Economy & Work
Your world must answer a simple question for every person in it: how do they eat, and who pays for it? The answers — work, production, markets, pay, debt — are Project truth. The system resolves what follows.
Occupations, employment, skill: three things
- Occupation is what someone broadly is or is known for: farmer, weaver, smith, carrier.
- Employment is an actual arrangement with a real employer, with terms and compensation.
- Skill rank is what they can actually do.
None creates the others. A village full of "farmers" may hold one competent plowman, several novices, and an employer with no workers. Establish each where it matters: what work exists, who actually employs, what competence workers genuinely hold.
Production and availability
Goods exist where inputs, competence, infrastructure, and demand meet. A village with one potter makes pottery locally — but still waits when the kiln is cold, the potter is harvesting, or clay runs short. Specialists concentrate by demand and route; no settlement needs every craft, and absence is content: it creates journeys, dependence, and prices.
Remember the market separations: existence is not local availability; a craftsperson is not a shop with infinite stock; a market is not guaranteed supply. Money never creates stock. A buyer may afford what no seller will sell.
Money, pay, credit, debt
Your world sets its own scale: what an ordinary day's labor earns, what bread and lodging cost, what coin is called. The system's calibration guidance helps you anchor that scale to one day-wage; your values become truth. Publish the anchor so players understand money — one ordinary day of labor is worth approximately this.
Work may pay in coin, goods, board, shares, or mixed forms. Wages owed stay owed until paid. Credit follows trust and relationship; debts persist until settled. Pool money honestly — personal coin, household stores, business cash, and institutional funds never merge on their own.
No universal prices, wages, rents, or formulas. Two settlements may pay differently for the same work, charge differently for the same loaf, and run on different credit customs — using identical system mechanics throughout.
Example
Millbrook grows grain; its smith mends plows first at harvest and makes horseshoes when iron and time allow. Downriver, Ferry Town imports grain, pays higher bread prices, and keeps its smith on cart and boat repair. Same rules. Different economies — because place, season, inputs, and demand differ.
Good Builder Question
What does an ordinary household here eat, earn, and owe in a normal week — and what changes that in a bad season?
You Usually Do Not Need...
...complete price lists, every transaction recorded, every purchase persisted, or an economy subsystem. Establish conditions — wages, availability, market rhythm, pressures — and let routine buying, selling, and working remain contextual. Record detail when it becomes consequential: the debt that will be called in, the shortage that will bite, the contract that will be disputed.