NTME - Microeconomics

In reference to the "binary environment" I've been using, with reference to a last-post comment from Lukas, aka Oddbit, to establish this little micro-economy, I want to stress that the whole point of the binary code was simply to translate Civilization IV (C4) to D&D.  I definitely do not suggest calculating everything in D&D into binary.  Once the translation has been made, and you know that a given tile produces a given amount of food, screw C4 in your head and just retain the important number.

The only importance to the binary code is that when a tile is improved, it increases exponentially, as I've described already.

I stress as well that this is Dungeons and Dragons, and not C4, and that the involvement of characters (and NPCs, if you like) can change things which cannot be changed in C4.  For instance ...

On the weekend, as my offline campaign got going again after a three-month hiatus, we were discussing the importation of elements of C4, should they not previously exist.  Obviously, if a hill tile has no copper, nothing short of a wish (or some very powerful, creative magic) could manufacture a copper vein ... but cattle, sheep, pigs and horses are not nearly so difficult to find and import.  "What if," asked my player's 10th level druid, "I wish to stock my forest with deer?"

Well, the answer to that is go ahead!  I had mentioned this last week in passing, but given that the player has a 10th level druid, its extremely practical that he could encourage deer from the surrounding environs to gather themselves together in the tile he has control over, using speak with animals and his marvelous charisma.  How long would this take?  Well, not overnight.  But if word should get around that he can offer the deer a safe habitat, and that he should promise to limit his culling of the deer to the old and infirm, its reasonable that deer - knowing they will be hunted everywhere they go - should eventually gather in his particular presence.  The same could be said of beaver, or any animal not previously conceived of in C4.

The same is equally true of any character importing domestic animals onto a tile already containing farms and such.  Farms obviously do not occupy every square inch of a tile, and so long as we're not talking whole herds of cattle, then a few dozen cattle could cheerfully live in the same tile as the village itself (more convenient than an adjoining farm).

Even ONE COW would add to the village's total food supply.  The microeconomy previously discussed can be adjusted right down to the last calorie and gold coin, remember!  Thus, if one medieval cow yields 8,000 oz. of food (and there's the influence of my macroeconomic table, that I've employed for years now) - and it does - then those 8,000 oz. translate into (give or take) 380,000 calories.

From that, naturally, we can work out how many cattle make up a C4 cattle tile, which is five food in C4 and therefore 3.1 billion calories (calculating by the binary method).  Before you divide one by the other and come up with a bit more than 8,000 cows, remember that an ordinary cattle farm only culls one sixth of its herd per year:  so the total number is really just shy of 50,000 cows.  At 2 acres per cow, that's 152 square miles ... which means, for our system, where a 20 mile diameter hex is about 306 square miles, that cow-tile is going to bleed into its neighbors all over the place.  Which is fine.  There's nothing wrong with assuming they drift in part through more parts of your hex than one tile.  'Course, that does limit the number of cows per hex to ... let's see ... around 97,920.

I would rather make that concession - that they tend to wander - to cows and livestock than rebuild a system that seems to be working fine so far.

The first point I want to make is that a little research online can turn up all kinds of things.  The land itself may not have a textile mill (C4 doesn't have them), but the party can obviously obtain sheep, create a mill (water or wind), and start churning out cloth according to the dictates of that industry.  It doesn't matter how many sheep either.  What's important is that we know how much the mill will cost, and how much a sheep will cost, and how much wool a sheep will produce.  We know how much cloth can be made from that wool in a year and that satisfies the time standard.

Everything is researchable on the net - if the party so desires.  The point is that players can CREATE their own worlds, their own environments, plugging in whatever they want to manage into an economic system that enables them to make, well, anything.

The second point is this:  the party does not need to control the territory to build in it.  It is, at last, a breaking free of the age-old bullshit that players must wait until they're name level to own property and make money from it.  Allow me an example from the online party.

Recently, I gave them the deed to a tiny island in the Aegean, near Naxos.  This deed is of ownership, not nobility ... and the problem becomes one of how does the party develop this land, and what are they permitted to do?

In the first case, there are people living there - never mind how many, the party doesn't know yet, so I don't want to say.  In the second case, those people are already under the authority of the local Doge ... Naxos is controlled by Venice.  The three islands the party controls are the territory of Koufonisia:

Before the party gets too excited, I want to let them know this isn't the final version of the map - in fact, Koufonisia may not be all in the actual hex indicated above.  This is primarily just a quick mockup for the purpose of describing this system.

Take note of the dashed lines on the enlarged hex on the right.  These would be the 'tiles' as they correspond to C4.  The 'village' in D&D need not be in the centre of the hex.  That's completely irrelevant in D&D, where the world is not neat and square.  The entirety of Koufonisia (which I've drawn in roughly, and which in fact has one more uninhabited island) takes up one tile.  The final version may take up two, in different hexes.

The south part of Naxos makes a tile, the two parts of Ios make two tiles ... and three of the tiles in this hex have no designated land at all.

Still, we know from C4 how to guage the total produce of this hex.  Each of the four inhabited tiles produces 100m calories of food (one C4 food) and 7,500 g.p. (two C4 coins).  Again, let me pause and remind my party that one coin = 2,500 g.p. was a designation based on the D&D ideal ... not my world's, lest you get too excited.

The coin comes from a number of sources ... travellers from abroad who tie up at the docks, odd and strange resources like murex and octopus, found sunken ships, etc.

How much of this would the party be entitled to?  Certainly not taxes, since they are not the nobles here - the Doge on Naxos is.  The party actually fits into that "privileged class" I spoke of back here.  Being rent collectors, it is probable they are entitled to 1/4th of all the coin collected by the privileged class - a nice tidy sum of 1,875 g.p. a year, for doing nothing but sitting on their butts.  That need not be calculate by the year, either ... we can always calculate it by the month (156 g.p.) or even the week (36 g.p.).

Can the party change their fortune here?  Of course!  They're as entitled to buy a fishing boat as anyone, paying someone to fish in their stead if they like, drawing in that extra amount of wealth.  My macrosystem lets me calculate the price of the fishing boat they want to buy - which would have to be purchased in Naxos, probably.  The gentle reader, for your world, can charge your party whatever you want.

Beyond that, it is up to the party to calculate if there's something else they'd like to do with their land ... and some means by which they'd like to encourage the other persons on the island to do the same - though they probably won't, being Greeks.

And I will have to roll a die to see if there's something special in the tile, like crab, clams or a fishing bank.  Always remembering that the Doge of Naxos, and probably the Bey of Ios (which is under Turkish control) would be vigorously working that tile, and might not like interlopers.

Suddenly the party is fighting shipboard battles with the Ottoman Empire ... over fish.



NTME - Military Units

This is probably the first of perhaps several attempts to hammer down the creation of the military in D&D using the NTME system I've been describing.  I think we want to limit the discussion here to those military units which would be available between 1100 and 1700, discounting gunpowder units.  Anyone able to follow this so far is free to go work on aspects of pre-Medieval or post-gunpowder units at their discretion.  For me, I'm satisfied to keep within this narrower framework.

