What I Learned about Running Estate Design

Between 1988 and 1992, I ran a name-level party with holdings in Viana do Castello in northern Portugal, Bissau on the Guinea coast and Barbuda in the Leeward Islands, all with the express support of the Portuguese king, to whom they rendered service in a peninsular war.  In establishing their holdings, the party fought drow elves living below the Cantabrian Mountains, as well as Spanish insurgents, and they fought various jungle beasts, as well as jackalwere interlopers from the Mali Sahel.  The party possessed two sailing vessels, which they used to work the golden triangle: tools and materials from Portugal to West Africa, labor from West Africa to Barbuda, sugar from Barbuda to Portugal.  They did not traffic slaves; but they bought them from the Futa, freeing them before offering them a new life in the New World.

The party had a good time.

For me, however, all of this was awful.  I had no trade system beyond a list of goods and futile attempts to make sense of the scant numbers I could find (I did not solve my trade system problem until 2003).  I had no map zooming system like I have now, only modern maps of the three areas that I redrew as rather simple representations of what the party was doing.  The maps I worked from were road maps, which had to be ordered special, as a 1:500,000 map of Guinea-Bissau is not the sort of thing one normally finds in a Canadian bookstore.  I had part-time use of a Macintosh 128K and full-time use of a Commodore 64.  And I did not have access to the internet ... what there was of it.

This meant that every question the players had, about hundreds of things, had to be hammered out of random books, guesses, logical proposals, my imagination and a lot of the time out of my ass.  The party would want to build a road inland into the jungle, upgrade the bullfighting arena in Viana, refit their ships for weapons, figure out how much labor they needed to produce so much sugar, have a price for goods bought and goods sold, which had to be different from place to place ~ and not only for the three places they semi-controlled, but for any other place along the way they might stop.  Ship repairs, stores, spoilage concerns, costs for men-at-arms, costs for fortifications, amount of food produced and used, crop yields, the occurrence and effect of storms, teaching religion to the natives, building a church in Africa, building a church in the Caribbean, hiring pirates not to attack their ships, prospecting, making rum, wine production in their vinyards, building schools, building hospitals, building houses, making treaties with other colonies, disease erupting among Europeans living in Africa, disease erupting among the natives in Barbuda ... the list went on and on and on.  Every session began with about twenty questions from the players, who thought of things while we weren't playing, half of which had to be put off until the next running; so that after the players' new questions, I had to give answers to the players' old questions ... and this was never ending.

Those people who argue they can run D&D "on the fly" have never had the kind of parties I've had.  It was not my idea to colonize Bissau ~ the party asked for the town as a gift from the Portuguese king and he was glad to give it to them, provided they kept it peaceful and his ships could rely on the port having supplies.  It was the party's ideas to find an island in the Caribbean without a European colony ~ and as it turned out the French and English didn't form a colony there until 1666, the party was totally free to do so first.  Running an agenda-free campaign, I was on the hook to answer all the questions they asked; and because I was willing to answer, and let them build up as they wished, they were encouraged to expand and expand.

Much of the various systems and rules and game designs I've put in place have emerged from the impotence I felt each week as I found myself with questions that no DM could reasonably answer using the game's books.  Quick, off the top of your head: how big is a bullfighting ring?  Now, how big is the one in Viana?  The map said there was one.  Now, without the internet, find out if it existed in 1650, how big it is, and how much wood and stone goes into it, then estimate a reasonable lack of maintenance so that you can guess how much it would be to make it new, then look at the plans the player has drawn up for you to show how more seats can be added.  Once you've got that, settle on a price per seat vs. the number of visitors, the cost of bulls and matadors, the balance sheet of the enterprise and expected profits for the party, plus status in giving great shows and how that status can be used to gain more favour at court.  Do that off the top of your head, with one player who works in the real world as an accountant and another who works in the real world as an engineer.  Go.

Players could build this.

I was surprised when I began this blog that most players don't ask questions like these, given that all my parties have.  I was surprised to discover that DMs don't seem to have players who are professionals in the real world, who know firm details about things, who are not to be fobbed off on a DM's nonsense demanding "simplicity" as proposed by the old school books.  If I'd attempted to collar my players with the original elementary-school versions of the game, they'd have scoffed and railed at me, and certainly wouldn't have considered me "the best DM they ever played with," which I used to get a lot.  99.9% of the time, I boggle at the willingness of the modern player in the modern game, to put up with the monopoly-level grittiness of the average D&D world ~ and this is what I mean when I say that RPGers are "robbing themselves" of an experience they should want to appreciate.

They claim they're having "fun."  They could be having the philosophical experience of their lives.

When I address the problem of an "estate system" now, I have to stress that we shouldn't be thinking only in terms of European farm country.  My players were hacking out roads and plantations in jungles; they were building docks in river estuaries; they were reworking urban landscapes; they were sawing trees out of the forests on the upper Lima River and using the logs to build towns and harbors thousands of miles away.  A proper estate system can't be measured by any one product; food cannot come from one kind of harvest; the materials produced cannot be limited to what's in the game book's equipment list.  The system has to be air-tight and yet flexible enough to handle a baffling array of possibilities, that might allow a player to send an email in the middle of the night asking, "If I want to capture and train oliphants to defend my settlement of Tarfaya from the hinterland of south Morocco, how would I start?"

Because hey, why not?

In the background, I'm doing some work in creating some proper wiki posts to describe the process of determining infrastructure, which in turn breaks the 20-mile hex into the 6-mile hex, that creates the pattern of settlement for the 2-mile hex, so that I can re-interpret that pattern in terms of the build hex, which I need to establish solid guidelines for the systemic design of estate land values.

So that when I get questions, I'll know how to answer them ... no matter where in the world the players settle.

Estate Scale

Some of you will remember this post from last year, in which I discussed the dimensions and contents of village blocks:

To quickly recap, each hex above is 145 yards in diameter (133 m), which makes a convenient scale for the location of houses, streets, and various other details, if we need to orient ourselves.

I thought this map would be of use in expressing the size of a "build hex," of which I spoke Friday.  Here is the above map in the scale of a build hex:

As you can see, the build hex provides plenty of space, but not so much that it dwarfs the much smaller block.  The build hex is, as I said, 1,304 yards (1,192 m) across ... and the "sub-build" hex is 435 yards (398 m) across.  Incidentally, the sub-build hex corresponds to the size of the fortification improvement that was part of Friday's list.

