Commodities List Part II

Well, I ought to finish this list.

Alchemy:

Alkali: bitter salt, sal ammoniac, soda ash
Black powder: Greek fire, fireworks
Cosmetics
Dyestuffs: carbon black, catechu, henna, indigo, madder, murex, ocher, more
Medicinal plants and drugs: bromine, healing earth, iodine, nutgall, perilla seed, santonin, senna, tonic, more
Ink
Lamp oil
Lye
Perfume: attar of roses, civet, lotus, musk, more
Pitch
Poison
Paint
Soap (including borax)
Sulphur (refined)
Vitriol
Wood alcohol

Yes, I know, not the list you were hoping for. These are the main chemicals produced in actual reality, which were not invented in the 20th century…so obviously none of the polymer group is included.

Most campaigns wouldn’t allow black powder; I accept that it can be pretty useful and that it could spoil a campaign. The best use I think comes from putting the black powder into a small, tied bag, upon which is then cast a fire trap spell. The bag is then tossed into the middle of a group of humanoids, using an audible glamer, causing the bag to make a definite clinking sound. Money! The humanoids open the bag, setting off the fire trap, which sets off the black powder…boom!

Remember, anything that can be used by the party can also be used by the DM.

Building materials & stoneware

Bricks
Cement
Ceramics: earthenware, pottery
Enamelware
Faience & majolica
Glassware
Ivory carving
Jade carving
Lacquerware
Masonry
Porcelain
Quicklime
Sculpture & statuary
Tiles

Strictly speaking, ivory is not stoneware…but it has more in common with that than anything else, so I include it with this group.

Metalwork:

Smelting
Alloys
Brass
Pewter
Pig iron
Metalsmithing
Engraving
Minting
Jewelry (includes lapidary)
Brassware
Bronzewares: bells, cannon, statuary
Coppersmithing
Goldsmithing
Silversmithing
Precision tools
Ironmongery
Armor
Tools
Weapons
Leadsmithing
Pewterware
Tinsmithing

Massive section, and the most complicated. That is because iron ore is made into pig iron which is made into ironmongery which is made into tools which is made into armor (yes, I consider armor a tool). Each step modifies the price, so that the price of armor is based on the availability of toolmakers, who depend on the availability of blacksmiths producing ironmongery, which depends on the availability of smelted iron, which depends on the availability of ore.

Good thing most of that is common.

A similar pathway has to be followed for copper ore smelted into brass alloy, smithed and then made into tools and precision tools. But I will be going more into all of this later.

Crops:

Anise
Cacao
Cardamon
Cereals: barley, gram, maize, millet, oats, rice, rye, sorghum, teff, tucusso, wheat
Chamomile
Cinnamon
Cloves
Coffee: coffee, chicory, harari
Coriander
Cumin
Ginseng
Ginger
Groundnuts
Hops
Licorice
Nutmeg
Oilseed: cottonseed, linseed, mustard seed, poppyseed, safflower seed, sesame, sunflower seed, tamarind seed
Paprika
Pepper
Pulses: alfalfa, castor beans, chickpeas, clover, flowers, fodder, hay, lentils, peas (dry), soybeans, vetch
Saffron
Tumeric
Sugarcane
Tea
Tobacco

I decided to lump all the cereals together because, basically, most cultures just eat what is local. Later I did the same with fruits and vegetables. It’s true, one type might be worth more than another, but for the purposes of the game, it just made sense to assume that if the players were in Norway, the bread would be made of oats, and if they were in Ethiopia, it would be made of teff. This is especially true of fruits and vegetables, which do not transport well in a medieval setting.

Fruits & vegetables:

Citrus: citrons, grapefruit, lemons, limes, mandarin oranges, oranges, tangerines
Orchard fruits: apples, apricots, blackberries, cherries, currants, juniper berries, grapes, peaches, pears, plums, raspberries, strawberries, whortleberries
Tropical fruits: avocadoes, bananas, breadfruit, cantaloupes, dates, figs, guavas, loquats, mangoes, olives, papayas, pineapples, pomegranates

You can argue about whether or not a particular fruit is tropical or temperate (orchard), but I don’t really care. You organize them however it suits you.

