Belatedly Fulfilling a Promise

19 months ago I made a promise I haven't kept.  Believe me, I haven't forgotten; I just haven't known what to do about it.

I tried several times to make videos - I even made a first one that can still be found on my youtube page.  Fact is, however, that I'm not a video maker.  All my experience in film had someone else behind the camera and someone else editing.  I suck at that.

I am a writer.  So with that, I am trying to have another go at this.  It may take a long time, it may get very pedantic (I don't want to move too quickly), but damn it I am going to get this promise fulfilled.  I've gotten just far enough this week to give the reader some homework.

I know that people have tried to build my trade system . . . and that it has proven difficult or beyond them (if I go by what they've written on blogs thereabouts).  I'm trying to break down the idea so that it is simple and can be put in place more simply than I think people will realize.  But . . . making images and maps will take a little time.  I'll update on the blog as I go along - and I will fill in holes or fix the system I'm outlining as I go along, also.  Because it is simplified in places, there are bound to be issues that don't work as my own system does.

But hell, my own system is in a mess right now.  I need about two months of solid work to straighten it out and I keep getting distracted by silly things like writing modules for my players and keeping up with spell creation, along with other things on the wiki.  My players, however, tend to be patient.  For now, any deep work is going to have to wait until the Fifth Man is written.  Wow, does my trade system need some deep, deep work (I need to rebuild all the tables to make them easier to adjust).

Here's some content ripped from the wiki:


Reference Types

With an eye to keeping the system as simple as possible, in order to provide most of the products that players would want to buy or obtain in a gaming campaign, there are a set number of goods and services that we will want to include. Many of these that I have chosen are highly non-specific, bundling a great many varieties under one heading for the purpose of simplification. Please note that at a later time these general categories can be subdivided as desired. Initially, our main concern is to establish a general framework from which we can expand later.

We can start with a set group of products. These would be brewing, bricks, cattle, clay, cloth, fish, grain, grapes, horses, leather goods, meat, metal goods, ores, pottery, salt, sheep, skins, spices, timber, wine and wool.

There would be other things we could add to the list, but this will be a sufficient start. We want to keep a very wide prospectus on what each of these would include. Bricks, for example, would include cement and masonry; timber would include construction with wood; wool would include all fibers, including those grown as well as those obtained from animals.

Each of these things will need to be located on a map of our world, designating the importance of each item according to its importance in a specific town or region. Regions may be political or they may be geographical, such as forests, coast lines, river basins, marshes, hills or plateaus. They may be very precise, such as a small valley where a good is made or scattered, such as ores found in many parts of a general mountain range. This is up to us.

There is one more reference type we want to include. This would be market. In the initial stages of system building, we will want to assume that every town will have a market (as we will be working with a map that only includes major towns and no villages).


Let me humbly add for those readers who did not give me a $1 back in 2014 that I have created a Patreon account.  Just sayin'.