WfS ~ Ooredoo and Tech-6

At last, I'm ready to start forward again.  I'm going to be introducing a new region, Pangaran, that is tech-6. The first step is to identify Pangaran's relationship with Jawanda, as we want our world to fit together. Therefore, we start with this map:

Depicted: 18-mile hexes

I have reduced the scale of the above map to 18 miles per hex, in order to create a 90-mile separation between Ooredoo, an island at the edge of Pangaran, and Jawanda.  Thus the island is marginally close enough for a dangerous journey in a fishing boat, which we presume our party of fighters will try to accomplish, bringing them to this new place.

[as an aside, I have made the decision not to attach intelligence to tech levels after all.  I know this is something I discussed back with the first implementation of the system, but after all this is a learning experience.  I know some will miss this note, it was meant to be included in the last post, but I'm remembering to add it now]

I've made only a rough drawing of Ooredoo above.  I have a more detailed version in 6-mile hexes to present; I could have updated the map above with the map below, but I felt at this point it was a detail that wasn't really necessary.  The important point here is the distance between the two places.

Here is a 6-mile hex map of Ooredoo:

Depicted: 6-mile hexes

My goal here is to depict familiar hex-types as they manifest around tech-6.  The deserts have become dry, unproductive rifts and sinks, which still offer the potential of meeting monsters in the hills and back country, but which have little influence on the island's infrastructure apart from inconvenience.

I have also divided the island into two terrains.  On the west, a flat watered plain, with a base supply of 2 food.  Should I start describing that as '11' food? To emphasize I'm referring to the number of 1s in the expression and NOT the number of food?  This seems to be really confusing some people.

On the east, we have a dry hill-plain, hardly better than the best lands in the previous desert culture, with 1 food and 1 hammer per hex.  The type-7 hex around Sayur has precisely the same productivity that Ai had in Jawanda (our starting hex).

But does it?  Unlike Ai, Sayur produces cereals, vegetables and at least one type of livestock: goats, sheep or swine.  Reindeer is pretty much out, as this is still close to the tropics.  See the link for where I'm getting this from.  We can further identify these things, if we want, by defining cereals as maize, vegetables as sweet potatoes and even a specific kind of goat, sheep or swine ~ but the point is that the small amount of food production in Sayur comes from these things and NOT from hunting and gathering.

How is this different?  Well, archery is now a skill set that the locals have, so the population is likely to defend itself with bows rather than spears.  If attacked, an inhabitant of Sayur will likely run away, then return later with bow and try to chop the party down one by one from a distance.  This is a new mind-set.

As well, Pangaran in general has no religion.  They've abandoned mysticism, so they are largely a pragmatic sort, much like one would expect of frontier settlers.  These are hardened, rugged individualists, living more in families than in clans, as there is less need to depend on others in order to eat.  We defend better and our food supply is more secure and diversified, so we can afford to be in it for our personal gain.

Moving on to the type-6 hex surrounding Qimo and Raya Pos, we have again the same relationship as Bodo and Cai in Jawanda . . . except that now the increase in food supply creates the existence of fruit trees, which will be scattered along the heights above the sea, where they can catch the morning dew.  Both the cereals in Sayur and the fruit in Qimo enables fermentation, so drinking now becomes a thing to do.  Drinking brings the option of intoxication as well as other social problems.  Qimo does remain a transshipment point, like Eom and Guba before it, but now it has more interesting things to ship.

Turning to the other end of the island, the type-6 and better hexes produce a great deal of food: 111 food, so that instead of merely a large settlement, we have made villages of Tangarang, Umar and Vekasi.  The latter two of these, however, lack hammers altogether.  Obviously, this means the table I posted earlier today and which I have already linked with this post will need an adjustment (learning process), as these can't be "nomadic hunting and gathering" cultures.  I will adjust "subsistence farming" from 1 hammer to 0 hammers, fixing that hole.