The list of units would then include (with hammer costs):  macemen (70), knights (90), pikemen (60), longbowmen (50), crossbowmen (60), catapults (50), war elephants (60), galleons (80) and caravals (60).

I don't suggest that any D&D system be hammered into anything as simplistic as the above grouping.  I would personally continue to insist that men-at-arms be considered as something to be bought and paid for personally on an individual basis.  To me, the only value in assigning a "hammer" value to such men is to measure how long it would take to raise such a body of men and train them to act as a unit.  However, there's no sense in trying to find a workable measure until we can first determine how many men a particular Civilization IV (C4) unit actually includes.  Is it a battalion?  A regiment?  Does one praetorian, from earlier in the game, describe a cohort or a legion?

The tendency would be to go big - but I resist that because the map of C4 represents one hell of a lot of area.  One praetorian = one legion makes sense since the map is continental in size.  It does not make sense if we are talking about hexes or tiles that are only 5 to 20 miles across.

Since my world takes place in 1650 Earth - without common use of gunpowder - I would seek to compare the creation of a general military unit with 17th century measures.  The best army of the early 17th century was unquestionably the Swedish Army ... and it could be termed the best organized as well, though they learned much from the Dutch.  Prior to the rise of Gustavus Adolphus and the onset of the 30 years war, infantry companies in the Swedish army numbered about 300 men (I've seen figures of anywhere from 100 to 600, but let's go with a compromise figure).  It seems to me that a company of men would be expensive for a single village, but not beyond reason ... particularly if that single village had grown into a town of 7,500 or 16,000 residents.  With 60 hammers to accumulate in making a pikeman unit, it would take a long time for a 1,500 person village - but arguably that ten year period could be seen as the establishment of a tough, consistent local tradition, such as many similar-sized towns in Switzerland developed in the 13th and 14th centuries.

The fact that 1/5th of the village population may be part of that pikeman unit does not discount that they are also farmers and tradespersons.  Unless the unit is truly at war elsewhere, both the military unit and the people themselves can be considered part of the same resource.

Provided the king provides the instruments (mace, pike, bow, etc.), then I don't see much to be made of one type of unit as opposed to another.  Perhaps the reader would prefer that it took less time to create a longbow company than a mace company - I see the real difficulty in obtaining actual elephants for the war elephant troop.  Unless it was done in India, this would be an expensive proposition.

Regarding the caraval or the galleon - how many of each would be built with 60 or 80 hammers?  The caraval holds no military units according to C4, but we can ignore that ... but can we really expect to put 600 men (2 units) on one caraval?  We might get 900 men on one galleon, if it were part of the Spanish Armada - but even so, this seems tight.

We can fiddle or fudge or fustigate as long as we want on this, suggesting there should be three ships or that they can only carry one company or that it can carry so many military or non-military units, but what is really needed is figures.  We can easily set the weight of an individual soldier plus the soldier's equipment at 300 pounds - and this give us a value of 135 tons.  Therefore, the total amount of ship tonnage (and we don't need to make a distinction between caraval or galleon), regardless of the type or number of ship, is therefore 80 hammers to produce 135 total deadweight tonnage.  We can make that a rounder number, say 90 hammers to make 135 tons.  Beyond that, the party or ruler can determine what kind of ships to build.

Hm.  Having worked through that, I'm somewhat pleased.  D&D determines the cost of the equipment, including ships; the hammer system determines how many men can be gathered together into a unit, or how many ships can be built, in a given time frame.  Obviously, if it takes 60 hammers to make a unit of 300 pikemen, 1 hammer will make 5 pikemen; if it takes 90 hammers to make 135 tons of shipping, then 2 hammers will make 3 tons.  Which would also mean that you can work out how big in number of ships is your fishing fleet from the previous post.

Something I've only alluded to a couple of times is that you don't have to build things to 100% capacity in order to take advantage of the return.  One fishing boat will still catch fish.  You don't have to build the whole fleet in order to take advantage of the crabs offshore.  Since everything has been translated into flat numbers, the crabs that will increase from 300m calories to 1,500m calories with 30 hammers of fishing boats will still increase even if you create 1 hammer of fishing boats (40 million calories per hammer, to be exact).  The video game requires all in, but D&D does not.  One hammer's worth of farm, one hammer's worth of military, one hammer's worth of fishing boat, these are all completely doable without having to spend every hammer you have for ten years to make one tile fully productive.

The system is far more flexible than that.

I suppose I'll want to start getting into how flexible with my next post.  Anybody bored yet?

NTME - Workers

The next topic would seem to be the improvement of land, or tiles.  Grassland needs farms, forests need sawmills, hills need mines and fishing grounds need boats.  How is it done?

We cannot hope to cram every feature from Civilization IV, or C4, into the D&D system.  The video game solves the problem by creation a worker (or a fishing boat to a much lesser degree) which then improves the tile endlessly, limited only by how much time it takes before it can move on to the next task.  There is no practical reflection of the "worker" in D&D, nor should there be.  Every villager is a worker.  The "worker" in the video game is merely a tool to abstractly represent the villagers at work, and we don't have to include the tool in this system.

The solution is simply to translate the improvements succeeded by the worker into hammers ... recognizing that unlike the worker's inexaustibility in Civ IV, the improvements will cost new effort every year.

In C4, to build a worker it requires 60 hammers.  Conversely, to build 8 farms on the surrounding 8 tiles, it will require 40 turns (we can dispense with movement costs).  If we include serfdom into the calculations (workers build 50% faster), I think it is 3 turns per farm, which would mean 24 turns.

A village with one hammer would then require 60 turns to create a worker, and another 24 turns for that worker to make all the improvements.  Therefore, we can simply argue that a village with 1 hammer would take 84 turns to make all improvements (sans worker).  2 hammers, then, could take 42 turns and 3 hammers 28 turns.  To improve 1 tile, then, should take 1 hammer 10.5 turns ... but lets be generous and say that 1 hammer produces 1/10th the work necessary to one farm - or, in effect, 1 hammer does the work of 1/2 of a worker's turn in C4.  The cost of a "turn" is therefore 2 hammers.

Therefore, if a road needs 2 turns, that requires 4 hammers - 4 years maximum, or less time if the village has more resources (the "road" would be a trading class road, and would reach from the village into one of the adjoining tiles - or one tile to another).  A farm would require 10 hammers.  Cutting down a forest would require 6 hammers.

Notably, to take advantage of fishing grounds would cost what it is in the video game: 30 hammers.

Now, I would tend to agree that the masters of a territory are entitled to the bonus in hammers that comes from cutting down a forest.  The video game calls this, I think, 20 hammers for the quick game.  I'm not certain, it may be 30 hammers for the epic game ... I'd have to check it.  In either case, it represents a rapid outpouring of work, drawing labor (presumably) from all around, enabling a player to rapidly develop multiple tiles around his or her village.  Almost certainly the destruction of a forest would be the first step in developing an area ... if there is a forest, naturally.

