand how much money they really had (which also let me control price inflation).
9:07 "How does anyone become an adventurer?"
You become an Wizard through apprenticeship. It's kind of a combination of an internship and indentured servitude, but it's actually a better deal than an internship, because your room and board are provided. You work under a skilled person like a Wizard. You learn their skills in exchange for free labor.
Fighters, and Paladins tend to have a military background. You got trained by the military and you use those skills in an adventuring career.
Rangers are outdoorsmen but scaled up. Hunters and scouts are already a thing.
Etc.
Bards go doot doot magic flute
Yeah but those are all valid professions that have moderately comfortable lifestyles and most are high in obligation to your master. You're busy doing the job, not off climbing in holes fighting monsters. The adventurer would be the people who failed out of these professions, people released from the lord's dungeon, kicked out of the tower, shunned by the thieves' guild even.
Short Answer: No, but it is supported in the PHB and DMG.
The Sword Coast is clearly operating in a post-medieval/early-modern setting, roughly around the 15th/16th century. The excellent podcast Tides of History has whole episodes on how that sort of economy works.
The BBC series Tudor Monastery Farm offers a good peasant-level look at the era.
Haven't delved into D&D besides CZcams vids and one smartphone game, but isn't the economy more or less the Renaissance?
@@zacharygadzinski3147 Essentially. It is DR 1492 (ish) after all. The _Dragon Heist_ adventure book in particular makes Waterdeep feel like a fantastical mashup of Renaissance Florence and Victorian London.
That said, your own games can be wildly different from the published adventures so videos like this are invaluable if you want a more primitive economy in your setting or your characters find themselves in a location where 'your money's no good here' and they have to start bartering stuff.
Yep, the sword coast in general seems pretty similar to late medieval-early modern Italy, with all the merchant republics and stuff.
Two big suggestions for this kinda thing. First of all, the Renaissance/Elizabethan era is a really good halfway house. It is at the end of the Medieval era, when there are still knights, nobles, peasants etc, but there is also a rise of the middle classes, a rise of Merchant Lords, a rise of greater social mobility, whilst still having many aspects of the old Medieval world. Also it was the era of exploration. People going out into the wider world to explore and literally adventure. Sir Walter Raleigh was a pirate. He was a commoner from the lower middle classes who travelled across the world, adventured in places no other European had been and became hugely wealthy being a pirate. And yet he became knighted. He became a member of the Court. But equally he ended up executed because he displeased the Queen. Both social mobility and the divine right of kings type worlds. Very good mix for D&D worlds.
The other suggestion for inspiration for particularly adventurers in a more accurately Medieval D&D setting is the Crusades. Kings, lords, peasants and serfs all went on Crusade, all decided to travel across the known world to fight in a Holy War to secure their place in Heaven. Some paupers and nobodies ended up in high station, some powerful nobles lost all their money to the journey and ended up begging on the streets. And some never made it for any number of reasons. But it was acceptable for ANYONE to take the Cross, because in the fight against the "infidels" all were equal before God. Everyone had an opportunity for both material gain in this world and spiritual gain in the next. If you make the infidels something like the Drow or Undead, as D&D can give you an actually evil enemy rather than just people who have a different religion, you can have a Crusade without also having the dodgy morality many in the present day would be uncomfortable with.
Also the Sword Coast is basically late Medieval Italy with merchant city states. So it's actually not all that inaccurate. Plenty of rich merchants buying their way into nobility.
Exactly, D&D is renaissance.
I've read that barter, while it exists, was never the basis for any economy in history. While people exchanged goods, they usually had an underlying common value standard and that, in ancient societies, their prices were throughly recorded by scribes. Medieval communities, according to Graeber, would employ some sort of IOU and tab keeping to be settled when goods became available (after harvesting or fishing, for instance).
By the way, there will come a day when we won't see Jim behind the castle walls anymore if it keeps growing... :-P
EDIT: " an underlying common value" -- "standard" added at the end.
Civilization predated economy. There were not just Barter economies but there were barter economies in very advanced civilizations. There were value standards but they were measured in chickens or in stone weights of grain.