Tubers: arrowroot, potatoes, sugarbeets, sweet potatoes, tapioca, taro root, yams
Vegetables: asparagus, beans, cabbages, cucumbers, eggplants, garlic, lichee nuts, lily roots, melons, mushrooms, onions, peas, peppers, radishes, rhubarb, tomatoes, turnips, watermelons

Treenuts: almonds, betel nuts, carobs, cashews, chestnuts, coconuts, filbert nuts, hazelnuts, palm nuts, pistachios, tung nuts, walnuts

Some of these groupings may seem strange to you. That is because the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) does not include potatoes with “vegetables,” yet does include watermelons, which are clearly fruits. That is because the organization of fruits, nuts and vegetables is dependent on the manner in which the crops are grown, NOT in their biological classification. Since I am using FAO statistics for my production numbers, I have simply adopted their methods.

Livestock & animal products:

Camels
Cattle: buffalo, cows, water buffalo, yaks
Dogs
Donkeys
Elephants
Fowl: chickens, fighting cocks, cormorants, ducks, geese, turkeys
Goats
Griffs (hippogriffs, that is)
Horses
Leopards
Mules
Rabbits
Reindeer
Sheep
Slaves
Swine

Bear paws
Bristles (from pigs)
Wax: candle & beeswax, vegetable tallow, ozocerite (which is a mineral, but fits here)
Honey
Horn
Ivory
Ostrich feathers
Sea Ivory (walrus, narwhal, whale tooth)
Tortoise shell

Pretty straightforward. The list above doesn’t quite include it all, but other creatures, such as griffons, oliphants and so on can be extrapolated from the above group.

And yes, I include “slaves” as “livestock.” I’m really not hung up on the fearfulness that some seem to have about the prospect of slavery and culture. It had been going on for 10,000 years and I think the prospect of having slaves is as relevant to fantasy as the prospect of owning a twenty foot high oliphant.

Fish:

This is a long list. It is as long as references I have found for each of these different creatures or products:

Fish: anchovies, barbel, bonito, bream, carp, catfish, cod, crabs, crayfish, cuttlefish, eels, flatfish, flounder, gudgeon, haddock, hake, halibut, herring, lamprey, lobster, lungen, mackerel, mullet, navagu, oyster, perch, pike, roach, salmon, salon, sardine, shark, sturgeon, tilapia, trout, tuna, vogla, whitefish
Fish fins
Seaweed
Sponges & sea slugs
Turtles

Like fruits and vegetables, I would assume the culture would eat whatever fish was local. Quite a number of those listed are extraordinarily local.

As I said, I don’t have to adhere to these groupings. I could break them down, work out a specific trading model for any one of them and add it to my system.

The problem with that is that my system is huge as it is, and I’m not anxious to make it more complicated.

The file which has all these references listed is an excel file with 14 pages. It’s 4.3 megabytes in size. So while I would love to send a copy to people who requested one, that might be difficult through email (but not impossible).

I don’t really care about the copyright on this. It’s useless without further development (adding in those parts of the world not yet added) and without the table that follows it.

I just can’t reproduce it here, except in a lot of sections. To give you an idea, I’ll take part of one table, the one that lists off the trading cities in the “organized” part of my world. Please note that I have done very little to edit these. I am reproducing them as they appear on my computer…some of the figures are in red or pink, indicating that these are not finalized numbers:





















This looks like a lot of work, but it wasn’t put together in a weekend. It was built up over a period of about seven years, since 2001. I have completely reorganized it twice. I never want to have to do that again.

You may also see that it is impossible to define geographically some of these areas. Some are historical, such as Terra Scania, part of Denmark in 1650. But other parts, such as the first one on the list, Altslok, do not exist on Earth.

This is because I made a decision years ago that in any part of the world where humans numbered less than 1 person per square mile, that area would be occupied by non-human races: orcs, goblins, dwarves, elves, what have you. Since my population figures depend on the spread of human beings in 1650, that means vast areas of central Russia and Turkestan are occupied by non-humans, particularly Siberia.

