Do you remember the source for this? I've been flipping through Ars books and have been having trouble finding much information at all on Grand Tribunals.
Heirs to Merlin explicitly blames English covenants.
This may be based on discussions around 2000 of an inflation between 1180 and 1220: see onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 4/abstract . For more recent investigations, look up p.63 to 65 of: Julia Crick, Elisabeth van Houts - A Social History of England 900-1200 - Cambridge University Press 2011, ISBN 978-0-521-71323-8.
Cheers
Are you speaking of this:
jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3 ... 6663029153
a period of 'monetary inflation' which wasn't noticed until the 20th century, then by an economist reviewing flawed and incomplete data whose conclusions have never been fully accepted?
This is what was supposed to be readily obvious to the secluded barely materialistic near hermits of the order?
I understand the game reasons for the constraints, my point is that the argument behind them is highly anachronistic.
The real reason not to manufacture gold or silver is that vis is a higher quality good than simple currency, and trading vis for coin should be as unthinkable as trading land for coin was, though the game certainly allows that as well...
This article is also part of the discussion I mention above. It wasn't out yet when Heirs to Merlin appeared, though.
And wouldn't it be fun to credit bogus magi for an inflation that then turned out to be bogus in real history?
If it was brought to the attention of the Stonehenge magi, how their covenants bought the same amount of goods for significantly more silver now, they might have caught up with the simple logic in it and reacted as Heirs to Merlin describes.
The problem in real history is rather, whether such an inflation is really a logical consequence of a local and temporary influx of a larger amount of silver. (For Mythic Europe, this parses to: Just how much silver do magi have to inject into the economy, before they feel the inflationary effect?) Therefore I included the more recent reference to the book of Julia Crick and Elisabeth van Houts.
Cheers
While I could be entirely wrong on this, I think the thing with the number 3 might be incorrectly based on the following from the core rule book on page 14 (bold for emphasis is mine):
Again, I could be wrong. But I can see where this passage could be misconstrued as each Tribunal only have 3 issues presented.
Serf's Parma, the number of issues each Tribunal submits is from 4th Edition Wizard's Grimoire. I can't locate the issues thing in either HoH:True Lineages or Guardians of the Forest, and I don't own Wizard's Grimoire, so I can't check.
That said, it's probably reasonable, as that brings up a possibility of 39 issues to be decided every Grand Tribunal...
I'm considering purchasing Transforming Mythic Europe, and I see that the table of contents[sup]1[/sup] shows that there is a section on the Grand Tribunal in the book. Is there something in there maybe about this whole thing about number of issues to be brought?
[hr][/hr]
[sup]1 - Darn you to heck, Atlas Games, for enticing me with teasers! Darn you all, my bank account says![/sup]
I don't recall it from that book. I know the idea of 3 issues per tribunal has existed prior to TME being released.
The magi of Heirs to Merlin really are presented as "secluded barely materialistic near hermits", living in a very few covenants, all of them fairly small, and often not even making quorum for regular Tribunals.
It's a wonderful way to present an approach to the Order of Hermes that feels medieval rather than high-fantasy, but these are the last people I'd expect to figure out advanced economic theories.
If I were to reinterpret the silver ban, I'd suggest that magi got in trouble for creating tons of silver and spending it on some political goal or other, i.e., interfering with the mundanes, rather than for causing inflation.
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Thanks. I also recall more information on Grand Tribunals from previous editions, going back to the original Order of Hermes book, but have searched in vain for much from AM5.
Magi usually don't buy or sell in person on the periodical local market. But they will not have any use of their silver, magically created or found, unless they send their cook, steward or autocrat to do so. And these persons can then explain to the magi the elementary effects of shortage and abundance on prices, which every stall-holder at the market understands.
There is really nothing advanced or beyond a medieval mind in remarking, how a decline of the value of something on that market - grain, goats or silver - is due to its observed abundance.
Cheers
Except that 1) that was not how medieval markets reacted to a glut of money. They increased trade and price increases were minimal and 2) within a medieval mindset the value of currency is intrinsic- silver is silver, it cannot have shortage or abundance like grain, so there must be a shortage of everything else if prices go up.
It's like saying that the principles of gravity are obvious- which they are to us now, but to the medieval (and even renaissance) minds it was still everything seeking it's natural level rather than issues of buoyancy and density.