Hey are you guys having audio issues?
It was a bold choice to send their editor hireling check for traps. As if it was not hard enough to lose the Bookstore Stronghold. Tough times ;(.
Sounds like phasing: where multiple mics cancel each other out due to the slight time difference of the sound reaching them leading to destructive superposition.
eric Thanks for the explanation! I hope it gets figured out soon I love WebDM.
DND + realistic medieval economy= Monster Hunter. Adventurers exist because monsters = food
As soon as you are in a world where food and water can be created by magic and this is not the SUPER RARE exception, everything we know about the medieval economy goes out the window anyway.
@@danamccarthy5514 I played D&D from 2e to 3.5e
More or less a high enough wizard/ cleric can Mass produce " Water."
But creating mass volume of food is not listed to the spell listing.
@@krispalermo8133 At least for the %e version of the Create Food and Water spell "You create 45 pounds of food and 30 gallons of water on the ground or in containers within range, enough to sustain up to fifteen humanoids or five steeds for 24 hours. The food is bland but nourishing, and spoils if uneaten after 24 hours. The water is clean and doesn't go bad." from a 3rd level Paladin/Cleric spell. A single high level cleric could feed an entire decent sized village at that rate if they used all of their level 3+ spell slots for Create food and Water. With as much of the labor in your typical medieval village went to simply feeding itself, that alone turns the entire economy on its head even before you take spells like Cure Disease into account.
@@danamccarthy5514 3.5e rules for creating magic items were made a lot easier than what 2e had.
Animate Dead cleric 3rd, wizard/ sorcerer 5th.
My game shop house rules went by what ever a cleric spell can do, a wizard can do two spell levels higher.
And if a magic item has multiple activations per day, then that item can feed 100 troops. Those who do not need to work are draft to fight.
3.5e multi-class npc miltia commoner2nd/warrior2nd CR:2 ; BAB+3
equipment: medium shield, spear, dagger, hand ax, club, English long bow, padded armor.
HD: 3d8/ or 2d4+2d8hp(12hp average)
AC:13 (+1padded armor, +2 shield) AC:20"turtle"formation.
Arch type: English militia during " England & France " 100 Year War 1300's
" Give these men lasso and military forks/mancatchers, and 20 of them and drop a team of six 12th-level fighters if you use the right tactics."
meaning you/ the DM just don't hand the PC a murder hobo victory.
Treat the 20 man unit as a 60d8hd monster, +5melee
"Aid another: +2 AC/ or Melee Atk."
When building my first world I took a lot of inspiration from Roman politics and economics. Take for example the Roman soldier, who received their pay in the form of 'salarium', latin for 'salt money.' Not that they were literally given salt in place of silver or copper coins, but it goes to show that people didn't always give each other funny pieces of stamped metal in order to exchange goods and services. At a certain earlier point in time they traded for things like salt, because a kilo of salt is universally valuable, as universally valuable as a kilowatt hour of energy is valuable to us today.
It's only as a society develops and gets larger, like the Romans did, that you need to implement more efficient systems for handling huge amounts of wealth, or to put it another way, a huge amount of goods and services. Eventually we got tired of carrying around pieces of metal, and just used bank notes instead, because of course you keep all of your money locked up in a bank. And then we got kind of tired of having to keep track of all that gold and just decided that this piece of paper had value because we all agree to take part in the delusion. Now we reach the modern day where the majority of currency isn't physical at all, just 1's and 0's in our digital bank accounts.
I mean to say that I don't think it's immediately intuitive for humans to assign value to 'money' as an inanimate object. If you are running a campaign, and your party finds itself bartering for goods out on the frontier, a promissory note from the central bank 2,000 kilometers away might be 'worth' 500 gold coins, but the local tradesman can't eat a piece of paper, he needs food to survive the winter, and he lost the year's harvest to bandits. So if the party needs new arms, what can they offer to a blacksmith that will be more valuable to him than the labour and resources he will expend creating those arms? This is the central basis for all trade based economies: people, or in this case non-player people, place different values on certain goods and services depending upon their environmental factors. The party is very good at killing bandits, and the smith is very good at making weapons. Thus they receive a good in exchange for a service to arrive at a mutually beneficial conclusion, and it makes for much better roleplay opportunities than saying "I pay him 50 gold."
