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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 4291115" data-attributes="member: 30001">Yea, a prosperous city I suppose doesn't rule out a poor under-class.  What this says about the average country peasant I'm not too sure though.  The books I've mentioned already break down the living standards and describe, at least in a general way, what the archaeological and documentary evidence is for these notions.  As I said, spot checking a few lists of peasant possessions, average number of livestock of each kind owned, etc. might help one to come up with average values for commoners wealth.  Well, "believe" is strong language.  In any case, there are two sides to this argument, and at least one of those sides thinks it has the archaeology and documents to back up it's picture of life.  IMO, all I need to do, for purposes of DnD, is to suggest that a model of economic life, the one described as "quaintly romantic" is at least plausible.  I have no reason to take a side in this, or convince myself that the other is wrong.I don't always comment on issues that I think wouldn't be enlightening.  The onus is on the OP to make sense out of what I said if he wishes, it's his question, not mine.  In this case, I'm not sure what "gruel" means other than a grain-based meal.  You're not considering the role that cheese and legumes would play in the diet.  I believe one would only have to consult documents that record agreements between lords and hired labor to find the allowances of meat at harvest time.  In fact, I recall anecdotes of lords complaining, after the Black Death tilted things in favor of laborers, that laborers would insist that their payment be in the form of cash rather than meat.  In any case, we're not talking about eating meat during religious feast days only.  Ok, I suppose we can agree to disagree - and I also have nothing to suggest beyond what's plausible, so if you want to argue with other experts on the subject that's cool.  There are several reasons I have to be skeptical of the nearly all-grain diet - one is that I don't think it's biologically plausible.  The other is that it doesn't really seem to be supported by the rates of livestock ownership that I've seen.  Call that data "romantic" if you want, but something tells me that those numbers came from something other than people's imaginations.  And the consider the Domesday book (a little early for the period) and other documents provide a substantial amount of demographic information, as far as what typical land-ownership was, and so on.  Of course it doesn't answer all questions, but I have to wonder why accusations of "romanticism" would be levelled when the evidence would pretty plainly support one side or the other.I think I was responding to your claim that I was suggesting that a single thorpe would support a school of wizardry.Those are technical issues - I don't really think much about the difference of pegging a rabbit with a slingstone and catching him in a snare.  I call it "hunting" for the purposes of what I was saying.Well, a longbow was not a noble's weapon IIRC.  But true, if you assume the hugely inflated costs for a longbow in the DnD rules then it's not going to be a weapon of commoners IMO either.Well, the basic question that would answer whether or not I'm "overly focused" on a 20-acre owning commoner is how many of them there were relative to the population.  The simple demographic statistics would relieve us of having to go back and forth about generalities.Well, as best as I can follow what you're saying here, we don't have an issue.  It seems a little paradoxical that a sparsely settled area would be relatively peaceful, especially in a DnD type world where the wilderness areas tend to be the abode of monsters.  It seems equally paradoxical that poverty as a result of overpopulation would exist in a sparsely settled place.  Otherwise, I would agree that the natural surplus of the area you describe would not support something like a wizard's school.I'm not saying anything for or against "taxes".  That depends on the governing structure you're imagining.  The band of rangers may owe the king military service for 40 days a year in return for being granted the manor-holdings represented by the 2000 peasants.  The king has his own demense for income, and whether or not a poll-tax, market taxes, or some other thing gives the king extra revenue I guess depends on the campaign.  IMO, crunching the numbers on how many people a 10-mile radius area supports speaks for itself - the numbers I used were extremely conservative.I would assert that only the poorest of the peasants makes 1 sp/day, and that those peasants make up no more than 20% of the rural population.  Granted, I have not proven that assertion but that's the context in which I am operating.  Again, statistics on the actual demographics would settle the issue.Your statement following the "likewise" part of the sentence does not match the premise AFAICT.  In any case, I think your doubts are well-founded.Not making sense out of something is subtly different from a statement not making sense.  I'll try to describe the ideas more completely.First - no I don't dispute that centralized patrols would not form the basis of protection for an area.  I refer you to earlier posts where I said that (I think).  But I've already described that given sufficient population densities, protective fortifications would exist within close reach.  The viking example that you give IMO is a very specialized case of probably the most lop-sided technological advantage that "bandits" had in the period.  If, for example, evil PCs have invisibility and teleport and none of the defenders had counter-measures, then things could go badly.  The effectiveness with which local forces will be able to respond to PC depredations will depend on factors that I don't know.  The various other things that we've discussed, like whether or not a thorpe's worth of people can dig a ditch around their homes, doesn't really speak to whether that ditch will be an effective defense against the particular technologies of their enemies.I don't think it would be troubling to define the core parameters that would take this out of the realm of vague generalization and into that of some hard and fast statistics.I'm not suggesting anyone is being cruel.  Many of the monsters may have a personality, like brownies or other chaotic fey, where they would not necessarily journey to the hot-spots of the good vs. evil conflict, but instead be content to watch over the locals in return for food offerings or whatever.  (Yes, something besides gruel. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />)  If, as the DM, you want to make this a problem for PCs, then I think it's understandable that you keep this sort of NPC help to a minimum, but this is gamist, and not simulationist, thinking.</blockquote>

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