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Message: <blockquote data-quote="taliesin15" data-source="post: 4290756" data-attributes="member: 22058">gizmo writes:Not "all gruel" but mostly gruel seemed to be the norm. In England, the norm seems to be a lot of beer soup. One of several books I have read that talks about gruel to illustrate how poor most Commoners were is an economic study of the Arsenal in Venice, focussed not just on their shipbuilding efforts, but that entire neighborhood. That's a really good point. Simply more evidence of the system being skewed both ways.Quote:Originally Posted by taliesin15But for the most part, even in prosperous city states like Venice, most of the Commoners were so poor that they had to subsist on *gruel*.   Considering that what I've read backs this guy's assertions up pretty well, and I consider him more of an expert (considering citations, footnotes, other well-documented research) than I am, I'm pretty certain. "Shipbuilders of the Venetian arsenal : workers and workplace in the preindustrial city,"1991, Davis, Robert C. (Robert Charles), 1948-Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, c1991.I have seen several scholars openly mock as "quaintly romantic" the notion that you seem to believe, that most common people, especially those in larger urban areas, didn't live in abject poverty and squalor. As far as I'm concerned, the onus is more on you to prove that most Commoners lived on better than fare such as gruel and beer soup. I notice, for example, you don't dispute the assertion that most Commoners only had meat on a few particular religious feast days.BTW, its not like this is only generally true of the "Middle Ages." I'm reading a book on Hellenistic Greece right now, James Davidson's brilliant Courtesans and Fishcakes, which supports these assertions. Most Commoners at best could only afford, if they wanted meat, the smallest sprats and suchlike, and even these they purchased at a dear price considering their poverty. Also, like the medieval peasants, they did get to indulge in meat on a handful of religious feast days. Wait a minute, where on earth did you come up with that? What I'm talking about is a reflection of Medieval Western Europe, where most of the population lives in small urban settings such as thorps, hamlets, villages and so on. Not just thorps. Not sure where you get that idea. This website is a handy one for designing such a kingdom: <a href="http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/" target="_blank">http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/</a>NPC bandits. Certainly, many people in rural settings would hunt, that's natural enough, and even more common than that is fishing and trapping. So funny to me people never mention trapping for game and furs.However, if these are 1st lvl Commoners without very much gear, what would they hunt with? Maybe they could make their own rickety bows, but could they afford 75 gp for a Long Bow? If they could, wouldn't it be easier to just raise chickens?I think part of the problem is you are overly focussed on the more well-to-do type of Commoner, the one with the relative luxury of a 20-acre farm, many kinds of animals and produce they sell and eat from, for whom a Long Bow is not an unthinkable luxury.As I said earlier, many (probably about half) of these small settlements would indeed be close to fortified locations, and not primarily for defensive reasons (save in the one dangerous part of the Kingdom), but mainly for economic reasons. So, we're not really talking about those.The problem is there's thousands of small settlements scattered over a vast area. Most of it is relatively peaceful. The closest known Orc/Goblin, etc. tribe, is hundreds of miles away past the mountains to the north, the known passes of which are guarded. FWIW, the Kingdom does have a few things already like what you describe, such as a Wizard's School, a Cleric School, and suchlike, but what I'm talking about is there's so many small settlements so spread out you can't have patrols, etc. close enough to guard them all. The best defense is the weapon in the hands of a strong man or woman.So you're saying that a) the King isn't going to mind that all the taxes he would get should be kept by the Commoners to defend themselves how they would and b) there's no system in place of a local constabulary?The DMG already covers this scheme as I'm suggesting--taxes for the Monarch (or whatever government is in place) and money to fund the local gov't which probably is mainly for the sheriff, local guards, defense, upkeep of local roads, and the like.I was assuming the Commoners would already be paying something along these lines. Not all that much surplus from 91% of the populace making 1 sp/day.No, actually, my goal was to point out how wrong-headedthe "NPC Gear Value" table is, especially in tandem with the GP limit/urban setting. Some kind of thought as to the stratification of the Economic Classes I think would be helpful to the game, and is one reason I refer to the 1st edition of the DMG, as limited as it is to this topic (still better than other versions on this).Forgive me if I seem rude; likewise, I doubt you meant to come across as rude when you suggested that I read books on the topic. Anyhow, I raise the topic of spread out small communities being side-stepped because you continue to come up with defensive arrangements for them that don't make any sense. Do you dispute the notion that in any Medieval-esque setting you're going to have numerous small settlements too far away from patrols etc. to be thus protected? Maybe I've read too many recently published works on the Viking raids and the like...this is partially why I find it fitting. Even more irksome and tiresome is that there's all too little famine, diseases like the plague, slavery, press gangs, prostitution, torture, and other kinds of ugliness in D&D settings, yet were so endemic to the Age it is supposedly based on.  I find it troubling we have to define terms considering how prevalent such settlements were in the world, but, hey, let's say more than an hour's horseback ride at top speed.A few hours ride, sure, I would say most of the "relatively isolated" settlements would be something like that. Even though there were garrisons in towns like Ipswich and Colchester didn't stop the Vikings from suddenly showing up in their swift longships on England's eastern coast, take what they wanted, burn the rest, then leave. Or, according to Francis Pryor, in many cases, simply take and arm the small settlements, later on sending for their women and relatives.There certainly are some high level benevolent monsters in the general area, but I should say most of these have their eyes elsewhere, say, on high level intelligent monsters and NPCs in the area as well. They aren't being cruel by neglecting the myriad tiny settlements, as much as doing a greater good by looking out for the greater evil. FWIW, when the PCs (who are of Good alignment) come to this area, one of these high lvl Good monsters is going to suggest the PCs look into these mysterious Thorp raids. The King thinks its the Slavers doing this, and in fact, the Evil party of NPCs is using that as their cover.</blockquote>

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