Does anybody knows a story behind the food prices in Arms and Equipment Guide?

[Saint-Just]

I never noticed how hilariously bad food prices in Arms and Equipment Guide were (I never played 3.0). If you ignore 1cp\pound of wheat which obviously was inherited from the core and corrected at at the last possible moment (it's obvious because price of wheat flour is in line with other flour and grain prices - and not in line with 1cp\pound for grain) - you're still left not merely with overpriced food but with weird disparity in the prices. Rice is more expensive than bacon. A pound of lentils costing more than a pound of mustard or coriander (I know that prices for spices are given per ounce, that's after multiplying by 16). A pound of barley having the same value as a pound of sugar. Rice being 7 times more expensive than millet\oats\rye.

I know that equipment in D&D is priced the way it's priced for gameplay reasons, and economy does not enter into it. But the food is food from gameplay standpoint, the only reason for that table to exist is fluff and\or verisimilitude.

From what I know about D&D community I am not the first asking the question - how does one screws up so badly?

[Drowbane]

Without looking too closely, one might assume either that numbers where chosen by throwing darts at a board... or that prices are meant to reflect some sort of rariety by region, such as rice being so expensive compared to millet.

I don't know, I've never bothered to use Arms&Equipment for food. When I want to go to that level of detail I bring out my Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue (2e FR) - one of the best Fluff-based products of all D&D.

[Fizban]

My guess is that the prices are taken from all sorts of different sources: we have some surprisingly good data on various things from that (1,000+ year) time period, but it's in the form of this or that person's detailed records of their specific profession. So you'll have the valuation of a dead man's possessions here, the bill for equipping a military unit there, the values of goods for tax collection somewhere else, etc. So you might be able to find a value for almost anything, but the time period and location won't match any of the other prices you're getting, and you might not even understand how the currency works and fail to convert it. And some of the prices are probably indeed based on essentially pop-culture pricing, stuff like "salt was worth more than gold!" when salt was used constantly everywhere and was actually as cheap as salt.

I'd make my own table, but that's a lot of research to do right, and a lot of the best information will be behind academic journal paywalls. And it's pointless to fix the food prices if you aren't also going to fix the equipment prices. Best way to deal with it is just ignore it and derive from the meal prices in the PHB, which are also factored into the upkeep rates in the DMG. Those, plus the 1sp/day unskilled and other hireling rates, are probably the one ones with any internal sense. There really isn't much reason or need to price the individual parts of a sandwich or ingredients in a pastry.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Fizban
…and a lot of the best information will be behind academic journal paywalls.

Not at all. Much of this information has been published in books, which are as cheap as an interlibrary loan.

It does take some time and effort to find them, and more so to work through the texts, but the information is readily available if you know where to look, and if you don’t mind paying $2-3 for mailing costs to your local library.

[Psyren]

They're game designers, not economists. Not much of a "story"there.

[tyckspoon]

From what I know about D&D community I am not the first asking the question - how does one screws up so badly?

I suspect a lot of this is from a (in my opinion misguided) belief that the rules are somehow flawed or incomplete if you don't try to account for every part of the world you might want to simulate - IE, you have to be able to point to a definitive answer in the rulebook when your player asks "How much will it cost to get winter provisions for our castle?" It doesn't matter so much if the answer makes sense, just that it's written down to refer to.

[Saint-Just]

They're game designers, not economists. Not much of a "story"there.

I don't think you need to be an economist to notice such things as grains being more expensive than meat or spices. Game designers may purposefully say "yes, here in our fantasy world meat is basic food and grains are luxury", but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

[Psyren]

I don't think you need to be an economist to notice such things as grains being more expensive than meat or spices. Game designers may purposefully say "yes, here in our fantasy world meat is basic food and grains are luxury", but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Accurate or not, that math doesn't change my answer - the authors of this 16-year old book were likely more concerned with the sections other than food even when it was current. The price of cheese doesn't affect, well, the price of cheese in most campaigns.

