Teleport Circle - Destroyer of Worlds
- Thread starter Lizard Lips
- Start date
jmucchiello
Hero
Why? You still have to bring the merchandize to the TPCircle. And you still have to take it from the destination circle to the buyer.s/LaSH said:
It took you until 9th level to find economy-wrecking (or altering) effects of magic? Especially when you start looking at constant or daily uses? A list off the top of my head: Expeditious Retreat, Create Food / Water, Discern Lies, Invisibility, Continual Flame, Gust of Wind, Wall of X, Private Sanctum, Tongues, Message, Magic Mouth, Permanent Image, Animate Objects, Fabricate, Shrink Item, etc.
The same is true of magic's effects on warfare. What's the point of a castle against flying creatures? Massed foot soldiers against Fireballs?
And social dynamics? How do divination spells affect the justice system? Why do rich people ever die (permanently)?
So, yeah. Unrestrained magic, especially permanent magic, will alter a campaign world. Either the society will have to have adjusted (i.e. Shadow World), or there must be some economic, social or metaphysical limiting factor.
. . . . . . . -- Eric
PS -- Consider: during the Napoleonic wars of the early 1800s, how did people in the New World know when to stop fighting? How many months after the war "ended" did they get the news?
The same is true of magic's effects on warfare. What's the point of a castle against flying creatures? Massed foot soldiers against Fireballs?
And social dynamics? How do divination spells affect the justice system? Why do rich people ever die (permanently)?
So, yeah. Unrestrained magic, especially permanent magic, will alter a campaign world. Either the society will have to have adjusted (i.e. Shadow World), or there must be some economic, social or metaphysical limiting factor.
. . . . . . . -- Eric
PS -- Consider: during the Napoleonic wars of the early 1800s, how did people in the New World know when to stop fighting? How many months after the war "ended" did they get the news?
s/LaSH
First Post
jmucchiello said:
Well, look at it this way.
You produce X units of merchandise for export per time-period. One merchant unit takes Y many units to another market, taking N time. Over that N time, that merchant is unavailable to export your merchandise, so you hire more merchants to export the goods for export until you have enough taking merchandise that your X units are depleted at the same rate you produce them. A 'merchant' unit includes animal drivers, guardsmen, negotiators etc etc.
With the Circle, things are exactly the same, only N isn't months, it's days (and this is a generously long estimate, assuming that the goods are gathered from a day-wide region and distributed across the same). The merchant can still take Y units, only he does it 20 times as fast. You need 1/20 the number of merchants to deplete your export stockpile.
Therefore, 95% of mercentile workers are out of business.
That's not even counting follow-on jobs, such as tavern keepers in the deep countryside, road maintenance crews, supply posts... the circle would have a ripple effect making the countryside a less suitable place to be, and increasing urbanisation. While 90% of people may have been rural in medieval times, you can bet they wanted to live close to a city - a city, after all, is where your goods go for redistribution.
Nifft
Penguin Herder
IMC, natural life expectancy is what we would consider normal for the modern world. However, few people die of natural causes.
For the rich -- or the lucky -- Reincarntion or Ressurection are possible, but since there are few 17th-level casters about, it's vitally important to recover the body. Normal people die because they're eaten by monsters, and their bodies aren't found.
(Moral: IMC, if you find a dead body and bring it back to town, you may get a reward from the person whose "recovery" you've assisted.)
Since life is dangerous and death is cheap, there are simply fewer people than in the traditional Medieval model. Magic makes up the difference -- without Plant Growth the relatively few farmers would be unable to support the relatively large army and adventuring population.
Typical NPC level is 10 or so, with fully 50% of those levels being Aristocrat or Expert. Very few people have no martial experience. People under level 7 are often apprentices, and those above 12th level are uncommon -- all are "named NPCs".
Adventurers are: "People with no sense, at least no sense of self-preservation!"
-- N
PS: Oh, there's a big new teleport circle pair IMC. This large government set it up to support a colony. Now, the colony is under attack by were-rats, whose presence have forced a quarrantine on the city -- thus negating the usefulness of the TPCircle for the time being. Who put the were-rats up to it is a question that my PCs are puzzling out. Certainly there are merchant groups who are quite hostile to the idea of this one kingdom monopolizing that trade route.
For the rich -- or the lucky -- Reincarntion or Ressurection are possible, but since there are few 17th-level casters about, it's vitally important to recover the body. Normal people die because they're eaten by monsters, and their bodies aren't found.
(Moral: IMC, if you find a dead body and bring it back to town, you may get a reward from the person whose "recovery" you've assisted.)
Since life is dangerous and death is cheap, there are simply fewer people than in the traditional Medieval model. Magic makes up the difference -- without Plant Growth the relatively few farmers would be unable to support the relatively large army and adventuring population.
Typical NPC level is 10 or so, with fully 50% of those levels being Aristocrat or Expert. Very few people have no martial experience. People under level 7 are often apprentices, and those above 12th level are uncommon -- all are "named NPCs".
Adventurers are: "People with no sense, at least no sense of self-preservation!"
-- N
PS: Oh, there's a big new teleport circle pair IMC. This large government set it up to support a colony. Now, the colony is under attack by were-rats, whose presence have forced a quarrantine on the city -- thus negating the usefulness of the TPCircle for the time being. Who put the were-rats up to it is a question that my PCs are puzzling out. Certainly there are merchant groups who are quite hostile to the idea of this one kingdom monopolizing that trade route.
