Addis Rook
Posts: 125
6/21/2017
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Still can't figure out how much 1 echo can buy in this setting, and how many units of various modern currencies that it's worth.
what further complicates matters is the cost of living in Fallen London, I can't imagine it would be cheap. But how much is 1 echo worth on the surface?
edited by Addis Rook on 6/21/2017
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Mordaine Barimen
Posts: 670
6/22/2017
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Nuncio
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I'm sorry, but due to policy clarifications, I will no longer be giving detailed mechanics advice on the forums.
If you still need help, try the IRC channel.
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Teaspoon
Posts: 866
6/22/2017
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The cost of sending a letter in 1895 (Surface) London was....
*drumroll*
one penny!
Failbetter knew what they were doing there. I'm still not sure how to translate that into anything practical, although I did come across a Wiki article dealing with this very question - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Penny_Post
(including most of the caveats I should have felt obliged to include.)
I suppose one might try saying "all right, let's call one penny equivalent to a modern pound and see where we go from there". It does at least simplify the maths.
edit: here is a delightful link. http://www.victorianlondon.org/communications/postal.htm
"But fancy the feelings of the postmen who found frogs, lizards, and spiders hopping and crawling about! 4,500 letters and packets were stopped for containing such objectionable things."
Poor Nuncio indeed.
edited by Teaspoon on 6/22/2017
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Truth lies at the bottom of a well.
https://www.fallenlondon.com/profile/Alt%20Ern
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Optimatum
Posts: 3666
6/22/2017
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Gillsing wrote:
You can buy 50 bottles of low quality wine for 1 Echo. Surely that could be compared to how much low quality wine you could purchase with modern currencies?
They weren't originally bottles, though - the units on most items were added later for consistency. When FL started you were just purchasing 50 times the abstract concept of low-quality wine.
Teaspoon wrote:
"But fancy the feelings of the postmen who found frogs, lizards, and spiders hopping and crawling about! 4,500 letters and packets were stopped for containing such objectionable things."
Poor Nuncio indeed.
At least those postmen didn't have to deal with the Tomb-Colony pickles.
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Optimatum, a ruthless and merciful gentleman. No plant battles, Affluent Photographer requests, or healing offers; all other social actions welcome.
 Want a sip of Cider? Just say hi!
PM me for information enigmatic or Fated. Though the forum please, not FL itself.
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Plynkes
Posts: 631
6/22/2017
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What I don't understand is why Fallen London uses decimal currency, something real-life Britons couldn't be coaxed into for another seventy years or so. I feel Londoners would have fought this change far harder than any of the other travails Failbetter have inflicted upon them.
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"Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop, but don't tell me."
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Gillsing
Posts: 1203
6/21/2017
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You can buy 50 bottles of low quality wine for 1 Echo. Surely that could be compared to how much low quality wine you could purchase with modern currencies?
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James Sinclair
Posts: 253
6/24/2017
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Comparing historical buying power to modern is notoriously difficult, but I generally assume that 1 penny roughly equals 1 modern USD (therefore 1 Echo = $100).
Using Greyfields '79 as an example, you can buy a bottle at the Bazaar for 2 pennies; today, $2 = 1 bottle of Two Buck Chuck (at least originally). By contrast a bottle of '44 Broken Giant is 2.5 echos; $250 for an expensive bottle of wine at a classy restaurant is certainly possible today. A cheap set of Workman's Clothes is 20 pennies ($20, a reasonable price for serviceable thrift store clothes). A Distinguished Gentleman's Outfit will set you back 115.20 echoes, or $11,520, which seems realistic for a late 19th century custom-tailored, top-quality handmade suit of menswear that only rich people (or hard-working echo-grinders) could afford.
Obviously this breaks down in a lot of cases. I would not pay $40 for a goldfish. Unless it was very, VERY cheerful.
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James Sinclair
Curator of the Sanguine Ribbon Society 🗡
 A fully-fledged rêveur of The Night Circus.
Wines is red
Spices is yellow
But old Jack-of-Smiles
Is a murderous fellow
☠
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Alysian
Posts: 57
6/30/2017
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Johannes Galepath wrote:
Alternatively it may be that it sunless sea you are actually buying the townhouse, where as in Fallen London you are simply arranging a longterm rental.
That certainly may be the case, although since for the Bazaar Premises and Room at the Royal Beth they make the distinction of it being a Lease and Reservation respectively I had always thought the others you were buying outright. Certainly the Steamer you are actually taking ownership of.