[MisterKaws]

They really didn't care much for any of the mundane stuff. Even on the revised PHB, that's plain for all to see. You constantly get people around here talking about how broken the mundane gear prices are. Few months ago someone brought up how ten-foot ladders cost a quarter of a ten-foot pole's price, but if you disassemble them, you get two ten-foot poles, which might even be thicker(and thus sturdier because all mundane types of wood have the same density in D&D physics) than the one you'd get for four times the price. Probably been brought up even before that, and it's not the only exploit with mundane items.

The prices of gear were just ass-pulls, mostly. Make your own if you want consistency.

[Vizzerdrix]

It is a conspiracy orchestrated by the Cult of Dalmosh. Higher food prices mean they need less to summon him.

[Fizban]

Not at all. Much of this information has been published in books, which are as cheap as an interlibrary loan.

It does take some time and effort to find them, and more so to work through the texts, but the information is readily available if you know where to look, and if you don’t mind paying $2-3 for mailing costs to your local library.
It would take long enough if it was all online, let alone sifting through multiple meatspace books. And that's assuming you have library access (I live in a particularly stupidly zoned area).


They really didn't care much for any of the mundane stuff. Even on the revised PHB, that's plain for all to see. You constantly get people around here talking about how broken the mundane gear prices are. Few months ago someone brought up how ten-foot ladders cost a quarter of a ten-foot pole's price, but if you disassemble them, you get two ten-foot poles, which might even be thicker(and thus sturdier because all mundane types of wood have the same density in D&D physics) than the one you'd get for four times the price. Probably been brought up even before that, and it's not the only exploit with mundane items.
That complaint has existed probably since the first month of printing, and it's been wrong since then too, at least in equivalence. A ladder bar is full of holes from the ladder rungs, and may not even be made from a single pole. A 10' pole is a single, solid, smooth, 10' pole. The prices on them are probably both still ridiculous, but the false equivalency is false. Count is as a typo and make the ladder 5sp, done.

[MisterKaws]

It would take long enough if it was all online, let alone sifting through multiple meatspace books. And that's assuming you have library access (I live in a particularly stupidly zoned area).


That complaint has existed probably since the first month of printing, and it's been wrong since then too, at least in equivalence. A ladder bar is full of holes from the ladder rungs, and may not even be made from a single pole. A 10' pole is a single, solid, smooth, 10' pole. The prices on them are probably both still ridiculous, but the false equivalency is false. Count is as a typo and make the ladder 5sp, done.

It was just an example of how utterly broken the system for mundane prices is, overall. Also castles for PCs costing their weight in copper and all that(I think that's from SBG, with castles costing 100k gp or more).

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Fizban
It would take long enough if it was all online, let alone sifting through multiple meatspace books. And that's assuming you have library access (I live in a particularly stupidly zoned area).

I was responding to your comment about a paywall, not the time required to read through physical books.

And if you don’t live near a library, you certainly have my sympathy. A university would probably allow you to look through their collection as well, but you may not live near a university either.

As to the issue of the paywall in particular, if there’s a particular journal article you want, you can always email the lead author and ask for a PDF. Back in the day we used physical reprints, and many professors probably still have boxes of old reprints stashed away somewhere. Those were available for the asking, and most lead authors will be glad to send you a PDF, if they don’t already have it posted on their publications page.

[Melcar]

When I want to go to that level of detail I bring out my Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue (2e FR) - one of the best Fluff-based products of all D&D.

That is such a great book!

[magic9mushroom]

I don't think you need to be an economist to notice such things as grains being more expensive than meat or spices. Game designers may purposefully say "yes, here in our fantasy world meat is basic food and grains are luxury", but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

In certain places, I'd absolutely say that meat is easier attained than rice. The obvious ones are mountain herders and arctic sealers/fishers, whose diets are mostly meat.

It's worth noting that D&D is generally less civilised than places of a similar techlevel IRL (due to monsters), so I would expect farming to be less dominant over herding. Not enough to go that far on a global scale, but... worth keeping in mind.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by magic9mushroom
In certain places, I'd absolutely say that meat is easier attained than rice. The obvious ones are mountain herders and arctic sealers/fishers, whose diets are mostly meat.