The value of a currency is inexorably tied to the health of the issuing government and economy. For real world examples you can research the German Mark, specifically the Papiermark during and after WW1, as well as the Roman Denarius from 60 BC to 360 AD. This period covers the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caeser, near the height of Roman power, all the way through the War of the Tetrarchy and the later civil war fought by Constantius II, during which time the empire suffered from inflation and reformed it's currency several times. For an example from fiction, think about the economy and politics found in Fallout: New Vegas, and how the NPC's think of and value the 3 major currencies: bottlecaps, NCR dollars, and Legion coins.
TL;DR: All free trade, whether using currency or barter systems, is based on mutual benefit. All currencies are only as valuable as the issuing economy is healthy. Economic systems should add to, not subtract from, the fun of the players, and should make logical sense given the state of the economy and government of your setting.
It seems to me that the economy appears to resemble the early 1300s - 1400s or so in the eastern Mediterranean where you have Mercantile city states and the like. These areas also marginally more open to social mobility (in particular in northern Italy), whereas you also have these trade port cities like Kaffa or Dubrovnik. Also to address the economics of adventuring, it seems like they serve something similar to mercenaries or in the case of another setting that address the why of its occupations you have The Witcher world which explains why its occupations exist. Hope this makes sense
aidbot woody I’d say it more closely resembles late 1400s into the early 1600s, more Tudor England than classic medieval France.
There's definitely a tone of Renaissance in the economy where individual artists and craftsmen are able to make a name for themselves and rise up in society through talent and dedication. I'd love to do a game where the primary nation is like renaissance Italy with these amazing citistates full of culture and free exchange of ideas and open practice of magic but you travel to the neighboring kingdom and nobody uses coins, nobody owns their property, everyone is functionally a serf or controlled by a guild and magic is rigidly controlled by the aristocracy.
I hope your audio issues get sorted out. The audio is a little all over the place and it really makes listening to the video harsh.
Yeah I had to stop
They also had audio problems last week. Wild guess: they film in batches, so we're going to get a few videos with audio problems, then the next batch will be fixed.
@@ZombieFood1337 audio > video
Hello, I am a DM of many years, going back to the OG D&D Basic rules. One of the things I did with my Forgotten Realms was introducing a banking system based on the gold standard which was backed by four primary groups; 3 dwarf families of wealth and The Kingdom of Gauntlgrym. This began as a story element where I used an eventual "hostile" take over of the 3 of the 4 banking companies by a faction of Zhentil Keep. What happened next was a collapse of the economy on the sword coast, where many people who constituted the "middle class" were plunged into poverty and the coin minted in the kingdoms and city-states (Cormyr, Tethyr, Waterdeep) would become the primary coin in the surrounding cities. This event opened the door to such storylines like Dragon Heist, where a large sum of Waterdeep's coin was embezzled. What also happened was that the cost for many common things was put into context, but it also accounted for the massive inflation on the cost for magic items. As this economic collapsed happened this year, the current storyline is struggling to make money and a coin is worth far more than it ever was.
When it comes to spellcasters in a setting that is _meant_ to be medieval, I assume that such people will trend towards nobility. Either because the privilege and time afforded by nobility (or, for that matter, the priesthood) makes learning magic easier, or because those who have magic power probably used it to _seize_ power.
In the latter case, there are a few options. First, the ones already in power gave someone like a Bard or Sorcerer a noble title, in a bid to keep them under control and make the spellcaster personally invested in maintaining the status quo.
Second, the spellcaster gamed the system with magic, and their claim is recognized because no one could easily stop them (which makes any low born spellcaster a potential threat, to be watched).
Third, a spellcaster becomes basically a magical warlord, winning land and title through magical power and a collection of warriors willing to follow their commander in exchange for the benefits of plunder and a new status quo. That last one is liable to give rise to Sorcerous Bloodlines that are also royal ones; the god-kings and such. Or you might have a family line made up of Warlocks, each generation swearing a pact to the family's patron (whether good, ill, or somewhere in between).
