12-28-2017, 09:18 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
|
Salt
I have simple and I hope easy question. In the dungeon fantasy game in the treasure table describes salt as $15 per ounce. Is that correct? Historically speaking salt was used as a packing agent and perversion when pounds and pounds would be used. Prices seem very high for sure me.
Is there a better chart for spices also? My players are getting close to a bizarre they will come in contact with more exotic spices |
12-28-2017, 09:30 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
|
Re: Salt
The price of salt could vary radically from place to place - it was an important trade good carried for considerable distances in quite a few different places.
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
12-28-2017, 09:49 PM | #3 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
|
Re: Salt
Like most rocks, it's super cheap near its source, and expensive far away. Unlike most rocks, people die without it. And we modern folk are a bit spoiled with all our seasonings. Back in medieval (like) times, for many peoples, it was either salt or nothing spice-wise.
Then again, your game, your rules. If it feels off to you or your players, then no RPG police will break down your door if you change the price.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check. |
12-28-2017, 10:02 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
|
Re: Salt
In France, in the 17th and 18th century, salt was a royal monopoly, licensed to the king's favorite in each region (for a healthy franchise fee), and sold for high prices. They were high enough, in fact, so that peasants (largely women, I believe) were hired to carry it from region to region for black market sales. And the penalty if you were caught was breaking on the wheel.
__________________
Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
12-29-2017, 06:53 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
|
Re: Salt
While it is true that prices vary a lot, and salt is often heavily taxed (for practical reasons, it's easier to find and tax a limited number of salt producers that it is to keep track of everyone to collect a head tax, and will produce the same result, you're basically using the salt merchants as tax collectors), $15 per ounce is ridiculous. That comes to something like $300 a year for enough salt just to keep a person *alive*. Charge everybody that and in a setting where Average starting income is $1000, anybody Struggling or poorer would be dead.
Spice prices have a tendency to be ridiculously exaggerated in games because "everybody knows" they were valuable in the past. Which they were, but valuable in the sense that a *shipload* of them was worth a fortune, not a belt pouch full. If it sells for more than silver, it's overpriced, though there are moments when a specific spice did manage to cost more than its weight in silver (including right now - saffron, which still has to be hand picked from flowers with a very low yield per plant, and hence hasn't fallen from its low tech price nearly as much as silver has, runs about $100/ounce wholesale).
__________________
-- MA Lloyd |
12-29-2017, 11:18 AM | #6 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
|
Re: Salt
Quote:
And where it's present in the soil, people do eat soil - well, clay, usually; it's more pleasent and easier on the teeth. This is common behavior among the other great apes too. Who manage to not die from sodium deprivation despite having no money to buy salt, I might add, along with all the other animals. In some places you need to trade for salt (or salt-containing things) - particularly if animal protein isn't part of your diet. In all places and for all diets it's nice to trade for salt because we're just as crazy about it as we are about sugar and fat.
__________________
All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog |
|
12-29-2017, 02:26 PM | #7 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
|
Re: Salt
I have read that most people prefer diets with 2-4 times as much salt as they need. With certain age groups like preteens having an unusual craving for it, such that soups that rate highest among them are revolting to adults.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check. |
12-29-2017, 02:36 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
|
Re: Salt
Salt was expensive. The phrase "not worth its salt" came around because only the best quality meat was worth the expense of preserving in salt.
__________________
Compact Castles gives the gamer an instant portfolio of genuine, real-world castle floorplans to use in any historical, low-tech, or fantasy game setting. |
12-29-2017, 03:02 PM | #9 | |
Aluminated
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: East of the moon, west of the stars, close to buses and shopping
|
Re: Salt
Quote:
The historical prices I have readily to hand for salt (exported to a non-salt-producing region) put a pound of it at about the daily wage of a middle-class craftsman. I'd call that around $25/lb.
__________________
I've been making pointlessly shiny things, and I've got some gaming-related stuff as well as 3d printing designs. Buy my Warehouse 23 stuff, dammit! |
|
12-29-2017, 03:17 PM | #10 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
|
Re: Salt
In late medieval England, salt was half the price of butter and five percent of the cost of ginger (https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/SPICES1.htm).
|
|
|