Between the people who tell me the grit I include on this blog is "extraordinary" and the people who tell me that I tend to wither under criticism, I confess this blogging thing gets on my nerves. In linking to Chris at Hill Cantons' writing of this post on the weekend, I draw the gentle reader's attention to the 27th comment by Limpey ... particularly the line where he says, "It became clear to me that my detractors were very determined ..."
It isn't that the self-righteous little fuckers are wandering around anonymously in the background. It isn't that they can pick and choose their battles from the literally tens of thousands of words I write on this blog monthly, focusing on this little sentence here or that little sentence there in the way it suits their fancy. It isn't their pretense to expertise or critical analysis that seems to pop up on my comments list but is inexplicably invisible on their own personal blogs.
What really pisses me off is that I can speak and argue in reality much faster and much more clearly than I can write. Face to face, I can rip apart their two-dimensional protests in the space of a minute or so. I can enter into the discussion with a full-on Socratean court press, demanding an answer to this, and an answer to that, walking my pathetic little detractor into a corner of his own dumbfuck construction before eviscerating his position.
The blog just doesn't let me do that. I can ask questions and demand answers, but as soon as these little peons sense their position is wavering a tiny bit they sidestep my questions and change the subject, smugly doing so with a meaningless diatribe full of disconnected, irrelevant examples. I can't stand in front of them and demand that they answer the question I've asked. I can't force them back onto the subject in question. I can't beat them with the stick of their own fucking stupidity.
No, I have to sit here and fume and argue with myself about how deleting this comment will make me look to the people who actually do respect me. Every one of these slippery bastards that don't respect me - or anyone else, as far as I know - holds me hostage. I am on trial, daily, put there whenever some little fart has read some obscure book on the subject he bought at Borders, who presumes that book must be right because its a book, and I must be wrong because I'm, well, a person. Books, of course, aren't written by people who get their facts wrong. Books are never irrelevant because they weren't written with D&D in mind. Books are gods. I know that I have never read a book which I found to be a piece of unbelievable unmitigated poorly-researched crap. Every book I have ever read was perfectly researched.
My greatest failing as an expert at anything is clearly that I haven't read, memorized and thoughtfully included a bibliography to every book ever written on every subject I dare to talk about on this blog. It is my fault that back in the 80's and 90's that I didn't painstakingly copy out long paragraphs of description from the books I read in libraries about feudalism, the middle ages, culture, history and so on, for the day when I would need to quote them, verbatim, for this blog. I am unforgiveably guilty of not spending every waking hour I have, now, at the library, fixing this regrettable lack of foresight by quoting chapter, verse and publishing house for every buttfuck critic who feels that I haven't read enough books written by actual medieval writers to please that particular critic. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Holy fucking mother of Christ, what in blazes was I - am I - thinking?
Let me explain something about defending oneself to readers who have disagreements about something you've written. It is fucking exhausting. The complaintants generally haven't read every word you've bothered to carefully write in each sentence you've carefully strung together, so you spend more than half your time repeating shit you've already said. Most complaintants just don't get it. They don't know what you're talking about. And if you've committed the immortal sin of crapping on some sacred cow they've spent the last twenty years of their lives fucking and reading bedtime stories to, they simply WON'T get what you're talking about.
So it begins to wear a little thin. It begins to beg the question, why bother? It gathers in a little less pleasant gain. The bloom comes off the rose. And if you aren't the sort that thrives on this sort of thing ... if you aren't the kind of person who soaks in controversy with the osmosis-bent fury of an amoeba touched by Darwin, you will find the day that comes when you just won't want to do this anymore. You will lift yourself from your computer and find out that there are happier, warmer places in the world, where there are people who considerately want to share their company with you, where they will not disdain your choices and interests, but serve them and do so with kindness and concern. You will learn there is a warm sun, a gentle rain, a glistening pond, a bustle of laughing people on the street, quiet glades, calling birds and spectacular little things in stores that you can buy with money you earn.
And you'll wonder why you ever had a blog.
For me, having now finished delivering my opinion on something, having taken time out of patiently churning out product to express myself like a human being on something that interests ME as opposed to those readers who feel my blog is no place for me to give my opinion freely, I shall now take on the task of again answering those who find everything I've written today to be yet one more pile of excrement, brown and smelly and wholly dissatisfying.
Okay. I'll just get a cup of coffee and we can get started.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Fletcher's Shop
A table that comes as the result of considerable research, I can promise; and still I'm certain that many a gentle reader will disagree with virtually ever number quoted. That's as may be ... there are so many dimensions given for so many different bows and crossbows in existence, I doubt very much there was ever a standard. But where there isn't a standard, make one.
The silvered arrow head is 10% the weight of the total arrow's head - and still it doubles the price of the arrow. The reader will please take note that the arrow costs more than the shaft and head combined - it is the additional cost to assemble the arrow. If the character has a fletcher's background, they might save some money.
The composite bow is the only kind of bow, long or short, that I sell, since virtually any other sort of bow had ceased to be in production by the 17th century. No doubt someone could make their own, but it wouldn't have the range or accuracy (I'm guessing, there might be an argument the player could offer to prove me wrong).
Normally my weapons break on a 1 in 6. I am considering making a rule for crossbows and bows where instead of a 6-sided I'll incorporate a 12-sided. The bow or crossbow itself still breaks on a 1, but the string breaks on a 2 or 3. The breakage rate overall would increase from 16.67% to 25%, and that might be a problem; after some testing, it might be useful to try some other ratios to bring it into a comfort zone for the players.
At any rate, for the crossbow at least, if the weapon breaks, it would be the stock, the mechanism or the 'prod', which is the forward part of the weapon; if either stock or mechanism, the player could replace just the broken part and, if put together by someone else, for just a small price.
But then, in Transylvania at least, bows and crossbows are fairly cheap. So much wood in the area is the reason. Wood is quite cheap throughout Europe.
That would be it. I'm having a running this evening, so I probably won't have time to post another table. Looking at my list, the Furniture Maker is next, and that's all wood - I don't know if the reader remembers, I began the restructuring of the tables because the wood-calculations were problematic. I know I won't enjoy the next bit.
But I'm smiling just the same.
Fishmonger's Shop
Let me begin this one by first pointing out that the market in question is two hundred miles from the nearest sea, and further than that from the fish sources of the Baltic, the North Sea and the Atlantic. So naturally fish prices are bound to be high. Even at that, herring is cheap, as is the freshwater trout.
