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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wrecan" data-source="post: 5637374" data-attributes="member: 64825">No, it doesn't.  All it means is that the PCs have the means to obtain the specific item they seek to commission with the loot they made.  It does not require -- and this edition does not suggest -- an industry dedicated to equipping adventurers.So you are suggesting that because Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dragonlance, and other fantasy settings don't mention stonemasons, that means that the setting assumes edifice-making minstrels?!  It doesn't occur to you that the fantasy world resembles our own except in those ways specifically mentioned?  (Which of course, takes care of your canard about the Roman Catholic Church, as each of the aforementioned fantasy worlds specifically sets forth what churches exist in those worlds.)From a world-building perspective, the issues of eliminating the entire construction industry are huge.  At a minimum, players should be told that their character histories shouldn't include quarries or stonemasons because those professions don't exist.  No adventurers born of quarrymen or stoneworkers.  Second of all, this completely affects the construction of keeps and fortifications, which can be very relevant to many plots.  The 3rd edition Stronghold Builder's Guide, for example, which is set in the default world of Greyhawk, gives completely inaccurate charts for the construction of castles and doesn't even mention the cost and time requirements for building castles using a minstrel.  So this not-so-big issue has now caused an entire supplement to be rendered obsolete.I guess that's why feudal societies never introduced new technology... oh, wait.  They totally did introduce new technology.  Again, you've proposed that Henry Ford should have been afraid of assassins from the buggy whip guild.  Or, more medievalesque, that the guy who invented (or, technically, rediscovered the Roman technology for) the treadwheel crane (a technology introduced during the medieval age that dramatically reduced the time and manpower needed to construct castles) was not killed by the masons who were put out of work by its introduction.Lords are not going to eschew the technology that allows them to build strategically important fortifications and castles (not to mention palaces) at 100 times the rate of manual labor, which eliminates the horrific death rates associated with large construction, and which doesn't require taking hundreds of people away from their homes for months on end, just because a craft guild is rendered obsolete.  In fact, I know that to be so, because that's how it actually worked in medieval Europe with the treadwheel crane, even though it wasn't a capitalist society.  And the treadwheel crane wasn't nearly as strategically valuable as a lyre of building would be.Once one lord does it, they all have to do it, or else they will fall behind technologically, and be overrun.  That's exactly why cannon spread as quickly as the technology was allowed.  And why the introduction of the treadwheel crane in the 13th century led directly to the rapid proliferation of castles and keeps throughout Europe.  At best, the masonry guild will do the best they can to train their own people to be minstrels or to find a different profession.  I know of no historical instance in which craft guilds ever successfully prevented the introduction of labor-saving technology.  General Ludd was not a successful general.It isn't.  That's the anthropic principle at work.</blockquote>

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