The question will arise among players: if I don't have enough hammers, and I'm ready to go elsewhere and pay for more, can I have them?

The answer must be NO.  You must conceive that everyone, everywhere in the world is already making maximum use of their hammers to make the stuff that they desire for their territories.  In C4, it would be the equivalent of asking the Romans to lend you, the English, a few hammers to help you build the Granary you want.  It just doesn't happen.  Additionally, even if the party were to bring in hundreds of laborers whom they seized or paid from elsewhere, this would NOT increase the number of hammers, since having a lot of workers doesn't increase the necessary resources or skills.  Arguably, a thousand strangers could cause many skilled workers to seek lives elsewhere.  On the other hand, however, a thousand new "settlers" could tip the balance into upgrading your village to where it could work three tiles instead of two - that could increase your available hammers.  And there is the slavery rule ... use up your population to finish things that are important to you.  I can't quite give numbers on how many population you would consume to make a granary - I rarely play the slavery option when I play C4, so I'm not overly familiar with it.  A conscientious game designer should be able to work it out.

I don't have the kind of players who would use it anyway.

Other civics increase hammers, however, as do some city improvements.  Culture, if it is included, could still widen the available environs and permit forest destruction.  I would tend to keep with the C4 rule that destroying forests outside your control does not bring extra hammers ... the important thing is the industry created by the village being near all that activity.  If the activity were far away (out of cultural influence) I do not think the village would benefit.

So you have your party taking over a piece of completely untouched land, say 8 forest tiles, two of them with hills, and no development whatsoever.  If it is a forest on plains, each tile has two hammers ... but if it is a forest on grassland, it is only one hammer per tile.

This would mean that the starting party has 2 hammers altogether, counting the village and the one tile the village can work.  To chop down the forest and bring those extra hammers to work would take three years.  It would be nice if the party didn't have to wait even one year - though technically, there's nothing to stop a party from all declaring that they are three years older and so start spending their gotten hammers.

Imagine:  say the forest produces 6 hammers per year in the time that it is being cut down (we don't have to strictly adhere to C4's rules - we can reckon everything in 1 year periods).  The players could then use those 6 hammers, plus their usual 2, of those gained hammers to finish chopping down the first forest the NEXT year, plus 2/3rds of another one ... which would yield 27 hammers.  During the third year, the party could finish the 2nd forest (with the 2 hammers they usually receive), plus 4 more forest tiles ... with three hammers left over to cut down half of a 5th.  For the 4th year, then, the party would start with 99 hammers.  There'd only be 1 and a half forests left, and the remaining country would be moved over into farms (with all those hammers, it would be easy).  Of course, there wouldn't be many hammers left over once the bonanza finished.  An environmental approach is slower, but more beneficial in the long run.

If it seems that the time frame is completely unreasonable for a party who adventures and runs around every day killing things, you're right.  The party would have to accept that encounters were something that happened only every few months, enabling them to enjoy the expansion of their kingdom.  As a DM, if you make your party understand that it can take months to, say, create an army to attack the lands next door, you might be able to have that time pass for them without their becoming resentful.  Campaigns, too, take a long time, since armies move so very slowly.  In any case, now then have a reason to conquer - taking over someone else's lands and how their hammers are spent becomes an interesting matter.

However, now I'm at the point where I have to discuss the creation of units - something to which I haven't been looking forward.  At least I'll have a little longer to piece it all together.

NTME - Update

Before moving on, let's recap.

One of the things I like about blogging is that it is possible to write out and examine the creation process as it is ongoing ... so if some of what I write now doesn't quite fit with what I wrote last week, it is because I am moving forward in the process.

Proposed:  we can translate the measures in Civilization IV, or C4, into D&D.

Population:

The city population in C4 progresses as 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.  I propose that this could be translated into binary as 1, 11, 111, 1111, etc. ... and that these binary numbers translated into a 10 based system would progress as 1, 3, 7, 15, etc., for use in multiplying the population.  We know instinctively that a size 13 city in C4 is not merely 13 times the size of the village it starts as - the math here is simply designed to reflect that.

The base population of a village is 500 people.  Thus, the size of a town's population would progress as 500, 1500, 3500, 7500, etc.

There would still be tiles, as per C4, and the number of these that could be worked would be equal to the standard C4 city growth - that is, a village of size (1) in C4, with 500 people, could work 1 tile as well as the village itself.  A village of size (2), with 1,500 people, could work 2 tiles.  and so on.

Food:

To feed people, using again the 1947 estimate regarding the feeding of people during the Berlin Airlift of 1700 calories per day per person, we estimate that 500 people would require 100 million calories (its a bit more, but round numbers are too convenient).  This is written as 100m.

Thus, a village with 1,500 people requires 300m calories.  A town with 3,500 people requires 700m calories.  And so on.

A 'food' in C4 is therefore set to be equal to 100m calories.  A tile which produces 2 food in the C4 system is again viewed as producing 11 in binary numbers, 3 in ten-based numbers, and therefore 300m calories.

Two different tiles that each produce 1 food would together produce 200m calories.  Each tile is calculated in binary numbers individually, and then added together.  An unimproved grassland therefore produces 300m calories; an unimproved flood plain, 700m calories.

The number of surplus calories available to a village therefore increases the population at the following rate:  a total surplus of food equal to 100m will increase the center's size one degree over a period of 33 years (33 divided by total food surplus/100m).  This is exactly as true with a center whose initial population is 10,000 as it is of a center whose population is 500.  Nevermind that this would cause a large city to starve - this happens in C4 also.

Time:

All improvements, increases and so on are measured in years ... thus even the smallest improvement requires at least one year to implement.

Coin:

The actual number of g.p. in D&D as represented by 'coins' in C4 is entirely a matter of the DM's discretion.  However, if strict D&D is to be played, then the value of each C4 coin is estimated to be 2,500 g.p.

Coins, like food, progress according to the binary number structure already described.  Thus, 2 coins from a given tile would equal 7,500 g.p.

All coins are perceived to be moving through the economy more than once - specifically, the velocity of money in the village is given as 3.  This means that if the center's economy includes 10,000 g.p., then total GNP (simplistic!) would be rated as 30,000 g.p.  It is further concluded that one third of this would filter into the hands of the three levels of society: the noble class, the middle class and the serf class.  Each level of society would therefore have the entire center's coin to play with.

Players gaining coin from the system do not spend that coin as per rules to be found in C4, but instead as per rules to be found in D&D - except (and this is a change) where rules in D&D are lacking in describing how town improvements ought to be priced and therefore paid.

Hammers:

The number of hammers are treated as static numbers and not as binary equivalents.  Therefore, 1 hammer in C4 = 1 hammer in D&D.  Since that which is built with hammers is also static, in that the cost of an obelisk does not increase due to the size of center in which the obelisk is built, the cost of an obelisk (or any other town improvement) is a flat rate.  Obviously, larger centers have access to more hammers and therefore build town improvements faster.

Town improvements cannot be built without hammers.  Coin cannot stand in as a replacement for hammers.  Hammers represent labor and material resources, so if they don't exist, there is nothing for the coin to buy.