The lack of hammers would indicate no animals, but we still have plenty of cereals, vegetables and fruits to supply a food source.  The population of Umar and Vekasi, both of which produce coins, is at least able to exchange food for bare necessities, such as the most simple of weapons, skins and the occasional maintenance of objects they have to pay to replace.  Life for these people is very primitive, but in a very different way that Jawanda: there are lots of people surrounding these two villages, 400-1000.  That's more than probably the whole region of Jawanda.

Tangarang is a little better off.  It has one hammer, gained from becoming type-5: but there is a lot of pressure put on that single hammer, so we can assume that a lot of extra goods must be brought in from outside to support the needs of all of West Ooredoo.  Still, none of these people are starving.  They are just living very simple lives.

For the time being, I think that covers it.  I'll make some rolls and determine that we have 1,301 persons in Ooredoo, in an area of about 12.3 hexes: about 105 persons per 6-mile hex.  This is much higher than the maximum should be for tech-6, which is around 49 per hex.  But Ooredoo is just a part of a larger region, so we can offset the density by adding additional hexes elsewhere.

I'll be taking a break from this for a bit, not producing another post tomorrow.  I have a general idea what to do next, but I want to contemplate that a bit, and see how this one plays.

Further Notes to Tech-5 and Some for Tech-6

I had meant to start on tech-6 today, but I have yet a small issue to manage first, to keep the reader in line with my thinking.  The gentle reader must please remember that I am creating this as I am going along ~ this felt like the best way to both work out the various elements of the tech-system and the world-building experience at the same time.  This way, the reader can progress with my interpretation, I can identify problems as they arise and are questioned, while at the same time a world can take shape slowly and steadily, showing that worlds can be made from the ground up in a fully rational manner.

In creating a table for tech-6 that would reflect the table I created for tech-5 in the last post, I found that it was clumsy and unworkable.  As such, I've rebuilt the tech-5 table so that it can match what I mean to do with tech-6.  And just so the reader doesn't feel that nothing has been added with this, I'll put up the tech-6 table also . . . and then begin on a map and design for the tech-6 region I plan to lay out.

Here is tech-5 again:

Instead of basing the indications for civilization based on the type of hex, I've instead chosen to base it on the amount of food, hammers and coins.  This is more logical, since different base terrains can radically change how much food and so on there is compared with the type of hex.  Readers who are ambitious can compare a type-7 hex on various parts of the recent Stavanger map with those on the recent Crimean map, where the base hexes are very different.

Now let's have a look at tech-6:

I won't go far into this: the reader can see at once that there are a great many more things to be found and used with a tech-6 culture.  As a reminder, I will point out that tech-6 adds agriculture, animal husbandry, archery, mining and the wheel to the mix.  I will probably need to update this table a bit in the future (I see I've forgotten roads), but I will post it again once I've gone through the process of outlaying the tech-6 region that goes with this.

Finally, I've left out a table indicating bonuses for hex-type.  Here it is:

This doesn't mention the +1 bonus coin for coasts or rivers (intermittent included), though not both. That is really a footnote, but an important one.

Good, that's fixed.  Let's get started.

T6: People & Abilities

Going on the premise that a lot of page views are more important than comments, I'm ready to try a close-hand investigation of another tech level; this will be a series like tech five, since there's too much to talk about in just one post.  I think I will go back and adjust the titles of the tech-5 series (giving them the prefix 'T5' just as this one is 'T6').  That will help me and the reader find them more easily.

Tech-6 is already getting complicated.  We've gone from purely nomadic societies to dwellings and permanent population centers; there are immediate signs of specialized work done by larger groups and much of what's done is not directly related to keeping clan and family together.  Yet I want to retain the 'clan' ideal, for this tech at least, because it helps organize the drift of population from hex to hex and occupation to occupation.  For much of this series, however, I will be talking about 'tribes' - which we'll arbitrarily define as two or more clans working closely together.  The tribes in tech-5 would meet occasionally at certain times of the year, the clans coming together to share.  Now tribes are a more permanent fixture, creating a tribal leader who is a higher form of chief.  Both clans and tribes have 'chiefs' so it makes the matter difficult.  I'm going to settle the matter by imposing the term tribal "chieftain" as the superior over clan "chief" - please don't impose any importance upon this terminology other than my desire for order and clarity.

Let me point out that, regardless of the notes below, there would still be various groups inside a T6 culture that would be entirely T5 in structure and behaviour.  Try to retain their presence in the hinterland of the T6 culture as we go forward.

Demographics

Like before, let's start at the clan level.  For T6, clans will be slightly bigger.  Permanent homes increase the number of children (as they don't need to be carried and can be more easily cared for).  I propose that the T6 clan will have 30-65 humanoids (25 +5d8), with 1-4 infants, 2-7 children and 2-7 youths.  Once again, an infant is less than 3 years of age, a child is aged 3 to 7 and a youth is age 8 to 14.  Most children and youths will work long hours even at a very young age, being encouraged to spend their time in varying ways (have a look at farm-life in the 19th century for ideas).

Let's increase the number of women by changing the male:female ratio to 1.4:1.  We can then imagine a typical clan of 47 humanoids: 2 infants, 5 children, 4 youths, 21 men and 14 women (average clan size is 47.5).

This means that a small tribe will measure around a hundred people - this would equal the smallest size of village that exists in my world.  So every small village would be made up of one tribe; larger villages may be one tribe or they may be two.  Towns would be conglomerations of several tribes.  This helps make clear how the cultural rulership of a town works: each tribe has a chieftain and perhaps two or three elders (representing the strongest clans in that tribe).  These would then meet as a council to make decisions.  The head of the council may have a number of titles: hetman, thane, bey, sheik, rajah, king and so on.  Remember that a name like 'king' was used very frequently for very small groups; not every king was leader of a great country.

Technologies & Abilities

T6 gave us five technologies: mining, the wheel, agriculture, animal husbandry and archery.  New abilities - sage abilities - should logically come out of that list.  I don't argue that this is comprehensive; I may have missed something.  Hell, last time I missed 'hunting' (though I went back later and added it in).  We do the best we can.

I'll skip incidental abilities this time around (a person could go crazy trying to nail all those down).  Let's stick to abilities that naturally derive from the technologies named (and this time I'll put the class associated with that ability in brackets).  Remember, unless indicated that fighter class includes rangers and paladins.  Let me emphasize, however, that while those classes would gain these abilities, they wouldn't exist in a T6 culture - not thieves, assassins, druids or bards either, for that matter.  These skills, where possessed, would be used by cross-trained fighters & clerics or by individual workers.

Bowyer (fighter/assassin) - from archery.  If bows are going to be employed by the populace, someone will have to be there to make them.  I agree that many bows will be made by the users themselves (which would fit into individuals having this as a low-level amateur ability).  Where many people congregate, however, it will become obvious that some are better at this skill than others, so that bowyers (though few in number) will become a specialized profession.  I'll add fletcher to this, since making arrows would also be a much wanted thing.  We may presume that a tribe would have one or two persons, performing both skills or each skill individually.

Cartwright (worker) - from the wheel.  If we're going to have wheels, and therefore roads, we'll want carts.  I don't choose to incorporate this skill into any particular class.  Characters can get the skill from my background generator.  At present, however, I don't see it as a 'sage ability'; perhaps I might change my mind about that.  For the present, we can assume that workers in the tribe apply themselves to making carts as necessary.

Cultivation (druid/worker) - from agriculture.  The druid gets this skill from knowledge of grasses and grains, where I call it farming.  For an ordinary worker it is just cultivation without all the farming bells and whistles.  We can add brewing as a skill, since we know fermentation probably preceded the cultivation of grains in human history (in fact, we may have started farming just so we could get drunk more often - makes sense to me).  Most brewing would be done by individuals, and badly; but most of the leading family members among the clans would be skilled at cultivation.