Of course someone is going to leap in and shout that walruses and narwhal are even farther away, so why are these things not even more expensive? I shall tell you honestly ... I am really not certain. One of the things I try not to do is to fuck around with the numbers the system generates. I input the data; I apply a consistent formula to the data and that gives me the cost per ounce. In this case, the data is world production & the number of references I have to that material. I don't decide the data. Now and then, I'll admit, the system does seem to spit out some odd numbers, but since the system WORKS, I accept that whatever the cost is, that is the cost. I have pointed out to the gentle reader in the past that the numbers may not suit the reader's world. I continue to stand on that argument. One thing I'm not going to do is to change a massive, complex system for the sake of someone out there who thinks the number for a particular item is a little high. That would be ridiculous.
In this case, I would guess it is because the ivory described above is raw and unworked. Compare it to the cost of the carved walrus tusk on the Carver's table. Since most of us have rarely had the opportunity to buy "sea ivory" straight off the boat, our perceptions of how much it is worth are probably worthless.
A bigger issue, no doubt, is the subject of ice on the list. This came to me only this morning, while researching fishmongers to figure something new that could be added to the table. The manufacture of ice is really only the rational application of heat in order to create a depressure system that will freeze water. It isn't nearly as complicated as Doc Brown's machine. The reader can see a description of the first ice-making machine on this youtube video here, starting at 4:11 into the file. (By the way, I strongly suggest you watch the whole episode, and then the whole series, and after that you dig up "The Day The Universe Changed" ... but that's just my opinion).
Of course, the ice machine depicted above was invented in the 19th century, but that's a mere bagatelle. Arguably, with the research for magic, etcetera, etcetera. Zzarchov at this point will feel the need to remind me that magic doesn't work like science, and that in fact ice isn't 'created' by magic, it is invoked or teleported or some such from the Plane of Ice, and so on - my respect sir - and I probably don't have him spot down there, since I never know exactly what his argument is going to be for anything I might propose upon the scientific line.
Yesterday Zzarchov wrote the following list of things he tries to run: "... heavy things fall faster, there are only 4 elements, glass repels electricity (lightning) and witches often do weigh the same as waterfowl."
Once again, with all due respect to my creative counterpart, I really honestly hate this kind of D&D. I feel I must explain why. It is because I have no idea how the world works. I don't know as a player what incorrect myths Zzarchov has chosen to incorporate into the campaign and which incorrect myths he has not ... and so I am bound by his ad hoc decisions which are and which are not so. And therefore every time I concoct a plan, I cannot rely upon what I know about the world, I must rely upon Zzarchov's judgment. I can't say strongly enough how much I despise that.
Zzarchov will no doubt deny that this is so, but since I can demonstrate in the real world that Aristotle is wrong in about two seconds (the end of this video and the beginning of this one), I am wondering why this theory of Aristotle (things falling at different rates) is accepted as 'truth' but not that one (things floating that shouldn't). And since I have never encountered a DM who conveniently provides a 100% complete list of what's true and what isn't, and since every DM I've ever met who ran a world with these concepts made shit up on the fly whenever it was convenient to restrain my character from doing something, I must rely upon my experience (and not upon Aristotle's say-so) when I say that a world run this way is run to stop me from taking unforseen actions.
So I prefer to have my ice made in a scientific manner, so that my players can recognize how it comes into existence and, if they wish, extrapolate from the ice machine into anything else of their choosing ... it and the world around it running according to scientific laws - albeit the appearance of anachronistic technology for the medieval age. Magic can produce ice too ... and I see no reason why the magician can't sell ice to the fishmonger also. For my purposes the machine has the benefit of pegging the price.
The question should be, how much does an ice machine cost?
Friday, July 8, 2011
The Farrier
And finally this table, which I think will probably do it for me today. I'm on a holiday, which is comfortable, but I wanted to get something out for the gentle reader.
To be honest, the above table abuses the term 'farrier' somewhat, as the profession applies traditionally just to the care and shoeing of horses hooves, and not with the whole horse. But for simplicity's sake, and to keep my player's sanity whole, I have decided to include articles of general tack as well.
Note that a hippogriff's back feet require shoeing, but not the front. The front are claws, and the player can choose to increase the amount of damage the hippogriff does by adding iron talons ... the difficulty is that the talons are uncomfortable for the hippogriff, which takes time to adjust to them and tends to be 'surly' in the meantime.
The cost of most things on this list is quite cheap, and things are usually available. It is only by chance that the salt lick or the bit for horse isn't ... most of the time, they would be. But the fact is that sometimes a town sells out of something, or everything is claimed by someone else. This of course doesn't keep players from stealing something they really need, if I can determine that it's likely something is around that is owned by someone. That involves going into the guts of the table and making a DM's call on the matter. As it happens, the problem hasn't come up. The party knows that in a week the item is likely to 'come in' and be available for purchase.
Well, that about covers it.
Distiller's Shop
Like the creamery, this is simple too. The various prices of the liquors are based upon the cost of the items necessary to make the recipe for the liquor, adjusted for the distiller's overhead. The cost and weight of the bottle, an 8 oz. glass vessel is included. The 'bottle' is standardized for my world - when speaking of a 'bottle' it is always this size and made of glass. If the same size item is made of ceramic, it is called a flask.
The higher cost for things like arak and arrack (see this post) is due largely to the sources for those liquors being far, far away from eastern Transylvania, which this table was generated for.
The 'spirits, ordinary' category refers to whatever local liquor is common in that particular area. It isn't specified because the table is meant to be universal, so that if I were to generate one for some other place I don't have to remember to change something. With a lot of work I could probably fix this, but I don't feel its necessary. For the record, a common liquor in Transylvania is something called palinca/palinka, the origin of which is claimed by both Rumania and Hungary.
The Creamery
Another straightforward table, but an important one. Note the relative cost of milk, and how cheap it is. The amount of milk is determined by the amount a medieval cow was expected to deliver in the space of 305 days, the usual lactation period of a cow after giving birth. Thus, the cost is pegged to the cost of the cow ... as is the cost of the other items on the table, cream, butter or cheese.
For a pound and a half of weight, the rare cheeses make an excellent treasure item. Even the butter, if found in sufficient quantities, would fare well.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Education
More than any other post upon technology, I feel a duty to this. That is because I believe there are two kinds of education, a very old one and a comparatively more recent one, and the second is in a death struggle with the first.
When an individual takes it upon his or her self to teach something to another individual, there is a decision to be made. The teacher is in a position of power; the student, in a position of vulnerability. If the teacher is the only source for that student's knowledge, the teacher's power increases considerably. The greater the number of sources for knowledge the student has, the less vulnerable the student is.
I have pedantically explained this relationship because of the manner in which education has been carried forth through the course of human events. We tend to see education as a force increasing our knowledge, and therefore the success we expect to have once we are old enough to take on the world. But we also know very well that 'education' is a methodology designed to enslave a population through the instigation of a belief system that is to be accepted unquestionably by the student throughout that student's life. To emphasize the difference between these two purposes, where I shall talk about increasing the general knowledge of the population, I shall simply write education; and where I shall talk about controlling the thoughts of the population, I shall write 'education' (with quotes) ... and in that way I hope to make things clear.