From this, it's easy to see how the player can begin with a simple cottage in a very large empty, and yet properly affect the surrounding hexes in a steady, growing manner, by clearing or preparing land for farming, setting the location of a mill upon a river, building up a hill or levelling one off to establish a fortification, and yet see these changes in a scale that will still allow the player to draw lines, sketch houses, build roads and streets, define what areas have been searched for valuable materials and so on.

And because the size of the sub-build hex is only 494 steps on your Fitbit, it's easy to see that the party is in no way limited to the size of the build hex where it comes to exploration.  In fact, if the party were to find an outcropping of stone only two build hexes away (2,963 steps) in one direction, and a source for fish in another, both could be exploited by hacking a path (at 4-8 times the speed of a rutted road) to either.  The party could, therefore, build a series of tendrils outwards, ignoring the immediate hexes for specific hexes to be exploited as needed.  The manner in which this is done, and where the roads are built (along with depots, perhaps, and who knows what other improvements the players would care to make) entirely fits with the players' agenda as they expand their territory and interests.

Estate Work will Continue

Before I progress any further with these posts about estate development and management, I would like to explain my motivation and thinking process.

I would rather not adapt these concepts to produce a book, for three reasons.  First, a book will require illustration and I simply don't have the assets for that.  I could produce the assets through kickstarter, as Baron Opal lately proposed, but that would only mean that my readers were being asked to cough up money for someone else, and not me or my work.  If the readers feel motivated to donate, please do it directly to me and not for artwork, but for the things I do.

Second, much of the material I'm basing my work on originates with the game, Civilization IV.  I've considerably adapted the material and expanded its value, but still it is something the game company could haunt me for.  To escape that would require much reworking of the material to produce a less recognizable result ... which would not improve the material, it would only require a lot of skull sweat and clever writing.  I doubt that Fireaxis gives a damn about my writing about the game on a blog, as much as it might if I published a book, so that gives me reason to discuss the material here.

Third, on the blog I'm free to upgrade the material at will, as ideas present themselves and as adjustments need to be made.  The value of a blog is that it provides a living, breathing process of creation, whereas a book calcifies the moment it is published.  I don't see my being able to complete all the ideas I have regarding how to manage an estate within a stale time frame, because I know I haven't, and won't have had, all the possible ideas that will occur to me on this subject.  So again, it is better that I simply blog the process out, piece by piece.

I am keeping a running document on the side that is organizing all the material being discussed here without the sidebars I'm writing.  I find that useful for keeping my thoughts organized; if asked, I can make that document available any time for those interested.

Of course, publishing a book means that I'll be paid for that book.  But that is really up to the reader.  We can remain trapped in the 18th century publishing model forever, or we can realize that I am publishing the equivalent of a book in blog posts every three months.  I leave it to the reader to give value for those "books" in my Patreon and through direct donations.  Providing free material for all gives me a sense of well-being, so I intend to keep doing it, whatever I happen to write about.  For the present, I'm content to write about this subject, just as I've written on other things.

When the reader feels assured that I've written "a book" relating to the managing of estate ventures by player characters, then take a moment and give a direct donation equal to the value of that book.  Were I to create a singular work, I'm sure the cost I'd attach to it would be about the same as my book, How to Run ... about $30.  So take that as a suggested donation, but don't feel bound by it.

In the meantime, I'm going to work on my book Fallow today (remember, retitled from the Fifth Man), along with detailing how both unimproved and improved land is worked.  It is only logical that persons should be able to build a cottage anywhere and then sustain themselves with foraging, hunting and fishing.  Each of these already has a sage ability associated with it, so I'll be basing unimproved figures on those wiki posts.

Be well and keep reading.

Improvements

This material isn't ready for the wiki yet, but I'd like to try it out.

For this next bit, some background:

Labour is measured in points, with 1 pt. = 1 person between the ages of 15 and 65, possessing the necessary sage abilit to be considered "trained."  

Workers who are not trained count as 0.4 points of labour and are limited to crude developments or buildings (see below).  Adult workers older than 65 subtract 0.08 points per year.  Child workers younger than 15 subtract 0.15 points per year.  One trained worker is able to oversee two other workers lacking the necessary sage knowledge so that they can act as nearly trained; each of these semi-trained workers count as 0.9 points of labor each, and will gain 0.01 points per week, towards tasks they’ve already learned.

Build hexes are 1,304 yards in diameter and are nearly one-half square miles in area (305 acres).  The diameter of three build hexes = one 2-mile hex.  A hex this size provides a good context for the size of hide-units discussed earlier.  The largest possible hide on the worst possible land would stretch over three build hexes; the best land would allow three hides to fit comfortably inside one build hex.  Thus the "build hex" defines the manor estate, or at least the kernal of one.

That looks about 1,304 yards in diameter.

The next goal is to construct a time-frame for "improvements" that can be made on the land, such as these listed below (necessary sage study listed in brackets).

I've crunched some numbers on the worker-unit and build-times in Civ-4.  Nevermind the particulars, but the times listed below for the amount of work done seems appropriate from other readings and my gut instincts.  Naturally, these will seem "off" to some, and "dead on" to others; there really are no definitive numbers possible, given that we're speaking of 17th century mechanics, materials and know-how.  Anything can always be adjusted if it does seem like too long a time, but in each case I've tried to error in the ballpark of making the work take longer that it could under ideal circumstances.

That's partly so that any benefits that might accrue to labor skills will retain some realism in construction times.  Do keep in mind that in any of the examples below that the times and labour requested do not include the acquisition and delivery of materials, which would be extra labour and time.  When materials on-site are used, such as earth, sand or general filling material that is presumably available and non-specific, the time to obtain that material IS included in the time given.

         Communal land [faith, leadership, ritual].  Organizes six or more farming families so that materials, ability and experience of the whole group can be applied to every task, intensifying the value of farmed land. Harrowing, fertilization and irrigation of crops can be improved, fostering healthier, vibrant plants and greater crop yields progressively over three years (+⅕, +½ and +1⅓ in succession, remaining at that level thereafter). Requires permanent hayward and 4 adult workers per virgate.