Town improvements require coin IN ADDITION TO the number of hammers.  Therefore, while it requires a set number of hammers to create a town improvement, it will also require a set amount of coin.  The amount of coin per improvement in this system has yet to be calculated.

Town improvements have similar effects to centers as they have in the game of C4.  This effect needs to be determined on an item-by-item basis, as well as the amount of coin required, and I shall endeavor to do so at a later time.

Going Forward:

I think this covers the highlights.  If anything considerable is missing from the above, please let me know.  I shall move on from here in the next post.

NTME - Hammers

This brings us to the subject of 'hammers,' and how they fit into the D&D system described thus far.  What are they?

Yesterday, I suggested strongly that I wouldn't confuse the issue of creating buildings and features in your world using the Civilization IV (C4) money system.  There might be a temptation to calculate the number of hammers as per the number of coins (the video game allows this calculation) and thus confuse the two things as though they are interchangeable.  They are - in C4.  If you want to retain the widest possible variety in D&D, however, they shouldn't be.

Hammers are the production measure of the game, whereby buildings and mobile units are built within the C4 game.  In D&D, they would be a combination of manpower, resources and engineering skill ... and this is why coin does not equal hammers in the D&D system I propose.  A building needs BOTH.

The coin, in order to pay the cost of building, in labor and materials ... and the hammers to determine how long it will take, given the resources of your community.

Any community, with enough time and money, no matter how small the community, should be able to build a stonehenge-like structure within its environs.  The test isn't limited by the possibility ... it is limited by the willingness of a small community with 2 hammers available to it to spend 40 years on the project - assuming the master of the village doesn't die, causing the villagers to simply quit and possibly steal the object's components for other projects.

I would propose, then, that most of the structures in C4 could be duplicated in D&D.  There's no limitation in terms of how many Hagia Sophia's could be built - except again, in D&D there are other relevant forces at work that do not exist in C4.  The church, for example, not permitting such a structure, or vandals seeking to destroy it, or even the gods having a say.  But that is for the DM to decide.  The game is built on drama, and if someone wants to build something big, that should be both possible and a temptation for enemies.

The easiest way to limit this would be to invoke some rule that says the longer an object takes to build, the more resistance there is created against its construction.  But let us leave off this digression, for the present, and get back to the details of hammers and how they work.

Because the number of hammers you have are necessarily measured against large numbers in the game (the Hagia Sophia requires 300 hammers), it isn't practical to measure such things in the binary number system proposed in previous posts.  (300 1s in as a binary number is 2.03704 x 10 to the 90th power).  Therefore, I suggest retaining the linear measure used in C4 ... so that an equivalent building to the Hagia Sophia would still cost 300 hammers.  (as to the subject of the Hagia Sophia speeding up your workers, that's a problem we'll leave until we discuss workers).

So if we look again at the image I posted earlier today (and I'll post it again for convenience),

We can consider the number of hammers available in this area.  Each forest here offers 1 hammer; the cows offer 2 hammers.  The village itself offers 1 also.  At a size of (1), and assuming the cows are not yet exploited, Bibracte offers a pool of 3 hammers for the construction of civic improvements within the town.

What civic improvements are available depends upon the tech level at which you think your world should operate.  If Roman, then structures like castles, cathedrals and grocers are probably out of the question.  On the other hand, forges, markets and harbors are perfectly in line.  Realistically, you can ignore earth-like comparisons and just mix and match however you like, using or discarding technologies like cards in your deck.  So long as the players have a list when they set out to make decisions, they'll be fine with your choices.

It won't do, however, to think of the construction of a single granary or forge as a "civic improvement" worthy of increasing your food supply or the number of your hammers (as such civic improvements allow in the game).  It must be conceived that the whole village is reshaped by the 'granary' or 'forge' improvement, effectively redesigning its streets, constructing means to bring in the necessary materials, plus the difficulties of finding and encouraging the settlement of the necessary skilled workers.  The cost in coin for such an adventure may be reasonable - it may even be paid by simply surrendering a certain amount of taxes, since most of the actual construction could be built by the new metalworker's guild forming in your town.  (Perhaps I'm wrong - perhaps you could resort to C4 for the actual cost, recognizing that it, too, could not be considered a binary number).  In any case, the 'hammer-time' would be long and arduous ... shortening the C4 turn rate to a year (I had previously supposed two years, but I am rethinking that also), it could still take 40 years for your 3 hammer village to grow an entire metalworker's guild.

Am I really suggesting that kind of time frame?  Absolutely.  The gentle reader may consider that anathema to the player's desires to have everything and right now, but if you adopt a wizard-speed option to the growth of your player's village, you're going to have trouble fitting that into the simultaneous growth (or static existence) of the rest of your world.  Besides, imposing deeply distressing problems like excessive time periods encourages innovation.  Remember, forests can be destroyed for hammers; mines can be founded; there's still the chance of some kind of cultural expansion; and the question must be addressed: can hammers be imported?

The answer must be YES ... but not by means of mere coin.  Encouragement of a stable labor market based on skilled labor requires more than remuneration.  What about conquest?  What about slave labor?  Just how desperate is your party to get that forge built in the next three years?

Really, each building needs an examination for what the actual D&D effects. Granaries couldn't operate as they do in C4 ... but they could preserve food against things that might happen in D&D but which wouldn't happen in C4: drought, for instance, or fire, or locusts, or the party destroying their own fields before the barbarians arrive.  The hammers could simply be a measure of the time it would take to build a truly comprehensive storage system, capable of storing as much grain as all the fields produce (and getting grain from other areas who come to you to use up part of your granary).

So far, I haven't calculated how to use hammers to make military units or even settlers (though I'm close on the latter, and it is quite different from C4).  I'm still working out workers.  I will probably address that problem, and the problem of tile improvements, before even considering culture or - dare I say it - health.

Meanwhile, surely it must be evident by now that the "end game," if applying some of these ideas as I've been talking about, is anything but an END.  The formula exists here to do more than give impetus to conquest, it defines precisely how conquest could benefit the players - and how they would account for every village and every city over which they eventually came into power.  The possibilities are spectacular, since whole kingdoms could be regulated, to move hammers and people and grain from here to here, how much it would cost, and potentially how anger of the citizens could eventually cause a revolt (if you've played C4, you can guess some of the principles behind how that could happen).

I'm really onto something here.  Next, I'll tackle workers and tile improvements.

NTME - City Growth

I want to pause before working on hammers, which are tricky, and examine whether or not the city growth model I've proposed would work to make a large city.  After messing around with trying to get a screen shot off my Civilization IV (C4)  game, I admit I don't seem to have the know-how ... so I'm going to steal this image below:

For the purpose of this post, we're going to ignore the growth of culture (which honestly would be different for D&D anyway).  What, then, is the total food surrounding the village of Bibracte?

Well, I count 4 floodplains, 3 forests and 1 cow (on a grassland).  The forests are all upon grasslands, so each offers (2) food (remember, the brackets are for C4 numbers, not translated for my D&D idea); the floodplains each offer (3) food; and the cows add a point to the grassland, making that worth (3).  Bibracte itself produces (2) food.  This is a total, in C4 terms, of (23) food.

