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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3760 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 26, 2025

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Diocletian’s Price Edict

Fun fact: One well-regarded Dungeons & Dragons offshoot, ACKS (the Adventurer Conqueror King System), uses this document as a basis for some of its economics.

How ACKS Prices Were Set

To correctly set the relational price of any given good or service in ACKS, we needed a historical price for the good, and the historical price for wheat, extracted from the same time and place. Otherwise we'd just have Cargo Cult prices [as in D&D and other offshoots of it].

Fortunately, while developing ACKS II, we were able to find an English translation of all of the known fragments of the Edictum de Pretiis Rerum Venalium, better known as the Edict on Maximum Prices. Issued in 301 AD by Emperor Diocletian, the Edict sets the maximum price for hundreds of goods and services in denarii.

What makes the Edict so useful for ACKS is that it is set in the time period that the Auran Empire campaign emulates, Late Antiquity. By knowing how much a Diocletian denarius was worth in ACKS, we were able to use the Edict to establish historical prices for the huge number of goods and services that it covers. Since ACKS prices were benchmarked against wheat, where 1 quarter of wheat costs 4 GP [gold pieces], we were able to use the price of wheat in the Edict to work out the value of the denarii.

The Edict tells us that 1 modius kastrensis (“k. mod.”) of wheat sold for 100 denarii. The modius is a unit of dry measure equivalent to 8.73 liters. The modius kastrensis is equal to 1.5 modii, hence 12.93 liters. 12.93 liters of wheat weighs 22.15 lb. Since a quarter of wheat is 480 lb, there are (480/22.15 =) 21.67 k. mod. per quarter. Therefore the price of a quarter of wheat, under the Edict, is (100 denarii / k. mod.) × (21.67 k. mod. / quarter) = 2166.33 denarii. We have established that 1 quarter of wheat is worth 4 GP. Therefore 4 GP/quarter = 2166 denarii/quarter; and 1 GP = 541.58 denarii.

With this conversion rate established, we are able to establish wheat-relative prices for all the various goods and services extracted from the Edict and convert them into denominations of GP, SP, and CP. However, as we did so, we discovered that just because a price is in the Edict doesn't necessarily mean it's the proper price for ACKS. For one thing, the Edict itself was a price fixing statute, and governments have a long history of getting price controls very wrong. Diocletian might have been—for all we know—as bad at pricing goods and services as the typical RPG. In addition, the very particular conditions means that some prices might be peculiar to that place and time. From time to time, we even encountered prices in the Edict that were mathematically impossible—goods selling for less than their cost of production, for instance. In such cases we have revised the prices based on other research. Finally, we must also note that certain adventuring equipment in ACKS II are simply not priced historically. In particular:

  • While the medium and heavy armors are correctly priced, padded and leather armor are too expensive relative to historical norms. Padded armor should probably be 2–5 GP while leather armor should be no more than 5 GP. For simplicity we standardized at 10 GP = 1 AC = 1 stone.

  • Grappling hooks and other climbing gear do not seem to have been in wide use during Late Antiquity. Their use in naval warfare (with grappling ballistae) is notable enough that the ancient historians go out of their way to mention it. We have retained them in ACKS II, but raised the price to reflect that they are a specialized technology not otherwise in use.

  • Healing herbs with the potent efficacy of those found in ACKS II are simply fantasy. No poultice of comfrey or woundwort had anywhere near the curative power we have assigned them. However, healing herbs with a realistic level of efficacy would have almost no discernable game effect. Therefore we have magnified the efficacy of healing herbs to a playable (albeit fantastical) level, and increased their cost to an ahistorical level to compensate. If verisimilitude is a worry, assume the healing herbs are rare, fragile, and hard-to-find varietals of the real-world herbs.

  • Lanterns of the sort described in the Adventuring Equipment section did not exist in Late Antiquity. However, they probably would have existed in a Late Antiquity in which legionaries had to enter dungeons to fight monsters. Therefore we have included them in the game but at an ahistorical high cost. The same is true for adventurer's harnesses, disguise kits, thieves' tools, and other adventuring equipment. All of these items were well within the capabilities of the ancients.

  • The carts and wagons that existed in Late Antiquity were relatively primitive in the construction of their harnesses, yokes, and wheels. Rather than force adventurers to endlessly deal with broken axles, oxen choking on poor harness[*], and so on, we have included vehicles more appropriate for a later era and raised the price accordingly. You can simulate historical carts and wagons by applying some of the cost reduction and penalties from the scavenged equipment tables.

*A different well-regarded tabletop RPG, GURPS (the Generic Universal Roleplaying System), claims that this is a misconception:

Breast-Strap Harness

TL0

This is a rope or leather harness that wraps around the animal’s chest. Initial research suggested that this and other early harnesses rode up and choked horses wearing them. Recent reconstructions have shown this to be incorrect. The real drawback is that, on horses, these harnesses appear to be inefficient when used to pull plows or drag loads on the ground (again, halve the pulling divisor), as opposed to when pulling wagons.

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