I think the mad wizard is a valid archetype too. If magic is distrusted by the masses and conflated with evil works then you can have arcane power and serve and important role to the court that compensates you well, but you're never really in a position to overthrow the aristocracy. Maybe wizard's towers reinforce this social structure because it gives them the resources and autonomy to pursue magic without coming into conflict with the king.
It is Early American Medieval Times is how I best heard most D&D described.
Early American medieval times?
Rubens Martins de Carvalho
Capitalism is established even in a medieval society
@@steamtasticvagabond474 Capitalism originated in the early modern period.
Caiã Wlodarski I know that, but DND is medieval capitalism
@@steamtasticvagabond474 D&D is an early modern setting in all but aesthetics, hell even then many D&D settings have renaissance inspired aesthetics as well.
This channel and the comments are absolute gold. Its hard to approach a campaign for friends and entertainment from point of view of a historical enthusiast. The things I'd think about first when worldbuilding : economics, geography, politics, seemed oddly secondary in terms of the typical d&d experience. I love a fantasy story as much as the next , but I have a hard time getting into what feel like cobbled together fan creations without these realistic components. Anyway love the channel! Top tier discussions
Basically Forgotten Realms economics has the same problem that FR politics, and society does as it's presented in the rule books: It does not quite manage to hide the fact it was created to be as convenient as possible for errant mercenary adventurers, and I feel like players often pick up on this and it hurts immersion.
If the economy is barter based, adventurers could instead offer their services for items or room and board. 👍 Could lead to a lot of good questing and RP.
That sounds like fun but that kind of economy is frustrating and admittedly only worked in the absence of any other idea that could work. Your players really don't want to spend hours of game time haggling for a bowl of soup and a place to sleep the night or having to explain to a barber why he wants to trade a good haircut for an ork's falchion. Finding a reason for coin-economy in your fantasy world is kind of necessary.
I think one big takeaway is the idea that people in Medieval and Renaissance times got their rights and duties from their inclusion in corporate bodies. A guild might have some privileges that another doesn't, or one people has a law system and the next one has another. In the Holy Roman Empire, these incorporations of people created this tight web of relationships that all existed because of the recognition that people gave each other according to what they belonged to. In DnD games, the players are often unattached and medieval people would have seen that as a very dangerous situation, as you had nobody backing you and no corporate body to fall back on. They would probably even be suspicious of well-armed vagrants walking around doing whatever they want.
Even in later societies people who have wealth and military privileges walking round is scary. Hell imagine in modern times a group of guys with hard armor and assault rifles and attack drones who are throwing around gold ingots at the local bar. That's unnerving. I think the piece of the puzzle that makes adventurers work is monsters. The world is terrified of these very big dangerous beasts in the dark and Adventurers seem to be a solution to that, they're terrifying and disruptive but they allow towns to keep peasants in the field and merchants in the market because someone is out there theoretically keeping the monsters at bay.
@@michaelwolf8690 Only if you consider most adventurers in a fantasy world to be good-aligned, or at least less destructive than the monsters. It's like the Jedi and the Sith in Star Wars. Most people can't really tell the difference.
Who cares about the audio top notch content as always also spices were worth oodles if you think about rarity and transport costs something as simple as salt and pepper were many mints journey n worth nearly as much as a small farm
The way I see it. D&D usually has some form of Diety of Wealth and that's what allows coined money to have standardized value.
It's been a year, but I tend to go off the assumption that it's based on the material's use in magic. The reason flawed gemstones are worth less than clear ones is they can't be used for the same spells. Gems are cut to exacting sizes because if the diamond isn't worth 1000gp, it's only going to be bought as a 500gp diamond, so you might as well shave off the excess and sell that as diamond dust.
I need to know about this Guitar Guy.
Hey guys! Just want to say thanks for all the work you've done making such a great channel. I've only recently found you and boy-howdy am I glad I did. Been binging episodes for days and loving the history & philosophy (both actual and game world), game tales from both sides of the screen, as well as genuine advice and concern for people who hope to enjoy playing D&D.