         Cottage [carpentry]. Crude development, with varying immediately available materials used for construction (sod, rough-hewn timber, wattle & daub, thatch, etc.). 1 week’s labour per 10 ft. section of wall or 5 x 5 ft. section of roof. Trade materials optional.

         Fortification [logistics]. Used to solidify and defend a plot of land, not necessarily including buildings, in order to create a fortified camp. This includes earthen or turf ramparts, including baskets filled with dirt or stone, a wooden palisade, trenches, a rampart, stakes, wooden towers at intervals, pits and potential traps. The effect is to reduce practical approaches to one twelfth of the surrounding perimeter, allowing a strong defence. Does not include stonework or castle-making. 150 weeks labour to ready an area of one block, 87 combat hexes in diameter with a circumference of 273.3 hexes (1,367 ft.), which can then be effectively defended by 50 soldiers, two-deep at the entrances, with 6 commanders.

         Hacking [woodcutting]. Clearing a forested build hex sufficiently so that it can be made ready for other improvements, with room for roads, farms, mills and all. Includes some grubbing of stumps. 45 weeks labour.

         Hunting camp (scouting). Crude development, serving as an outpost and slaughtering area for hunting, with smokehouse and post-holes for tents. 2 weeks labour.

         Mine [mining]: Crude development, for preparing a space for the extraction of minerals following discovery of the ore body. Strips surface vegetation, building access shaft, sluice boxes and more so that buried ore deposits can begin extraction. 10d6 weeks labour, as precise location of ore cannot be known without exploration. Requires 2 cub.ft. of wood per 125 cub.ft. of mine space below ground, plus tools and haulage. Following labour spent, mine may be deemed unproductive.

         Orchard [plantation culture]. Crude development for the purpose of producing labour-intensive crops such as citrus, coffee, tobacco, cotton, tree nuts, spices, grapes, hops and so on. Areas must be clear-cut and protection from the elements for labourers, walkways, freshwater wells and in-filling of mosquito infested ponds must be provided. 75 weeks labour per bovate. Requires tools, baskets; materials specific to area.

         Quarry [mining]. Crude development, for preparing for the pit mining of materials found near the surface, most likely building stone. Establishes initial benches for providing access to the richest material. 90 weeks labour before ore or stone can be removed. Requires tools and haulage.

         Road, cobbled [logistics]. Finishes out an existing rutted road with cobblestones, sand and clay, without paving (see below). Produces a hard, pitched causeway that drains in bad weather, providing a good surface for wagons, carriages and horses hooves. Surface is yet rough and is subject to necessary shoring in 6 to 12 years (equals 10% of original work). Width of 9 ft., with 2 ft. roadbed. 1 week’s labour per 1¼ chains of distance (⅛ furlong). Requires 845 cub.ft. of stones and 211 cub.ft. of sand per chain of distance.

         Road, paved [logistics]. Lays broadly rectangular quarried stone overtop of rutted roads, cemented with mortar, to produce a solid, durable causeway that serves as a pleasant and smooth surface for carriages and wagons. Is subject to necessary reworking every 11 to 40 years, but will endure decently for more than a century. Width of 12 ft., with 3 ft. roadbed. 1 week’s labour per 2 rods (½ chain) of distance. Requires 277 cub.ft. of broken rock or gravel, 178 cub.ft. of paving stones, 119 cub.ft. of sand and 20 cub.ft. of mortar per rod of distance.

         Road, rutted [logistics]. Crude development, with digging out and grubbing a route through forested and non-forested land to create a furrow or track sufficient for cart-travel, ending with a serviceable road. The result is often uneven and loads will sway in places. Width of 8 ft., with room for passing. 1 weeks labour per 2½ chains of distance (¼ furlong). Requires 2.2 cub.ft. of crushed rock, stone, broken pottery or other material per chain of distance, for packing soft places.

         Stabling & corrals [animal husbandry]. Crude development, providing shelter and pens for domesticated animals. Enclosure size depends upon animal type. Materials may vary, but usually consist of stiles or broken rock. 2 weeks labour per ton of animal, at a rate of 20 cub.ft. of wood per ton.

         Tillage [farming]. Crude development, incorporating well building, irrigation, fertilization and grubbing of rough-farmed land for good-quality cultivation. 4 weeks labour per bovate. Requires a plough, one shovel per worker and 10 cub.ft. of rough-hewn timber.

         Watermill [carpenter, mason]. A structure that uses a water wheel to drive a mechanical process such as milling, rolling or hammering. Watermills require the development of a backwater, a dammed body of water within a main river, that ensures continuous steady flow through the water wheel channel. The mill encloses a mechanism that turns a horizontal shaft, used to drive machinery. 60 weeks masonry work and 60 weeks carpentry work, each of which requires sage knowledge. Requires up to 240 cubic yards of broken material for dam construction, 350 cub.ft. of mortared stone and 400 cub.ft. of wood, plus tools and shop materials, depending on the purpose of the mill.

         Windmill [carpenter, mason]. Consists of a brick or stone tower, on which sits a wooden cap or roof, which can be rotated to bring the sails into the wind. Typically includes a four-sail frame, with crude cloth work. The interior encloses a mechanism that turns a vertical shaft, used to drive machinery for manufactures, most typically a cam. 60 weeks masonry work and 30 weeks carpentry work, each of which requires sage knowledge. Requires 824 cub.ft. of brick or mortared stone, 200 cub.ft. of wood, plus tools and shop materials, depending upon the purpose of the mill.

         Workshop system [artisan]. Organizes a “cottage industry” to bypass the guild system by creating a homespun rural labour force. Workers in home shops fabricate articles from raw materials, which are brought to a central market to be assembled and sold. A trader supplies raw materials and collects the finished goods. Popular for cloth production, pottery and ceramics and chintz. 11 weeks labour per home-shop. Requires 33 cub.ft. softwood, 150 cub.ft. thatch, plus tools, work table, stools, shop materials.

Obviously, this is expandable, if something else is needed.  I have it in mind that labour is needed to cause the above improvements to produce goods and materials, sort of reversing the Civ-4 way of doing things, since I need actual products to sell, not "hammers."  So the next step would be to go through the above and describe how that production manifests, per worker.

After that, the third step would be to work my way through the vast list of buildings and structures, determining how long they require to put into place, adjusting the size as needed (since obviously a barracks or library of any size can be created).  Like the examples above, I'd want to break down any given building to its core elements, and then allow the player to decide how large the structure would be built according to the player's needs and budget.

