A world with no roads, no doors, and no boats

[Wolfen Priest]

Re: Crime, One Way Portals, and the Middle of Nowhere

First of all, excellent thread. Couple things:

(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.)

I agree with this completely, of course. But it seems to indicate you're forgetting one thing in your (very sound!) economical analysis: security.

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 …

I don't recall how much money a typical guard is paid, but assuming you'll need some heavy hitters to guard such an expensive device, and assuming you are going with the more realistic payment of 5x what it says in the DMG, then you might be barely breaking even in a bad economy.

I'm not saying you're wrong, in fact I completely agree that in a world where such things could exist, they would. But there would be some degree of risk. And I think it would mostly come from the daily expenses.

 

[Wolfen Priest]

Adressing the issue of homogenization, think of it this way.

Before we lived in a 'global' community, even before there were well-established shipping routes across the globe, each society would be considered very homogenized. Examples include northern Russia, China, India, even the Americas. In each of these societies, people looked similar, practiced similar (not identical) custums, dressed similarly, etc. etc.

Once things got 'opened up' (although they open more and more every day) all our societies began to merge; BUT, there is far more diversity in each culture NOW than there was before. So it would be with this "World Without Roads." Societies would merge together, but I don't think they would be any more homogenized than any other society (including our own historic Earth society), which has been cultivated by strictures in geography and space, rather than teleportals.

Also, there is always going to be a 'frontier' of some sort, (even in the case of this society), some outland community which for whatever reason has not managed to get inside the teleportal 'loop.' So there would always be new cultures joining to the 'global' culture, and changing it.

In essence, such a Teep world would be no more homogenized than our own.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Just wanted you guys to know that I am following the thread, but don't have time for a good long post. After howling at the moon and banging my head angainst the walls, my free time is spent studying for the LSAT's (which are this Saturday). Wish me luck, and see you Sunday.

Irda Ranger

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Dire Fiendish LSATs?!?! How dya summon those?

Good luck, Irda!!!

 

[Wolfen Priest]

Yes, good luck. <bump>

 

[Chrisling]

And here I thought Irda was a <i>serious gamer</i>, and now I learn he's letting something as trifling as the <I>LSATs</i> get in the way of a game discussion!

Seriously, good luck. The test could be called Hobbsian, save I hear it is not short.

 

[Chrisling]

About that Dwarvish T-Circle Thing

So, uh, two groups of people get that Teleport Domain. Dwarves and <i>giants</i>. Somehow I don't think I'd be worrying about a couple of short guys reclaiming their ancient citadels. ;p

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

eeee!

Somehow I was worried about Giants who could cast ninth level spells long before we began to discuss the possibilities of Teep circles.