I'm on the far side of 50 and haven't played since I was about 11. Been watching RollPlay for about 5 years and Roll20 & CritRole for 2, and now, here I am DMing for a group of 6 high school actors and couldn't be happier. Your videos will help me make their experience at the table more enjoyable, even when it hurts.
Thank you for your love of the game and for helping a new generation of players & DMs.
Thank you so much for telling us your story Susan! Glad you're back at the table!
Adventurers are just another word for mercenary. their were plenty of those especially after wars.
You can't tell me that a decent Condotierri wouldn't have troubleshooters(the PCs) in their pocket if not part of their inner circle.
Other words for out of work mercenaries are thieves, bandits, murders, cuthroats.
@@Coid They'd have them, adventuring guilds are probably the realistic example of that sort of thing. But those people are still strangers in their own town, distrusted by any good person for good reason.
This is by far my favorite video from you guys. Great insights Jim.
Thank you Eduard!
One of your best videos of all time. Thanks, you guys. :)
Thank you so much!!!
I actually prefer to spend it up a few centuries instead of going down that way the setting actually matches the historical. Seventeenth and eighteenth Century Society is just as interesting as Medieval Times
Just listened to Jim on The DM’s Block so thrilled to see both of my favorite D&D resources finally come together!
Thanks so much! It was a fantastic experience!
Even if we never obey actual medieval economics, this is a great video to think about alternative economic and political systems than a standard DND setting.
I really like this kind of video. I get the sense that Jim really knows what he's talking about
7:26 Soon, you'll be able to find a copy of Fight, Pray, Toil in your local bookshop. But let's be honest, you're just going to buy it on Amazon.
Not just a great D&D video, but a great introduction to the sociology and economy of feudal Europe - well done chaps!
Really love this video! I hope you do more of this.
LOVE the conversation about Fantasy Nobility. Thanks for the great inspiration!!!
I've spent a lot of time trying to square this topic... I'm glad you guys brought it up!
Glad to help!!
Loved this episode, have been wanting to hear Jim dive into medieval history like this! More! More!
You guys have the best introductions.
Id love to see more Midieval world based videos from you guys, Its extremely helpful!
This is great. It also happens to be the kind of D&D I play.
You should make this a series.
We've got more on the topic!
I love minutiae episodes like this. They really do help provoke a lot of thought when world building.
Look at the roman empire for a good economic system... Or the vikings between 800ad and 1200ad they used silver as their economic structure in the form of neck and wrist bands that they cut off piece by piece...
Absolutely loved the video, I'm going to try and get my players to watch this before our next session to try and understand the setting I'm trying to run, which is much closer to the medieval economy you described than stock D&D
Thanks! Hope your players like it too!
Oh this really helps me have a reason for an artificer to go out into open areas of the world.
She was refused licenses and guild status for political reasons, so she made her fortune is out in the world as an armorer, merchant adventure.
Great video as always!
One realization I had, though, is that I’m much more intrigued by the idea of adjusting the campaign setting than I am about adjusting the economics - in other words, dropping the medieval patina in favor of a magical Wild West or magical early urban Industrial Age setting is more intriguing to me than taking a standard D&D setting and introducing a more medieval economy and social structure. Just personal taste, and as you noted, you can easily just ignore the dissonance entirely if it doesn’t bother your group.
This is a great video. Really fascinating topic. Hope you guys do more of these. I'm currently running a Zweihander campaign using a setting like this.
About time someone talked about a subject that just doesn’t get discussed. Well done!! I see y’all have some audio problems. But know that will get fixed.
For anyone wondering, the guy who first said, "I am the King of France" rather than just "I am the King of The Franks" was Hugh Capet.
You know you've reached a whole new level of nerddom when you start investigating the economical aspects of your fictional setting with magic and dragons.
Absolutely
Grains into gold definitely saved on my workload.
