Monthly Upkeep

obody ever seems to keep track of the amount of oil his lamp holds, the state his clothes are in, or the number of meals eaten at roadside inns; or so our DM keeps saying. To remove any concern about this day-to-day administration, he has suggested a monthly upkeep cost. This would be a fixed amount of money a character has to spend at the end of each month which symbolizes the money he spent during the month on food, drink, lodging and upkeep of clothes, equipment and animals. Now the numbers supplied by the DM where a little bit on the rough side, so I made a spreadsheet, guessing and improvising on some detail and came up with a list of upkeep costs specified for characters leading extravagant or simple lives, for months spent in town or months spent in the jungle, etc. The spreadsheet is available to play with, but some general results are listed below for easy reference.

All prices are listed in SC.

The following assumptions have been made:

• The basic character eats 3FP/day; he has 3 sets of clothing, which last one year
• The basic henchman has a 1SC/month wage, which is included in his upkeep; he eats 3FP/day
• When staying at an inn, the employer pays lodging for his employees; when staying at home he provides living quarters at his mansion
• When staying at home the travelling supplies are hardly ever used, they can be stored and must be renewed every ten years only; when travelling from inn to inn, they are lasting four years, even when unused; when camping in the wild, travel equipment lasts a year at most, in the wild this includes a tent and bedding
• When at home the character has to pay for upkeep of his house, this is set at 1/10 of the price to buy the house per month (lighting, heating etc. included)
• When staying at an inn, stables and watering for the horses and other large animals are paid for

I distinguish four different categories here: at home; travelling and camping in the wild; travelling and sleeping at inns; mixed travel mode, i.e. camping out doors 4 nights out of 7 and sleeping in inns the other nights. In many cases this mixed mode will provide a kind of average monthly expenses. Furthermore four price categories are distinguished: cheap to extravagant. Cheap implies staying at the cheapest of roadside hostels only, sleeping in flea ridden common rooms; extravagant would mean taking a private room in an expensive hotel and lavishing one self with expensive foods and wines every night. A character can choose whether to live dirt cheap, normal or extravagant; the campaign will provide information on what travel mode is most appropriate and one can figure out easily what the average cost of living would be.

Wout Broere