Comment on “Becoming a Functionary”

My germ of an idea is this: relate pay to rarity of profession. This can be done by making reference to the probability of obtaining a certain result on the Father's Profession Table in your character background generator. (Assumption: probability of getting profession X on that table is more or less equal to proportion of people who hold profession X.)

Let P(job X) = probability of getting job X on your table.
Let G = monthly salary in arbitrary units.
Let specific salary for job X = g = G/P(job X)

If the probability of getting "prince" is 1/10,000 or 0.0001, then monthly salary for a prince is G/0.0001 = 10,000*G.

If P(baker) = 500/10,000 = 0.05, then g = G/0.05 = 20*G.

The numbers may need massaging, but the important part is that cost is related to rarity. You do similar calculations with your trade table, no? e.g. if a certain item calls for a silversmith, then the number of silversmith references in the world is taken into account in the price of that item. In the same way, hiring a baker takes into account the number of bakers: here I've done that with proportions, but you might do that with references. I chose proportions because while I know that "prince" is on the d10,000 table, it is probably not on trade table, and this might be the case for other functionary positions.