From the beginning, 'education' was initiated by the priest-kings of the ancient world. The principle issue of the day was to cement together the social levels of society in order to withstand both invading forces and natural forces. An unregimented free-thinking society is weak where it comes to defending a city or tolerating a season of famine. In-fighting results. Early cities were, by their nature, placed into a siege-mindset, and their ultimate survival was largely determined by the success of that mindset. A series of other technologies were applied through the millennia to strengthen that mindset, those that I've already spoken about: religion, literature, philosophy, music and so on. As the technological development towards mastering the thinking processes of a people were improved, it was not only a city which was directed in its thought patterns, but whole nations and ultimately empires.
The structure of 'education' is quite clear. Individuals must be taught from an early age to accept as truth those things upon which a society agrees ... or at least what a society is understood to have agreed upon. Those things are always traditional expectations for behavior; duty towards the state; duty towards the family; the expectation of sacrifice for the greater whole; the acknowledgement that there can be no other acceptable practice and - finally - the willingness to root out those persons in the society who do not play according to the 'rules': criminals, non-conformists and traitors. The last may be better defined as persons who uphold the traditions and standards of some other culture than their own.
Nothing has changed about this in 10,000 years. When Pink Floyd sings "We don't need no education," it isn't in reference to not wanting to learn how to play musical instruments or not wishing to know what's the best way to get from Fleet Street to Harrow. It is in reference to the sort of 'education' that tells me what to think and when to think it. Social constructs continue to require blind allegiance from their citizens and they always will ... for the social construct which is most viewed as infallible will most likely be the construct that outlasts its competitors who are decaying and collapsing from within. All decay and collapse must be shored up, and the shoring up is done with 'education' in the form of state religious demonstrations, the mass production of the written word, the rigidity of approved philosophy and the drum drum drum of music.
As an adult male in my late 40s, I tend to be under the delusion that I am in control of what I think, in that I believe I am free to think what I like. In reality, however, I have, since birth, been at the mercy of an emotional methodology which has had as its goal the sole purpose of guiding me towards behavior causing me to serve my role in that society. The complexity of the methodology has been, particularly in these last two centuries, brought to a level of considerable mastery. I find that I am forced to consider everyday, in an effort to wrestle with truth, whether I love my country because I have good reason, or if I love my country because it has always been presumed that I would, having been born here and raised by others who in their turn were driven to love their country. Am I a Canadian because I belong here, or am I a Canadian because I was 'educated' here? The reality that I will never be able to answer this question to my satisfaction humbles me. And of course I remember that most Canadians never feel any need whatsoever to answer this question at all. It has been answered for them, long ago, to their satisfaction. They are Canadians because they are. That is enough for them.
It is not enough for me because of the other education.
There is a tiny percentage of individuals whose presence within the system we can trace back to the increased urbanization of civilization. This urbanization created something called 'leisure' - which is not a technology, though it has had the influence of a technological revolution upon the general development. With leisure came the presence of mind to question the principles upon which the social system was founded ... and to posit other possible meanings or reasons for the existence of those social systems. In other words, to recognize that my considering myself a Canadian is more important than simply identifying with a general conceptual condition, but rather a motivating factor that coerces my behavior and acceptance of conditions in the construct of Canada. It is not intended that I question this motivation. It is intended that I act correctly. And such is the force aligned against me that if I do not act correctly, it is not only the generalized state which will oppose my behavior, but all the individuals within that generalized state. In fact, it is the other individuals themselves, who are in turn motivated correctly to behave according to the program of coercion, who will do the great work of policing that must exist in order to keep the construct coherent. The construct cannot hope to hire all the policemen needed; but the peer pressure that exists in every corner of every part of the land of my birth will most likely be sufficient to bring me back into line ... since I am also trained to fear ostracization.
The very act of questioning this arrangement, or defining it as I have tried to do so in the above paragraphs, has been given to me as an option by others who have found themselves in a similar position to myself, and who have taken the trouble to write it down. Isaac Newton said that "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." If I have a different perspective upon my role in the present social construct it is because I have had more teachers than those who were assigned to me by the state. It is a funny condition of our present social construct that the tools necessary to pull down the same construct are piled up in libraries where they can be read by most anyone. This would seem extremely foolish, except that it is well known - particularly to the sort of people who haunt libraries - that there simply aren't enough people who read books to overthrow the system. Moreover, the vast majority of people who peek behind the curtain, and meet the Powerful Oz, are more likely to ask Oz for a job turning the handles on the machine than to expose Oz to the scarecrow, the tin man and the cowardly lion ... who after all exist to be duped in every way possible.
I confess that I have seriously considered throwing in with Oz myself. It is merely a matter of perpetrating the system by telling them something I know not to be true in exchange for personal gain. It is a marvellous and reliable way to get rich.
This is not the post I had originally intended to write. Three days ago I meant to write about the rise of the university system and the circumstances of gaining knowledge through experience rather than through mentoring ... and at some point I might write that post. At any rate, this is the point that I usually step back from the description of the technology itself and discuss its influence upon D&D.
In effect, I've softened the crowd and now it's time for the dancing girls.
If you are running a medieval world, one that is pre-1000 A.D., it should be understood that the mindset of the people in that world is very, very different than your own. Even the most casual survivor of childhood in the modern Oriental or Occidental worlds has had the benefit of more than one teacher throughout their lives, and the benefit of contrary points of view. The vast proportion of inhabitants of the Medieval world HAS NOT. I cannot say that with greater emphasis. Even if an individual has been raised in an urban landscape, the understandings, beliefs and traditions of that landscape are inflexible in the extreme. If you are a dwarf in a land that does not like dwarves, you will not be liked, period. There will not be a moment when someone realizes that you're a nice person after all, there will not be a moment when they realize dwarves are people too, there will not be a moment when you are listened to or considered or treated with anything but disdain. There will be no Spielberg moments. You will be hated, from the moment you meet the first person until the moment you get the hell out of the country, or the moment when you are finally driven to slaughter every last woman and child with the aid of your dwarven buddies. And understand, when the last child spits in your eye, it will not be because you have killed its mummy and daddy, it will be because you are a dwarf.
The social construct of the medieval world was so harsh that even persons seeking education which supported the social construct were forced to seek safety and exclusion in high mountain fortresses built in such a manner that they could never be effectively sieged. The need for cohesion among every tribe, clan, band and population center was so powerfully strong that every stranger was viewed not merely as someone disliked and unwanted, but as someone that could only be a villain bent on eating the local children. If you can imagine the present social view upon child molesters, multiply it by about a hundred and then recognize that your wandering, travelling characters are seen in exactly that light.