Is it though? it's not like coins or purchases are alien to the game, yet so many people seem to scoff at the idea that the fantasy world needs rules for how money works. It makes more sense for your fantasy RPG to have a detailed economy than it does for it to have rules for how magic works. You're certainly more likely to encounter a tavern with a variety of services or a town guard that wants a bribe than you are a dragon. Shouldn't you know what those things cost and why?
I would think that in a more medieval setting the adventurers would be something like a mercenary company. During peace they are given leave to explore and collect the loot found, minus a tax, in the ruins and dungeons on the kings land to keep them making money so that don't turn to banditry. This even fits with them being sent to deal with monsters and other problems in the countryside. Then during a time of war they are expected to muster with king's forces as some of the more professional troops or even his use and lose shock troops.
Thank you for this video, it came at the right time for my campaign. I was having a hard time making countries based on Europe that also meshed with DND rules for my PCs to be in. Their verisimilitude seems to be intact so far, it just makes me happy to create countries that feel believable to me. Thanks for the great content again and hope you all continue to create more!
Glad you found it helpful!
I'm just getting back into D&D. This video has an elusive title, because there is so much fertile ground for world-building concepts here. Also, thinking about the history of coinage, how people would shave the edges and sell the scraps (the ridges on US quarters and dimes is a throwback counter-measure to this). Also, some older coins would have a pattern similar to a cross on the back. This was so a coin could be chopped into four "quarters."
This was a fantastic video, thank you! Tons of great commentary and insights ripe for worlsbuilding inspiration.
Thank you!
Great video. The actual grand tour concept was actually quite a bit later than the Middle Ages but nobles were broadly educated.
Jim, your degree is paying off! I could listen to you talk history all day!
Thanks!
One of my playgroups introduced fractional reserved banking into a D&D world. You can go as light or deep as you want. Great video guys!
Welcome to Avarice Bank, exploiting your impatience. Interest rates start at 10% per month.
It turned out rather funny. Our characters are running a bank out of a city state and ended up convincing one of the guilds in the city to give a more than fair discount for some services for a guaranteed low interest rate loan. Honestly it was pretty funny.
22:56 Adventurers voluntarily assuming a legal status equivalent to outlaw is a very interesting idea - Keeping the medieval sense of being outside the protection of the law, but not necessarily with the implication of being criminals
This is great! I've felt this way about D&D since the '80's, but probably because I also played RuneQuest, which, while more Bronze Age, does manage to get outside of the modern mind-set more than D&D. Your comment that D&D's economy is more like the wild west is spot on. Hey, I didn't notice you guys talking about literacy rates. D&D assumes almost everyone is literate, which probably bugs me more than the economy.
I enjoy all of Web DM videos
Loved this video. Interesting tidbit: at 17:00 or so you mentioned going from King of the French to King of France. Actually it went the other way around. Before the revolution he was King of France. Afterward, as a check on his majesty and to make him seem more accountable to the people (among other reasons), he became King of the French.
Strong themes & information here. I would love some coverage on how magic would fit into a more classic medieval setting.
All that information was really taxing on my mind, though I would be inclined to put stock in it. Well done, guys! Your talking points generate continuous interest and the length of video results in good value for the investment. Lastly, improving your acoustics and/or microphone setup would be a capital idea (though I'm sure you were already aware).
Cheers, dudes. Keep up the good work!
10/10 punnage. Thanks!
Funny point. I made a city built on guild and only way to get weapon was from a guild in charge of keeping the city safe from the people. So for this that make sense. This however gives me very good insight for other countries and smaller towns. Thank you so much for the video as I love history and can't get enough it made me make a more immersive enviroments,
I'm actually working on a guide to medieval social and economic history for DMs who want to build a more reliably medieval setting (since I have a PhD in Economic History). This summary is very good though! Great place to start. At most I'd say Jim Davis exaggerates the lack of coinage a bit - coinage was commonly used for long-distance trade, and towards the later Middle Ages most things became monetized (including rents in kind).
Love this one! I would love to see the multi-law system worked into 5e! Thanks guys!
Don't listen to all the haters Trav, I know you'll figure out these audio issues. Most of your videos are top notch.