Translating this into calories for D&D, the floodplains and cows offer 700 million calories each, while the forests and Bibracte offer 300 million calories each.  This is a total of 4.7 billion calories, or enough for 23,500 persons.

Ah, but if the cows and the floodplains are improved, the use of the binary system greatly increases the food supply.  Each floodplain counting as (4) in C4, once improved with a "farm," jumps to 1.5 billion calories.  The cows jump to (5) in C4, or 3.1 billion calories.  Even if the forests are left unimproved, this is 10.3 billion calories, or enough for 51,500 persons.

But of course, in order to work all eight tiles, Bibracte must have a population of (8) ... which in the system I'm employing, would mean a population of 127,500 - more than Bibracte can feed.  As the reader can see, the system doesn't *quite* work out the way C4 does.  More's the pity.

The breaking point comes when Bibracte has a population of (5), or 15,500, and can work all the floodplain tiles and the cows as well.  At this point, Bibracte is overflowing with food ... it is only when it moves up to size (7) that food becomes an issue.  There's also the matter of ways to improve the forest tiles, tearing them down, and (D&D assumes the civil service technology) irrigate farms on the grassland.  Such farms would produce 700 million calories each, however ... only enough for an additional 4,500 people.  There are other possible increases (biology) which would really bounce up the food production everywhere.  It's questionable where you would want to limit your technological world - and isn't that a new concept in playing an end game in D&D?

C4 solves these issues by having the city expand its boundaries, so that it can take advantage of the floodplains on the other side of the river - and clearly the D&D comparison will need some kind of commensurate system that allows this. So there will need to be culture rules if cities are expected to get BIG.

There are other ways to think about the D&D's possible influence, however.  Can you create "deer" by stocking the nearby woods like a game reserve?  Food, as well, could simply shipped in from elsewhere, so that a city without the tiles could still get bigger and bigger by fostering colony cities that all have great abundances.  The rules of C4 need not apply ... there are workarounds.

Okay, hammers next.

NTME - Coin

Let me start by saying that while elements of what I'm proposing here resemble the framework in Civilization IV (which I'll call C4 from here on), I am not saying that it is an option for an economic system.  There are a number of problems with it - fundamentally, far too much of the game is geared towards the creation of new technologies, whereas D&D is a static technological bubble.  Other problems include elements of culture, politics, religious effect on the economy and the military units/buildings as well.  How large is a 'granary'?  How do you calculate in D&D game terms the phrase, "stores 50% of food after growth"?  No, I don't see basing a D&D economy on C4.  Still, some things I can see working ... but that for another day.

I have a ground up economy that I have no intention of abandoning ... but for the moment, for those many readers who simply want something they can apply to their worlds, I'm examining a methodology for making such an application accessible.

Very well. 

When you start a village in C4, you're automatically supplied with 8 coin in addition to the 1 coin the village adds, plus whatever you receive from your hinterland.  Obviously, in D&D there is no palace at the center of the village, so this must be discounted in determining its wealth.  We can therefore regard only the village itself and its the hinterland.

Rather than thinking of it in video game terms as money that is created, let us instead view our one coin as money as it exists in a 'closed' system.

In my macro-system, I have methods for determining what the per capita income of any given region would be, dependent on where in the world the players are, but since this is inconvenient for a blog discussion, let's fall back on standard D&D ... the dreaded, sadly thought out taxation rate of 7 s.p. per person.  We can extrapolate from this a tax rate of near 7% (which would be moderate for the medieval period, but what the hey, you can change the numbers anyway that works for you) in order to suppose a general income of every person of 100 s.p. per year.  Given our previous post's description of a village with 500 persons, we could thus say the actual coin in our closed system is equal to 50,000 s.p., or 2,500 g.p. per coin in straight AD&D parlance.  Thus, if the village produces (1) coin (in C4 terms), and the hinterland produces (1) coin, the total amount of money in our D&D village is twice the above, or 5,000 g.p.

Again, as before, if we have a location that produces (2) coin, such as an undeveloped gold mine, that's worth three times the value of (1) coin (see the previous post).  A (1)-size village next to an undeveloped gold mine, or field if you like, would have a closed system monetary availability of 10,000 g.p.  Imagine what a developed gold mine would produce (two to the fifth power times 2,500 = 80,000).

Don't get the impression that doubling the size of the village would double the available coin ... the coins are static just as the food is static.  The number of people in the centre determines how much of the hinterland can be utilized, but it doesn't increase the production of the hinterland.  Go that way and you'll quickly get into troubles with your system.

Let's imagine a village, however, with a simple plain, just as in the last example.  That's two coin, or a money supply of 5,000 g.p.  To this, we can now add the idea of velocity, which is the number of times money changes hands in the system, in order to give an impression of the effective money supply.

Now, any modern framework for the velocity of money is going to hardly reflect a medieval system.  Money just did not change hands 20 times a year, as one of the stats in the velocity link above describes.  I think we can make the following suppositions, however, regarding the movement of money in our system - not because they accurately reflect a real money system, but because they are PLAYABLE, a word I can't stress enough to impress the endless gits who cannot understand that in a game, all reality must be modified in order to achieve the desired purpose.

1)  Let us assume that all money that departs the "closed" system for other locations ultimately feeds back into the same system.  This isn't true, obviously ... most systems either bleed or accumulate wealth.  But for game purposes, we can presume its static.  Who does it hurt if it isn't?

2)  All money in the system ultimately flows into the coffers of the master/mistress of the realm ONE TIME.  Thus, in the system we are describing, if your players were master of the village in question, the money they would receive per year would be 5,000 g.p.  Some of this would be in taxes, but some of it would be in fees, tolls, gifts, surplus sold goods, inheritances, seized land, etc.  This makes a nice, healthy way to empower your players when they are trying to determine how much money they make from their land, as they can decide to forego money in favor of something else like more food or "hammers" - which we shall manage later on.

3)  All money ultimately flows ONE TIME into the privileged class ... and in this case, that means any skilled guildsperson, the clergy, the local miller, passing bards and players, people who successfully gamble, prostitutes (which may not sound privileged to you, except that they're immoral, not unsuccessful), the army and guards protecting the manor, etc.  Some of this would be money flowing up and eventually to the ruler, and some would be flowing down in wages, gifts, stolen goods, etc.  This privileged class has to divide up this money between them.

4)  All money ultimately flows ONE TIME into the whole lower class.  Because of the number of people in the lower classes, this allows each very little indeed ... but for the purpose of our economy, we can suppose that they get a third of the pie (or all of the pie, one third of the time).

Given this, the velocity of our money is 3.  The total GNP is thus 15,000 g.p. yearly.  This is not a very meaningful statistic in your D&D world (the players will only care about how much money they get), but it's there for you if you have a way to apply it.