Given this, it is a little ridiculous to assume that a member of a village would joyfully sign on with the party in order to get out of the crummy little town they live in. Having been told since birth by the only people they have ever met or heard from that the world is full of demons, giants and horrible creatures who would rather strip your flesh from your bones as soon as look at you, and then having been told that these same creatures pretend to be ordinary strangers just passing through small towns and inviting locals to come along with them for a bit o' fun, there is just no way in the world you are going to go. You're just not. You're going to run away from party characters so fast that the ground itself will brown from friction.
The Renaissance mitigates this a little ... but it is still the attitude that remote villages will have. The printing press begins to provide some alternate media view of the world beyond that given by the local clergy - but remember that it is not in the clergy's interest to let any individual from anywhere up and leave. The late Medieval age and into the Renaissance did experience a time of great difficulty for the local lords and masters due to the peasants flocking to the cities where life was potentially less work and more free thinking. But it was the second kind of education, the kind that proposed life was about things like drinking and frivolity rather than religion, that was winning out there. Hedonism has continued to be an enormous headache for the modern state ... most of the dangerous critical problems of modern life surround the state's inability to stop people from doing things they want to do: drugs, sexual promiscuity, refusal to serve in the military, the internet, etcetera. Religious 'education' did its job to keep people restrained for a long time - and it is religious education that dictates the actions and expectations of NPCs in your D&D world, not the player character's heroic visage.
Of course, the concept of a player running a 'hero' presumes that the occupants of the medieval village will view that hero with the same awe and adoration that heros now expect to be given. The one goes hand in hand with the other. And DMs will continue to run persons in their worlds as though they live in the present century because the fantasies of DMs are fantasies any person living now would have. That heroes are loved, that the world is forgiving and and respectful of all persons, that Spielberg moments can happen at any time and to anybody. For some, the fantasy world is a world that is not dangerous, ignorant or unkind. It is a fantasy. That it should be fanciful is the point.
Of course, I would fail as a pundit if I did not make the recursive point that the fantasies we are intended to have in this construct are necessarily ones which are unachievable. Unachievable fantasies contribute to the certainty of the status quo. Even in the game we are subject to the moraes of the social construct.
I am getting off the point, and I realize I need to return to background. Returning to the dominance of the church within the framework of your world: the technology of Theology was to incorporate a fantasy (redemption in the eyes of god) in order to keep the average individual's shoulder to the grindstone here on Earth. Those cultures who did not possess the Theological technology crumbled in the face of societies who adopted it. Spain, France, England, Scandinavia, Russia, central Africa and Persia all succumbed to the theology of either Christianity or Islam, since societies who accepted the theology were better able to create cohesion within by instituting the theology/'education' into the minds of their children. Faced with a superior authoritative culture, the foreign states went down one by one, ultimately converting to the one-god religions in order to continue maintaining their authority at home, as opposed to foreigner religionists imposing their authority. If your NPCs in your campaign are not run by a church of some kind, what keeps other churches from other states from simply subverting the state's authority by offering a carrot (heaven) the state cannot offer?
The newer education undermined this in its turn by recognizing the utter stupidity of a promise that cannot be proven, turning the attention of the smarter classes towards problems that could be solved through proven methods. In other words, science. Thought processes being not dependent upon social convention but upon recognizable proof. And while this different philosophical approach to thought was in existence for many centuries, it was crystallized in the writings of William of Occam and Pierre Abelard. It has since been a philosophy based not on created a construct designed to assign persons their role in the world, but a construct designed to assign the world's role in the circumstances of people's lives - with the understanding that the knowledge, and therefore the teaching of that knowledge, is not born of the philosophy, but rather employs the philosophy in order to recognize the difference between what is knowledge and what is actually bullshit.
Theology and the social construct which 'educates' the population wants to have the debate between these two approaches to reality as a philosophical one ... since philosophy, with its overtures of guilt and expectation, are the construct's weapons of choice. Science, on the other hand, which does not seek to educate the individual in the difference between moral responsibility and irresponsibility, but rather in the difference between proof and lack thereof, makes an extremely difficult target for the religionist. The religionist is concerned with ensuring that I continue to use an object for the purpose to which it was made. The scientist, without concern for the object at all, as a happenstance will make the object obsolete.
In history, the late Medieval and Renaissance era was a locked battle between a small contingent of emotionally charged individuals who fervently sought out the previously unforseen 'truth' about the universe around them and the huge contingent of social authoritarians who recognized how dangerous this was. The small contingent, by relying upon their own experience and by educating others to rely upon theirs, very much won the day against the religionists. They have not won the day against the social construct ... but that is because 'education' has enabled the creation of new technological innovations which were never conceived of by the Medieval, or even the Renaissance mind: Nationalism, Democracy, Military Tradition and Communism, just to name a few.
This probably has nothing to do with your D&D world, correct? I suppose I am trying to force you, the reader, to think with a mind that is not your own, to get into the mind of a person born in another time, who in turn was never socially obligated to the degree that you are, who in fact could never understand the nature and circumstance of your social obligation, any more than you can understand their lack of it. In short, I am arguing an impossibility. You can never roleplay a D&D character. You can only conjecture what that might have been like.
But for me it is in that conjecture that the fantasy truly lies. It forces me to discard the social norms of my own culture in favor of another. Not because the other culture is wonderful.
Because it isn't mine.
When an individual takes it upon his or her self to teach something to another individual, there is a decision to be made. The teacher is in a position of power; the student, in a position of vulnerability. If the teacher is the only source for that student's knowledge, the teacher's power increases considerably. The greater the number of sources for knowledge the student has, the less vulnerable the student is.
I have pedantically explained this relationship because of the manner in which education has been carried forth through the course of human events. We tend to see education as a force increasing our knowledge, and therefore the success we expect to have once we are old enough to take on the world. But we also know very well that 'education' is a methodology designed to enslave a population through the instigation of a belief system that is to be accepted unquestionably by the student throughout that student's life. To emphasize the difference between these two purposes, where I shall talk about increasing the general knowledge of the population, I shall simply write education; and where I shall talk about controlling the thoughts of the population, I shall write 'education' (with quotes) ... and in that way I hope to make things clear.
From the beginning, 'education' was initiated by the priest-kings of the ancient world. The principle issue of the day was to cement together the social levels of society in order to withstand both invading forces and natural forces. An unregimented free-thinking society is weak where it comes to defending a city or tolerating a season of famine. In-fighting results. Early cities were, by their nature, placed into a siege-mindset, and their ultimate survival was largely determined by the success of that mindset. A series of other technologies were applied through the millennia to strengthen that mindset, those that I've already spoken about: religion, literature, philosophy, music and so on. As the technological development towards mastering the thinking processes of a people were improved, it was not only a city which was directed in its thought patterns, but whole nations and ultimately empires.