Altslok, for example, corresponds to four earth-territories. The first is an area of Kazakhstan formerly called East Kazakhstan (which I call Croft). The others are three parts of Siberia: Gorno-Altaysk (Roth); Khakassia (Khath) and Tuva (Tuvath). Together these are arranged along the Altai Mountains, comprising a Dwarven Kingdom: a civilized, densely populated island of civilization amid orcs to the west, haruchai to the south and east, and hobgoblins and bugbears to the north.

I remember what these territories are and where they are because I have another huge table, called “Cities”…from which I extrapolate the population figures noted here. You’ll see that Altslok only has two primary markets: Croftshelm and Bokoth. The products of both Roth and Croft are together gathered at Croftshelm before they are traded outwards; because war cannot go on always, I have a world where orcs trade with dwarves—although tensions are necessarily a part of such arrangements. The limits in trade are indicated by the “1” which appears beside both Croftshelm and Bokoth.

Not like Archangel or Astrakhan, just below. Both relatively small populations, but profoundly important trading cities.

I could spend a long time just talking about the kingdoms…and I will, but not now.

Mostly I want to end this by pointing out that the table is extensive. This should provide some evidence of that.

Don’t hesitate to ask questions. I can’t remember to explain everything.

Commodities List part I

At this point, the most useful thing I could provide would be a list of the products I include in my economy. I’ll list off the main heading and its corresponding components…the system is flexible enough that, if at some future point, I want to divide the components and consider them main products, I’m able to do that.

Starting with:

Trade: banking, markets.

This is merely a list of those cities at which products are gathered and sold to the public. All the markets in a particular province are combined for the purpose of exports. For an example, I use Bohemia, which has 8 market references (names are Medieval): Budweis (1), Pardubitz (1), Pilsen (2), Prague (1), Reichenberg (1), Tetschen (1) and Usti (1). Note that Prague was, historically, a cultural and religious center, not a financial one. However, with eight references, the overall kingdom of Bohemia is a substantial trading center.

Ores & Minerals:

Adamantite
Antimony
Bismuth
Cadmium
Chromium
Cobalt
Copper
Gold
Iron
Lead
Manganese
Mercury
Mithril
Molybdenum
Nickel
Platinum
Silver
Tin
Tungsten
Zinc

Abrasives: emery, pumice
Alum
Arsenic
Stone cutting
Chalk: chalk, meerschaum, phosphorus
Coal
Granite: artyk, tufa, basalt, brownstone, granite, porphyry, syenite, sandstone
Guano
Kaolin
Limestone: dolomite, limestone
Marble: alabaster, marble (varying colors)
Niter
Obsidian
Peat
Salt
Slate
Sulphur
Witherite

Agate
Cat's Eyes
Greenstone
Lapis Lazuli
Moonstone
Mother-of-Pearl
Quartz
Turquoise

Alexandrite
Amber
Amethyst
Coral
Garnet
Jade
Pearls
Spinel

Corundum
Emeralds
Diamonds
Rubies
Sapphires

Gemcutting

That’s pretty self explanatory. There are other gem types, it is only that in the part of the world that I have worked on, these are the gems that I have locations for their production.

Foodstuffs:

Brewing
Caviar
Confectionary: chocolate, candy, edible bird’s nests, peppermint, treacle
Copra
Milk: cream, milk, kumiss
Butter: butter, ghee
Cheese: gruyere, gorgonzola, parmesan, ewe’s milk, others
Distilling: arak (date), arrack (coconut), brandywine, cognac, kirschwasser, plum brandy, sake, strega, whiskey, others
Flour: bread, cakes, noodles, oatmeal, yeast
Dried fruit: various fruits, prunes, raisins
Malt
Meat: beef, lamb, meat, mutton, pork, poultry, eggs, yak’s tail
Dried meat: various meats, bacon, sausage
Dried or smoked fish
Vegetable oils: lard, castor oil, citronella, coconut oil, cottonseed oil, linseed oil, olive oil, peanut oil, sesame seed oil, soybean oil, sunflower seed oil, tung oil, vegetable oil
Whale or fish oil
Opium
Qat
Snuff
Sugar: cane sugar, beet sugar, starch
Wine: champagne, vinegar, wine, marsala, asti spumante, beaujolais, others

