Expedition Notes 3: Economy & Lifestyle Expenses
With some basics about the expedition members, food, and water down, I want to start working on the finances. I had already decided to use the Lewis and Clark expedition as a case study for expedition costs, so I started to look into economic records for the US around 1800. This is late for a medieval world, but still pre-industrial, and I figured the records would be higher quality.
Before doing the expedition itself, I wanted to get a baseline for the world. My source was “Comparative wages, prices, and cost of living: (from the Sixteenth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, for 1885) by Carroll D. Wright”. There is a great list of sources on similar information here.
I tried to get data for 1800, around the expedition start. Not all were available, but I got useful information for a few professions. All values are in USD.
| Profession | Daily Wage | Year of Data |
|---|---|---|
| Laborer | 0.33-0.82 in 1800 | 1800 |
| Agricultural Laborer | 0.424-1.0 | 1800-1805 |
| Blacksmith | 1.5 to 2x laborer wage | Based on 1815 data for both |
| Butcher | 0.33- 0.5 | 1775 and 1808 for the endpoints |
| Carpenter | 0.836-1.0 | 1800 |
| Mason | 1.66 | 1803 |
| Millwright | 1.00-1.17 | 1799 |
There is a lot of data here and it would be cool to see someone do a deep dive.
By a happy accident, it turns out we get reasonable values in sp doing a 1:1 conversion with USD. Using that, I constructed the following monthly wages for my campaign world:
Awful job (butcher): 12 sp
Unskilled labor: 20 sp
Skilled (carpenter, millwright, blacksmith): 30 sp
Highly Skilled (mason): 50 sp
I cross-referenced with another source, from the National Park Service. They say that in 1805 the average adult male earner across all income types earned $400-450 a year. They cite NBER, although I couldn’t track down the original. That works out to 33 to 37.5 monthly, which is a little higher than our numbers but close enough that I’m happy with them.
One more source for the 1800 wages: They give 10/month for agriculture and 1/day for others (Table 2). That puts agricultural labor as ‘awful job’ in our matrix but is otherwise in line. Overall I am happy with our estimates.
With these values in mind, I wanted to introduce another rule, called lifestyle expenses, which I’ve had success with in the past. The idea is that every hero character pays a flat rate every month, set by the social class they aspire to, that accounts for their lifestyle. Doing so accounts for equipment maintenance, food and drink, and clothing, and gives them access to the restaurants, taverns, parties, social circles, and connections that come with that social class. Here is a table that works for our economy:
| Lifestyle | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Destitute | 3 sp | Minimum to not starve |
| Poor | 20 sp | Minimum to maintain any kind of equipment |
| Modest | 30 sp | Minimum for medium armor |
| Modest+ | 50 sp | Minimum for heavy armor, spellbooks |
| Comfortable | 100 sp | |
| Wealthy | 250 sp | At this level, begin to have servants |
| Aristocratic | 1,000+ sp |
The levels map onto “poor” for unskilled labor, “modest” for skilled, and modest+ for highly skilled laborers. At a comfortable lifestyle, you are probably moving past laboring for yourself and supervise many people. Wealthy and aristocratic then correlate to landholdings of increasing size.
I like this mechanic because it grounds the players in the world. Now when you raid a dungeon and come back rich, you can see specifically how that will help you. It also clarifies the passage of time. It costs money to live. It also simplifies bookkeeping. Once a lifestyle is chosen, the PC is considered to have paid for everything relevant to that lifestyle. So you don’t need to spend time figuring out how many sets of fine clothes a PC has, or what the inn costs, or whether they have the standing to enter into a particular club.
When using lifestyle expenses, its important for the DM to make these levels matter. I do that a bit by default by making certain thresholds for types of gear—the idea is, if you have plate mail or valuable inks and paper, then you’ll need to take care of those. It also makes sense that people with that level of gear belong to a particular stratum.
But, it’s also important to give them narrative benefits that show the effect of a lifestyle. Emphasize how this manifests—a player choosing a comfortable lifestyle should have an inn with a doorman, and be able to socialize with patrons of wealth and influence who just might have a lucrative business opportunity in mind. In contrast, players with a poor lifestyle will stay somewhere cramped and inconvenient. If their level of wealth appears much higher, because of jewelry or large bags of coin, they may be targets for robbery.