Let me say this very clearly: in no way should you try to use C4 for pricing items.  Seriously, just don't do it.  If someone wants to build a mill, or buy an army, or otherwise take advantage of their coin, buy it in the normal, D&D manner.  If you haven't got a price for something, you might examine C4 for a guideline, but I wouldn't recommend it.  In this case, we're only using C4 to determine the general amount of money, and NOT to provide you an equipment list.  You can try it if you want, but I think you'll find very quickly that C4 is more interested in how you exchange your cash for research than for actual things, and that the actual things in the video game aren't designed for D&D practicality.

There will be more.

Never Too Much Economics - Food

Let's participate in an exploratory exercise in order to produce a coherent, convenient micro-economic framework for your world.  You may or may not know that I have a macro-economic system that I use ... let's leave that by the by, however, and steal from another system entirely, one that is familiar:  Civilization IV.

(sorry, I'm not familiar with Civ V; I heard it was shit and never bought the game - so you're stuck with me talking about IV)

Typically, you start Civilization with a village that produces food, hammers and coin.  This village is, in the game, recognized in size to be equal to 1 ... and this 1 requires two food to feed it.  Luckily, it is also assumed that your new village controls one square of hinterland, and this provides you with surplus food (as well as hammers and coin), and so your village can grow and get bigger.  When it grows to size 2, it requires four food to feed it, but that's okay because now you control even more hinterland - and so on.

Since, in the game, you are a thriving city by size 4, we must assume that the food required (and thus produced) increases at a geometric rate.  The game doesn't care about this, of course - but let's care ourselves, because we want to understand this progression in terms of D&D.

Let's set a size of 1 as equal to a village, and let's say that village has 500 people.  Further, in keeping with the geometric progression of increased numbers, let's translate "two food" as equal to '11' food ... understanding that the 11 is a binary number.  This means that the first digit represents 2 to the first power (2) and that the second digit is equal to the power of zero (1).  Thus, the "2" in Civilization = binary 11, or can be translated as a  "3" in the ten-based system we're familiar with.

I hope this is clear, and that I haven't lost half the audience.  If you're not familiar with binary numbers, you might want to start here, read for a bit and then come back.

Therefore, our village of 500 requires 3 food to survive.  Using the minimal survival quotient (and I'll use that defined by the U.S. Army to feed Berlin during the Airlift in 1948, since it's hard to argue) of 1,700 calories per person per day, our village requires 310,250,000 calories per year.  We can thus define each food required as being equal to 100 million calories (letting our medieval villager starve a little).  Just to emphasize - we're not talking the "2 food" referenced in Civ IV, but its translation into our calculations, which means 3 food.  When I refer to Civ IV numbers from here on, I'll note them in () ... thus, 2 food would be described as (2), which equals in binary 11, or 3 in my system.  Clear yet?

Now, in Civ IV, a prime piece of land, a plain, also produces (2) food ... and if you add a farm, it produces (3) food.  For us, the latter equals 7 food, or by our reckoning, 700,000,000 calories.  Thus, our village positioned next to a nice hinterland plain has the potential to produce 1 billion calories altogether - enough to feed 1,666 people.  This is a good thing, since a laborer really needs much more than 1,700 calories a day - 3,000 to 4,000 calories is more the requirement for hard labor ... but then, the laborer only needs that during the heaviest working periods, and obviously the children and the old don't need that much.  Still, a billion calories is enough for our village of 500 to eat very hearty ... and its enough to draw other people to our village, where the food is plentiful.

According to Civ IV, it would take 11 turns for our village to grow to size (2) ... which in our ten-based system would be equal to 3 x 500 people (isn't it nice when the math works out).  For the city to grow in Civ IV from size (1) to size (2), I'm guessing it requires an accumulation of 33 additional food (I've never been quite clear about the exact number needed for each city size).

These 11 turns, depending on the time of the game, can be anywhere from 220 years to 11 years ... I think for my world, we want a renaissance speed.  I'm afraid I can't remember what epic is around 1650 ... I haven't played epic for awhile, and I don't have the game in front of me as I write this.  If someone wants to jump on me, they should ... but in the meantime I'm going to call a "turn" two years.

Thus, our village is gaining, on average, 53 new citizens per year.

If, then, your party enters into an area like this as landholders, and they have a village with a set size which they wish to grow, what they need is to accumulate enough food to increase their village's growth.  This could be done by building a farm where there was no previous farm, or introducing fishing boats into a village where there were no previous fishing boats ... or simply plundering food from outside their immediate system equal to the necessary calories required to raise the size of their village.  Naturally, they could also seize persons as slaves/followers, and here you now have a system to determine how much food those slaves/followers could produce in another section of hinterland, using the Civ IV measures for how much food areas like desert, oasis, forests, plains, sea coasts and so forth produce.  This will enable you to measure your entire food production right down to the last calorie, if need be, while gauging your micro-economy's growth in a rational, predictable manner.

More to the point, you can introduce a randomness to this (and I might in a few posts, there are other things I want to cover first) that will break down the calorie producing capacity of regions.  Rather than using one food = 100 million, you could say 1 food = 10 million, and then designate a plain as producing 6 to 36 food rather than (2) as it is listed in Civ IV.  That is really up to your interest in playing with the odds.

I'll be tackling coin next ... but I would encourage discussion of the above, since it will give me an idea of what problems I need to work out regarding how coin would work.

An Update of Purpose

"If you can stand back and see that the other individual is an individual like me, who might have interests and values and feelings like mind, then you can make a bond."

Iain McGilchrist, speaking upon the human

 brain's capacity for empathy.

I've debated all weekend about addressing this subject, but now and then I'm driven to examine not only the world around me, and how it influences the various activities I pursue, but also myself.  Why do I behave in the way that I do; why do I write as I do; why do I take positions against other people; and why is it that so often those positions are spiteful, irreverent or abusive?

There have always been people who have said about me and my writings, "I like this or that, but the way he chose to say/write that particular thing really annoyed me, and I don't care about him."  The solution, it would seem to most people, is that I should write more kindly and sympathetically, in order to make the kind of connection that Iain McGilchrist above is talking about.  Others would have more empathy for my position if they viewed my position as similar to theirs, couched in feelings and values like the ones they possess.

If I must disagree with them, then I should do so empathically - concerned about their reactions to whatever I am saying, so that they are more likely to absorb what I am saying.

Here is the thing, however.  When I view the statement from McGilchrist above, I find myself immediately leaping to the conclusion that the average person I'm about to meet on the street is NOT an individual like me, and the he or she will NOT have interests and values and feelings like mine, and that we will NOT make a bond.  I have this conclusion not because I'm unreasonable or close-minded, but because for the last 17,520 days of experience, I so rarely meet anyone like me that the default position is to presume that any person I hear from almost certainly has nothing like my perspective of the world.

