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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 974930" data-attributes="member: 5724">Rural Blacksmiths often worked throughout the year for individuals and then paid a set amount of yearly money (or more often in food supplies).Urban blacksmiths often had "relationships" with their customers that were more than a "pay by piece" situation. Getting a medievalesque blacksmith to take a vacation is basicaly asking him to reneg upon his social obligations. You're asking him to act improperly in his social environment.Smithing was also a process that was done with a lot of a sense of "magic." Rituals were performed that had nothing to do with the actual forging processes because they didn't have modern chemistry to understand what was really necessary to the process.And as any craftsman will tell you, asking another man if you can use his tools is a touchy situation.You may be able to overcome all of these obsticals will a lot of gold, but then you've done several things to the social fabric of the community.1. You've created strife. The PC is now disliked by the individuals who were relying on the blacksmith, even if just for sharpening their knifes.2. You've demonstrated a lack of caring to the populace at the same time when showing them you've a lot of gold. In an urban environment this can have unforseen circumstances.  More than likely the PCs are "outsiders" to the city. What are the PC's going to do if the city council catches wind of this and decides to tax them a new tax for the "surreptitious rental"?  Or the blacksmith guild gets a bit peeved because they now "own" a forge and they're not members.Things are very socially complex and the PCs are usually not in the "inside", but are rather "outsiders."  That's dangerous ground to tread when you start ticken off the locals.It would be so much simplier socially to simply hire the blacksmith. <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=":)" />  And if they do it right they can, instead of antagonizing the populace, create a positive place for themselves.joe b.</blockquote>

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