Castles of Crystal, Wars of Genocide!

[seasong]

Hm. Some additional points:

In a world where the ground is more fertile, yielding a 1:5 urban:rural ratio, the number of people required in the fields is not increased "proportional to the yield". Neither should it be here. At worst, there might need to be another 10% of the population devoted to supporting farmers who no longer have as much free time to devote to whittling, cloth making and similar tasks, which would reduce the city from 65,000 to 51,500.

And I could have said the stuff about the DMG's demographics better - the demographics in the DMG, quite simply, conflict with the rules in the DMG. And where there is conflict, I have gone with the rules (CR, spell casting, etc.) over the demographics.

 

[jgbrowning]

Ironically i'm doing the tables for kingdom generation in my upcoming book right now so i dont have as much time as you deserve for answers.

1. If everyone levels as you say, statistically there are huge amounts of "challanges" being overcome. In civilized environments the marjority of these encounters will be person to person. if one person "wins" enough encounters to level up at the rate your suggesting, where are all the people who "lost"?

Regarding plant growth: Actually, most of the labor is per square foot, regardless of the amount of grain produced. If it is growing a third faster, that is more likely to mean one extra growing season than a particularly large growing season.

Plant growth only raises potential productivity. Not speed, so you're not growing more an extra crop a year, your just having bigger crops. like our genetically engineered products do now. Also note that plant growth doen's insure a good harvest, it merely increases potential.

He're an example from our manor generation system... *plug, plug*

Cotton: Though cotton is not a traditional plant grown in medieval Europe, it is used in cloth at the time. Cotton is very labor intensive at planting and harvest time, requiring ten persons per acre for cotton. Cotton also strips the land of minerals and nutrients, so continual cotton harvests can deaden the land, even with spells like plant growth, which only increases the yield 33%.

*** End plug.

a medieval ratio of 1:8 on grain return (ie. 1 part seed grain to get back 8 parts end grain) would increase under plant growth to 1:10.6ish. Also, anything that would interrupt the food supply becomes even more deadly, as there are more people dependant upon the same number of acres. Suddenly if a 5 mile radius crop goes bad, there's more grain involved.

Druids will also cast diminish plants.

i love talking about this, but i really really have to work...

joe b.

 

[seasong]

First, thanks for hashing this out with me. Your points on cotton have already started some new gears turning .

1. If everyone levels as you say, statistically there are huge amounts of "challanges" being overcome. In civilized environments the marjority of these encounters will be person to person. if one person "wins" enough encounters to level up at the rate your suggesting, where are all the people who "lost"?

Actually, if you'll check my comments prior, this was specifically designed with the intent of being able to scale back the encounter rate. Truly civilized regions (a rarity in a setting where mind flayers and vampires and dopplegangers and wererats and sewer goblins and ... may conceal themselves among the human populace) will simply be lower level overall. My base assumptions, however, were that there was approximately as much wilderness as there was in medieval Europe... which is to say roughly 2/3rds of the land in any given area.

And wilderness in D&D is dangerous. So no, I don't think that "person to person" is at all necessary. In an environment where you want that (a drow city, perhaps?), the death rate (and advancement rate) will be correspondingly higher.

Plant growth only raises potential productivity. Not speed, so you're not growing more an extra crop a year, your just having bigger crops. like our genetically engineered products do now. Also note that plant growth doen's insure a good harvest, it merely increases potential.

First, potential vs harvest: +1/3rd potential is the same, statistically, as +1/3rd results. The numbers I'm throwing out are averages - a plague will wipe out crops and starve a city, and an unachieved potential will also. Since the 1:10 urban ratio is based on potential only, so is the 3:10 ratio.

As for the rest, I don't think we're going to be able to agree on this. Especially since you were the one that said the plants were "growing faster" .

I will just assert again (weak, I know) that labor is by the square foot, not by the number of grains. This is not entirely true, because the effort expended does go up somewhat with a better crop, but not significantly enough to need more people.

Cotton: This is an obvious exception to what I state above. Thanks for bringing it up! Another exception is cattle, which is unaffected by plant growth. Legumes, on the other hand, would have no extra effort involved in their harvesting... and a more bountiful crop of legumes would improve all grain and vegetable crops by an additional amount, as the legumes would restore the land that much faster. My gut says they will balance out, but I'll see if I can find a good resource of hard numbers on each.

a medieval ratio of 1:8 on grain return (ie. 1 part seed grain to get back 8 parts end grain) would increase under plant growth to 1:10.6ish. Also, anything that would interrupt the food supply becomes even more deadly, as there are more people dependant upon the same number of acres. Suddenly if a 5 mile radius crop goes bad, there's more grain involved.

Interestingly enough, this is the same problem we face in the modern world, or would if we didn't have more farm land than we can actually use, and an insanely high worker:land ratio.

Here's a creepy thought: why not use animated skeletons to till the land?

 

[jgbrowning]

As for the rest, I don't think we're going to be able to agree on this. Especially since you were the one that said the plants were "growing faster" .