What's interesting about this is that anyone who HAS my perspective of the world is equally certain to have come to the same conclusions about the people THEY meet, so that they are as sick and tired of running up against the same sad, uninformed, uneducated, unreasonable and flat-minded people that I run against all the time.  Moreover, IF they ever hope to meet anyone of like-mind, they will without question be just as abusive and cold and emotionally cruel as I am ... in which case I will immediately recognize them as a kindred spirit, just as they will immediately recognize me as a kindred spirit.  This is the way it has always happened in the past, with those people whom I do share any affinity.  It never seems to bother this particular kind of person how abusive I am on the subject of stupidity or incapacity ... and I am never bothered by others who are abusive in like manner.  In fact, I have most often leapt to my feet in joy the moment I hear someone of this nature railing or ranting on screen or in lectures, or online as the case may be.  It is such a rare event, it is always a religious experience in that it brings out of me a need to cry, "SING IT BROTHER!" ... or SISTER as the case may be.

I have not been disappointed in the internet's ability to waft people occasionally in my path who - to some degree - share some of the viewpoints I possess.  It is a shame there are not more people who feel about D&D (or other subjects) as I do, but as this was to be expected from the beginning, I cannot say I'm terribly disappointed.  I have placed myself out there in public events and experiences in the past, so I have a good idea of the ratio of people like me as compared to people with whom I share no empathy.

Because I am clear about this reality, and the likelihood of my ever being "liked" for being the way I am, excepting the possibility of by chance producing something which will make me irrationally popular, in the manner that certain other historically unlikeable people have chanced to be popular, it should be surmised by the gentle reader that the purpose of this blog, and the content within, does not derive from a need to be popular.  Therefore, threats of unpopularity as a reason to change the content of this blog were in the past ignored, and will continue to be ignored.  The tree that is barked up is made of other wood than pandering to the crowd.  The wood here is grown to build factories, not temples, for engineers and not worshippers.

We have no comfy chairs and no hot chocolate.  There's only cold machinery here, and be careful where you step - a moving part is likely to rip your arm off.

Physics

Occasionally I have a chance to listen to random strangers in some venue spin on about philosophy or religion to each other ... and it is always funny.   There is always some smattering of books they've read, or social flotsam they've gathered - Dawkins is a favorite - which they casually mix in with their own experiences in Christianity or Judaism.  'Personal experiences,' such as a two week trip they took to Lebanon or Jamaica mixes in with the media perspective on Islam ... coupled with marginal siftings of David Hume or Nietzche.  Usually, they do not quote philosophers, but rather they repeat some other source which has boiled down the philosophy to its simplest elementary school accessibility.

What such people rarely have is any proper framework within which to put the scattered pieces together.  As they leap in their conversations haphazardly between Hindu reincarnation and Aristotelian logic, semantics and cartesian conjecture, it becomes plain that the dialogue - or dialectic, as may be - is driven more by which of the two individuals is anxious to demonstrate their flexible argumentative skills than to arrive at any conclusion upon which either expects to apply to their lives.

Such was the debate I sat next to last evening, doing my best not to chuckle aloud, and failing entirely to keep my facial expression straight and proper.  I don't doubt that in my youth I was every bit as random and directionless in my shotgun approach to intellectualism (nor do I doubt that some would think I still am).  There's something fun and pleasant about shooting a few hours down with spontaneous demands for others to define 'facts' or the unvaried proposal that given the right opportunity, a person could walk through a brick wall - since atoms are made of "mostly space."  Silly, but fun and pleasant.

Here is where we apply the present subject heading ... for if there is anything which amateur philosophers and religious pundits do not comprehend, it is physics.

I am no physicist.  I did not enjoy it when I first took classes in the subject, and I find it difficult to concentrate on the math - particularly when the math requires three dimensional thinking, such as calculus and the like.  It is out of my purview.  In terms of Dungeons and Dragons, it is out of the purview of medieval fighters and thieves, too, and no doubt well past the comprehension of most Dungeon Masters ... so physics does not seem very important where it comes to the game.  Occasionally an argument might erupt about the effect of a lightning bolt upon a pool of water in which both caster and targets are standing, but usually such arguments are resolved with all the deciphering ability of Middle Age philosophers - mostly wrongly.  Meh, it is as it is.

When philosophy is applied, then, by the random individuals with little or no training in physics, the subject of "what is real" and "what is truth" always has an 18th century ring about it.  After all, most comprehension of physics by the masses ends at what was understood by the highest minds two hundred and fifty years ago.  A physicist is not concerned by what is real, only by what is predictable or - in the case of quantum physics, more correctly stated as what can be reasonable expected.  we cannot deduce with certainty the results of the Hadron Collider, but we can with skill produce the Collider itself so that it produces results evolved from our former understanding of molecular structure.  We may go to the theatre being uncertain what the movie will be about, but we are quite confident there will be a movie and it will be something we have not seen - having properly constructed the theatre, you see.

Philosophers are rarely in the business of application, even to the extent of constructing a venue in which to discuss philosophy (the last major leap was the invention of the European coffee house, in 1645; the Ottomans had enjoyed this technology since 962).   This is why it is so easy to deactivate amateur philosophers with Taoism.  When the question "Why?" is asked, the question "What purpose would the knowledge serve?" is begged.  The investigation into 'why,' apart from its utter failure to produce an answer these past 10 millenium, has never satisfactorily explained the benefits which would be offered by its comprehension.  How is it that knowing why you are here, or what you are meant to accomplish, or towards what general purpose you are meant to serve, would produce satisfaction in your soul?  If the answer were clear and conclusive, would you accept it?  My feeling is that you would not, but that you would resist its clarity with dissonnance and denial.  Your mother told you to eat your beans, and gave you a reason, and it seemed not to provide enough justification to eating such horrid things.  Of course, you may like beans ... but then you would only be plagued by the possible 'truth' that the final answer to your purpose on earth may be to never eat beans again.  This would certainly seem inappropriate to your habitual willingness to eat beans.

The conclusion one might leap to is that 'truth' is in large part unpleasant or undesirable.  Thus, so many philosophies in existence which deny truth, enabling greater freedom of mind - and choice - about your bean-eating preferences.  Truth, we are told, is a straightjacket, and straightjackets exist to restrain you.

Thus, as I have been told often on this blog, "rules" are anathema.  The game should not have HARD and FIXED rules.  Rules deny imagination.  Rules deny possibility.

Strange, then, that every particle in the universe adhering to a highly fixed existence, described by the rigorous and unforgiving technology of mathematics, has not eliminated the imaginations of those conglomerations of particles that we ourselves are.  The universe is utterly inflexible.  Perhaps not understood; perhaps beyond understanding; but nevertheless inflexible, as in that it operates to a codebook which we have been piecing together since the age of Anaxagoras.  Conveniently, it is an inordinately, unfathomably complex set of inflexible conditions - so complex as to seem, well, flexible.  Just as we begin to feel that something cannot be done, another element of the inflexible codebook is interpreted and we suddenly discover that the impossible is possible.  Moreover, it was always possible.  It is not as though Physics has changed since we began to be complex enough to live thoughtfully without understanding it.  The same physics that allows me to fly would have allowed me to fly 20 hundred million years ago ... even though nothing flew, anywhere, to our knowledge.  Actual flight is unimportant.  Actual application of any physical principle is a convenience and not a characteristic.  It may have been that until the development of insects, nothing flew anywhere, ever - this would have had no influence whatsoever upon the principles of flight.  The rule remains unchanged.  Application is immaterial.