There are plenty of other examples of peoples who don’t rely heavily on grain cultivation, and it’s a fair point on the face of it. But limiting the grain in question to rice isn’t entirely fair, and even early agriculture involved far more than grains, with lentils and peas being the prime examples from the ancient Levant.

That said, the default cultural context for basic D&D is sort of a blurry, vaguely medievalish Europe, and in that context it does make sense for meat to be much more expensive than basic cereal crops—depending on what meat. Hunting large game may have been difficult or restricted, but small game would be another matter. You can’t discuss accurate pricing without a detailed sense of the culture involved.

[Asmotherion]

I have 3 theories and suspect a combination of all 3 may be responsible:

A) Food prices are meant to represent scarcity and rarity of a certain food in the region PCs are expected to explore as well as the price and tax of importing such products from far away lands.

B) The Wizards of the coast started realising that with magic item prices, coper and silver pieces started to become irrelevant and wanted to adjust prices but the ecconomy was already too much of a mess.

C) They included those prices with the intend of making an actual living tax for players who opt for large downtimes.

[Saint-Just]

I have 3 theories and suspect a combination of all 3 may be responsible:

A) Food prices are meant to represent scarcity and rarity of a certain food in the region PCs are expected to explore as well as the price and tax of importing such products from far away lands.

B) The Wizards of the coast started realising that with magic item prices, coper and silver pieces started to become irrelevant and wanted to adjust prices but the ecconomy was already too much of a mess.


Neither is likely. Wheat is 1 cp\pound. A world in which wheat is abundant but barley, rye, buckwheat are luxuries does not sound vaguely European, it does not sound like anything.

On the other hand if the author was given permission to overhaul prices then price of wheat wouldn't be edited to be consistent with Core. And with overwhelming probability it was edited - It's highly improbable that someone would consciously choose to price wheat grain at 1 cp/pound but wheat flour at 3 gp/pound. Much more likely would be the situation in which author had priced wheat somewhere around 1 gp, but then it was edited for consistency with published materials

Maybe they wanted to lure munchkins into becoming millers

[Tiktakkat]

Maybe they wanted to lure munchkins into becoming millers

That exists.
It was using the trading rules from the Known World Gazetteer series, which was TSR, but it exists.
And it was grapes and winemaking and merchants, not milling wheat.

This one happy fellow back on the old Wizards boards insisted, INSISTED!, that everyone just had to grow wine in order for everyone to be millionaires.
Not merely PCs mind you, but everyone (cue Gary Oldman clip) - every single peasant farmer everywhere.
See, wine sold for the most on the economic tables. Therefore, everyone selling it would just sell their wine to traveling merchants and be fabulously wealthy.
He even had extensive calculations for just how many farmers could live in each hex of the map, how much land they needed for perfectly cycled forests to produce firewood, and other fun stuff.

What if the lands were not suitable for wine grapes?
Where would the wheat and meat they bought with their wealth from selling wine come from if everyone, everywhere, only grew wine grapes?
How could they perfectly assign plots with zero wasteland, perfectly aligned roads of perfectly minimal width, and perfectly sized forest reserves?

Never mind such questions!
Just grow the grapes, turn it into wine, sell it to traveling merchants, and be fabulously wealthy!

And that is why downtime and economics minigames, subsystems, and lists of mundane equipment should be handwaved and minimal - because if you codify it, they will come and min/max it.

[magic9mushroom]

There are plenty of other examples of peoples who don’t rely heavily on grain cultivation, and it’s a fair point on the face of it. But limiting the grain in question to rice isn’t entirely fair, and even early agriculture involved far more than grains, with lentils and peas being the prime examples from the ancient Levant.

That said, the default cultural context for basic D&D is sort of a blurry, vaguely medievalish Europe, and in that context it does make sense for meat to be much more expensive than basic cereal crops—depending on what meat. Hunting large game may have been difficult or restricted, but small game would be another matter. You can’t discuss accurate pricing without a detailed sense of the culture involved.

I singled out rice because the OP and the A&EG singled out rice; it's 5 gp/pound, while meat is generally 3-5 and all other grains are 1 or less.

And yes, plenty of other examples, but I wanted to give extreme examples where growing any grain would be difficult and rice impossible.