I think this hangs together.  I'm counting on the reader to tell me if this sounds clear and functional.

Programming an Estate

Tuesday's post got little response, so I feel I better explain.

In describing the bare bones of managing an estate, there are a host of things we need to know.  These can be broken down into a few general categories: 1) how much of whatever can the estate produce; 2) how much of this will go to the support of the estate vs. how much can be sold; 3) how many people will it take to watch over this production; and 4) how much will we pay in maintenance/wages.

From this, we'll be challenged to use our resources to create permanent assets that we hope will be productive, then produce a profit.  But every time we create an asset, we increase the number of persons that we need.  We increase the cost of maintenance.  We increase wages.  And most of all, we increase the chances that something in the organization will fail.

Make a hand mill, and operate it yourself, you can assess immediately how it needs to be handled and what may be wrong with it.  But hire someone else to work that hand mill, and trouble starts.  Build a watermill to grind grain and there are bigger problems.  Now you're relying on the river to run, and at a certain speed; you're relying on several people to keep the wheel and the cams in working order.  More people, more chance of incompetence, laziness, theft ... and ultimately that something will go wrong, which will be deliberately hidden from you because the worker doesn't want to be blamed.  Suddenly the mill goes up in flame ... or the wheel breaks and jams ... and while you think this was random, it's more likely because of who you hired or how much reliable oversight the mill received.

And the more you build, the more ventures you jump into, the greater your risk becomes.  Someone comes along and creates a friendlier, more manageable program, or delivery system, and *poof* ... Amazon or Facebook are gone.  No matter how big you are, there's no such thing as security.

When asking the question, "How do I manage an estate?" the assumption is usually that the players keep pouring money in so that money comes out, until it is boring.  OR, the DM keeps creating so much trouble with the process, strangling the profit, that the players quit.  We want a system that lets the players manage the troubles, and yet the management itself creates more troubles that the player can foresee, but can't easily escape.

We want the players to be laying in bed at night on a Tuesday, four days from the next game session, running it through their head: "If we shut down the mill in November, and pull the wheel from its mount then, we'll have four months to rebuild the housing ... and if we commit Jerome to it, we can trust him not to screw that up; but if Jerome's working on the mill, we'll need someone else to oversee the mine through the winter ... maybe if we concentrate on shoring up tunnels until we can get Jerome back, and suspend digging the shaft down to the third level; 'course, the second layer's starting to play out, and we'll need a fresh vein if we're going to get the foundry started next summer.  God, it sucks that we're fifty miles from another source of iron.  We should have taken August and September and prospected that south ridge.  Too late now.  Then again, we could still do it, but that's going to need a foreman too.  Who's going to keep a crew of twenty prospecting those hills in December and January.  Davis?  Nah, he gave us trouble on the mine.  Somebody new?  Not sure ... new people can be very unreliable.  I guess I could do it myself, let my henchman run with the party when we tackle the keep.  Then I could be around to oversee Davis every few days, and could plumb the third level.  But if I'm here, why not just manage the mill, and leave Jerome where he is?  Hm."

None of this means a thing if we don't nail down the principles upon which the game is founded.  What land produces how much food and raw materials; how much does it cost to build something; how long do built things last?  How much damage can a random person do, and how do you choose people you can count on?  All the games that we play like this work on the same principles: find the resources, make the resources, allocate the resources, reduce spoilage, fire incompetents when we find them, find ways to make more capital or streamline costs, etc.

The main difference is that, because this isn't a video game, there are no technical limits on what strategies a player can try.  Video games are full of arbitrary boundaries: the map is just so large, the buildings are this big, such and such always costs this much ...

There's no way for YOU, the player, to program the system.  But with a DM, that should be possible.  In fact, that's what makes this format in D&D a massive upgrade.  The player is the programmer.

That doesn't mean we can suspend the niggling bits, however.  A solid, reliable baseline has to be established in something very like concrete ... and that baseline has to be as simple to grasp and understand as it is in any video game.  That's why we don't want to fiddle with comparisons between food calories, soil yields and consumption.  Once we establish what a "person diet" is, we can then adjust one number to manage health benefits, famine, distribution, value, space required and so on.

We want to simplify the base factor so that we can adjust that factor to manage far more complex problems than crop yields.  This is the goal across the system.

We don't need to know the exact cubic footage of mine we've dug; we need a ratio between one miner, production of raw material and the cost to shore up what a miner can mine in a day or week. Then we can produce one number that tells us the cost and the effect at one time.  We can then rate individual miners at 0.98 "ert" [excavation rate], 1.01 or 1.05.  That helps the player decide if this miner needs to be replaced or if it isn't that big a deal.  Replacement means time training, unknown qualities in the green worker and possibly ill feelings among those who are now worried they'll be let go.  It isn't just the ert that matters.

I trust this helps put Tuesday's post in perspective.  I'd rather not write post after post about how to manage fifty different land improvements/buildings that could be emplaced ~ though that would be the goal in the long run.  A goal that, I admit, I've considered for a long time and have been making incremental movements towards.  It's only that my interest was rekindled this week by the retinue post.

Estate Farming

Let's suppose we have a group of characters, 1st-3rd level, who are prepared to suspend their usual adventuring ways and instead take some time to settle themselves upon a plot of land.  This creates an interesting decision to be made, one that could easily intrigue a party for an hour or more, once they fully grasped the question.  We'll assume I'm asking the question of you, dear player.

Where would you like to settle?

We have the question of whether or not you'd like to find some land within the existing settled environment, or truly virgin land.  I have plenty of both to offer.  Being the 17th century, there are very few places in the world where every acre of ground within a 20-mile hex has been broken.  All around Holland of course, and the environs of Paris, London and Vienna, and a good deal of Italy ... but still, there are options.

You can buy an existing farm anywhere, for a pretty penny.  You can find some sliver of untilled land between existing farms most everywhere except those few places I've mentioned.  And you can find quite a lot of virgin land if you're prepared to settle on the borderlands ~ and the further out you go, the better the chance that those virgin lands will have a lovely rich soil.  America is virtually untouched in 1650.