By faster i ment, "The forest has come back faster from the fire than i thought it would." IE. the total growth speed is greater, but each plant is growing at their normal rate because there are more plants. I should've been more specific. Technically the growth would be faster, but only because it would take the same amount of time to reach a return that's 33% more. I hope that's clear, i tend to ramble sometimes.

I will just assert again (weak, I know) that labor is by the square foot, not by the number of grains. This is not entirely true, because the effort expended does go up somewhat with a better crop, but not significantly enough to need more people.

go here http://www.exp.citymax.com and click on products and then labor calendar to see just how busy the peasants already are.. **its my proto-site** ** i haven't included OGL documentation so please don't distribute, when we go live, i'll be as 100% legal as i can**

I think the "more return" idea's a bit better than the "more harvests" because you spend the same amount of seed grain and you don't deplete the soil nearly as much another harvest would.

Cotton: This is an obvious exception to what I state above. Thanks for bringing it up! Another exception is cattle, which is unaffected by plant growth.

cattle would be affected. cattle feed off the stubble of the fields after harvest and the mowed grass. Here again, if you add another harvest, you've depleted the traditional source of cattle food. perhaps the difference would be made up with the greater return, but it could very well become an issue of timing.

Legumes, on the other hand, would have no extra effort involved in their harvesting... and a more bountiful crop of legumes would improve all grain and vegetable crops by an additional amount, as the legumes would restore the land that much faster.

There will always be more labor with more food. It takes more people to just move the more food than it takes to move the normal amount of food. You'll need more people to weed, cut, more space to dry... etc.

Again, if you have an extra harvest, you'll have greater % of work increase than you would if you simply have a better havest.

Here's a creepy thought: why not use animated skeletons to till the land?

Hehehe.. all bets are off if you want to use magical slave labor. I'd have to have a completely different model. It would be far from medieval.

joe b.

 

[Azure Trance]

Hey JGB, whens your book due for release?

Also, Skeletons in the field with a Sickle ... hmm ... are there any other magical creations which could subsitute for slave-labor work? Massive, threshing, golems, frex?

 

[jgbrowning]

Hey JGB, whens your book due for release?

Also, Skeletons in the field with a Sickle ... hmm ... are there any other magical creations which could subsitute for slave-labor work? Massive, threshing, golems, frex?

I'm laying out the tables right now and we plan on having it printed and available for on-line purchase by march. We haven't got a distributor lined up yet (this is my first book, im pretty much 100% certain im not doing this the right way) but when i have some flash copies of the book i'll contact distribs and i think we shouldn't have any problem getting distribution. I think there's a big market out there for world creation information.

If you wanted to go big magic, by all means do the "magical combine" with the "magically engineered" seed. There's so much potential in DnD that's never really been addressed. Our book doesn't address it either (we're trying to put out something thats pretty much compatable with the core rules) though i've toyed with the idea of putting out a high fantasy type book..

joe b.

 

[seasong]

Also, Skeletons in the field with a Sickle ... hmm ... are there any other magical creations which could subsitute for slave-labor work? Massive, threshing, golems, frex?

The only problem with golems is how expensive they are. An acre would likely translate to about 100 GP. My (very rough) number crunching indicate that there should be about 12 acres per person, but hopefully jgbrowning can give a more accurate number on that.

Regardless, if you assume a golem can work faster than a person due to its strength (hauling supersized plows, for example), and is worth about 10 people, it still costs 50,000+ GP to make, plus XP costs and whatever markup the wizard making it for you charges. If we assume 120 acres that it will work, the cost of the land is about 12,000 GP... and you don't save much in labor costs.

Especially since the golems would require constant supervision over the course of a year... skeletons are just cheaper (and don't have the rotting flesh problem of zombies).

jgbrowning: Cool stuff! Looks like a book on my to-buy list . I'm going to go have a think about the labor cycle now.

 

[jgbrowning]

The only problem with golems is how expensive they are. An acre would likely translate to about 100 GP. My (very rough) number crunching indicate that there should be about 12 acres per person, but hopefully jgbrowning can give a more accurate number on that.

At harvest 4 people are required per acre, just to cut, gather, bind, sheath and move the grain into the barn. After its in the barn, people have to winnow and thresh and store. This part is less labor intensive and doesn't have such a tight "window of opportunity" as to when the labor has to be performed.

Generally, populations are based upon 2 adults per cultivated acre.

jgbrowning: Cool stuff! Looks like a book on my to-buy list . I'm going to go have a think about the labor cycle now.

hehe, thanks! i think there are a lot of people who will find this book useful.

joe b.

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

CrusaderDave Wrote:
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SHARK, I'd love to know what techniques you use to keep your Epic Level characters from knowing everything and being everywhere at once?
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Well, I use many different kinds of magical energy throughout the world for example that interfere with the use of travel magic as well as divination magics. This makes a large check on players going everywhere and knowing everything. In addition, the gods in my world will answer prayers and such as they see fit. Spells like Commune for example may not always work quite the way characters expect. The same thing goes for Wish spells.

