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WARHAMMER
Fantasy Role Play
IBERBER
FF
INANCIANANCIA
Jason J. Patterson
2012
W
ARHAMMER
F
ANTASY
R
OLEPLAY
C
OINS
AND
M
ONEY
WFRP 1st and 2nd Edition, primarily set in a fantasy analog to the Holy Roman Empire, and geographically, Germany, specifically under the rule of Emperor Maximillion I, make use of the eventually mostly standardized European and most well known Britush currency system, known as "L.s.d." or "Pounds/Shillings/Pence", from Latin origins, with the "L" (£) standing for Librae (which represents Great British Pounds Sterling as an example, in modern times), "S" for Solidi and "D" for Denarii. A pound was an actual weight of one pound of silver, and while this might have reflected a Tower, Troy or Avoirdupois Pound at different times or locations, everything in this work is addressed from the aspect of simplicity and suitability for game use, so it is a standard pound Avoirdupois or Imperial Standard Pound, of 453.59 or 454 grams. Next, rather than gold being the "coin of the realm", most older economies and especially the L.s.d., were silver- based, so the pound and shillings were both silver – it is the metal coin most people dealt in. In fact, there are 20 silver shillings to the pound because a pound of silver was actually cut into twenty pieces which were made into individual coins, which is where the worn-out term "silver piece" comes from. Moreover, pennies were, for a very long time, also silver coins, merely smaller, because they too, were simply shavings or cuts, either from the larger pound of silver, or from the twenty split "silver pieces", with 240 silver pennies per pound. Only in the late 1600s and later did the actual metal weight and its value began to be replaced by intrinsic value assigned to coins by governments, and so the smaller denominations like pennies were represented by brass or copper.The pound was usually a unit of account on paper and mostly paid by a "pound note" or bank bill, much like modern paper money, rather than a physical pound of silver, for many payments.WFRP does not use Pounds as its largest value amount, but instead substitutes Gold Crowns (GC), but does keep Silver Shillings (S) and Brass Pence (P).
WFRP 1 and 2 Inter-Coin Exchange Rate:
1 Gold Crown= 20 Silver Shillings = 240 Brass Pence 1 Silver Shilling = 12 Brass PenceUnfortunately, while the second part of the basic exchange rate is correct (12 pence or pennies = 1 shilling), the first is completely wrong and the pound has been replaced with the gold crown. Also, like the crown substitution, different metals being used for different coins is for easy in-game differentiation of denominations. For the most part, most of WFRP's coinage conventions are pretty inaccurate. And just for trivia: while coins existed that were worth 1 shilling (12 pence), no actual “shilling” coin ever existed.Although coin values fluctuated vastly over the years and centuries in various cultures, in a broad sense, the following could be considered fairly solid standards:
Historical Coin=Value
1 Gold Double Sovereign=40 Silver Shillings1 Gold Fine Sovereign= 30 Silver Shillings1 Gold Sovereign=20 Silver Shillings1 Gold Royal/Ryal= 15 Silver Shillings1 Gold Crown/Angel=10 Silver Shillings1 Gold Noble=8 Silver Shillings1 Gold Dbl. Rose Crown=5 Silver Shillings1 Gold Double Gold Shilling=4 Silver Shillings1 Gold Quarter-Angel= 2.5 Silver Shilling1 Gold Shilling= 2 Silver Shillings1 Sixpence=6 Pennies1 Groat=4 Pennies1 Thruppence ("Threepence")=3 Pennies1 Half-Groat=2 Pennies1 Penny=4 Farthings
So it is plain that what WFRP calls a "Crown", worth 20 silver shillings, is in fact a Sovereign, which originated in the early 1600s and weighed between 7-10 grams of gold, while each a pound of silver was 435.59 grams, making gold 57.42 - 62.14 times as valuable as silver (without taking each metal's debasement into account), for a simple calculation of "Gold Value = Silver x60" for the 14-1600s.WFRP does not make explicit use of farthings, which were abstractly and literally "a fourth of a penny", meaning when one needed to spend less than a penny, he simply cut a penny into fourths and spent the needed "fourthing", which were irregular shaped slivers of silver, not coins, until they too were assigned intrinsic values and made of other metals.
2
While it's nearly impossible to make accurate, useful comparisons between modern and much older eras, due to various differences in government, lifestyles and spans, level of technology, cultures, commerce and other factors, including magic, two universal standards are working for pay and paying for things. Although both have changed significantly over the years, if each are looked at in context only of its own time, used as an analog for its counterpart timeframe, it's possible to draw some rough comparisons.For example, unskilled laborers and other jobs that could be considered "wage slave" employment, such as fast food or grocery store cashiers and other entry level positions with little upward mobility or future, could be comparable to WFRP's "Laborer", with some minor adjustments. In most medieval and similar times, a serf also inherited or lived and worked on family land or land leased to him by his lord and he rarely paid rent or other texes other than once a year, and often made his own food and clothes, and there were no utilities such as phones or electricity, but also the few things you did buy ranged anywhere from cheap to outrageous, so it is hard to say what a good direction would be, as far as "leaning" in a conservative or liberal manner, wage and cost-of-living wise, so let us just go with the WFRP standard idea of 6 pence per day, and use that as the "universal" wage. Some historians disagree on how many hours peasants or serfs worked, and if they took naps or breaks and how many perks they got, such as gifts or extra food from their lords and such, but most agree that most peasants did work mostly six-day weeks, and whether farmer or employee, most unskilled workers and laborers made around 6 pence per day, so 36 p (3 shillings) per week. There are also disagreements about work not being possible during winter for a large number of people, but work was also different and a number of different ways existed to profit and make a living, including barter and trade and helping each other, so for the sake of simplicity, we'll say both serf and modern worker work 280 days per year for an annual wage of 1,680 pence (or 140 shillings or 7 pounds/gold crowns), and of course skilled laborers, tradesmen, merchants and other business owners made much more than this, and an unlucky few (children, servants, women) made even less, but this document uses the 6 p/day baseline. Below is a general low-wage chart for the years 1300 -1950.
YearHLSDHUSDMUSDMUSDPHP
13002f$59.00$118.0013501p$62.00$ 62.0014002p$65.00$ 32.5014504p$62.00$ 15.5015006p$61.00$ 10.1715508p$60.00$ 7.50160010p$63.00$ 6.3016501s or 12p$0.01**$64.00$ 5.3317001s/1p$0.02**$59.00$ 4.5417501s/2p$0.05**$62.00$ 4.4318001s/3p$0.12$65.00$ 4.3318501s/4p $0.30$62.00$ 3.8819002s/- $0.50$61.00$3.7519256s$1.42$60.00$3.63194010s/5p$2.00$63.00$3.521950£1/12s/