Of course, you don't have to choose farmland; you could decide upon a whole range of possibilities.  There are varying kinds of forest land (which you could clear, or not), desert lands, jungle, tundra ... even an oasis, though you'd likely have to wrest that away from some tribe by force.  And each of these have a hill option: grassy hills, hill plains, hill forest, hill desert, hill tundra ... even the hills of some arctic wasteland.  There are mountains as well, though unless you intend to mine these, you would be looking at the valleys between the mountain ranges and not the mountains themselves.

And all of these have a coastal and river option as well.  Rivers produce possible trade, but they do offer fewer options if virgin territory is your intention.  The coast provides islands, too ... but again, more often than not, the best islands are already settled.

You can see that this offers a lot of choice ~ but it is a bitter choice, because you can't really have them all.  True, you would probably want to shoot for a forest-covered grassland adjacent to some hills and a river, not far from the sea, with good soil in case you do decide to farm, and hopefully a chance at other raw materials like an iron, copper or gold mine ... but it isn't like every place like this hasn't been found and settled already.  Chances are, wherever you choose to settle, you'll have to settle for the best you can find.

I've been considering some measurements for this, keeping with work I've done in the past with food, hammers and coins, plus reading I did lately on the subject of hides.  The hide isn't a specific unit of area, but rather a unit measuring the land sufficient to support a household, including obligations for food-rent, maintenance and so on, paraphrasing wikipedia.  In the real world this is hardly a consistent thing, but I'd like to codify a hide in terms of actual food supplied, for game purposes.

To do that, I'd like to propose a unit, called "person diet," or "pd," this being equal to a sufficient number of calories necessary to give one person enough food over a period of one year.  It doesn't matter that we don't know how many calories that is.  We can argue that it's still possible to live on 0.9 pd per year, but that this is unpleasant and unhealthy; we can also argue that many children of various ages can survive on 0.2, 0.4 or 0.6 pd per year, depending on their age and to what degree they are starving.  These are details that can apply to other matters ~ they don't need to apply to the mean average comfortable food requirement for a theoretical "normal" person, which we can then use to guess a the production of one hide of land.

After some consideration, I'd like to set a hide-unit as equal to 15 pd.  We don't even need to know the exact nature of food being produced.  This number allows 2.5 pd to replant, 3.75 (one quarter of production) as tax, rent or maintenance, 7 pd to support a ten person family with six children and older dependents, eating various ratios of pd, plus four fully grown adults, or some combination thereof.  That leaves a cushion of 0.75 pd for storage against famine (4.5 pd in six years) ... plus more if the family is smaller, or the taxes are lower, or the particular kind of food doesn't have a 6:1 replant ratio.

The actual size of the hide then depends on the land itself.  We can rate dry plains as producing 2-7 pd (d6+1) per 120 acres (known as a "carucate," so that the physical size of a hide-unit would measure between 257 and 900 physical acres of land.

Grassland is better soil, and we can divide this into two kinds.  If the grassland has already been settled, then the best land is already part of a farm ~ so the best virgin land that can be found will give 8-14 pd (2d4+6) per 120 acres, so that the physical size of a hide-unit would be 129 to 225 acres.  On the other hand, if the grassland were truly virgin and untouched, the best sort of grassland could be found, offering 15-21 pd (2d4+13) ... in which case a hide-unit would be 86 to 120 acres.

Potentially, even better land could be found, upon flood plains that would offer between 22 and 49 pd per 120 acres, but those are most likely already occupied and in any case, would be quite small in size.

But why use a "hide?"  The unit itself is the actual tilled area within the greater physical area ... so that a 900-acre hide would still expect to have 120 acres of tillable land.  This land was divided into 8 bovates of 15 acres each, the amount of land that could be tilled by 1 oxen in a season ~ that is, between the time the land was ripe for ploughing and when the seed had to be in the ground.  An acre itself is defined by how much land an oxen can plough in a day, so the window of days to plant a bovate is 15.  Two oxen could move faster, ploughing twice as much in a day.  With six oxen working, three working ploughmen could manage six bovates (three "virgates) within planting season ... and the fourth plot, at least by 1650, the time of my world, was left fallow.

My suspicion is that the window was not as tight as described, and that more than an acre could be plowed in a day, as I've seen documentaries that depict more land than a bovate being plowed by one team of two-oxen, but these are the measurements as dictated ~ perhaps accurate to the 9th century, then overcome by horses with horsecollars and such.  Teams and animals likely made their rounds of the neighbourhood and more research will probably reveal the actual amount of land an ox team could plough circa 1650 ... but for my purposes now I'd like to stipulate that it requires three grown workers of age 15 to 65 to farm a hide, of which one must have the farming sage ability (which I realize now has to be rewritten to fit this model, but that's how it goes), so that a farmer and his two sons/daughters could manage the space.  Each, then, can till enough land to produce 5 pd of food supply.

That works also, though it's a bitch if that one farmer has more than 4 other pd to feed, but life can be rough.  My goal is to argue that the characters, if they wished to till land, would need one of them to be a farmer ... in which case three of the characters could pitch in and help farm.  And if enough animals could be found, the characters could manage perhaps more than a hide.

And if the land was truly virgin, so that no taxes were required, that would produce 7.5 pd that could be sold or stored each good season.

Incidentally, ballpark, using the food rules I've postulated, and assuming half the year spent at labor and half the year spent at relative rest, a pd = 1,080 lbs. of food.  Not realistic, I know, for real life, since different foods have different calorie values, but this is a game and overall the concept works.

It would need some moderated mechanics for plantations, but that's doable, eventually.

None of the second half of this post addresses the other possibilities than farming.  Lands could be hunted, they could be mined and the coasts fished, the main purpose may be clear-cutting a forest, or building a desert castle, etcetera.  I'm only giving an example of how the numbers might be managed, and quite simply, so long as we're all willing to circumvent the need to be too precise with our definitions.  The above can be quickly expanded to fifty, a thousand or ten thousand farmers without much adjustment.

And do note, that if the players are free to explore virginal lands, they don't need to settle for 2 or 4 pd per 120 acres.  They can settle on the best dry plains, or the best grasslands, once they've explored enough.  Noting of course, that the lands immediately adjacent may not be as wonderful.  It's a question of how much exploration the players want to do before they settle down.

What Purpose Does it Serve?

