Only the Lonely: Why We Demand Official Product

[Don Durito]

Don't forget all the creatures living below Waterdeep when you consider its census. Wererats in the sewers, vampires in the undercity, probably whole tribes of goblins, etc.

There's a campaign hook.
"We need you to go down into Skullport and Undermountain and bring back an accurate survey of the populace for tax purposes."
"Wait, just a census right, we're not collecting taxes then?"
"Not yet, you'll need to be higher level for that."

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

So why do people keep asking for GH to be "redone" for 5e? What are they actually asking for? Why do they need to pay again to read the same stories they've already read?

My guess? To complain about it.

 

[pemerton]

Put it this way if the French had a proper tax system they could have recreated the Roman Empire from Paris.

Mediaeval France could not have "recreated the Roman Empire". They didn't have the administrative technology. The best recent one-sentence description I've read recently of the French mediaeval system of government was along the following lines: feudalism is a system for allowing a peasant society to raise sufficient mounted troops to fight successfully against pastoralists.

It's completely different in social and governmental forms from the Roman Empire.

Protestant illegal (Catholic in the UK until 19th century).

Being Catholic in the UK was not illegal. Catholics were subject to various disabilities until the early 19th century.

 

[Zardnaar]

Mediaeval France could not have "recreated the Roman Empire". They didn't have the administrative technology. The best recent one-sentence description I've read recently of the French mediaeval system of government was along the following lines: feudalism is a system for allowing a peasant society to raise sufficient mounted troops to fight successfully against pastoralists.

It's completely different in social and governmental forms from the Roman Empire.

Being Catholic in the UK was not illegal. Catholics were subject to various disabilities until the early 19th century.

Tax/adminstration similar thing. The things keeping France in check was themselves and then matter coalitions. Geography in 3rd place maybe.

Catholics from memory ended up at around 1% of the UK population, there was no freedom of religion. Same in France except they also did it pre reformation.

Once France was unified and stable you had the Sun King. When they went Republic you had Napoleon.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Being Catholic in the UK was not illegal. Catholics were subject to various disabilities until the early 19th century.

It was illegal NOT to worship in the Church of England, which amounts to much the same thing.

 

[pemerton]

Catholics from memory ended up at around 1% of the UK population, there was no freedom of religion.

It was illegal NOT to worship in the Church of England, which amounts to much the same thing.

I was responding to the claim that it was illegal to be Catholic in the UK up until the 19th century. This isn't true. Nonconformists and Catholics were subject to various sorts of disabilities imposed by the Test Acts and similar, which meant that non-Anglicans couldn't hold various public offices or access universities. But they weren't criminals, and for most of the 17th and 18th centuries it wasn't criminal to take part in non-conforming church services.

Some of the details are in the Wikipedia entries on nonconformism and recusants.

In France the persecution of protestants was for the century from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes through almost to the Revolution. For a hundred years prior to its revocation the Edict of Nantes - part of the resolution of the Wars of Religion in France - provided for a degree of toleration of Protestants.

The discussion of the role of a particular approach to Catholic uniformity in creating the high mediaeval French state that I am familiar with is R I Moore's The War on Heresy, Some of the basic ideas of the book are set out in this essay on his website.

 

[Anoth]

Hmm. Is this a rational thing for a publisher of APs, though?

Anyway, if they do it, they should get Luke Crane and Robin Laws to write it!

I bet a book on short adventures and scenarios that can fit in anywhere would do well. Maybe not every time. But their has been numerous request for shorter adventures. I would like to see something that is somewhere bwtweeb yawning portals and the old book of lairs products. Little mini quests or scenarios that can be placed anywhere. Just my idea for a possibility that may work.

 

[Fenris-77]

I always thought it was a little weird to up the population to 2m without changing the map. The Manhattan comp is a good one, and Manhattan has skyscrapers. I don't know where Waterdeep would put 2 million people. It's one of those 'canon' facts I'll feel free not to use.

 

[Anoth]

Yeah. 2 million population waterdeep is an oversight on the part of the editors. That’s about all there is to say about that topic. But I’m sure we can drag that out for another 50 pages on this thread on a nothing issue that has nothing to do about playing the game

 

[pemerton]

I'll concede the Hammlet example, though as you say it is 2e.

The Village of Hommlet is not 2nd d AD&D. It's a Gygax module, T1, reproduced as part of T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil.

I wouldn't normally make a big deal of it, but there are some posts in this and the other thread about what is or isn't proper to Greyhawk that don't seem to be based in a deep familiarity with the published material.