Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran
I think we all know that politics, transport, basic availability, and numerous middle men jack up prices significantly. But that's the easiest thing to adjust for specific settings.
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Yep, although it can work in both directions. Some of that complicated scenario DanHoward outlined helped speed things up as well as make savings at some points even if some increased costs at other points. It kind of depends on how much you want to get into industrial process, or time and motion studies!
(a big point here is who was armour made for and in what numbers it was in demand for)
Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher
I've read that before. But this is a sort of idealized framework drawn from a European high medieval or Renaissance era sources. It would not work for earlier periods, for non-Europeans locales, etc. In particular, it would not work in many fantasy settings. My comments were directed at how it could work, sans the historical accuracy. Also, I mean this as a way of questioning the prices we have, as I suspect they are not market prices as we know it, but rather priced for legal or licensing reasons, if you will. The local lord who controls armor production is going to get first dibs, and his armor needs will be met first. Perhaps this will be just materials costs. Selling armor to competitors would be a poor strategy, for instance. So, too, the armor values seen in wills or other legal records, they are possibly inflated, and/or include the pass-through costs for replacement that someone controlling labor would not pay. There is essentially a surcharge, as it were, for nobles who buy armor when it isn't produced by their peasants. Thus, finding a realistic price might not be possible. A workable price in a fantasy setting, well, that's different. And it could be that prices then would be much lower than the historical price lists show.
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I agree the economic model for high medieval / Renaissance armour manufacture (let alone other historical models) does make abstract pricing hard. And that such models could also involve factor that increase a theoretical per item cost. But I'd hesitate to assume that fantasy setting would be inherently cheaper per item, because the economic models of fantasy settings are also rather weird and wonderful at times as well so may also have factors that increase costs about the theoretical base cost.
Take the stereotype of the fantasy "armour shop", often tacked on to the town/village black smith who does all the work. Where adventurers swap freshly delved bags of gold coins for suits of armour. Only unless you have a regular passing trade of successful adventurers, spending a considerable amount of your time and resources making a single item that sits waiting for a passing adventurer is a big risk when you have a family to feed and costs to cover. Including the costs of that item. So it would not be unsurprising if that risk was mitigated by jacking the price up (especially when you have cash rich individual customers and your the only one around who can meet the need)
I.e yeah I agree some historical costs may well have been jacked up as repercussion of the manufacturing process and local economics and politics. But well I can envisage various fantasy scenarios were they could be jacked up as well! Also as I said above some of those historical models may have also included factors that drove down prices as well.
Cue the many jokes about fantasy settlements who's economic model is based around fleecing cash rich adventurers staggering out of dungeons laden with loot and long shopping lists
Of course not all fantasy settings are so stereotypical, but I can't help but feel that unless the setting is specifically designed to make armour cheap, the more "realistic" you make it it the closer you end up with historical models anyway.