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Alysian, gone North, grieved, gone.
Alybye, A Midnighter available for children's parties. No appointment necessary.
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A Dimness
Posts: 613
6/24/2017
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James Sinclair wrote:
Comparing historical buying power to modern is notoriously difficult, but I generally assume that 1 penny roughly equals 1 modern USD (therefore 1 Echo = $100).
Using Greyfields '79 as an example, you can buy a bottle at the Bazaar for 2 pennies; today, $2 = 1 bottle of Two Buck Chuck (at least originally). By contrast a bottle of '44 Broken Giant is 2.5 echos; $250 for an expensive bottle of wine at a classy restaurant is certainly possible today. A cheap set of Workman's Clothes is 20 pennies ($20, a reasonable price for serviceable thrift store clothes). A Distinguished Gentleman's Outfit will set you back 115.20 echoes, or $11,520, which seems realistic for a late 19th century custom-tailored, top-quality handmade suit of menswear that only rich people (or hard-working echo-grinders) could afford.
Obviously this breaks down in a lot of cases. I would not pay $40 for a goldfish. Unless it was very, VERY cheerful.
That might be justified considering it's a surface goldfish in a subterranean setting. Mementos from the surface are rare, and a living, innocent, cheerful one like the goldfish especially. I suppose it's not to steep a price for people wanting to build an aquarium. And naturally, keeping a normal fish alive in a giant cave is going to take some effort on your part.
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A truth so strange it can only be lied into existence
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Johannes Galepath
Posts: 3
6/30/2017
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My personal theory on the value of an echoe has, for simplicity's sake, always been that one echo (1895) = one British Pound (1895). As for the price discrepancies between Sunless Sea and Fallen London, I think its important to remember that you don't sell goods directly to the consumers, you sell them on the exchange, and I think someone (Cough The Masters Cough) then sells them to Londoners at a significant mark up. I also think that the difference in the value of the townhouse could be explained in a couple different ways. My first theory is that Fallen London Characters are effectively just making a down payment on the townhouse, where as Zee captains, whose lives are extremely unpredictable and often very short have to pay full price up front. Alternatively it may be that it sunless sea you are actually buying the townhouse, where as in Fallen London you are simply arranging a longterm rental.
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Addis Rook
Posts: 125
6/21/2017
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Gillsing wrote:
You can buy 50 bottles of low quality wine for 1 Echo. Surely that could be compared to how much low quality wine you could purchase with modern currencies?
Yes, but at the same time it's mushroom wine, we have no idea of the costs of production of such a thing in the Neath, as mushrooms practically grow by themselves down here. I don't imagine there's anywhere near the same kind of infrastructure needed for grape wine.
Also there's the matter of inflation over the course of some 120 years.
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Gillsing
Posts: 1203
6/21/2017
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There's also regular, non-'magical' clothing sold at the Bazaar. Any clothing that appears to have more of an roleplay-price rather than a bonus-stats price could be used to compare to real world prices. I'm not saying it'd be easy or accurate to try to figure out real world value of a game currency, but comparing items that are similar to real world items would be the way to go.
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Anne Auclair
Posts: 2215
6/22/2017
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One penny is enough to pay the price of postage within the city limits of London. So, find out how much it would cost for the post office to deliver a letter to someone within your city and you have a rough approximation of the real value of a 1895 Echo Bazaar penny in present day surface currency.
edited by Anne Auclair on 6/22/2017
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Teaspoon
Posts: 866
6/22/2017
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That part of a Londoner which demands overly complicated currency is probably well satisfied by a system in which you have forty different kinds of valid monies depending on who you're talking to and what you're trying to buy.
(Also Anthony Trollope, inventor of the pillar box, was quite keen on decimal currency. Perhaps it was his reward for presiding over a postal service that had suddenly got much, much more complex.)
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Truth lies at the bottom of a well.
https://www.fallenlondon.com/profile/Alt%20Ern
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PJ
Posts: 210
6/24/2017
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In Sunless Sea, a Searing Enigma is worth a thousand echos. That's a pretty big price difference.
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https://www.fallenlondon.com/profile/Peter%20James
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Anne Auclair
Posts: 2215
6/24/2017
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Searing Enigmas collected on the Sunless Sea might be a bigger deal then the ones collected in London.
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Anne%20Auclair
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