The structure of 'education' is quite clear. Individuals must be taught from an early age to accept as truth those things upon which a society agrees ... or at least what a society is understood to have agreed upon. Those things are always traditional expectations for behavior; duty towards the state; duty towards the family; the expectation of sacrifice for the greater whole; the acknowledgement that there can be no other acceptable practice and - finally - the willingness to root out those persons in the society who do not play according to the 'rules': criminals, non-conformists and traitors. The last may be better defined as persons who uphold the traditions and standards of some other culture than their own.
Nothing has changed about this in 10,000 years. When Pink Floyd sings "We don't need no education," it isn't in reference to not wanting to learn how to play musical instruments or not wishing to know what's the best way to get from Fleet Street to Harrow. It is in reference to the sort of 'education' that tells me what to think and when to think it. Social constructs continue to require blind allegiance from their citizens and they always will ... for the social construct which is most viewed as infallible will most likely be the construct that outlasts its competitors who are decaying and collapsing from within. All decay and collapse must be shored up, and the shoring up is done with 'education' in the form of state religious demonstrations, the mass production of the written word, the rigidity of approved philosophy and the drum drum drum of music.
As an adult male in my late 40s, I tend to be under the delusion that I am in control of what I think, in that I believe I am free to think what I like. In reality, however, I have, since birth, been at the mercy of an emotional methodology which has had as its goal the sole purpose of guiding me towards behavior causing me to serve my role in that society. The complexity of the methodology has been, particularly in these last two centuries, brought to a level of considerable mastery. I find that I am forced to consider everyday, in an effort to wrestle with truth, whether I love my country because I have good reason, or if I love my country because it has always been presumed that I would, having been born here and raised by others who in their turn were driven to love their country. Am I a Canadian because I belong here, or am I a Canadian because I was 'educated' here? The reality that I will never be able to answer this question to my satisfaction humbles me. And of course I remember that most Canadians never feel any need whatsoever to answer this question at all. It has been answered for them, long ago, to their satisfaction. They are Canadians because they are. That is enough for them.
It is not enough for me because of the other education.
There is a tiny percentage of individuals whose presence within the system we can trace back to the increased urbanization of civilization. This urbanization created something called 'leisure' - which is not a technology, though it has had the influence of a technological revolution upon the general development. With leisure came the presence of mind to question the principles upon which the social system was founded ... and to posit other possible meanings or reasons for the existence of those social systems. In other words, to recognize that my considering myself a Canadian is more important than simply identifying with a general conceptual condition, but rather a motivating factor that coerces my behavior and acceptance of conditions in the construct of Canada. It is not intended that I question this motivation. It is intended that I act correctly. And such is the force aligned against me that if I do not act correctly, it is not only the generalized state which will oppose my behavior, but all the individuals within that generalized state. In fact, it is the other individuals themselves, who are in turn motivated correctly to behave according to the program of coercion, who will do the great work of policing that must exist in order to keep the construct coherent. The construct cannot hope to hire all the policemen needed; but the peer pressure that exists in every corner of every part of the land of my birth will most likely be sufficient to bring me back into line ... since I am also trained to fear ostracization.
The very act of questioning this arrangement, or defining it as I have tried to do so in the above paragraphs, has been given to me as an option by others who have found themselves in a similar position to myself, and who have taken the trouble to write it down. Isaac Newton said that "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." If I have a different perspective upon my role in the present social construct it is because I have had more teachers than those who were assigned to me by the state. It is a funny condition of our present social construct that the tools necessary to pull down the same construct are piled up in libraries where they can be read by most anyone. This would seem extremely foolish, except that it is well known - particularly to the sort of people who haunt libraries - that there simply aren't enough people who read books to overthrow the system. Moreover, the vast majority of people who peek behind the curtain, and meet the Powerful Oz, are more likely to ask Oz for a job turning the handles on the machine than to expose Oz to the scarecrow, the tin man and the cowardly lion ... who after all exist to be duped in every way possible.
I confess that I have seriously considered throwing in with Oz myself. It is merely a matter of perpetrating the system by telling them something I know not to be true in exchange for personal gain. It is a marvellous and reliable way to get rich.
This is not the post I had originally intended to write. Three days ago I meant to write about the rise of the university system and the circumstances of gaining knowledge through experience rather than through mentoring ... and at some point I might write that post. At any rate, this is the point that I usually step back from the description of the technology itself and discuss its influence upon D&D.
In effect, I've softened the crowd and now it's time for the dancing girls.
If you are running a medieval world, one that is pre-1000 A.D., it should be understood that the mindset of the people in that world is very, very different than your own. Even the most casual survivor of childhood in the modern Oriental or Occidental worlds has had the benefit of more than one teacher throughout their lives, and the benefit of contrary points of view. The vast proportion of inhabitants of the Medieval world HAS NOT. I cannot say that with greater emphasis. Even if an individual has been raised in an urban landscape, the understandings, beliefs and traditions of that landscape are inflexible in the extreme. If you are a dwarf in a land that does not like dwarves, you will not be liked, period. There will not be a moment when someone realizes that you're a nice person after all, there will not be a moment when they realize dwarves are people too, there will not be a moment when you are listened to or considered or treated with anything but disdain. There will be no Spielberg moments. You will be hated, from the moment you meet the first person until the moment you get the hell out of the country, or the moment when you are finally driven to slaughter every last woman and child with the aid of your dwarven buddies. And understand, when the last child spits in your eye, it will not be because you have killed its mummy and daddy, it will be because you are a dwarf.
The social construct of the medieval world was so harsh that even persons seeking education which supported the social construct were forced to seek safety and exclusion in high mountain fortresses built in such a manner that they could never be effectively sieged. The need for cohesion among every tribe, clan, band and population center was so powerfully strong that every stranger was viewed not merely as someone disliked and unwanted, but as someone that could only be a villain bent on eating the local children. If you can imagine the present social view upon child molesters, multiply it by about a hundred and then recognize that your wandering, travelling characters are seen in exactly that light.
Given this, it is a little ridiculous to assume that a member of a village would joyfully sign on with the party in order to get out of the crummy little town they live in. Having been told since birth by the only people they have ever met or heard from that the world is full of demons, giants and horrible creatures who would rather strip your flesh from your bones as soon as look at you, and then having been told that these same creatures pretend to be ordinary strangers just passing through small towns and inviting locals to come along with them for a bit o' fun, there is just no way in the world you are going to go. You're just not. You're going to run away from party characters so fast that the ground itself will brown from friction.
