Old Posts 21-30

For those who may be interested, please feel free to comment on any of these old posts.  All comments go straight to my email, so I will see them.

I'll start collecting the list of Top 10 Posts that people have proposed and create a poll out of them for the weekend.

Here is a list of 10 posts that I created in July, 2008:

Values.  Trade Prices.  My first belated attempt to explain the same pricing system that I would repeatedly explain over and over, as I searched for the words to do so.  My inability to convey this concept through text nagged at me for years.  Believe me, if you sit next to me at my computer, it is really easy to understand.

Haulage.  Trade Prices, Transport.  Same thing as above.  Just as I would do this on my wiki, ultimately very slowly and with many pictures, I tried to explain my method for calculating the price of things based on a sound economic principal, rather than on km/mileage between markets.

Commodities List Part I.  Trade Commodities.  A list of goods and services corresponding to my trade system at the time I started my blog.  At that time, my system did not include Holland, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, North Africa, India or a variety of other parts of the world.  Covers minerals and ores, foodstuffs, textiles and woodworking.

No Pics Please, We're Mathematicians.  RPG Trends.  Some pithy remarks on the apparent importance of artistic expression that was very central to the gaming community at the time.  Some points about my personal inclinations towards math and D&D.

Commodities List Part II.  Trade Commodities, Trade & Production, Worldbuilding Theory.  A continuation of the first post, covering alchemy, building materials, metalwork, crops, market gardening, livestock and fish.  Includes a list of largely unreadable tables that account for all the references in my world at that time.  I was new to blogging, so that was a waste of time.  Some notes on how I designate some parts of my world as occupied by non-humans.

Sources Table.  Trade & Production.  Broken link to my sources table, which is now only available through Patreon ($10 donation, button on the side bar).  [Hm, delete the post or leave it as a record of where I once was?]

Prices.  Equipment Table, Goods Manufacturing, Trade Prices.  Again, an early attempt to discuss how the value of commodities and transport are translated into the specific price of a specific good.  This is better done on my present-day wiki.  Includes content, however, on the progression of iron ore to pig iron, wrought iron and ironmongery, distinguishing one from another.  Gives equipment list for ironmongery products.

Player Wrongs.  Legitimacy in DMing, Ranting, RPG Trends.  Discussion of "player rights," DM responsibility and anti-politicization of the game.  I am actually talking about Legitimacy Theory, but I would not stumble into a direct connection between RPGs and that until 2014.

Answers.  Trade Prices, Worldbuilding Theory.  Arbitrary numbers in developing a trade system, rehash of the earlier haulage and values posts.

Commitment.  Personal Memoir, Player Participation.  How lack of commitment leads to the dissolution of game play, social pressures to participate in events other than D&D, lack of respect the game has in the outside world and the failure of players to respect the game enough to sacrifice in order to play it.

Reading these posts each week is a terribly sobering experience, one that I can't say I'm enjoying.  I know that others have written to say they were enjoying these posts at the time, now that I read them I wish I had known more, or been more willing to make a better effort all around.  I suppose it really only matters what I do today.