In RQ1 & 2 the Lunar was valued at about the price of a moderate meal... about $4 in the '70s, closer to $6 or $8 now.
In RQ3 the Lunar was revalued to be 1 day's wages for a physical laborer. This is more in line with the biblical value of the silver coin of that period which might be used to pay just this kind of laborer. The equivalent in today's money is in the neighborhood of $40, so there is about a 10:1 conversion between game versions.
This invalidated all of the old price charts and treasure awards from RQ2, but those were the only modules available, and since I found the new valuation to be too cumbersome for words, I went back to a valuation of $5 per penny and adjusted the physical size of the coin.
The easiest way to deal with the issue is to pick a comfortable conversion from modern money to the purchasing power you want the coin to have (try to pick a ratio that you can do in your head), and think of the modern price for the object or an equivalent, divide by the conversion, and that is the value in Lunars/Guilders/etc. You can further adjust for availability of materials and labor, but these are not quite as important.
If a house costs $100,000 and a Lunar is $5, then it would cost about 20,000L in the game. If you check the price charts in the game, this is not so horribly far off.
>Can anyone give me some examples? The sort of thing I'm after is:
>- - How much would a wolf hide be worth? A lion hide? A small diamond?
>- - What is the cost of training? As per RQ2? RQ3? Something different?
>- - How much should a night's stay at a poor inn cost? A good inn?
A raw hide might be $30 to $50, tanned it should double or triple. A
small precious gem can be $100 to $1000. The RQ3 training rules basically
work out that a class of 16 novices, training for a day, would pay about 2x
the subsistance level (unless the teacher can demand a premium rate). This
is in the area of $1 per hour per student. A poor inn can cost $20 to $30,
a good one can easily be $60 to $100.
Bob Stancliff
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