There are a lot of individual varieties in this category. I like to supply varying examples, particularly the cheeses, liquors and wines. It is a bit annoying, and the players rarely seem to notice, but nevertheless…

Fabrics

Pelts: ermine, fox, lynx, otter, sable, snow leopard, wolf and lesser pelts
Fur Clothing
Spinning, Carding or Fulling
Embroidery
Artwork
General tailoring: gloves, hats, robes, sacks, shawls, much more…I don’t separate this out until the equipment list

Cotton, raw
Cotton cloth: flannel, jersey, muslin
Cotton goods

Flax, raw
Linen cloth: canvas, damask, lace, linen, sailcloth
Linen goods

Rough fibers: hemp, jute, kapok, kenaf, kendyr, ramie
Rough fiber cloth
Fiber goods: hemp goods, nets, rope, twine

Silk, raw
Silk cloth: pongee, satin, pure silk
Silk goods

Wool: angora, camelhair, karakul, mohair, llamahair, vicunahair, sheep’s wool
Wool cloth: felt, mohair cloth, plush, velvet, wool cloth, serge
Carpets: floor covering, tapestries
Woolen goods: felt hats, ribbon, blankets, tents, more

Skins: bearskin, goatskin, kid leather, leopardskin, tigerskin, sealskin, sheepskin, snakeskin
Hides
Leathercraft: boots, moroccan leather goods, saddles, sandles, coats, more

Probably the section I hate the very, very most. And do you think characters care that they can buy their particular doublet in wool, velvet, serge, damask or mohair? Don’t count on it.

Wood

Charcoal
Construction, general: carpentry, water wheels, windmills, looms, presses…represents the general service of construction, not to the wood itself

Mastics: asafoetida, gum arabic, gum benzoin, tragacanth, jelutong, resin

Thatch: baskets, coir, mats, rattan, straw goods, thatch roofing

Musical instruments: cellos, drums, church organs, violins (I consider this the cost for fabrication, so I apply it also to metals, bone, ivory or whatever an instrument can be made from)

Broadleaved woods: acacia, bamboo, beech, birch, blackwood, boxwood, carobwood, chestnut, cinchona, cork, cryptomeria, ebony, eucalyptus, ironwood, lac, laurel, oak, palms, rattan, rosewood, sal, satinwood, tamarisk, teak
Coniferous woods: fir, cedar, cypress, larch, pine, spruce

Farm tools: ploughs, general wooden tools
Wagons: wheels, carriages, carts, wagons
Watercraft: barges, dhows, boats, ships
Carved goods: bonecarving, horncarving, dolls, toys
Furnishings: barrels, buckets, coffins, furniture, veneer, more

Aromatic woods: aloe, camphor, frankincense, mistletoe, myrrh, sandlewood, teak oil, wood oil

Paper: paper, papyrus
Paper Goods: bookbinding, paper fans, manuscripts, paper lanterns, papier-mache, parasols, playing cards

There may be some who dispute the inclusion of paper under wood…my world takes place in 1650, and some technologies had developed wood for paper. I believe that in a world with magic, it would be likely they would have made this step up from parchment…besides, if I were to use parchment from animal skins instead of wood, the cost of spellbooks would be prohibitive.

I have seven other tables: Alchemy, Building Materials, Metals and Metalwork, Crops, Fruits & Vegetables, Livestock and Fish…which I promise I will publish. But this has been tiresome up until now and I think I’ll stop for today.

Wide, Wide World

When I decided to create an economy for my world, I did not sit down with a real hot cup of coffee and scratch out some notes about which places would produce what: “Let’s see, France and Italy will have a lot of wine, Russia has some trees, India has indigo…” However long I could have gone at the system that way, it would never have been what I needed. I wanted a comprehensive system, something that would include virtually every product in use and its availability. More than that, it had to give a price for those products…a different price for each location where that object would be purchased.

This last, of course, was the major bitch in the project. If we establish a geographical location for the production of materials, it stands to reason that the distance from that geographical location is going to have something to do with the material cost.

