snarfoogle
First Post
I agree with Raven Crowking -- two attacks a day means that the goblins are gonna get sick of losing men. Eventually they'll have formed an uneasy truce, making life that much easier.
The Common Commoner
- Thread starter I'm A Banana
- Start date
This is a fascinating thread. I personally despise 'magic as technology'. I don't see the point. I mean first it isn't anything like the fantasy fiction that I'm trying to emulate. Second, if I wanted a game with technology in it I'd play something modern. Why play some convoluted version of D&D and go on about a crystal ball network and flying carpet expresses when I can just play something modern and have the internet and buses?
As for the cleric charging the townsfolk, I think there's likely a huge difference between what Farmer Joe gets charged when his leg gets broken and what they charge wandering vagrant tomb-robbers that blow through town and start ordering folks around (ie, adventurers). I imagine a lot of it goes by barter - the cleric patches up the farmer's leg for a couple of chickens, etc.
On XP, commoners don't need to kill goblins and ankhegs for XP. PCs do, because they're adventurers. They get XP for adventuring. Farmers I presume get XP for farming, bakers for baking, and cobblers for cobbling. As this isn't Horseshoes & Homesteads I'm not overly curious as for the exact mechanics.
Two encounters a day? Well, I'd accept that as the number of times something nasty goes lurking outside the village just in case someone decides to go wandering off by themselves, with occasional larger encounters.
As for the cleric charging the townsfolk, I think there's likely a huge difference between what Farmer Joe gets charged when his leg gets broken and what they charge wandering vagrant tomb-robbers that blow through town and start ordering folks around (ie, adventurers). I imagine a lot of it goes by barter - the cleric patches up the farmer's leg for a couple of chickens, etc.
On XP, commoners don't need to kill goblins and ankhegs for XP. PCs do, because they're adventurers. They get XP for adventuring. Farmers I presume get XP for farming, bakers for baking, and cobblers for cobbling. As this isn't Horseshoes & Homesteads I'm not overly curious as for the exact mechanics.
Two encounters a day? Well, I'd accept that as the number of times something nasty goes lurking outside the village just in case someone decides to go wandering off by themselves, with occasional larger encounters.
D+1
First Post
Farmers get XP and levels because they are ASSIGNED to them by a DM. Yes, NPC classes earn XP just as PC's do - but that only means that IF they go off adventuring they get an xp split and would get to level up in their choice of classes. It does not mean that to get where they ARE they MUST have been off killing orcs or braving dangerous weather and monster incursions several times a month.maddman75 said:
Somebody check me if I'm wrong but encounter frequency tables are written for PC adventuring parties. They are not meant to be applied universally to every individual in the world, nor collectively to settlements.
It is quite easy and acceptible to suppose that monsters simply do not routinely attack or menace even small settlements, but that they are not far beyond the edges of the cultivated areas. Farmer Ted can live and work his whole life on his farm on the edge of the village - but then he seldom if ever goes far beyond his fences. Travelling to the next nearest village or to the nearest "big city" may be a routine task but he still doesn't do it every day - few people do. PC adventurers on the other hand travel constantly over long distances and often not on the most heavily travelled and patrolled roads. THEY are the ones who have the encounters.
The game does not presuppose any particular level of "encounters" for Farmer Ted because he's not the focus of the game - the PC's are. It is perhaps assumed that the Farmer Teds of the world DO have encounters occasionally but the game does not concern itself with what they would be or how he would deal with it. Virtually all of what you find in the rules is geared DIRECTLY towards how the PC's are affected and how the PC's affect the world around them. GP limits and available cash can be calculated not so the DM knows how much trade a given village does with the next closest village - it can be calculated so he knows what trade can be done WITH PC'S.
The entire game has ALWAYS been constructed that way. Dangerous pitfalls open up when this simple premise is overlooked and rules that are really meant to apply only to PC's are assumed to be universal rules for every individual in the world, and composes a weave that would/could/should accurately describe an entire game world.
That said, I think the original post is all but dead-on.
Thornir Alekeg
Albatross!
This is a very enjoyable thread. I'll take my stab at it now.
The one thing that keeps coming to me is the two encounters per day thing. I do not have the rules here at work (not even the SRD, they blocked it
), but I am thinking; the random encounter rules just apply to PCs adventuring, don't they? If the PCs are sitting in a bar in a city, do you roll for random encounters? I don't. I apply the random encounters to when the party is moving through an area or when camped for the night in the wilderness. And this is really done to provide a mechanic for a DM to challenge PCs between the "planned" encounters and to show that the wilderness is, well...wild. It does not make as much sense when applied to established settlements.
