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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greenfield" data-source="post: 5888963" data-attributes="member: 6669384">RE: The government.Our game is set in an era based on Europe, circa 500 a.d., give or take a few decades.  The fall of Rome.Feudalism, as such, hasn't evolved yet, or is just starting to take shape.  Now since we have eight players, and hence 8 DMs (round-robin gaming style), the exact rules vary from one part of the world to another.  Which kind of makes sense.As for your numbers, I have to admit that I'm confused.  Blame it on working the last month without a day off (and some of those were 14 hour days), or maybe I'm just being thick.  When I read your posts, my eyes start to glaze over.  (Not a condemnation of you or your posts, just me being brain-dead tired and overworked.)It seems to me that you're supporting my argument that spell would be affordable and justifiable for at least some of the farmers.  I suggested 40 acre farms, you said 10, maybe 20.  That, as I noted, drops the per-farm share of the spell proportionally, in essence an argument *for* the affordability of the spell.  Was that the direction you were trying to argue in?Now I think you're overstating the commonality of meat in the diet of the medieval farmer.  I also think you have an odd idea about the size of a farm family.  Two children?  Unless the wife died in childbirth the second time around, there's no reason for a farm family to be that small.  I also think that you and I are using different meanings for the phrase "subsistence farming".(To me, a "subsistence" farm raises enough to feed the people living on it, with little to spare.  What excess there is is reserved for barter, for the things they can't make themselves.  Any and all harvest surplus is stored way to get through the winter.)By that definition, the subsistence farm pays little or no actual cash, it just supports itself and pretty much nothing more.  Adding 33% to that cash surplus is like doubling the pay of your volunteer help.  It's a meaningless gesture.Now, is the D&D economy broken?  Only when you start including the presence of magic, and adventurers.  And since both of those things are part of the equation, the answer overall is "yes, the economy is broken."Teleport, Shadow Walk, Wind Walk, Teleport Circle and all of the other fast-transport spells would facilitate trade on a scale unseen before the introduction of commercial air travel.  Shrink Item, and items like Portable Holes and Bags of Holding increase the cargo capacity of a pedestrian beyond that of a freight wagon, or even a cargo ship.  And with the afore-mentioned fast-transport spells reducing or eliminating transit delays and loss in shipment, the overland trade routes to exotic places would become meaningless, and profits would be limited only by the amount of competition.Cargo ships to China suffered losses of over 30% due to damage or spoilage in transit, without even counting ships lost to storm or piracy.  The trip between Italy and China took years overland, and could take over a year by sea.  What happens what that trade cycle can turn over several times a day?  With no spoilage, no transit loss, no damage at all?And the same thing happens on the shorter routes as well, so Phoenician dyes are as available in Norway as English cheeses are.How would the economy of such a world be in any way recognizable as "medieval"?  And with no way to close a border or tax the trade, what would government look like?And we haven't even begun to look at crafting magic like Stone Shape, Wall of Stone, or Fabricate.Though we like to pretend that we can compare historical views of economic models to the game world, there's no way they're maintainable.  The "real" economy of the feudal period was based largely on what was essentially slave labor:  The serf population.  While the serfs couldn't be sold, per se, they "belonged" with the land they worked, and if the land changed hands, so did the people.The middle class of merchants and craftspeople didn't exist.  Oh, there were merchants and craftspeople, it's the social class that wasn't there.  They were purely commoners with no influence or power.  If a nobleman wanted something they had, he simply took it, and if they argued they could be flogged, imprisoned, tortured, maimed or killed on his orders.  Prior to the Magna Carta, (1215 a.d. ) the same thing could happen to any nobleman who displeased the King.Russia was one of the last holdouts on this tradition, by the way, ending its serfdom system in the 1860s, at about the same time the US was fighting to end it's own slave system.  And it was an economic shock to Russia at the time as well.  The Czar was inspired to order it by the American Civil War, in fact.So in the time we're emulating in our games, adventurers would be exceptional people by any standards, in that they would be considered either runaway serfs who go away with it, or were free-born, a rare class of people.</blockquote>

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