Before I could get into that, I needed a source: a comprehensive tome that would list off the locations where objects were produced, so that an estimate could begin. Of course, there was no need for me to be arbitrary about it—the planet earth is filled with books about what is produced and where (part of the benefits of running a system on this planet)…but a consistent one, ah, there’s the rub.

I grew up with an encyclopedia that was purchased the year my parents were married, in 1958. It’s interesting that encyclopedias produced at that time were focused primarily on history and geography, unlike encyclopedias today that are focused on science and social science. I was lucky enough to happen upon a duplicate of that set, the Colliers Encyclopedia, printed in 1952. There are some fascinating idiosyncrasies about a set of facts volumes printed during the Korean War—when space travel was not conceived of, when Libya had no oil production, when Vietnam is still a part of the French colony of Indochina.

Most important to me, the encyclopedia has articles on literally thousands of geographical locations: cities, provinces, plateaus, vales, rivers, lakes, mountain ranges, seas, forests…and each article includes, as was standard at the time, a list of what that particular location produces economically.

Or, at least what it did in 1952.

The age of the book is its best feature—the closer to Renaissance period Europe, the better (my world operates in circa 1650). Of course, there are numerous listings for the production of automobiles, turbines, electrical cable, steel, uranium, radium and so on. For these things I read wagons, windmills, rope, pig iron, mithril and adamantium (the last two are a bit cute, but at least I’m not deciding where they’re found). I make other substitutions as needed.

Very often, the encyclopedias make more than one reference to a particular place in terms of its production of a particular item. For example, I have 7 references to the Island of Elba off the coast of Tuscany for its production of iron ore. As I make my way through the encyclopedia, I make note of each of these references; statistically, it is fair to argue that seven references would mean that a location produces seven times as much as another location, say Val d’Aosta, which has one reference.

Not always true, I know. But I dare anyone to find as complete a listing.

My “trade tables” as they are now, do not include most of Africa, any of the New World, or Western Europe. This has taken some time to accumulate the data. Altogether I have 19,400 references for areas stretching from the eastern half of Germany and Italy to Japan. More than 400 of those references are “iron ore”…so Elba’s seven have a relevance to the local area of Italy, but they would have very little effect on prices in Turkestan or China.

Because the encyclopedia is an independent source, the substance of those things produced vary widely. Some of the more obscure and profound references I have found, many of which I’ve been forced to look up, have included ozokerite, vogla (for which I could not find an English site), catechu, artyk (for which I could find no representative site at all, though it is a building stone used in Azerbaijan and Armenia), kumis, kenaf, asafoetida, perilla seed, brocade, teff, bear paws and sea slugs. These are things I would not have come up with on my own—even the spellchecker doesn’t recognize most of them. Altogether, there are more than 600 different products, which I group together into 279 commodities and services.

Why 279? Because these are what I have been able to find additional statistics for: specifically, production statistics. I began years ago with two books, the United Nations Industrial Statistics Yearbook (1988, earliest one I could find) and the Food and Agricultural Organization Yearbook (same year, for consistency). These two books provided me with a considerable volume of statistics…not as complete as I would have liked, but it was a considerable start.

The numbers, of course, did NOT correspond to 1650. Obviously we produce considerably more pig iron per population than was ever produced in 1650…and there are NO statistics for that period.

And this is the point when an assumption must be made? No, this is when more research is required.

I tore into every book on the Industrial Revolution and the economic development of Europe and the world that I could find, including quite a few very boring published theses. I have yet to find any clear figures…and for some time the numbers floated around as I compared data between what I was reading. I settled on a rough division of 500 between the late 1980s and the mid-17th century. That is, world production of anything would be approximately 1/500th of the present…adjusted individually for various products as evidence allowed. It has not been perfect—but as I pointed out yesterday, neither is the census. Doesn’t mean it lacks practicality.

It has made it possible for me to get a sense for the value of a product with my having as little arbitrary influence on that number as possible. I can, if questioned, “show” my work and challenge others to improve it.

Please…improve my work. I’m trying to do it myself, all the time.

That’s enough for now. I’m enjoying this, so I may post later today, and probably tomorrow.

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.