Poster's Getting Full

 

Nine weeks into this project and I keep getting distracted by side projects and duties, but head way is being made.  The space is getting tight, but I'm still not at a point where I seriously have to make choices about what to include.  I did leave off the boomerang this week, but perhaps there might be time for such odd things before I'm done. 

As always, a good expandable version of the poster can be seen on my patreon.  Just move the mouse over the image and it will give you a + option.  Give it some time; the image file is up to 6mb.

That's it for the moment.  I just wanted to reassure readers that it is progressing.  I think my original guess of 13 weeks is out of the question.  That was a rough guess made before starting anyway.  I'm thinking 17 weeks at this point, but perhaps it's not as bad as I think.  Part of my process is making sure the table will remain consistent with my game system, which would seem unimportant to a profit-driven merchant.  I don't want to look at this poster in 5 years and shudder, thinking I wish I'd been more consistent in my work.

The Shipbuilder

Such fun.

Working on this list for the poster yesterday.  All the prices were generated from my trading tables, based on so much cedarwood, pinewood, oakwood and chestnut wood for exterior hull, planking, spars & ribs, and wooden fixtures, plus metal pieces and pitch to build the size of ship in question.  Final totals were calculated according to the volume of ship based on keel, beam and height; the cargo capacity was then determined afterwards.  Everything from the rowboat to the Indiaman was calculated using the same ratios.

Accurate to history?  Probably not.  What matters to me is that the players can design their own ship, identify the size and the type of ship (carrack, ketch, yawl, whatever), and I can give a price and details to match.  I like that the list gives dimensions & construction time; and I like that after you buy the ship, you have to outfit it with sheets and extra spars.

If some of the numbers seem off, I rush to remind the reader that these are based on 17th century designs, not the more familiar Napoleanic-period designs that impress themselves on our consciousness, about how a ship is rigged and how many sails it carries.  The development of jib sails from every mast took time, and was hardly there in the 1600s.  But, as always, I'm not trying to be accurate.  I'm trying to run a game, with just enough grittiness but not too much.  For example, before Sterling corrects me (and he'll be dead right, he always is), I'm not saying that a mainmast accurately needs two mainsails, a top sail and a luff.  Chances are, it's called a "jib" and not a luff, or some other thing, and they're all different sizes, as is the topsail or mainsails for different masts, and so on.  BUT, there's only so much grittiness I need to put into this and what I've got above is enough.  I'm happy to simplify by saying a mainmast needs 4 sails, while a foremast and a mizzen-mast each need two, of different types.  I'm happy to average out how much rigging the ship needs, regardless of the actual type of sail.  What I want for the game is stuff on a ship that can break, tear or blow away, so it will need replacing; I don't need this to be historically or even practically accurate for game purposes.  Given how these things are usually glossed over in game terms, I'm doing very well.

I also like that while the Indiaman is very expensive (my offline party could put up that much), the caravel is completely in range for a party of 3rd-5th level, in my game at least.  Missing, of course, is the cost for the crew; I'm was in the middle of cracking that problem when the poster idea emerged, so that's been shelved.  I'm not ready to include wages on the poster; I don't think there will be room for them anyway.

I love ships in the game, though somehow I seem to be the only one that does.  People worry way too much about drowning.

This is not the complete shipbuilder list, by the way; not yet.  I haven't added any metalworking into the poster.  I'm working on wooden goods just now; then it is chemicals (paint, lamp oil, dyestuffs, perfume, etc.), then ceramics and clay, and THEN metals.  Got a long way to go, and the poster is filling up.  Have to see what I have space for in the end.

Things Players Don't Buy

18 days and here's where I am.  Not to worry about reading it; the copy on my patreon is fully expandable.  I'm updating it at the end of each day.

 

And here's the block of content that gives explanation to the post's title.