If there are five hamlets located in a 1 mile radius and they each get attacked twice a day, then there are ten attacks in one day. If there is a single small town in a 1 mile radius there are only two attacks per day and there are more people to help out. Eventually you would get to the point where the majority of the population would live in towns and cities than in hamlets and villages.
To me the mechanic does not make sense to apply to a static location.
The one thing that keeps coming to me is the two encounters per day thing. I do not have the rules here at work (not even the SRD, they blocked it
), but I am thinking; the random encounter rules just apply to PCs adventuring, don't they? If the PCs are sitting in a bar in a city, do you roll for random encounters? I don't. I apply the random encounters to when the party is moving through an area or when camped for the night in the wilderness. And this is really done to provide a mechanic for a DM to challenge PCs between the "planned" encounters and to show that the wilderness is, well...wild. It does not make as much sense when applied to established settlements.If there are five hamlets located in a 1 mile radius and they each get attacked twice a day, then there are ten attacks in one day. If there is a single small town in a 1 mile radius there are only two attacks per day and there are more people to help out. Eventually you would get to the point where the majority of the population would live in towns and cities than in hamlets and villages.
To me the mechanic does not make sense to apply to a static location.
kigmatzomat
Hero
I think people are looking at commoner existence from a city-first standpoint. Reality is, cities survive on the excesses of the farmers so unless you know how much the farmers overproduce, you don't know how big your cities can be.
So let's say that every individual in a family qualifies as a farmer, to eliminate the population age issue. Then lets say that each farmer can produce enough food for 3 people for a surplus of 2 people. That immediately means that 33% of the populace has to be farmers. (FYI, I'm lumping meat producers in with grain and vegetable farming)
However that's staple food production only. We also have to worry about cloth, lumber, hemp, and various cash crops (like grains for alchohols). Using the same 3:1 ratio we are now at a 66% agricultural. Assume that 4% of the population are non-producing rural types (nobility, administration, milling, hauling, smiths, priests, animal trainers, servants, etc) we are 70% rural.
The size of a city is based on the travel radius. A farmer won't travel more than 2 days in an ox-drawn wagon. More than that and the odds of storms or accidents get too risky. That limits you to a production radius of 16 miles (rough terrain, typical road) to 32 miles (flat terrain, romanesque highways) for total area of 500,000-2,000,000 acres. Half of that will be non-arable due to soil type, rough terrain, too much/not enough water, location, etc which brings us to 250k-1 million arable acres.
For simplicity, half of the arable land will be staples and half will be cash crops, luxuries, or otherwise non-food producing land. We're now at 125k-500k food producing acres.
In general, a medieval farmer could work 1 acre. Remember, I'm counting children as farmers so I really mean a family of 8 works an 8-ish acre plot.
At maximum utilization you could have 125-500k farmers, 137-550k rural non-staple producers*, and 112-450k urban dwellers.
With magic you can boost production by around 33%. It isn't entirely 33% because plant growth doesn't impact meat production, a labor-restricted task, but I'll assume other spell-based improvements in production (weather control) make up the slack.
We can now max out a city at 150-600k people.
This super-city assumes there are no smaller cities within its production area. Each one reduces the urban dwellers by an appropriate amount. It also assumes no significant waterways or other non-agricultural resource. You can have a big city if its on top of a gold mine and everyone can afford to have food hauled in.
If you disagree with an assumption, change it and go through the process again. Thank you, and good night.
So let's say that every individual in a family qualifies as a farmer, to eliminate the population age issue. Then lets say that each farmer can produce enough food for 3 people for a surplus of 2 people. That immediately means that 33% of the populace has to be farmers. (FYI, I'm lumping meat producers in with grain and vegetable farming)
However that's staple food production only. We also have to worry about cloth, lumber, hemp, and various cash crops (like grains for alchohols). Using the same 3:1 ratio we are now at a 66% agricultural. Assume that 4% of the population are non-producing rural types (nobility, administration, milling, hauling, smiths, priests, animal trainers, servants, etc) we are 70% rural.
The size of a city is based on the travel radius. A farmer won't travel more than 2 days in an ox-drawn wagon. More than that and the odds of storms or accidents get too risky. That limits you to a production radius of 16 miles (rough terrain, typical road) to 32 miles (flat terrain, romanesque highways) for total area of 500,000-2,000,000 acres. Half of that will be non-arable due to soil type, rough terrain, too much/not enough water, location, etc which brings us to 250k-1 million arable acres.