Detect Evil, for example, only detects immediate evil intent, as in, if your character is sitting at a bar, and you use detect evil on a cloaked man sitting in the corner, the spell won’t detect anything, unless the man for example is planning at that time to knife and rob the bartender for example, within say the next few minutes or so. In that case, the spell would register as an evil aura.

Magical energies and boundaries affect even fly spells for example, as well as teleportation and so on. All of these things, may be restricted at various times, seasons, and places throughout the world.

Thus, and there are more, but I have assumed that the world affects and changes the way magic can work, and the result is that players cannot really know everything and be everywhere. The world is absolutely huge…it is bigger than you probably imagine!, and the way magic is affected by it is different.

Mmadsen Wrote:
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To reiterate, I think there are a few reasons why people might be apprehensive about epic-level play:
1. The rules break down at high levels. Actually, they don't seem to break down too badly, but older versions certainly did -- and people remember that.
2. They have no experience playing at epic levels. It takes a long time to get a party up to epic levels (if you don't skip past any levels), and the game definitely changes by the time you get there. People are apprehensive because Epic D&D is a different game they don't quite know how to play.
3. The campaign loses logical continuity. If the campaign wasn't designed from the get-go for epic levels, then its history stops making sense once we introduce epic elements. "Hey, where were all these 30th-level Wizards the last time the Chaos Lords attacked? Why were we saving the world?"
4. The consequences of epic magic (or even high-level magic) are impossible to predict. The more magical the game becomes, the harder it is to understand anything. Ask Aristotle what the world would look like with nuclear weapons and networked computers. Right, he'd have no frickin' clue.
5. How do you stock a dungeon for four 30th-level guys?
That's a start.
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End Quote.

(1) People have to change their thinking; Indeed, as long as the refuse to consciously change their paradigm, then they will be frustrated in trying to get an epic level campaign off the ground.

(2) I would say that it can help to intermix epic knowledge with the campaign from the very beginning, so that the fact that epic level characters existing isn't a problem. Also, expanding the entire scope of the world, the populations, and the access to magic will make epic level play flow more smoothly.

(3) The above also addresses this somewhat; but it is important for the Game Master to realise from the start of the campaign that epic level creatures and characters exist. Their existence doesn't present a consistency problem because the Game Master will be advised to expand the scale, population, and magic access to their world to such an extent, that there is always stuff going on, with many different levels involved. The epic leve characters for example aren't merely sitting around in the palace, but they are involved with desperate quests and vast campaigns of their own; next, it isn't advisable for the player characters to be "saving the world" and certainly not while at sub-epic levels. For example, instead of them encountering the Lich Lord, and thus wondering why higher level characters haven't dealt with them, they could encounter lower ranking liches that are a serious threat, but still less than the lich lord. In addition, if there are greater numbers and expectations, it doesn't matter, because epic level characters in any event, can't literally be everywhere. The world, and the forces of evil are simply much more than any one handful of characters can effectively, conssitently deal with.

(4) Epic Level Magic: I believe that it is very important that the Game Master spends some considerable time in thinking about precisely how magic affects the world, how magic is accessed, and how users of magic fine tune and apply magic throughout their lives and their society.

(5) How do you stock a dungeon for four 30th level characters?

This can be done effectively, though the Game Master has to spend some time designing it carefully, with thought to consistency and an eye towards the capabilities of the dungeon's designer. Challenges can relatively easily be made for such an environment, based on numerous factors; Is the dungeon an occupied, fortified dungeon? Or is it a wilderness, random-occupied dungeon? Such assumptions will determine what kinds of forces and creatures that would likely occupy the dungeon. In addition, of course, some of the dungeon would be considerably lower level compared to the characters, and would thus be hammered. The characters have to have some glory, after all! However, the portions of creatures that are at the character's level or higher, will certainly be very deadly, powerful, and highly coordinated. Such occupying forces will be very challenging for a party of four 30th level characters.

Of course, the Game Master has to design the world to have a rich and detailed background and social and political environment so that there will be a rich, believable context in which the players--the four 30th level characters--would have in order to be properly and realistically motivated to be in such a situation.

JBrowning Wrote:
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Quote:

I"m also interested how shark protects the massive grain fields that are needed to support such numbers. Small tactical unit hits on grain producting areas could easily lead to mass starvation, (if not of the soldiery because of their access to magic, but of the peasantry). Perhaps magic food production is very common.
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The lands have vast herds of animals to eat; the seas and rivers are full of creatures; Agriculture is not only highly sophisticated, but thoroughly augmented by the application of magic; magic is applied to the weather, the soil, the water, the animals, plants, and so on.

There are new and different kinds of plants, trees, crops, and animals. Combinining this with many other aspects of magic as applied to food production, creation, preservation, enhancement, and storage, the populations often have plentiful and diverse amounts of food and other such nececcities.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Well, what do you think?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK