Crime, One Way Portals, and the Middle of Nowhere
Man, I am so glad I posted this idea. I almost lost it too because my wife walked into the room and started going over the Discover bill before I wrote it down. Whew.
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Crime: Yes, crime always seems to make its way into society. The rational response would be to not bother controlling the portals too much, and making it cheap and easy for everyone and everything to go through. This would discourage crime by making it extremely easy and cheap to do things legally. Therefore, you don't lose out on the tolls.
Of course, even in this enlightened age we call the 21st century, goverments still have major problems with this. 20 years of utter failure with "The War on Drugs" has gotten the US nowhere, but we keep plugging away.
I imagine that a crime syndicate in a Poral Empire would have its own secret portals and mages who could teleport to move illicit goods around. Going overland would be way too slow. Especially if the city they wanted to smuggle the goods to was on Rigel III, in the Gamma Quadrant
I can see "underworld" races, such as the magic-savvy Illithids, being interested in certain types of crime. The slave trade comes to mind.
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One Way Portals
I am not sure I would personnally use this set-up, although there are definately aspects of it I really like. What I like the most about it is the new twists of politics and coercion that I never imagined when I first posted the thread.
Hmmm ... I suppose I could add that the attempted black-mail and control of distant cities by controlling their water/ food/ oil supplies would lead to a drastic increase in crime and civic unrest. The more you try to control the people underneath you, the more they squirm and make life difficult. I'm not saying it wouldn't work (for a while), just something to think about.
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The Spaces Between Cities
I imagine that the lands that are not part of Portal Network are several things.
1) Poorer. I don't care what any of the rest of you say. The economies of scale and the trade/ mercantile benefits a portal network would grant to an empire would be engines of enormous wealth. All other things being equal the cities that had unfettered access to the portals would be immensely more wealthy than cities without such access. The economics of the situation are clear.
2) Envious or Contemptous. I don't think its fair to make broad assumptions, but the fact that your neighbors to the south have access to the goods and services of a dozen worlds would have an effect on you. You might envy them and their privaleges, or you might be contemptuous of them for some perceived weakness. There are other responses too of course. Some societies might even have the self assurance to just not care.
3) Less Insular. The cities of the portal network would be, by definition, less interested in the world outside their walls, than the world inside. The source of all wealth and power comes from "inside" (in the sense that the portals are at the center of the city) not outside. The lands in between would be more aware of their neighbors, and probably more involved. This situation could change if the "outside world" forced itself into the spotlight on teh Teleportal Empire, say with regular barbarian incursions on one of the cities, or some other outrageous display of wealth/ power.
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Economics (What I live for)
A basic one-way portal, continously active with 10' radious, has a base cost of 50K GP. A basic two-way portal, continuosly active with 10' radius, costs 75K GP. Both are plus 1/25th XP cost, of course.
- FRCS, p. 61, Building a Portal
By the way, I never figure beyond the base cost. The base
price is whatever the market will bear. It could be less than the base cost is some cases, and the crafting Wizard might have to sell at a loss. This happens sometimes.
The rules continue to state that a Huge sized creature can fit through a Portal of this size. Also, the portal does not have to be circular. It could be any shape with a surface area of up to 300 sq. ft. I imagine that a very efficient portal would be 20’ wide and 15’ high. This would allow some darn big wagons through. Of course, an area that used Hill Giants as porters might opt for 10’ wide and 30’ high portal. Whatever works best of course. Lets stick to wagons for this example though, just to keep things simple.
This portal is continuously active and does not need time to recharge. As fast as you can get people to walk through it, they’re on the other side. So, lets look at some prices to figure out what tolls you can get away with charging.
Teamster: 15 SP/ day (by the way, if you don’t multiply all wages on pg. 149 in the DMG by 5, the people you are paying would starve to death. Just ask KarinsDad.)
Wagon: 35 GP. Movement Rate: 20’ About 2 SP/ day in maintenance and feeding the horses. A wagon can cover 16 miles/ day.
With costs close to 2 GP/ day/ wagon in a caravan, you can see that a Portal Toll of only 2 GP/ wagon would save the merchants a huge amount of money for a caravan (and those costs assume that you don’t lose the whole thing to bandits half-way to your destination). You could probably charge as much as 5 GP/ wagon as still have happy merchant. Lets say 3 GP/ wagon.
At 3 GP/ wagon, 25,000 wagons would pay for the a two-way portal. Too many you say? Well, if only 13 wagons went through your portal every day, the portal would be completely paid off in 5 years. After that, you’re making free money, hand over fist. Just 12 wagons/ day would net 13,140 GP/ year for no additional work. And what size city do you need to attract just 12 wagons worth of goods/ day? 20,000? 30,000? Now you see. And you wondered how high level Wizards paid for those expensive spellbooks …
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Utrecht – I admit that in today’s real world, with the inter-connectedness of TV, radio and the internet, the world’s culture is slowly becoming more homogenous. That does not mean however, that I believe it will ever be truly homogenous (too many people, too may opinions) or stagnant.
“Homogenous” societies are never stagnant unless it is forced upon them by some controlling power that limits ideas and freedom of expression. Such a controlling power may arise in a Teleportal Empire, but the teleportals themselves are not it.
In fact, by allowing people to switch worlds, cultures and allegiances by stepping through a door, they would inherently weaken the power of despots to enforce stagnation. Look at the lengths that Soviet East Germany had to go through to prevent its own citizens from fleeing to West Germany. Imagine the East Germans had a teleportal. Imagine there were teleportals going across the U.S.-Mexican border. I think you can see that teleportals would be a source of empowerment for the expression of ideas, not for the repression of them.
Of course, imagine there were teleportals leading directly from Baghdad to Tel Aviv, or from Kabul to New York. They are dangerous as well as wonderful.
Irda Ranger