For simplicity, half of the arable land will be staples and half will be cash crops, luxuries, or otherwise non-food producing land. We're now at 125k-500k food producing acres.
In general, a medieval farmer could work 1 acre. Remember, I'm counting children as farmers so I really mean a family of 8 works an 8-ish acre plot.
At maximum utilization you could have 125-500k farmers, 137-550k rural non-staple producers*, and 112-450k urban dwellers.
With magic you can boost production by around 33%. It isn't entirely 33% because plant growth doesn't impact meat production, a labor-restricted task, but I'll assume other spell-based improvements in production (weather control) make up the slack.
We can now max out a city at 150-600k people.
This super-city assumes there are no smaller cities within its production area. Each one reduces the urban dwellers by an appropriate amount. It also assumes no significant waterways or other non-agricultural resource. You can have a big city if its on top of a gold mine and everyone can afford to have food hauled in.
If you disagree with an assumption, change it and go through the process again. Thank you, and good night.
kigmatzomat
Hero
I left out a few things.
Military personnel and all exports count as urban people. Every soldier you have in a "Keep on the Borderlands" sucks down supplies, as does every bushel of grain you sell to another city.
One other assumption I made is that while magic increased production per acre, it did not increase production per person. I.E. plant growth causes crops *AND* weeds to grow so it requires more manpower to control the weeds, keeping the manpower-bushel production the same.
Now if you add a few hundred Combine Golems you'll get more bushels per farmer. It doesn't change your total land area or total population, but it does reduce the rural population and let you have larger urban areas.
If you provide magical transportation (use those Combine Golems to pull massive wagons faster than oxen can) you increase the production radius, the overall land area, and the total population.
I might turn this into a spreadsheet for ease of use, if I get the chance later
Military personnel and all exports count as urban people. Every soldier you have in a "Keep on the Borderlands" sucks down supplies, as does every bushel of grain you sell to another city.
One other assumption I made is that while magic increased production per acre, it did not increase production per person. I.E. plant growth causes crops *AND* weeds to grow so it requires more manpower to control the weeds, keeping the manpower-bushel production the same.
Now if you add a few hundred Combine Golems you'll get more bushels per farmer. It doesn't change your total land area or total population, but it does reduce the rural population and let you have larger urban areas.
If you provide magical transportation (use those Combine Golems to pull massive wagons faster than oxen can) you increase the production radius, the overall land area, and the total population.
I might turn this into a spreadsheet for ease of use, if I get the chance later
This is why I have feel that the Renaissance period is more interesting – and thus more interesting to game in – than is the medieval period. There was simply more going on during the Renaissance in terms of general social dynamics. Pity there are so few RPG set in that time, as compared to the plethora set in a (poorly executed version of) the middle ages.
kigmatzomat
Hero
Size of hamlets & thorps will be based on reasonable distances and geography. Most farmers won't walk want to be more than 20-30 minutes from home at any time, meaning there's a 1-mile radius from housing. That's a default community size of 1 sq. mile, or 640 acres so it'll suport ~600 people, assuming fully arable land and ~40 acres lost to roads, housing, barns, etc.
Since most areas won't be 100% arable, I'd say the typical community size is closer to 300 or so. Likely 40% of the total populace live in these smaller communities. That's roughly half the rural population and is reasonable based on either 50% non-arable land or the populace being situated on scattered water supplies.
River vallies will likey make up the remaining 30% of the population, providing good soil, water, power for mills, and some travel. I'd also wager that valleys house the bulk of the cities as well.
By those assumptions, communities in highly arable regions (Kansasland) will only be an hour or so apart, while the more arid regions will be about a day apart.
When I get home to my DMG I'll extrapolate out what that means as far as magic availability.
Since most areas won't be 100% arable, I'd say the typical community size is closer to 300 or so. Likely 40% of the total populace live in these smaller communities. That's roughly half the rural population and is reasonable based on either 50% non-arable land or the populace being situated on scattered water supplies.
River vallies will likey make up the remaining 30% of the population, providing good soil, water, power for mills, and some travel. I'd also wager that valleys house the bulk of the cities as well.
By those assumptions, communities in highly arable regions (Kansasland) will only be an hour or so apart, while the more arid regions will be about a day apart.
When I get home to my DMG I'll extrapolate out what that means as far as magic availability.
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