LordGhee Posted October 31, 2009 Report Share Posted October 31, 2009 I will be running a Musketeer game in January and I need help. Any one have any information on the cost of stuff in France in 1630's or about then. How much the KIng made? What the income of the nobels was like (this is hard stuff I know)? What a job would bring in? The cost of weapons, horse anything? Land titles and housing. I have Grups swashbucklers some help. I found a Frech gamers site that google translator did a fine job on so I will be posting that information. Thanks Lord Ghee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panpiper Posted November 1, 2009 Report Share Posted November 1, 2009 Re: Help with cost of living in 1630's France The earlier editions of Chivalry & Sorcery had fantastic details on precisely what you are asking. I do not know about the later editions. Sadly I no longer own copies. See if you can locate a copy perhaps? Check for more details, as a start anyway: http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=1571 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vondy Posted November 1, 2009 Report Share Posted November 1, 2009 Re: Help with cost of living in 1630's France You might see if you can rummage up a copy of Flashing Blades. Old. Out of print. Classic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vulcan Posted November 1, 2009 Report Share Posted November 1, 2009 Re: Help with cost of living in 1630's France If you're just looking for enough food to live and a humble place to sleep, it would likely cost next-to-nothing. However, no self-respecting Musketeer would settle for such humble accomodations unless driven by dire need. Beyond that, well, a lot is negotiable. Rents can be postponed or even wavied for service to the landlord. And there are a lot of different levels of accomodation for Musketeers, who might live like the nobility when they have lots of money, then live quite modestly when their luck turns for the worse. A piece of advice (take it for what you will). If I were running a Musketeer era game, I wouldn't bother having the characters track their money. I'd just make some sort of chart up and randomly roll how their financial state is - or even just let the needs of the plot determine their immediate finanical state. After all, in Dumas' archetypical story the Musketeers spend a lot of time dealing with their financial woes, and their efforts to obtain enough money to live on and equip themselves to their station drives a fair amount of the story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted November 2, 2009 Report Share Posted November 2, 2009 Re: Help with cost of living in 1630's France I will be running a Musketeer game in January and I need help. Any one have any information on the cost of stuff in France in 1630's or about then. How much the KIng made? What the income of the nobels was like (this is hard stuff I know)? What a job would bring in? The cost of weapons, horse anything? Land titles and housing. Thanks Lord Ghee Whoa. Big topic. A few very general points. The 1500's through early 1600's was a time of high inflation in France and so an increasing number of people (about 12% or 1 family in 6) lived in pretty dire poverty: there was much unrest as a result. Income was wildly divergent. An experience day labourer might make 10-12 sols a day: that was enough to keep him fed and housed, so there's your basic cost of living: about 3600 sols or 180 livres a year, if he had full time employment. (12 deniers =1 sol =1/20th of a livre) A noble of decent standing with a half dozen estates might make 3000 livre a year - a noble with a dozen or more great estates might make 40-50 thousand livre or more. A poor noble with a single estate might make no more than a few hundred livre a year and as one courtier said "Be barely distinguishable from the peasants and pigs he lived among" As a very rough rule of thumb, the livre was worth about the same as the English pound in this era, so you can also get some idea from English price lists of the time. As a veeeery rough rule of thumb (prices varied hugely from season to season, and place to place) common workers of the time used about 75% of their income on food and only about 8-10% on rent. The rest went on clothes and general items. So that gives you a rough estimate for daily cost - it'll cost you about 6-7 sols to get meals for a day (in contrast at wholesale a pound of meat cost about 1 sol for the most basic quality: so this is not a diet of gruel - the most expensive item was typically bread, which in cities at least was usually not made at home). Cloth (and thus clothing) was highly variable in cost - coloured wool was about 2 livres an ell, linen was about 2 deniers per ell. I've got no idea about specific prices for things like swords or horse furniture: a bit out of my period, sorry. cheers, Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curufea Posted November 3, 2009 Report Share Posted November 3, 2009 Re: Help with cost of living in 1630's France I did a bit of research for my Versaille RPG (written in 2 weeks for the Game Chef comp) if you want a look (although it is set 150 years later). Although it was mostly website stuff aggregated. http://www.curufea.com/Wikka/wikka.php?wakka=RulesVersailles Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordGhee Posted November 3, 2009 Author Report Share Posted November 3, 2009 Re: Help with cost of living in 1630's France Thanks for the Information and keep it coming, Please! I order a copy of A Mighty fortress which is a old AD@D aid on 17th centry France. I found out about this from a review of Flashing Blades which I got from DrivethruRPG in PDF format. Some good information in that book. Thankyou all again and I will post more about this soon. Lord Ghee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperPheemy Posted November 4, 2009 Report Share Posted November 4, 2009 Re: Help with cost of living in 1630's France From the point of view of cost-of-living, the King pretty much got whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Royal debts came from the wars he chose to fight, or the provinces he wished to buy. It's good to be da King! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curufea Posted November 4, 2009 Report Share Posted November 4, 2009 Re: Help with cost of living in 1630's France From the point of view of cost-of-living, the King pretty much got whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Royal debts came from the wars he chose to fight, or the provinces he wished to buy. It's good to be da King! On the other hand - he had absolutely no private life at all. Everything he did was observed, up to and including bowel movements and sex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted November 4, 2009 Report Share Posted November 4, 2009 Re: Help with cost of living in 1630's France From the point of view of cost-of-living, the King pretty much got whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Royal debts came from the wars he chose to fight, or the provinces he wished to buy. It's good to be da King! On the other hand - he had absolutely no private life at all. Everything he did was observed' date=' up to and including bowel movements and sex.[/quote'] Yes - it's much like being an A-list celebrity today. cheers, Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted November 4, 2009 Report Share Posted November 4, 2009 Re: Help with cost of living in 1630's France If you can find it, there's a book called "Life in Chaucer's England" which is a really useful guide for middle ages role-playing, both table-top and LARP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordGhee Posted November 7, 2009 Author Report Share Posted November 7, 2009 Re: Help with cost of living in 1630's France Thanks everyone And Curufea thanks the information on peerages is a help. Lord Ghee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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