It is not that a rule in D&D - or any other game - necessarily restricts the game, since the imagination is not to be found in the rule itself, but in its application.  The application is the 'choice' the player has.  What is expressly interesting about the game of D&D, and of course in any possible game conceived of in the present and the future, is the number of possible applications which can be devised from the existing rules of that game.  More rules, coordinated so that overall the rules inter-relate to one another towards the degree in which the rules of mathematics or the rules of physics relate to one another, allows for a greater logic and coordination of the applications your players may dream up.  If you set out to produce rules, be mindful of the coordinates within which your players may operate.  This, but not that; so far, but no further.  Even a straight-jacket makes for interesting games of skill and imagination, since the body within the straight-jacket is itself flexible.

I appreciate that certain physical conditions on my choices, being beyond my powers to change, lend themselves to my dissatisfaction.  I would rather not die.  I would rather not ache in the morning when I get up.  I would rather the distances between certain locations be shortened.  I am comforted, however, in the knowledge that for people dwelling in a time previous to this one, these inconveniences were much worse than they are for me.

The chances are that your world is a largely fragmented ball of goo, lacking in cohesion or structure.  It is, in fact, as this world we live in was perceived to be by everyone prior to the technological revolution that was our understanding of physics.  It is the world as it is still understood by people who are not educated about physics.  But reality is not a ball of goo.  It is not two random inconclusive, uneducated intellectuals bantering in a coffee shop.  It is logic and reason, even though it is a very complex logic and a very complex reason.

Allowing for a rich and complex world.

The Rotten Door

I will return to matters of D&D, I swear ... when I have the time.

Thinking instead today of America's woes, a government that's broken, a coming election that looks to the rest of the world like an enormous sad joke ... and most of all a rich upper class that cares nothing for the remainder of the population.  We gaze in wide wonder from outside at a congress and senate so thick with graft that the simplest legislation, even legislation in the interest of the ruling class, has trouble getting passed.

It cannot be helped but to contemplate on the inevitable revolution that will seize the crumbling ruins of America, as that country turns against itself degree by degree.  The question has long since been how long before the revolution comes, and not if - always remembering that every successful revolution in history has been the kicking in of a rotten door.

Thus I offer this small morsel for thought.  As the power of America exists in the hands of the rich, who think only of themselves, who even among themselves compete and cheat the system to better the miser in the castle next door, how much concerted resistance will this class put forward when the door is inevitably kicked in?  Or will they flee, scattering to the four winds with their booty and their self-aggrandizement, caring nothing for the country they've squandered to obtain their wealth.  When the rotten door of the country gives way, will there be anyone but the patriotic poor keeping the country against the patriotic poor attempting to wrest it away?

When will half the poor refuse to kill the other half for the sake of bastards who care nothing for anyone?

Influences

I've been scattered these past two weeks, ever since the book launch.  My partner and I spent a good portion of my holidays last week flogging the thing online and trying to create a presence.  It is a hard, uphill climb, one that will be going on a year at least.  At the same time, I'm trying to edit my book, so that it can be published the end of October.  I thought at first September, but that ship has probably sailed.

Worked on maps, which I posted, and I worked on a new algorithm for the availability of goods and services for my equipment lists ... but that won't be evident in any of the future lists I'll publish, and in any case all 1,600 hundred items on the list need to be individually managed.  That will take time.

I admit I'm depressed at the moment.  Depressed at the long actual artistic tasks in front of me and depressed at the prospect of getting it on the market for no good purpose.  It may be lost on some readers that I have a profound artistic temperment - as my daughter says, it wavers from "I am master of the world" to "Is it any good?  Really?"  She's right.  It hurts to admit that, though.

My partner Tamara is twisted up for her own reasons, as naturally the sales jump she expected was less that desired.  And there have been unexpected problems, resulting in frustration and the feeling of being kicked when she's down.  I know I'm going through this myself in a couple of months.

The decision to publish our own stuff came uneasily, as people explained to me and Tamara that we were wasting our time attempting to get the subjective support of a publishing house.  The world has changed, and the only way to get recognition now is to sell online, prove yourself and THEN maybe one of the houses might deign to take notice.  This is a change in thought process, and not an easy one.  The fall out has been sobering.

Sometimes, the artistic temperment gets muddled with the problem that my brain never stops working.  Getting the brain shifted into something calm and pleasant is difficult.  Video games are often too much like work.  Designing D&D is often too much like work.  Writing is always too much like work.  Film and entertainment are good, but often too passive.  I like something that at least takes a bit of functionality - interactivity, if you will - to keep me relaxed.

About 8 months ago I stumbled across the flight simulator on Google Earth, which has been an interesting experiment.  If you haven't played it, you can find the option under the Tools menu; the simulator allows you to take advantage of Google Earth's 3D landscape as an arena for flight.

It's touchy, but easily manageable with a little practice ... and since sometime in February I have occasionally returned to it.  With it, I've been on a strange quest, the kind that appeals to me.  With the SR22, the slow plane that's offered, I've been flying from Calgary eastward.  The plane's top cruising speed is about 175 mph, and having dedicated some time to this, I'm about fifty miles from Isfahan in central Iran.  I have been flying from airport to airport, not stopping unless I've landed in an airport (had to teach myself how to land) ... and so far I've covered something like 9,000 miles on an uneven route through eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Europe and the Middle East.  I plan to drop into India, cross the Himalayas from there, fly across China and through Siberia to the Bering Strait, then down through Alaska and back home again.

I'm not in any hurry.

There's something odd about viewing Google Earth in this fashion - something I've learned.  Since I'm not rushing the trip ... and since it can take up to half an hour to fly to yonder mountain range out there ... I have plenty of time to contemplate the manner in which people live, the distribution of population, the circumstances surrounding the layout of roads and so on.  It is profound to think that prior to Google Earth, it would be virtually impossible to view the earth in this fashion - even as late as four or five years ago.  The 3D is excellent, there are images everywhere that can be viewed if the flight is paused, and of course I'm not limited by political air space. 

The world is BIG.  Deserts are not, in large part, empty.  There are large places of emptiness, to be sure, but its fascinating to note where on earth there are extensive fields and small towns.  The proliferation of huge cities in strange places is astounding.  I have a visual sense now for how the mountains are different in Montenegro as compared with, say, Scotland or central France - a sense I wouldn't have if I'd merely dropped into those places with Google Earth.  I've stared at those mountains intently as I've approached them, flown around them, watched the patterns of the ground change as its risen or fallen away.  I really believe I have a sense of the Earth now I did not have seven months ago.  I'm not saying in the least that its equivalent to actually going to these places ... but then, going to these places is not equivalent to joining hundreds of them together abstractly.

It takes patience.  I can heartily recommend it ... though I can't say I really began to feel the effects of it until I had begun to cross the Atlantic.  I continue to be enlightened.  Moreover, like I say, it is a calming influence.

There can never be too many of those.