Defense against Predation (fighter) - from animal husbandry.  I'm basing this entirely upon tales and traditions of agricultural folklore where various herders (and often young men) fight off wolves, bears, lions, tigers and so on.  The theme tends to appear in many different parts of the world, with different animals taking the role of huge dangerous predator.  I'm thinking that fighters with animal training would gain a +1 armor class when fighting specific kinds of animal or semi-intelligence predator.

Domestication (fighter) - from animal husbandry.  This would also be part of the animal training for fighters - the ability to 'break' horses, tame dogs, sheep, goats or cattle, or pacify a range of other animals (acknowledging that some unusual variants, such as the leopard or cormorant, would probably not appear at T6) would be a natural gain for both fighters and rangers.  Arguably, the skill could be included in the bard as well, though perhaps not because I feel it might be managed in a completely different way.

Horseback riding (fighter) - from animal husbandry.  I have a rule that warhorses can only be ridden by fighter classes - but at this tech, there probably wouldn't be warhorses.  I also have a rule, however, that only fighter classes can ride a horse into battle - so while most of the classes can manage to get on a horse and ride it, only the fighter gets this particular training.  At any rate, we would see a cultural increase in people not travelling by foot.

Mining (fighter/mage/thief) - from mining.  Why do I include mages and thieves?  Because mining is often an intellectual activity as well as a physical one and thieves are generally motivated to finding short-cuts.  Therefore I'd include the skill in both these classes.  I only include the fighter because mining also applies directly to war.  Most actual labor in mines, remember, would be done by workers, under the direction of a classed individual.  The skill set at T6 would only apply to soft stone, near-surface mining, though creating drifts, shafts, winzes and raises, as well as skill in shoring tunnels, would all be included.  The chance of a tunnel collapsing would be high, so I would imagine that would be the real limit on how deep a tunnel would be dug by a rational society (near enough to the surface that a collapse could be dug out before the miners all died).

Navigation (druid/fighter/thief) - from fishing.  Yes, fishing was a T5 technology, but there are bound to be improvements with T6.  One of those would be a willingness to move farther from land, so that setting a course over land or sea, by the stars, would be acquired by a few rare individuals.  The druid gains the skill from time in the outdoors; same with rangers; other fighters through military interests and thieves because they're willing to be pirates.

Pathfinding II (ranger) - from hunting.  Like navigation above, this is an improvement over pathfinding I, described in the T5 posts.  Here the ranger is able to improve the chance of others to avoid accidents, giving a +4 to ability checks and saves against accidents that might occur while travelling over untracked country (something that sounds like it needs a set of rules, doesn't it?).  I perceive that a ranger could only help 1 person per level, so that the ranger would have to specify who was being helped on each given day.

Ploughwright (worker) - from agriculture.  This is just a placeholder for a wide variety of tools that would need to be made by someone, from winnowing baskets to ploughs to harnesses for oxen.  Characters can get this from the background generator (when I rewrite the damn thing).  I don't feel it needs to be a sage ability, not especially.

Prospecting (druid/thief) - from mining.  The druid has the skill included under geology.  Perhaps I just want to include thieves because of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but I return to the argument that thieves are the sort that look for short cuts.

Stonecarving (bard) - from mining.  The appearance of soft stone and gems, coupled with the appearance of practical tools (trade through navigation and connections with the outside, higher tech world would bring in hardened iron for general use) would encourage a more sophisticated artistic passion.  Many workers would probably choose to express themselves by making small sculptures when not working, in poor seasons - and the appearance of so many such sculptures would likely dilute the importance of fetishism (replacing it with our modern perception of sentimentality).

Teamster (fighter) - from the wheel & animal husbandry.  In a T6 culture the driver would be limited to oxen and donkeys, not horses.  Most likely, most carts would be drawn by one, perhaps two animals.  I'd like to leave four-in-hand or six-in-hand teams to higher tech levels, with the proliferation of the four-wheeled wagon.  I'm limiting my T6 vehicles to carts only - not because it's necessarily reality, but because it is a nice indication for the players when they pass through such areas.

There, that's an overview.  Like before, I'll be getting onto religion, improvements, tools and treasure.