Forgive me wanting to talk about this; it's on my mind and there's little else.  I haven't felt like a hard-core public project in a couple of years and I'm stoked to get this into production.  The examples shown only comprise what I'm willing to add to the actual poster.  Some may think that none of it belongs, since players usually don't concern themselves with women's clothing—but I have it on good authority that this is what makes my equipment list different from that of others.  It contains real things, real objects, everyday objects, not just stuff that helps to fight monsters.  This is a much stronger road towards building a game character than backstories.  What does your character like, what do they wear, how do they identify themselves, what material items do they love?  How much are they willing to spend on a thing that has no immediate practical applications?  I've learned, an awful lot, since they have the money; and on top of that, they're willing to build the house and the functional day-to-day circumstances that will ensure that after they've bought the 2,112 g.p. dress, they have a closet to hang it in and people to take it out and keep it maintained.  This sort of thing helps a campaign hang together far better than people realise.

So, I muck about adding things to the list such as doormats and hall carpets; a banner and embroidery that will let you put your chosen heraldic symbol on the thing; giving you the choice to eat pumpernickel, rye or wheat bread; letting you buy bonbons or pay to have your room cleaned when you're at an inn.  These are not just things to bleed you of money, as Gygax saw the reequipping side of the game.  They exist to make a character feel pampered, and to make the player feel a part of that pampering.

There is something very human in sacrificing something we have for someone else.  One aspect of D&D allows the player to consider the fantasy coins as "my money" and yet at the same time think of the character as a person apart from ourselves.  Thus, we pay our money to help our characters feel better, and get a strangely derived seratonin boost from knowing the character owns a flannel blanket for nights spent at the inn or enjoys a cigar now and then, even if it doesn't give any in-game bonus of any kind.  Moreover, it is a much stronger relationship when we can SEE the things we're buying and know what they are, complete with even a modicrum of description, rather than simply saying, "I spend a hundred g.p. on my character worth of frivolous things."  The money has no meaning.  A new pipe, a prime cut of beef or a fine new silk cape are completely different.

It's a bit sad, however, when a fighter character looks at a list of items at the Apothecary, useful things like skin oil to block the sun, disease antidotes or insect repellent (yes, it exists), and says, "I'm not a mage or a cleric, so why should I care?"  There's something broken in a system when characters view an equipment list with a mindset that all they need are swords and boards, because the game affords little or no attention towards anything else.  Everything I've said thus far includes the DM caring enough about clothes and food to mention them during the game; to tell the players they've just eaten a very good meal and now they're sitting around the fire joking and digesting.  It needs a DM who will have an NPC react to a player's new 50 g.p. doublet, or the shield they've polished with linseed oil.  If the DM is myopic to such things, the players will be as well ... and all that's left is cut-and-paste gaming, with little reason not to quit after 33 months of play.

I meet far more people who "used to play" D&D than do.  The complaint is almost always the same: "I tried it, but it was ... well, not for me."  I know perfectly what that means.  It means the DM did not capture the player's imagination.  They were willing to try and the DM failed them.  For all the trashing I give to the game, we have to always acknowledge that the game can be addressed, fixed and expanded only if the DM cares.

Better Image

I have published the poster image on my Patreon, where it can be zoomed easily and read.  It convinces me more than ever that Garamond is too thin a font for use in this capacity.  I haven't got an alternative yet.

Again, I'm sorry for having nothing else to write about, as I'm deep into the project.  There are things to do and people to talk to, and I have a perfectionist streak that slows everything down.  Thankfully I always have a mad compulsive drive that compensates.

Project Progress

Alas.  My attention's been directed elsewhere, regarding last week's post.  Usually when I research some project, I learn interesting things that I can talk about here, but this has been such fiddly work, of a peculiar type, and such small inspirations haven't arisen.  Yet, I'm far enough along to talk about the project itself.  Yay.

Not very impressive, is it?  For some time now, I'm going to be steadily populating the above white space, seeing if I can fit in 1600 items or so.  The number so far is a little less than 200.  Everything here is subject to shifting around, with adjustments to fonts, headings and such—the only thing that matters is the actual descriptions, which have to be as tight as I can make them while using all kinds of rich, vibrant words to paint images.