The next question becomes,  what purpose does the fief serve?  Why should the player undertake the process of managing land, house, hirelings, financing, accounting and more for the sake of a character who can hardly experience comfort or the sensory impact of looking out upon one's own estate?

Wealth?  Characters rarely lack for plunder
 Prestige?  Characters tend to be lone wolves, without the compulsion to prove their value.   Raising an army?  There are so few rules in place for conquering campaigns that any outline of raising money and force that we're in a hole even if the method of recruitment is put in place.

Persons of the period saw title and land as a ticket to "the good life."  To appreciate the experience, the character must want more than the accumulation of prowess.   There must be a visceral response to watching a project grow, for its own sake.   Can players be satisfied with laying out money to "build" the estate piece by piece,  as nothing more than diagrams, lists of assets and liabilities, along with tiny details recording outputs, shortages and spoilage?

I have my doubts.   I'd like to make the process "sexy," but without the physical manifestation of the real property, we're stuck with representations in maps,diagrams and numbers.

Just think about it.  Give me some feedback.

Fief Real Estate

It's a pity when the book pages don't line up.

Before anything can be written about the management of fiefs, we've got to look at the problem from the perspective of intentions and motive.  Before the player buys into both the costly title of the above concept and the willingness to believe that this will be a valuable, useful venture on the player's part, there are a few obligations that need to be discussed on the DM's part.

In effect, the DM is the real estate agent, whether we're talking about a piece of bald land that the player will build on, or we're purchasing the above tranquil scene a month after it's been burned to the ground, leaving only the stone standing, or this is something brand new that the character has come into.  And being the AGENT, the DM cannot, should not, act solely for the DM's benefit.  The DM must not be Snidely Whiplash here, callously viewing this whole thing as a means to line the DM's metaphorical story-telling pocket.  The player should be able to feel reasonably secure that this parcel of land, like hundreds of other like parcels of land in the same kingdom, will not be monster-central, the first place where monsters get off the adventure train.  As an agent, the DM has an obligation to protect the player's interests ~ fairly, decently, respectfully and as an interested game partner.

This means that if the player thinks to hire an NPC whose an expert on land rights or property laws or masonry or whatever, the DM should credibly offer real, legitimate, honest advice, addressing all the details being asked about, so that some future point the DM cannot simply step up and claim the land belonged to someone else, because we checked that, thank you.  The DM must be candid and willing to disclose all information about the property, and I mean ALL.  For any sort of fief management to work in game, the DM must see that the better course of action is to work towards the player's instructions or wishes, and let matters like cost, weather, inability to find workers, the player's own bad habits in managing their land and such like to determine the success or failure of the venture.  The DM should not plan to upset the venture just because it exists.

Therefore, if the player decides to determine the value of their property, and then adds to that value with effort and sound behaviour, the DM should not arbitrarily then destroy the housing/products market, or deny the player the benefit of their labor, or in any other way refuse to give compensation in value for effort and time the player has taken.  IF the player makes bad decisions, refuses to grow local crops, or takes risks that are clearly defined as risks at the outset, then the die can decide on the success of the risk.  The DM should not be in a position to do so.

If the DM knows things about the property, the DM cannot, should not, invest that information into any NPC dwelling in the DMs world, without due respect placed upon the process of that NPC getting that knowledge ~ along with a reasonable chance the player will see the NPC make the attempt.  The DM is not entitled to use any knowledge of the player's property in the creation of events happening in and around the player's estate.

Failure to follow these principles should entitle the player to kick the DM in the balls, of course metaphorically speaking [so that it still applies if the DM is a she].  Mostly, I just want to make it clear how much legitimacy the player would have in performing this most physically abusive act.

If you've ever bought a home, and given a moment to think about how you'd feel towards your real estate agent if they behaved like many DMs would, you get a sense of this post's sentiment.

What Price?

I have had issues with the Equipment List since the very beginning, issues which annoyed me twice as much as a DM. The first would be that the prices are too low. In order for my party to have a chance at turning 5th level, I have to give them, on average, about 8 to 10 thousand gold pieces each (half the experience they need to accumulate). Some of this can be in the form of gold, some in gems and jewelry, some of it as magic…but however you cut it, if I have five party members, the total accumulated cash that the party will acquire during that time is going to be around 45,000 g.p.

What’s more, about one game year will probably pass while they are acquiring these four levels (they start with one), which is a total of 252 weeks. The game tells me to charge 5 g.p. a week for food (hard rations), which is 760 g.p. Even if everyone in the party buys chain mail four times (my parties don’t wear plate unless they want to be Joe-the-Slow, last to see combat), each, that’s 1,800 g.p. Charge them another 1,800 for weapons and 2,000 for horses (two each). And just for shits and giggles, let’s charge them the farcical 100 g.p. per month per level (an average of 250 g.p. each per month). Total: 21,360. By the time they’re fifth, they still have more than 23,000 g.p., or 4,728 each.

It takes about the same amount of time to go from fifth level to sixth as it takes to go from fourth to fifth, because the X.P. and the treasures gets bigger (even though twice the X.P. is needed). So sixth level comes just three months game time later and now their coin has doubled. And doubled again at 7th level.

Yes, that’s right, at 7th they’re hauling around 20,000 g.p. each and they’re still not allowed to buy a castle, because they’re not “name” level. Even though the five of them could easily go in together and buy a fortress.

The only time I’ve ever had a party short on cash happened when I’ve been able to catch them doing something stupid, letting me seize a few thousand g.p. from each. But one moderate first level dungeon treasure is enough for everyone to get weaponed up, buy leather or scale, and horses, and flee town.

Things should cost, and it should be HARD for the party to pay for them. That’s one issue.

The next is that there is just nothing to buy. Beyond weapons and armor and horses and jewelry, just where exactly does one spend their money? I’ve had to step in and stop parties from buying 150 vials of holy water…which they can afford and which they can carry in the 600 pound pack capacity of their pet donkey, towed behind their horse. My only argument has been that there aren’t 150 vials available at the local church—but the real problem is that there is nothing else for them to spend their money on.

Perhaps this is something you have experience with? Knights of the Dinner table did an excellent bit with Bob and Dave buying hundreds of untrained pit bulls. If a war dog is 20 g.p., why can’t the party buy fifty or sixty that are trained?

It comes to the point that the party just ditches the gold because it’s a) inconvenient; b) useless; and c) easily replaced. Once it has given them their experience, who cares?