The Renaissance mitigates this a little ... but it is still the attitude that remote villages will have. The printing press begins to provide some alternate media view of the world beyond that given by the local clergy - but remember that it is not in the clergy's interest to let any individual from anywhere up and leave. The late Medieval age and into the Renaissance did experience a time of great difficulty for the local lords and masters due to the peasants flocking to the cities where life was potentially less work and more free thinking. But it was the second kind of education, the kind that proposed life was about things like drinking and frivolity rather than religion, that was winning out there. Hedonism has continued to be an enormous headache for the modern state ... most of the dangerous critical problems of modern life surround the state's inability to stop people from doing things they want to do: drugs, sexual promiscuity, refusal to serve in the military, the internet, etcetera. Religious 'education' did its job to keep people restrained for a long time - and it is religious education that dictates the actions and expectations of NPCs in your D&D world, not the player character's heroic visage.
Of course, the concept of a player running a 'hero' presumes that the occupants of the medieval village will view that hero with the same awe and adoration that heros now expect to be given. The one goes hand in hand with the other. And DMs will continue to run persons in their worlds as though they live in the present century because the fantasies of DMs are fantasies any person living now would have. That heroes are loved, that the world is forgiving and and respectful of all persons, that Spielberg moments can happen at any time and to anybody. For some, the fantasy world is a world that is not dangerous, ignorant or unkind. It is a fantasy. That it should be fanciful is the point.
Of course, I would fail as a pundit if I did not make the recursive point that the fantasies we are intended to have in this construct are necessarily ones which are unachievable. Unachievable fantasies contribute to the certainty of the status quo. Even in the game we are subject to the moraes of the social construct.
I am getting off the point, and I realize I need to return to background. Returning to the dominance of the church within the framework of your world: the technology of Theology was to incorporate a fantasy (redemption in the eyes of god) in order to keep the average individual's shoulder to the grindstone here on Earth. Those cultures who did not possess the Theological technology crumbled in the face of societies who adopted it. Spain, France, England, Scandinavia, Russia, central Africa and Persia all succumbed to the theology of either Christianity or Islam, since societies who accepted the theology were better able to create cohesion within by instituting the theology/'education' into the minds of their children. Faced with a superior authoritative culture, the foreign states went down one by one, ultimately converting to the one-god religions in order to continue maintaining their authority at home, as opposed to foreigner religionists imposing their authority. If your NPCs in your campaign are not run by a church of some kind, what keeps other churches from other states from simply subverting the state's authority by offering a carrot (heaven) the state cannot offer?
The newer education undermined this in its turn by recognizing the utter stupidity of a promise that cannot be proven, turning the attention of the smarter classes towards problems that could be solved through proven methods. In other words, science. Thought processes being not dependent upon social convention but upon recognizable proof. And while this different philosophical approach to thought was in existence for many centuries, it was crystallized in the writings of William of Occam and Pierre Abelard. It has since been a philosophy based not on created a construct designed to assign persons their role in the world, but a construct designed to assign the world's role in the circumstances of people's lives - with the understanding that the knowledge, and therefore the teaching of that knowledge, is not born of the philosophy, but rather employs the philosophy in order to recognize the difference between what is knowledge and what is actually bullshit.
Theology and the social construct which 'educates' the population wants to have the debate between these two approaches to reality as a philosophical one ... since philosophy, with its overtures of guilt and expectation, are the construct's weapons of choice. Science, on the other hand, which does not seek to educate the individual in the difference between moral responsibility and irresponsibility, but rather in the difference between proof and lack thereof, makes an extremely difficult target for the religionist. The religionist is concerned with ensuring that I continue to use an object for the purpose to which it was made. The scientist, without concern for the object at all, as a happenstance will make the object obsolete.
In history, the late Medieval and Renaissance era was a locked battle between a small contingent of emotionally charged individuals who fervently sought out the previously unforseen 'truth' about the universe around them and the huge contingent of social authoritarians who recognized how dangerous this was. The small contingent, by relying upon their own experience and by educating others to rely upon theirs, very much won the day against the religionists. They have not won the day against the social construct ... but that is because 'education' has enabled the creation of new technological innovations which were never conceived of by the Medieval, or even the Renaissance mind: Nationalism, Democracy, Military Tradition and Communism, just to name a few.
This probably has nothing to do with your D&D world, correct? I suppose I am trying to force you, the reader, to think with a mind that is not your own, to get into the mind of a person born in another time, who in turn was never socially obligated to the degree that you are, who in fact could never understand the nature and circumstance of your social obligation, any more than you can understand their lack of it. In short, I am arguing an impossibility. You can never roleplay a D&D character. You can only conjecture what that might have been like.
But for me it is in that conjecture that the fantasy truly lies. It forces me to discard the social norms of my own culture in favor of another. Not because the other culture is wonderful.
Because it isn't mine.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Coppersmith's Shop
Now, this is a list. Plenty of D&D standards, including the lanterns, the thieves' pick and the holy symbol, along with a few things that I feel the game has overlooked.
A bianzhong is set of bells which were hung on a wooden frame and played as part of a religious ritual. In this case, the full 65 bell set is not offered, but lesser sets were quite common, particularly if they were meant to be hung in personal homes and such.
A ship's compass is a large device which is designed to be fixed permanently to a horizontal plane upon a ship, with counterbalances to manage the rolling, heaving environment. It was not meant to be hauled along with a party. The glass facing helped keep the device waterproof.
Details about the hookah pipe can be read here. I have generally taken steps to enable characters to develop the same sorts of addictive habits as exist in the real world. I recognize why things like opium, hash, qat and so on aren't prevalent in a publishing-focused D&D company perspective, but I am not bound by such things. If the player wants to get a rush with the aid of tobacco and a hookah pipe, I want that option available.
There are some who would deny the presence of a telescope, but since my world exists in the year 1650 and afterwards, telescopes existed. Therefore they are included in the list. While they are fairly inexpensive, they do require considerable care if they are to be functional (being highly unstable due to the era). Haul your 44 in. telescope clumsily up a mountain and don't expect the lenses to be aligned properly when you get there.
I have an issue with the "thieves' picks and tools" collection that the Player's Handbook included. What exactly are these picks? Do they work for every kind of lock? Is it necessary to have a full set, or are there locks which require specific picks? What about a jeweler's loupe that's needed to see some special tumbler inside the lock? Was that included in the original "tools"?
I haven't yet sat down to work out a set of rules for thieves' tools and specific locks ... but someday I will get there. In the meantime, I don't expect a thief to buy more than one pick. I can let things slide for now.
That would leave just the mechanical hand, which I included to compensate for characters who have lost a hand and did not have the money to buy a regeneration spell. The hand functions in a completely normal fashion, so as to be virtually biological ... it is a magical item, partly fashioned of mithril. The item is expensive, but occasional available - it turned out to be so on this presentation. The troubling aspect of the hand is the faerie oil it requires, which can be found at the apothecaries' shop.
Questions?