People like you need to stop. Constructive criticism does not make people a "hater".
You are just promoting an echo chamber of failure. Stop.
I love this, absolutely love this. My kind of D&D video.
One of the things I love about this channel is the passion Jim clearly has for thinking about real-world references and finding ways to use them to inspire great ideas that enrich our gaming. That said, while there was a lot of good in this episode, there were some issues I feel, as a scholar of medieval history, need to be addressed.
First off, kudos to Jim for his depiction of the legal and social structure of medieval European society. It was (as he admitted) extremely cursory, but generally pretty good. It certainly paints a picture that isn't so different from the Early Middle Ages (the "Dark Ages") of the 5th-11th Centuries, when massive migrations and unstable political arrangements lead to instability and hardship compared to the wealth of Late Antiquity. However, medieval societies, especially the medieval societies of the High and Late Middle Ages, and early Renaissance -- roughly the 12th-16th Centuries, which is where most of the nominal inspiration for D&D's pseudo-medieval fantasy setting originates, at least as it was digested by Victorian-influenced fictional representations of that era -- didn't look very much like what Jim describes. Yes, most people were serfs or freeman peasants, and worked in subsistence agriculture, and yes, most people lived agrarian lives in villages they'd rarely (if ever) leave.
But actually, medieval European society, partly as a result of increased stability and partly as a result of increased contact with the Byzantine empire and the various Muslim powers due to the Crusades, entered a period of renewed technological and scientific advancement during the so-called "Renaissance of the 12th Century" that presaged the renovation of the humanities during the later Renaissance.
More importantly, warfare was a big part of medieval society, and it was thought of very differently than it is today. In the earlier centuries, warfare was often a matter of small bands of levied peasants led by knights and men-at-arms, but by the Crusades, European kingdoms were increasingly fielding large armies of common soldiers, and by the Renaissance, condottieri were leading mercenary bands consisting of professional soldiers numbering in the hundreds and sometimes thousands.
Warfare was extremely lucrative, since the victor of a battle typically looted their fallen foes, and also because knights and other nobles were wealthy and would pay hefty ransoms in exchange for their freedom, meaning they were often captured alive when possible. Soldiers in Henry V's army during the Agincourt campaign were paid well for the time, especially archers and other higher skilled and better outfitted troops. Those English soldiers of the Hundred Years War typically were expected to provide at least some of their own equipment, but later mercenaries and town militias were often outfitted from armories by their employers with munitions grade arms and armors to ensure that even the lowliest troops of the very late medieval and early Renaissance period were sufficiently well-equipped to deal with the increasingly effective weapons developed towards the end of the period (such as more powerful crossbows and early firearms, as well as the advanced pole arms that were beginning to proliferate).
Even in peacetime, people moved more than was implied in the video; troops of traveling musicians or actors often went from town to town and village to village, plying their trade in exchange for coin where available, and food and shelter in between, though this was far more common later in the medieval period than in the first several centuries.
In short, while much of what Jim and Pruitt said in the video was great, there are a few big caveats to be made, and taking those into account will hopefully add even more nuance and depth to our settings when combined with the video. Of course, as Jim said, this is far too big a topic to really do it justice in such a short video or a CZcams comment, but every little bit helps.
i love that last idea about adventurers as outcasts. it's very much a "Witcher" mindset for adventurers
I've always reconciled this as a compromise between an authentic world and creating a game that can function smoothly. Money only has to work for the adventurers, I'm not concerned if the blacksmith isn't able to pay his apprentice a living wage!
Such a huge component of gaming is the accumulation of wealth and using it to solve problems. An economy that the players can understand and that is consistent is very important to that. Maybe more important than a system that governs how much damage you do with a sword.
Great ideas guys. Love you content
As a house rule I have money work like ablity scores call (finance) which go up and down when needed.
The last minutes sound perfect for a West marches game
I really like the idea that because magic works the way it does in D&D that it eliminates a lot of early barriers to centralization. Having a court priest or wizard who is able to cast sending. That eliminates a lot of issue of message delays, able to coordinate orders and decrees with much more speed. Of course, there would be the limit of spell slots, but still, this can eliminate entire months of delay between the decree of the monarch. The fact that D&D has a much more centralized government with organized civil services could be a result of the fact that these barriers were all but erased. Wizards would almost always be in demand by any organization could afford them.