As an aside—recent systems have tried to provide parties with something to buy by selling magic items. This baffles the shit out of me. I’ve had many players ask, when first beginning to play, if they can “buy” a +1 sword; my answer has been a perfunctory NO. Who the hell would go through the trouble of making one only to sell it at the local market? (I did go through a period where I sold really adamant players “magic” swords for immense amounts of money, only to have them turn out to be just an ordinary weapon—I’m nicer now). What mage making swords wouldn’t have a guardsman to give it to? Or a relative? Or a KING? Sell it to some piker who just blew into town? Are you kidding me?

These are the people who accuse me of being unromantic. I can see it now. “Arthur…Arthur…I am the Lady of the Lake. I bring you Excalibur.”

“No thanks. I picked up this little beauty here for 79.95 at Morgana’s hardware shop.”

Among video games, my particular favorites over the years have been those which involved “gathering” as part of the program, particular war games: VGA planets, Age of Empires, Civilization. You must first gather your shit, build an army, and then fight. In all of those games, at the beginning it costs a substantial amount of food and materials to make a single unit. One is always scrambling for more, or even just enough to sustain what one already has.

D&D is the one game where sustenance is a joke. And it should not be that way.

Finally, costs do not logically relate to one another. This, in particular, is the fundamental issue that can be and should be addressed.

Let’s consider something simple: the cost of a horse.

Let’s take the stabling of an animal for one day, typically placed in the 1 s.p. range. A newborn horse requires three years to mature to the point where it can be saddled and ridden for long periods. 3 years = 1,095 days. If we assume the stabling fee is a suggestion for how much money it costs to support a horse for a 24 hour period, and 20 s.p. = 1 g.p., it will have cost our owners more than 50 g.p. to raise the horse. Which sells for 25 g.p., according to the Player’s Handbook.

But, but, but, say the critics. The horse could have been wild. And it costs less to keep a horse in the open country than it does in a stable in town!

Well, first of all, until the North American experiment with a group of escaped Spanish horses breeding in predator-less country perfectly designed for them, it had been 4,000 years since wild horses had been available in Europe or the Middle East. Also, it was expensive for ranches to pay men to watch free range horses…it cost wages that enabled those men to eat up to six pounds of beef a day and up to 11 pounds of food. If this is what I can get for less than a silver piece, why does it cost me 60 silver pieces to buy a week’s food for sedentary activity (non-iron rations)?

But let’s go at this from the other end. What should the price for stabling be? Get ready for a flurry of statistics…here it comes.

A carthorse eats 19 lbs. of feed per day. A heavy Percheron or Belgian eats much, much more. A bushel of oats is 27.52 pounds, or enough feed for a day and a half. The oats are grown on a farm which—in the Medieval world—is typically 20 to 30 acres in area. The yield of that farm was 36 bushels of oats per acre, a total of 1,080 bushels. However 5 bushels per acre are needed to replant the following year, so the actual net yield is 1,030.

If you want the farmer to do any planting next year, along with his wife and average 3 children, you’re going to have to feed them some of the oats they’ve grown. 1,500 calories a day on average works out to 4.32 lbs. of oats for the whole family, or 1 bushel every 6.37 days. Each year, the family eats a little more than 57 bushels.

Well, that still leaves 973 bushels. And the good news is that it’s only taken the farmers 3 days a week to work their own land, and they’ve worked the lord’s land for the other three days. So the farmers have succeeded in adding 2,003 bushels to the lord’s land. Of which the lord only needs 252 bushels to feed his horse.

There’s the argument that the horse could pick its meal from the field, but if the lord’s horse is a warhorse, that’s not going to be enough. It’s going to be fed oats, every day.

Lets say the lord has a manse which includes a little hamlet of about 150 people. Averaging 5 persons per family, and assuming all 150 are farmers (let’s say the miller, carpenter, mason, bakers, chandlers, chaplain, reeve, hayward and vintners, not to mention the men-at-arms, with their families, are dwelling in the manor house), and each has a farm averaging 30 acres, AND the lord has land of the same breadth and size (which would be unusual, but it’s a round number, lets go with it), the total surplus after farmers and before other household members would be 60,090 bushels—in a good year.

Now, the lord has to determine what would be the best way to use those bushels. Every 250 bushels he sends to town means one less horse he can support; not to mention the ducks, geese, pigs, sheep or goats he might have to vary his meals a bit. If he IS going to send a cart load of oats to town, he’s going to have to pay a teamster, cover the cost of maintenance for the cart and risk the goods themselves…but chances are he’s going to have surplus and he’s going to send it to town.

The oats will go into the hands of a wholesaler, who will certainly double the price for the oats—already nominally placed at the cost of 1 horse = 250 bushels (horse, 25 g.p., equals 10 bushels per g.p.). The wholesaler makes it 5 bushels per g.p.; he will sell the oats to the innkeeper, who will again raise the price (lets say a typical sixty per cent), so that now its 2 bushels per g.p. Which the horse will eat 3/4 of in one day. So for food alone (not the bother of having deal with the horse) we are in the ballpark of 15 s.p. stabling per day.

Ah…but the 25 g.p. total cost of the horse may not be fairly juxtaposed with the cost to feed that horse each year. A horse can live for 40 years…should the total value of the horse be divided into the total number of years it lives?

No. It has to eat every one of those years and the total value of the horse is dependent on what it needs to eat before it dies. Moreover, the first two years the horse produces NOTHING for the trouble of keeping it alive and its third year it is able to do only so much marginal work. If it is a trained warhorse, most of its productive life it stands at its ease and produces no value at all, except in the eyes of its lord.

The problem with trying to make any predictions on the cost of the horse or its oats or its stabling, based on the figures in the books, is that you just wind up running around and around in circles. Now the horse requires 15 s.p. per day to keep it fed, meaning that overall it costs 750 g.p. over the first three years of its life (well, less, the horse was a pony first…lets say 500 g.p.)…which means that the oats ought to be worth more, making the stabling cost more, making the horse cost more and so on and so on. How does one make a rational guess at the cost of anything?

The general D&D community’s answer: who gives a shit?

I do. There’s no basis for any of these prices…which means that it is impossible to do the gathering necessary to run the sort of campaign that one could run with rational prices. How am I supposed to figure out how much material it will take to conquer Poland if I can’t get a straight price on the cost of a horse?