Where do you get that idea? Silver in the developing medieval economies (like this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_bo ... gnificance ) was first a commodity to exchange for goats, just like goats for grain.
It took a lot of enticement and enforcement by the authorities (first kings and lords, then often towns and boroughs), to make the coins they minted from silver and from lesser metal the only means to make purchases at their established markets - but that did not give metal coins any absolute, 'intrinsic' value in the medieval mindset.
Silver shortage could still be sorely felt, leading to early credit schemes like at the Champagne fairs. Clipping was the small crook's way of realizing a bit of extra metal value from coins, while debasing coins was the way of the minting authorities - both knowing full well that there was a difference between metal value and face value of a coin, and that the gains from their operations varied with metal value. And the reduced value of clipped or debased coins was noticed, causing them to lose buying power outside of markets enforcing their face value.
What is very hard to assess about medieval money is, how quickly it could leave an area where it was abundant. Here face value worked to keep local coins in the domain of their minters' authority, while metal value allowed it to spread - theoretically all over Europe and into the East. That makes any quantitative theories about actual effects of medieval inflation a touchy topic.
Cheers
You may be overstating the worldliness of the Heirs to Merlin covenants - Cad Gadu magi seldom leave their regio, even for Tribunals, while Blackthorn magi literally live in caves. And these are two of the largest covenants in the Tribunal!
Leaving that aside, medieval people certainly noticed scarcity or abundance of precious metals, usually through the disappearance of unclipped coins or through changes in the gold-silver exchange rate, if I recall correctly. It's possible magi would make the connection between creating precious metals and prices, although I think it would take a lot of silver. I think they would likely first see other effects they would object to, such as bribed nobles attacking rival covenants or royal agents noticing suddenly rich magi and demanding alchemical services for the king.
I'm far more dubious that Magi would ever expand this understanding into a limitation on actual production of goods and services (cattle, grain milling, etc.) involving magic. It's not at all obvious why improving the diets of local peasants by making beef more abundant is a bad thing, whatever the level of economic understanding. In fact, this is deflationary rather than inflationary. If anything, the concern would be that local powers that be would want their piece of the action and magi would turn into obligated court wizards. But since the Order has been around for four hundred years and has not seen a need to ban magical conveniences, it's hard to see what might precipitate that now.
Maybe it was a purely political move against some covenants and they invented some munbo-jumbo theory to support their side. Being right for the wrong reasons.
I like this version! 
It's entirely possible to believe both that goods have an intrinsic value and that prices float. The key additional element is sin.
For example, the Church knows the grain price is lowest just after harvest and climbs until it peaks just before the next harvest. This is not because grain becomes more valuable: it's because people are tempted by the avaricious sin of withholding their goods from market, so that the actual price rises above the fair price.
I'm not saying this was a universal view, merely noting that the ideas of a floating price and an intrinsic price are not as mutually exclusive as you and One Shot seem to be discussing.
Trading land for coin isn't unthinkable. It happens a bit. Actually trading the right to profit from land for coin is an anchor of the banking system slightly later, and is not considered ursury, much to the delight of ursurers everywhere.
Even monks in charge of their monastery's economy understood the working of their local market. So magi from highly political covenants like Blackthorn and Voluntas, or covenants like Burnham maintaining a castle and keen to maintain their status - all named as culprits of a magic-induced inflation towards the end of the 12th century in England by Heirs to Merlin - understood it as well.
A few - especially from Schola Pythagoranis and Voluntas - might later in the 13th century take notice of Thomism, and its ethical theory of just prices. In general, repeated laws and strongly presented normative theories tell an historian, that there was a need for them, and that the behaviour they discourage was rampant.
Note, that there was no significant amount of gold coins in late 12th century England - so no relevant gold-silver exchange rate either (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_penny ). And I don't see any way to determine, just how much silver would have been needed to cause a change of silver value in England. But we don't know the amount of silver the English magi created and spent either. The politics of the Tribunal (see Heirs to Merlin p.23f and p.141) could easily have caused a bout of competitive spending at the end of the 12th century. This is similar to the spending bouts of mundane nobles and kings in times of strife and war - who, however, had to borrow the money they spent and later often resorted to coin debasement to pay their debts.
I should agree with you here. If Magi are better able to look after the well-being of their people than their noble neighbours, this first compensates for their generally weird personalities and uncertain status - hence stabilizes the local society, if done within reason.
Cheers