The best episode since the "gods/pantheon" one. Really really solid stuff, bros. Any chance you guys do a straight-up history show at some point? I'd be in!
Thanks Dirk!
@@WebDM of course! Speaking truth to power. The real strength of the show to me has less to do with content and aid (though that's certainly indispensable) and more to do with inspiration to pursue this research myself. The more far out the knowledge, the more I'm taken in.
I run games that have these elements and most of my players enjoy the nuance and complexity of the settlements they encounter. I use the 1970's publications from Judges Guild that included them in their game world, Wilderlands of High Fantasy. The City State of the Invincible Overlord, The City State of the World Emperor are both excellent source material and cover the Social Level of their inhabitants; Noble, Gentleman, Military, Guild, Merchant and Commoner. I highly recommend using these ideas to add depth to your games.
Guitar guy can never be gone. He’s part of you now.
Great topic, that got me thinking!
In the future, I would love to see a series where you guys talk about different terrain/monster implications, discussing how the monsters within different terrains would interact with each other. For instance, a swamp episode wherein we discuss why black dragons would naturally develop a taste for bullywug, and force themselves into a God-like role, demanding sacrifices from the neighboring bullywug tribes.
Thanks for the suggestion! A terrain/environment show or series is something that certainly has been considered in the past; perhaps it's worth returning to.
Web DM well, first, thanks for responding! While I have your attention, as a poor DM that runs the game with a mat, and markers, I rely heavily on concept and description to make my world real.
That being said, I relish the content you create as a channel. Jim has been a goldmine for me. Thank you all!
Audio issues?!? All I see and hear are two intelligent & educated men. Letting us (the viewer) drink from there fountain of knowledge. Great show and great topic.
Thanks Jim & Jonathan for quenching my thirst. You gentlemen (and your family's) have a happy 4th of July.
Thank you Matt!
These intros just keep getting better and better. Makes you wonder what sort of pact they have made to keep this up...
That isnt necessarily true, peasants of many medieval societies were armed, the levies that the Aristocracy raised had to come from somewhere.
Wasnt it something like once a week they had to train?
Being part of a town militia or a trained levy doesn't men you kept your spear or bow on the wall at home. Those people you're training to defend your walls could easily some day be storming them. Best to keep those weapons locked up.
Not gonna lie i'm a sucker for this topic, loved listening to the discussion! I would not be opposed to more :D Really entertaining and informative video as usual!
Thanks for letting us know!
Love the subject matter - thanks guys!!!!
This is such an awesome video idea!
This is a really timely discussion. I'm planning to running Waterdeep Heist for a group soon for which this is very topical. The way I'm looking at it now is the strict laws (which is a handout for the players) may only apply to those not a member of the open factions, basically all the non-guild people that migrate into the city during spring/summer.
If you're member of a faction, you follow a different set of rules and laws. I think that would make belonging to a faction have more meaning and differentiation. If you're a member of the Lord's Alliance, you can commandeer a couple of City Watch guys to apprehend certain people. Property owners current on taxes would have more rights, migrants and laborers would have less.
Glad to help!
Good video, I found a bunch of premises wrong on ancient societies which threw points off.
However it was a well done video and logical as per the lines of error.
I genuinely like videos like this as it really leads to great and informative conversation and thought.
Thanks
Really cool topic and well done! :)
Thank you!!
Now what happens if you want your dnd economics to be Bronze Age?
all excess labor is devoted to making goods for the copper/tin trade and society prospers until the sea peoples attack.
Look at classical Greek and Egyptian civilizations. You have to decide whether slave labor exists.
If anyone is looking for ideas, the anthropology book "Debt: The First 5000 Years" is a fantastic read for getting a sense of how varied this sort of stuff was over the years.
Tethyr getting a name drop! Damn, I do Love Messrs Davis and Pruitt.