I'll be reposting the image every once in awhile, because that makes it fun for me.

After a long conversation Thursday, which became passionate and loud, my business manager (Yes!  I have one of those!  Isn't that scary?) convinced me the above format will go right over the heads of many, many potential clients, the sort who can't train their eyes to look at a lot of words jammed together or adjust themselves to numbers which follow descriptions.  Yeah, yeah, I know.  Apparently, however, this is unreadable:

Kirtle dress ~ elaborate dress coat, with slit sleeves & collar, laced as corselet; favours cold climates; highly crafted; damask – 83 g.p. / 3¾ lb. linen – 2 g.p. / 2½ lb. velour – 36 g.p. / 5¾ lb. wool velvet – 689 g.p. / 4⅜ lb.

Common, ordinary people need something called "columns," with loads of white space, or else they consider the plentiful, remarkable content to be utterly useless and of no commercial value.  I tried to explain that columns and white space will just eat up space, removing any real cleverness to be found in the creation of the poster, since ultimately what remains will be just the same, dull, boring stuff that can be found on any equipment list.  But Mark says I'm going to face plant if I keep thinking that way, so I've agreed to make a poster that has a wider potential audience.

Wait, wait ... before you start screaming at the screen, wait.  I'm also going to make THIS poster, the one above, the original one I'd planned, without compromising my artistic integrity.  Then I'm going to sell both posters, independently, so that crazy lunatics like me—you know, that can read—will be able to buy one version that can sit in front of your toilet and never get old, whereas other people can buy their crutch-minded version.  It's my plan to build the deep one first, then figure out what content to drop in order to build the shallow one thereafter.  I may ask for some help on-line about that, but usually no two people can agree about what's superfluous and what isn't.  There may be no point.

Anyway, that's the state of my world.  The poster teaser post got a LOT of page views, so clearly there's something appealing about this.  I don't do anything halfway, so I'm frustratingly digging into the shelf-life of food products, what they taste like and other like details, because hell, I might as well go on being an extreme kook.  As such, this will take time.  Ultimately, I'd like a product that will mezmerise an onlooker, who's helpless to go on free-associating from item to item, until an hour goes by without notice.

That would be very cool.

Incidentally, I can't help noticing that the image above isn't very clear, due to blogger's policy of having the image upload capacity of a 2004 start-up.  If anyone wants to see a clear image of the poster, please email me at alexiss1@telus.net and I'll send you a copy right along.

Poster Teaser

 

This is a terrible teaser, especially if I don't come through and make it ... and on some level I'm writing about it today to keep myself motivated.  I'll have to be to get this project off the ground.

What the reader is seeing is a small portion of a 36" by 48" poster that will include as much of my equipment list format as I'm able to fit in.  At present, I'm using 11-point font; I'm not settled on the font-type, I'm looking into that.  This is Garamond, which is bound to be too thin a font for this.  I am sending out some persons to find me an artist to fit in small pictures here and there throughout; I have some leads on that.  I don't know how much the poster will cost, but as it is huge, and I intend it to be glossy, it's going to cost a lot.  So it goes.

Just now, I don't even know who I can obtain to print the poster; I'd like to make an arrangement with a company like Lulu, that sells my books, so that posters were printed as they were purchased, alleviating my needing to keep a bunch in stock.  I haven't looked into that yet.  I've only been on this project about a week now.

Obviously, I've had to create prices that discard my usual trade/pricing system; that should make the poster more accessible to ordinary game worlds.  As can be seen, I'm upgrading my descriptions, so that the poster will be interesting reading.  It should be the sort of thing a guest could stare at while waiting for the microwave or in a hallway next to the bathroom door.

Adding 25-30 items a day; some 1600 items to be added altogether.  Negotiations with artist, negotiations with printer during covid will be troublesome.  Hopefully, I can make this available by the end of April.  Some creative work, but nothing that will especially trouble me.  Shouldn't be a problem.

Incidentally, notice how most of these things would be included in a "craving" list.