Thursday, January 5, 2023

Thanks All Around

I'd like to thank those people who have recently bumped up their contribution to my patreon, post-Christmas, and even those who have thought of doing so, but cannot due to circumstances we're all feeling.  To those who wish to help, but cannot, please understand that crowdfunding is not won through individual achievement, but through numbers.  If you have three or four friends, especially among your players, whom you can induce to give a dollar each (with 2 cents going to patreon), then try that path.  It's just as successful for me and you can pat yourself on the back for organising such effort.  You can even put it on your resume.

I understand the reason for this interest in recent work on the wiki.  I've clearly hit on the right subject material, which I'll continue to expand as I'm able.  One immediate problem, as I expand upon the communal hamlet with the bailey hamlet, is the distinct growing complexity arising from more people and facilities, and therefore a more complex environment that needs describing.  The trick, I've learned, is to keep stepping back and building up resources that better outline and define each element, so that instead of trying to cover all the information on a single page, more of the gritty detail is shifted onto some other page specifically designed to handle that detail.

I find myself with a little more time today, though I still have honest work to do, so it's my intention to build a table on a new facilities page that should expand as the day continues.  The table will explain the facilities by giving a name; how many persons the facility contributes to a community; and what conditions need to exist for the facility to exist.  Mediawiki tells me there's a way to build a filterable table (I haven't made one yet), so hopefully I can then build it so the table can be filtered for each kind of community.  This should help in calculating a single thorp, hamlet or village's population based on its facilities, without the mix of individual population tables and descriptions for each individual page, as I did for thorp and communal hamlet.  That should help organise that particular aspect of each place.  Personally, I believe a logical explanation for where a population comes from is vastly superior than being given a flat number without explanation of who does what.

As regards the map blog, I do encourage some of you to use your $10 to name a place on earth that you'd like to see mapped with my system.  If you're holding back because I've expressed some resistance to building a map of Minnesota or some other place not designed in 20 mile hexes as yet, don't.  It's natural for me to question taking on any additional work ... but it's also just as natural for me to figure out something that works when faced with a problem.  It's why I love D&D.

It's up to you to define exactly which county and place in England, Minnesota or Timbuktu that you'd like me to swing at, the fences be damned.  If it goes awry, I'm going to learn something from the experience at any rate and I won't quit until it's done.  Remember, the first time doing anything sucks ... it always takes too long and there are always errors made.  But ... practice improves the process.  Once I've practiced a little, I shouldn't find any part of the world beyond my ken.

So think about it.  Throw in.  I'm curious to know which parts of the world you'd like to see done.  It may be just dribs and drabs at first, but who knows where that might go in the end.




13 comments:

  1. Okay, I'll bite! It's not Minnesota, but part of the UP over in Michigan. During my travels there, this was one of my favorite locations:

    Bay Furnace Ruins
    https://maps.app.goo.gl/t8xA6XB3B8FreNgW8

    It's near the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. I have no expectations on inhabitant / place names.

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  2. Good that you have no expectations, Discord.

    I can't find where I wrote about it (I know I did) but somewhere around 2019 I decided that in peopling North America, I'd incorporate a mix of human native tribes, bound together by the wisdom of elves, and various goblinish/bugbear tribes who occupied the most northerly forest ... particularly those controlled by the Ojibwe, Chippewa and Cree tribal groups. A quick read of the area you describe puts the pictured rocks on the boundary between Ojibwe and Odawa tribes.

    Thus, like casting the Mongols as urukhai (haruchai in my game), I've likewise cast the Ojibwe as norkers (they don't look like the fiend folio image, and they're a lot smarter). This is naturally politically dangerous ... but most anything about North American history is bound to be.

    The Pictured Rocks description gives no reference to a specific tribe; a look around for tribal occupation in the area puts it on the boundary between Ojibwe and the Odawa, who are distantly related to the Ojibwe but also to the Potawatomi peoples, whom I definitely want to be human. This makes the Odawa "half-norker" ... with more distant contact with Elven counsel than the Potawatomi have.

    There's a definite agreement that Marquette was occupied by the Ojibwe, so I'll set that as the west side of the divide on the Upper Peninsula.

    Regarding Europeans, they reached the outlet of Superior prior to 1629; it was voyaged upon in 1641; Joliet would get there in 1669. Somewhere in those dates, "white" people knew about the lake but no official voyage had been made there. Probably the lake was well known to many fur traders by the late 1640s; I'd assume bartering trade, an acknowledgement of respect for territory and permission to enter, but no official meetings.

    Politically for the time being, that's as far as I go. As regards infrastructure, it's my intention to give the humanoids there complete knowledge the elves would have, which is nearly that of humans. It would mean a different kind of farming, so no need for gristmills, and certainly not numerous other European-elements like taxation and the like ... but elder authority would still hold, as would the creation of more hovel-like dwellings and other things.

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  3. I'll need to start by figuring out the populations of Marquette, Alger, Delta and Schoolcraft counties.

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  4. Discord, I'll write further comments on the mapping blog.

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  5. I just read the post over there and it's awesome. I'm very excited to see the end result, but the process is fascinating, especially when you are working through your thought processes.

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  6. I have been enjoying leveraging your work on the wiki to build my own maps, but I'm intrigued by your earlier comment (sorry I don't know how to link straight to your comment on this post) about the New World and your Bumper Cars post is one the continues to occupy a large space in my mind, so my request is to see what you build out from Brunswick on the Adroscoggin.

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  7. *giggles uncontrollably like a madman ...*

    Yay, coastline.

    I did some work on this earlier, so it's not from a cold start. I've already identified a number of Maine settlements, some of which are European, others belonging to the Abenaki nation. Brunswick is the single settlement of a colony called "Thomas Patent." I'll plot it and the hex directly to the west, since that's generally plotted while the one immediately to the east isn't. That eastern hex is in Sagadahoc County, which is all Abenaki as well, and more coastline than the reverse.

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  8. Perhaps I should make a rule that says for those people who want me to map places that I don't already have 20-mile maps for, I should have a full month to get the thing off the ground.

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  9. I'd like to see a very-high-infrastructure area, please. How about London? Say, from Kensington Palace on eastward along the Thames.

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  10. As for crowdfunding, at my next game session (probably a week from Sat) I'll ask my players if they're willing to pitch in. I predict success: they love your wiki, and we use many of your rules (especially sage skills.)

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  11. Thank you Maxwell. London shouldn't be a problem.

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  12. Hello Alexis,

    Sorry, I've a big backlog to go through, so I didn't see this before now and just because I wanted to check something else.

    If you're still accepting requests, and if my membership is still active (can't seem to see how much I give), I'm trying to decide what'd be interesting. I'm curious about how you'd do Strasbourg, but Bavaria hold more interest game-wise, so ... Take your pick and I'll be happy :) .

    Be well

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  13. No, no Vlad, you've got to pick a specific hex.

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