The Chump is Stumped out!

[jgbrowning]

We all know about evil spellcasters plannig on taking over the world. Now, what about small crimes.

How many spellcasters would turn invisible to look at a beautiful woman naked?

More seriously, would that be a problem in the society...spellcasters using their powers to commit that type of thing? Wouldn't it be very disruptive and everyone would be paranoid?

Well, i wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them did.

However, medieval crime tends to be more a question of injury to person or property. Other aspects of modern definations of crime were dealt with socially. More like how if a young kid gets in trouble (not bad trouble, just kid trouble) the adults deal with the situation without notifiying the authorities. The social order is designed to deal with those who don't like to always work within it.

Paranoia of magic would be very high, especially for the wealthy. As there's fewer ways of protecting successfully against magical attack (besides threats of retaliation) that paranoia would'nt be unfounded.

joe b.

 

[lokiqc]

VERY interesting thread. Thanks a lot.

I'll definetely take a look at the pdfs you made. Looks exactly like the type of thing I've been looking for a while.

 

[Eosin the Red]

Given that clerics can cure diseases and poisons but that they remain rare enough that they would be unable to cure all - what sort of charms might develop among the common populace to ward off such ill events? This can include other supersticious practices such as lead fortification.

-- a modern example would be a bezor

 

[jgbrowning]

Sorry gentlemen, but this chump just got stumped into going to the mall.

Sorry to interrupt the contest, but i'll be back in a few hours and we can pick it up around 7 US central time.

There's still one copy up for grabs!, and Drawmack, send me your e-mail address for your copy.


josephbrowning@exp.citymax.com

joe b.

 

[Savage Wombat]

OK, here's another for when you get back:

Assume a walled, capitol city, with an unreasonably large population of one million residents.

What is the total regional population (i.e. including those outside the walls) necessary to support such a city, when you take into account:

a) Nearby villages providing the agricultural base
b) Predatory populations draining off the city resources, such as bandits, pirates, and orcs
c) Predatory populations feeding off the populace, such as vampires, dragons, etc.

Sort of a "how many cities this size can there be?" question.

 

[Conaill]

Ok, since you just got some fresh soy milk, and I'm too lazy to do the math...

According to the DMG demographics (i.e. NOT the ones used in AMMS:WE ), what would be the makeup of a whole nation's army in terms of levels and classes (let's focus on Fighters and Warriors for now)?

The DMG tells us the distribution of levels for a *city*, but not for a whole country, which would presumably determine the make-up of a national army. I assume there's some distribution of population centers as well, which should allow you to calculate the totals for an entire country. (Of course, counting the entire country as a Metropolis will dramatically skew the results.)

For example, the city of Mor's End has a total of 48 Fighters, and close to 400 Warriors (with 7/8 of those being War1). Above lvl 1, there are about as many Fighters as Warriors. At lvl 1, there are about 16 times as many War1 than Ftr1 (War1 take up 5% of the population). Smaller villages (which take up ~92% of the population of a country) will have a very different ratio of Ftr to War. (This means you will also need to specify a distribution of Thorps, Hamlets and Villages.)


Along the same lines... given the DMG demographics, what is the ratio of Adepts to Clerics and Wizards/Sorcerers for different size cities, considering that the number of Adepts contain an additional .5% of the total population (as Adp1's)?

 

[Steverooo]

Water

How many gallons of water, per person, will it take to support each unit of population (village, city, etc.), including drinking, bathing, washing, laundry, sewage, irrigation, etc., etc., ad nauseum?

 

[Steverooo]

Pits, pits, pits (why do it always got to be pits?)

How long/much will it take to dig a 5' x 5' x 10' deep pit in each type of soil (soft, firm, hard, rocky, solid stone), including what tools, and the cost of the labourer(s)?

 

[jgbrowning]

Given that clerics can cure diseases and poisons but that they remain rare enough that they would be unable to cure all - what sort of charms might develop among the common populace to ward off such ill events? This can include other supersticious practices such as lead fortification.

-- a modern example would be a bezor

Pretty much any superstition you could imagine would be possible. People will always try to "hedge their bets" any way they can.

But even with clerics not being a dime a dozen, wands/scrolls of cure disease would be fairly common as they would have a big consumer market. ie. the items would pay for themselves enough so that the demand would be met.

Bards as well can get this niffty little spell, and I'd imagine they'd take it. Nothing quite as handy, unless your an adventurer.

joe b.

 

[jgbrowning]

OK, here's another for when you get back:

Assume a walled, capitol city, with an unreasonably large population of one million residents.

What is the total regional population (i.e. including those outside the walls) necessary to support such a city, when you take into account:

a) Nearby villages providing the agricultural base
b) Predatory populations draining off the city resources, such as bandits, pirates, and orcs
c) Predatory populations feeding off the populace, such as vampires, dragons, etc.

Sort of a "how many cities this size can there be?" question.

The main question here is one of political will. Cities can be very large depending upon food sources (Rome with Sicily and Egypt is a good example)

This is a hard question to answer because the base premise of a 1million pop city simply can't happen given the nature of western feudalism combined with medieval technology. A very large medieval city was over 100,000k.

All that aside, using information about rome to determine grain needs…
1,000,000 romans got aprox. 10 million bushels of grain a year. That would require 1 million acres or 1,562.5 square miles or 40X40 miles of pure farm. This of course doesn't count for feeding the people who do the farming.

Now having nearby villages provide the agricultural base is going to greatly increase the amount of area you'll need for support while at the same time driving up grain prices. There's a reason why all the big cities of ancient and medieval times were port cities or on good rivers. Transporting grain by land can double its price for every 50 miles.

This isn't much of an answer, I suppose, but it is definitely out of the medieval aspect of the contest. However, I'd heartily recommend The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome by Rickman if you're doing any mega-city building.

I'm attaching a chart from MMS:WE that should help answer your community distribution questions.

joe b.