Confectioner's Shop
This table is fairly straightforward also, though I imagine most of the things here don't make it into a typical campaign. A candy shop in general seems like a bit of an anachronism in a medieval setting, but most everything on this list has been around for a long, long time. The peppermint candy would not be the cane twist that is familiar, but a candy flavoured with peppermint has been around since the 17th century.
As with the carver's shop, the items here are handily found in the pockets of enemies as a small level treasure for low-level characters ... who it might be said could only sell them off to people in the street or otherwise if they have the willpower not to eat them. It's an interesting concept to suggest that the player has to balance his desire to sell off the pear slices for the needed 18 s.p. against the character's natural weaknesses.
But then, many games don't have characters suffering for the sake of a few silver pieces. I have to say, for one of the parties I'm running off line, where everyone in 1st level, it isn't easy to stave off the tremendous hunger I impose upon my adventuring, fighting, mountaineering outdoor-living players with the income they have. Food, at least in the campaign's beginning, is a huge consideration.
Plus, there's also the argument that some players should have to spend a certain amount on sweets just to feel happy ... but then happiness is rarely a concern among the penny-pinching power-player type. Ever think of what a miserable life characters must live 'down on the ground?'
Anyway, let's bury this table and move on to something more interesting.
The Cobbler's Shop and a Lot More
It was bound to come to this. There just isn't anything special to cheer about where it comes to this table. But boots must be bought, and it would be nice to think that having their own table would remind players to buy them. If there is any one thing that people seem to forget for their characters, it's to have something to put on their feet. It has gotten to the point that whenever someone starts a new character in my world, or whenever a new person comes to play (I had a new player join just this last Saturday, making nine people in all running in my main offline campaign now), the whole table reminds them to buy boots.
Incidentally, court shoes would be a reference to shoes that were worn on the tennis court (a popular sport in western Europe going back hundreds of years, albeit played differently), not shoes for visiting the king.
I will take this opportunity to answer Eric's question in the last post about the cost of clothing, and the costs of things in general. It's not generally understood that clothing was in fact very, very expensive in the pre-Industrial era, prior to the mass production of cloth. It is hard to imagine now, particularly with the proliferation of non-natural fibres, but the difficulty in manufacturing things like silk or wool by hand made these clothes very difficult to obtain for the majority. Something as heavy and elaborate as a cassock was doubly expensive. The only relatively cheap fabric was cotton ... but pure cotton was fairly useless for most of the temperate world in an era without proper home insulation or with modern heating. Thus a character can expect to pay more for brand new woolen clothes than for a suit of leather armor.
The cost of leather armor is determined as follows.
The value of the cow is pegged at the base cost of the cow at birth (170 c.p.) plus what it requires to raise the animal from birth to two years of age, at which point it can be gainfully slaughtered. This involves feeding the cow (in addition to grazing in the field) 56 oz. of forage a day, every day, for two years. The cost of forage is determined by its prevalence, increased by the process of cleaning it for use. In Kronstadt, forage is 0.39 c.p. per ounce. The total cost for a cow at the point of slaughtering is thus 15,910 c.p. (almost 83 g.p.)
The leather which can be obtained from one cow (a portion of the cow's cost) is first treated with salt, 208 oz. on average. The cost of the salt and the raw hide is added together, giving a total of 2,827 c.p. This is then tanned, increasing the cost of the hide to 2,966 c.p. The hide will weigh approximately 624 oz., so the cost of the tanned hide is 4.75 c.p. per ounce. The hide is cut and prepared for use by the leatherworker, which increases its value to 5.30 c.p. per ounce. From that point it is made into armor, so that the price at that point is raised to 12.48 c.p. per ounce. A suit of leather armor weighs 160 oz. (10 lbs), and so the total value is 1,997 c.p., or 10 g.p.
If studded leather armor is desired, then the iron studs have to be made. To get iron studs we start with iron ore, which as you know from the assayer's table is priced at 2 g.p. per ton. This is a rounded off figure - the exact number is 382 c.p. per ton. (2 g.p. = 384 c.p., so the rounded price is provided for the buyers, but the exact price for the shopowners).
The iron ore has to be smelted, and each oz. of produced metal from the original ore requires 91 oz. of coal (or the equivalent heat in charcoal) plus 1 oz. of quicklime to produce. This is averaged out. Thus, once the iron ore is "puddled" - which is to say smelted - it has a cost of 33 c.p. per ounce. This puddled iron is then mixed with manganese and nickel in order to produce an iron alloy which will hold up, which in turn requires more coal, plus workmanship, raising the general price to 46 c.p. per ounce. Following this, the iron alloy has to be smithed, or beaten into the desired shape (studs) which requires more work and more coal. As ironmongery, the studs have their cost set at 53.59 c.p. per oz. However, since they have to be fashioned into the armor by the armorer, the additional cost fixed for this extra work increases the cost of the studs to 141.83 c.p. per ounce.
The wrought iron studs weigh 5 lbs., or 80 oz., which equals 11,346 c.p. There is an additional cost of 10% for fixing the iron studs to the leather, so that the total price of studded leather armor ends up costing 14,677 c.p., or 76 g.p.
Mind you, all of this is built into a series of calculations spread throughout a very large and complex excel document that maps out the production and increase in cost of every item, which is in turn dependent upon the distribution of that item over the earth's surface, so that as the availability of cows, leatherworkers, puddlers, iron mines, metallurgists, ironmongerers, smiths and armorers change from city to city, so does the price of each increment along the algorithm. The tendency is to increase the price most due to the nearness to armorers, but cheaper cows can still bring down the overall price.
Now, to produce a woolen cassock is managed as follows.
The cost of the wool is pegged at the cost of a sheep, which at birth is 148 c.p. The sheep is also fed forage, 4.8 oz. per day, and throughout its life prior to slaughter it is shorn for wool. The amount of wool that can be obtained from one sheep (which at point of slaughter is worth 1,113 c.p., or almost 6 g.p.) sets the price of greasy wool fibre at 26 c.p. per ounce. The cost of cleaning, carding and spinning is relatively little, and after all that the price is only 28 c.p. per ounce.
The cost of weaving, however, is fairly costly, so that wool cloth comes to a total of 43 c.p. per ounce. There are 9.578 oz. per square yard of wool cloth (you can look it up, my source for that is the UN Statistical Yearbook), so that makes the cost for a square yard of wool cloth equal to 415 c.p.
Tailoring further increases this cost to 474 c.p. per square yard - and then here comes the kicker. The cost for making the tailored cloth into a cassock of profound elegance and noble appearance, in a part of Europe where dressmakers are few and far between, kicks the price of the cassock up to 2,829 c.p. per square yard. Of course the cassock is filled with knots and folds and a cowl and so on ... it is not just a cloth hung over the cleric's head. On the other hand, it is hardly the end all and be all of clerical attire. If the player wanted the cassock to be suitably embroidered, in this Transylvanian country where embroidery is most rare, the cost would be 9,013 c.p. per square yard. But we will simply go with the lesser price. The cassock is 8 square yards for tailoring purposes, so the cost is 22,635 c.p., or 118 g.p.
