Re: Buying a House?
 

Thanks! That's great stuff, I appreciate it!

One question I am left with though is what are someone's cost of living at different salary levels? The rules say that subsistence is $20 and it included in those that live at subsistence level. I doubt that is supposed to mean that a Healer lives at subsistence levels. So some of their money is going to 'rent' or whatever, that just leaves them with their play money at the end.

Which on the one hand makes it easy...you guys all have jobs so you don't need to worry about rent. But on the other hand, clearly someone who makes $30 a week and someone who makes $150 can't reasonably be living in the same house (their cost of living must be different).

Ugh...I like the job system, I just wish it didn't hand wave this stuff or took more details (like purchasing property) into account!

Re: Buying a House?
 

I get your desire, and more guidelines would be good to have or develop, though I think they should also include the concept of different locations having different economies.

ITL does say a bit more than that. Pretensions to any sort of social status cost at least $50/week. And it's not just about lodging costs.

Any answer to what housing prices "should" be is going to get over-applied unless it mentions how much prices can vary.

Really I think it calls for the GM to come up with figures for the current time and place, and to vary those numbers. It can make the game feel more real, interesting, and sometimes quite entertaining, to deal with varying mundane costs and the people who offer them.

As the people who started in with economics observed, housing prices vary massively due to artificial causes, and would in Cidri too, which is why I think the GM ought to choose what housing markets are like for each place in their own worlds, and not just have one "standard" set of prices.

I know of one house that sold for $30,000 in 1970, which some years ago sold for well over $1,000,000. That's not inflation, and even the $30,000 price was generally unaffordable except by the very wealthy and/or those who could get a mortgage.

In Cidri, probably most places don't have real estate loans, or if they do, the "credit" for a band of adventurer types would not I think be very high...

But there probably are houses build by and/or for lower-class folks, which might be quite affordable for middle-class folks and/or adventurers to buy outright.

And someplace like a well-off capital city with more demand for housing than supply would probably be much more expensive than someplace like Winterhome in Dran, which supposedly used to have ten times its current population.

Re: Buying a House?
 

No worries, it was an interesting exercise! :)

ITL says $20 a week subsistence and $50 if you have social pretensions.

I interpret that as $20 gets you the bare minimum - some (occasionally dubious) food in your belly and a dry bed (probably with uninvited guests). $50 gets you respectable living - a room in a reasonable inn, stabling for your horse, food, some new clothes now and then, a few beers in the evening.

If you want servants, fine clothes and your own swanky town house it's going to be a LOT more. I don't read any of the jobs as going much beyond the $50 a week on living.

Re: Buying a House?
 

So that leaves the question, does that $50 come out of your salary or do some jobs come with it included (like the invisible subsistence)? I could see a Healer getting it by default, for example, but a merc recruit probably not so much.

Re: Buying a House?
 

Honestly I'm okay with that. I know that real estate varies from X to Y, and I can happily change it as suited. Weapons and armor get a default cost and that's sufficient, GMs can always change that according to their needs. Just a base cost either for a village or a city (or preferably both) would be good.

I know I'm spoiled, the last OSR clone I was playing a lot of did a lot with real-estate and my players got into owning a house and all that.

Re: Buying a House?
 

The earnings per week is after expenses. So if you want raw pay for a healer, probably add on $40 or so? A mercenary will be provided with a tent and a bedroll and some 'stew' I should think, so the army has taken care of their expenses? :)

Re: Buying a House?
 

Yeah, its just figuring out who gets what invisible bonus?