Oh, and by the way. How many manor farms does your world have? Exact number, please. I’d like to know how big an army I’m going to need.

There Has to Be More

I am, and have always been, crazy. It is this craziness that I brought to D&D, the sort of obsessive preoccupation that one normally associates with people who have to turn the lights on and off five times before bed or replace their keyboards once a week to combat sweat congealment.

As a child I received, as a gift, my first almanac at the age of 7. My parents were well aware of my fascination with atlases and statistics gleaned from the household encyclopedia…and perceived very correctly that I would find the material within an almanac of interest. Thereafter, for the next sixteen years, I received an updated almanac every Christmas. Throughout my school years, that almanac sat in the upper left corner of my desk…a ready source by which every teacher I had was measured. They had better get their national and state capitals right (along with every other statement about geography, history, industry or economics)…because I knew every fact by heart, to date, and I had the book to back me up.

No, I was not well-liked. I was well on the way to my present career of being an arrogant know-it-all with little regard for disinformation.

Yet it may surprise you to know that I was not a “rules lawyer” when I played D&D. I accepted quite readily that the rules in a DM's game were set by the DM and not by the book.

That is because sometimes almanacs are wrong.

My fascination from the beginning was never with the numbers or with the power of the books, but with what they represented. My fascination has been with the planet, the big picture, the manner in which it all fits together and how it relates to itself. No book, not an almanac or a Dungeon Master’s Guide, can completely or effectively relate the whole picture…it takes millions of books and billions of people to do that. For me, the almanac was convenient; it had a great deal of information crammed into a relatively small space—but the thing wasn’t holy in itself.

I suppose that my almanac was replaced by the DMG to some degree when I started playing, but it is has never been the whole game to me. All of the various books together have not been the whole game…if that were all there were, I would have gotten bored sick of the game long ago. What appealed to me about the game most of all was that it left room for me to apply all the other knowledge that I had gathered together through what I had read and studied.

I bluffed my way into a job with Statistics Canada in the 1980s, with no formal schooling and no working experience. I worked through the lead up to the census, which was fascinating for me as I’d spent so much time reading census statistics. It was mind-opening to see how they were gathered and to have a clear representation of how “wrong” they were. However, the application of those statistics, however flawed the data, enables the prediction of a great deal…worlds turn on the political and economic understanding of statistics.

When I left Stats Can in ’86, I entered university after a long period of destitution and zero income. I spent most of that time reworking my world and aligning it with the real world. University gave me plenty of time to go on doing that…even though by ’88 I was married and had a daughter on the way. It was about that time that I conceived of something that would redirect the entire format upon which my world would be based. A format that I have developed and continue to develop until today.

It’s not an easy subject to get into…for one thing, it sounds crazy. And it is. It is the central reason for me wanting to produce this blog, and it is going to take a long time to outline completely; all I want to do today is to outline my thinking process at the outset.

The DMG makes a point under the notes on “The Campaign” that a structure should be created by the DM which gives a reasonable, practical distribution of people, wealth and power…something that will enable the party to get a handle on what is going on. Too much random irrationality will discourage a party’s interest. It is the least read part of the DMG, and in the last 30 years I have seen nothing published which either promotes the argument, or remotely educates a DM on just how this is done.

What is a world, in D&D? It is a collection of described factions and hollowed places in the earth holding treasure and guarded by monsters, a network of roads which connect adventures and a sort of vague “fog” called civilization which settles over everything and impinges on the campaign only in terms of its crop of NPC’s. We’re led to believe that these are the “practical” limits of the game. DMs are forced to find ad hoc answers to player’s questions for lack of any structure to base those answers on.

Let me give an example:

I am a fighter, who has recently established himself as the lord over a 20-mile-diameter hex. Here are some questions I will want answered: I’d like to feed my 200 man army and I’d like it to not cost me any money while I’m not adventuring—how much food can I grow? How much of my land is arable? How much is suitable for the raising of cattle as opposed to sheep? How much meat can I get from a cow? How often will my cows breed? How much milk will they give? How much hay will I need to feed them in the wintertime? Are sheep more practical, considering that the land is similar to Scotland? Do you have other answers prepared if the land is closer to Arabia?

Most DMs will say, the land produces enough that you don’t have to provide for your men.

Does it produce more? How much can I sell? How much will the wool of 75 sheep provide for my coffers? Can I take some of that wool and make clothing, perhaps establishing a weaving mill? Will that make me more money? How much will I need to pay a weaver? How many herders does it take to look after 100 sheep? What does a herder cost?

Most DMs will give numbers, off the top of their head. The weaver costs a g.p. a month. The herder much less. The sheep will give such-and-such lbs. of wool per sheep.

Whereupon I’ll produce charts and evidence to show that now the DM has provided figures so out of whack that I’m able to turn my whole 300 square miles of arable land into sheep country, have it watched by 500 herders for 1 c.p. each and make a total of 7,500 g.p. every month. Why adventure?

Most DMs will recant, pull different figures out of their ass, and argue that I can only make 200 g.p. a month from my sheep. And we’re back to punishing players for thinking outside of the box. Again.

And if I point out that I have 40,000 sheep on my land and that I’m only making 1 c.p. per head because of upkeep, what if I ask to get into the business of feeding sheep, because that’s obviously more lucrative?

The game just doesn’t cover this crap. Because, it is argued, no one wants it to.

I disagree. I believe that the emphasis for the last thirty years by the gaming companies on “character” and “weaponry” has been because they CAN’T solve the problem. They have to push the player out of the real world and into the box because the box has clear, concise defining borders which they actually can address. I doubt that anyone working at Wizards of the Coast has any experience whatsoever with politics, economics, geography or demographics. They obviously think that none of those things, in terms of their existence in the world, are very complicated or at all inspiring in giving humans a motive.

D&D is often judged a children’s activity because all-too-often it resembles one of those games where you roll a die to move along a two-dimensional strip, marked with things like “lose a turn” or “jump forward two spaces.” The words have just been replaced with “lose a character” or “gain a +2 sword.”

I’ve never been satisfied with that. The campaign problem can be solved, and the questions I asked above can be answered without anyone’s butt being involved. I believe I have the way, which corresponds to the title of this blog.