Except that it isn't. Working this out, I found a small glitch in the table (a misplaced decimal) and fixed it as I went. The final price of the cassock is actually 122 g.p., so the table I posted yesterday is actually moderately wrong. I'm not worried about it. These sort of glitches pop up all the time. The mass of calculations is extensive and bound to turn up with an error from time to time. For example, I found to my chagrin a few days ago when I was working on the brewers table that instead of making the beer with malt, I had for some time slipped on the cell that was being called upon for the calculation and that I was making my beer with mustard. These things happen. I correct them as I go, and tell my players to keep an eye out for anything that seems irrational - such as Eric catching the problem with the greenstone rosary yesterday.
As I have said in the past: my world, perfect? Hah.
In any case, from the above I hope it can be seen that none of the prices are randomly generated. They are, whenever possible, logically worked out according to the substances required to make the product measured against the commonality of not only the product, but also the service or expertise that makes that product (such as tailors, weavers, shearers and so on).
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
The Church
Bored of this yet? Too bad, as I think this is the best list I've offered this whole series. This is because I had an epiphany about how to price this table that - I think - is wholly new. The new system solves the problem that was proposed on this post, in which the cost of spells was discussed and mulled over. And then last week (I was working on this before starting to post this series) I realized that even if a cleric DID have the spell, the demand for the spell would be potentially overwhelming.
And thus the reader will note that each level of spell desired also notes a 'waiting period.' Yes, that is correct - the cleric would like to cast neutralize poison for you, but there's a six-day waiting period. The cleric able to cast that spell is booked.
Because of this, I was able to make the actual cost of the spell cheaper ... though not so much with sixth level spells. The actual availability of the spell is based upon the number of clerics of a given level in my world, modified by the total population of the trading area. As it happens, 11th level clerics, those able to cast 6th level spells, fall on the far side of the bell curve that's created, so the price jumps considerably. And 7th level spells simply aren't available at all. If you want a 7th level spell cast, you had better get to know someone personally through a king or some such. Yes, that does mean players have to learn to live with their missing arm. Too bad, so sad, it sucks to be maimed.
There's always a scroll the DM can offer as a prize at the end of some quest to get the character's arm (or level) back.
The gentle reader will take note that there are two headings for 1st and 2nd level spells, and three headings for 3rd level spells. The specific difference for level one and two is obvious - that a cleric of the player's religion must be found in order to receive that level of spell.
But there are two different options for 3rd level spells of the 'local religion,' one from the chapel and one from the church/temple. The difference is based upon the status of the cleric casting the spell. Most clerics in my world are non-adventuring types, NPCs who are quite domesticated in their habits and slowly increase in levels as they encounter ordinary, mundane tasks. Thus, rarely do these stay-at-home clerics reach level 5. They won't charge much if they do, but the waiting period is likely to be long because of the relative rarity of their breed.
On the other hand, adventurous clerics who take part in military campaigns and intrigues are more likely to have established a church or temple, and are more likely to reach 5th level. There are, therefore, more of this type in existence ... which probably seems strange for some readers. Nevertheless, if the cleric is able to cast a 3rd level spell, he or she is probably better placed in the religion, and while they will be able to offer the spell more expediently, the cost will be higher.
The waiting period itself is a random generated number, based upon the algorithm I've devised. If I were to update the table on excel and post again, the numbers would be changed ... and sometimes more conveniently. Some testing shows that even a 1-day waiting period for a 6th level spell is not in the realm of possibility. It just depends on how lucky the player is.
Nicely, the reduced price allows the player cleric to be able to sell their services to the church, casting a spell here and there in order to obtain some hard cash. Of course, because the exact spell that is required isn't listed, even where it says the chapel will pay 6 g.p. for two 3rd level cleric spells, a roll must be made to determine which spells are desired. In a lot of worlds, where the spells are whatever the cleric wants for that day, this isn't a problem. But I am more rigorous with my clerics, so that they cannot change their spells from day to day. I write about that here. There would be less likelihood of having the right spell in my world.
Of course, the 5th and 6th level spells are not available for purchase ... but the fact that they are not requested by the church either shows that no one in the area has the income at this moment to pay the necessary money. So even if the player is offering, there wouldn't be any takers.
Regarding other things than spells ... yes, it's a small list. It could be longer. The cassock and cleric's wear makes an interesting treasure item, provided you don't get caught selling it covered in blood.
Chandler's Shop
I am posting these tables as I polish and complete them, which explains why I am not posting groups of them at one time. This table was expanded from three items to ten in the last day or so, wanting the chandler to have something interesting to offer. I think the most useful element for playing is the description of how long each candle will burn. Different ratios have been offered for beeswax vs. tallow candles, as they do not burn at the same rate.
An exact time for the candle burning has not been included since a change in the atmosphere can shorten or lengthen the potential of the candle. Consider that the candle is likely to gutter out within 30 minutes of the time specified, typically leaving up to 10% of the candle unused. These leavings were carefully gathered by persons and reconstituted in more candles ... it's always a laugh when Hollywood depicts these churches with huge piles of untouched melted wax to indicate how old a church is. The wax needed to lit a space was expensive ... unused wax was never left to remain once a candle finished burning.
I've included one scented candle, but like anything else there's a potential for making candles have the odor of sandlewood, cinnamon, lotus, lavender or any of a hundred other scents. There's little sense to including all of them. The same can be said of the scented soap.
The 'candlelighter' is a long wand which is used to light candles high upon an altar or even upon a street corner, in rare places that offered oil-fueled street lamps. It requires that a taper be fitted into it for use. Incidentally, not that I've previously demanded this in my world (but now that I've added the item, I will), it should require a taper to easily light a lantern. Can you imagine trying to light a lantern with a torch? I'm sure the situation is mostly overlooked.
The lamp oil on the list includes the cost and weight of the flask - the flask is an 8 oz. earthenware container. The oil in my world is fashioned from a wide variety of sources, including natural oils, marine oil, vegetable oil and so on. For game play, lamp oil is the traditional 'flask of oil,' which despite arguments that it couldn't possibly exist in a medieval setting, does exist in mine.
Tallow is sometimes available when wax candles or not. In any event, a character choosing to make his or her own candles would ultimately be cheaper. The chandler's pot is an earthenware vessel that can be placed in fire embers for melting and cooking the tallow, and is about 8 in. deep so as to allow candle dipping (provided a large candle is not required). A larger pot is available at the blacksmith's.
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