In which we open up the books

It was recently suggested that I write up more details on my trade system. Since I spent a chunk of the last week writing up my procedures for handling travel it seemed like a natural next step. I'm going to skip all of the world building that went into the base of the system although another polite request might get a thousand words on that as well.

So the world exists. Raw materials exist. In places. Limited by biome, rainfall, manpower, altitude and a few other geographical factors. The OTHER thing that exists is my spreadsheet(s.) Before we begin I need to credit my inspiration, Alexis Smolensk. I return to his material daily for guidance and inspiration. A dozen other writers provided insight, ideas and inspiration: for h in hexes , Red Ragged Fiend and others you'll find over there in Appendix N.

Just realized I have NO idea where to start. So I'll send you back to Alexis's. That's a rough starting point for the travel stuff. We then use THAT table to calculate how far each and every shipping point is from “Our Town.” Divide the amount of something that's produced “far away” from the distance and you get a number reflecting how much of any given item is available here. He uses the example of elephants from Burma to Norway. That's 300 units of travel. His math further determines that 144.55 of the beasts are available in Norway. That's the number of elephants moving through this town of 2,500 in a year. Or COULD be, if anybody wanted to ship pachyderms through Norway.

All of that is pretty much a straight adaptation of Alexis' with a few corners cut. I then do the same thing with “Storefronts.” Manufacturers. Trade people. People who convert raw materials into stuff … and the people who convert that stuff into other stuff, etc., until it ends up in the PC's backpack. Short version: Cow to stockyard to butcher to tanner to leather worker to armorer to Ranger as leather armor. Or sheep to shearer to spinner to weaver to tailor to Druid as that sweater to weather this winter's long journey. By using the same formulas for Storefronts as for Raw Materials I can generate another decent number to calculate finished goods reflecting the rarity and difficulty of the labor which goes into it.

The question that was bugging me was what are the caravans hauling into and out of a given place. Here's what I'm testing. Spreadsheet. Column 1: all raw materials. Column 2: Amount of each resource in “Our Town.” This represents what is produced locally AND can be shipped in. Column 3: amount of resource produced locally. Anything with more than .25 units produced is considered for export. (This may change in future iterations as it's a work in progress.) Column 4 is Column 2 less column 3 (total available less locally produced.) Another way to phrase it is amount available for importation. If it qualifies for export I won't import it and if there's less than .25 units for importation it's rare enough that it rarely gets here. I take what's LEFT and look for what's most available, by type. I consider the three most prevalent types of timber. Our current location imports maple (used for handles), chestnut (utensils, tools and furniture), linden (furniture), and yew (sometimes art but in this case, bows.) We export iron ore but have to import clay, salt and construction stone (hence why most homes are wood.) Livestock? We export hogs, ponies (!), freshwater fish, and chickens. We import sheep (for wool) and saltwater fish (salted of course.) Carrots and turnips come in as well. Using the same system I can tell you the woods are full of moose and elk, along with fox for a good trapper.

But it was at this step that I hit a wall. Shelby and I discussed this almost a year ago when considering rarity and availability. I'm omitting a lot of the reasoning that went into the following tweaks. In short, in order for later stage production to occur the inputs must exist. Let's make a pair of cowhide shoes. In our current location there are plenty of cows. A butcher (or tanner) needs to separate the hide. The tanner tans it (turning it into finished leather.) It can then go to a leather worker or a cobbler. Cobbler turns it into shoes and we're done. But without a tanner, there's a problem. Why would a cobbler exist in a village with hides, but no tanner? Potential solutions: a) make existence of a cobbler dependent on existence of a tanner. b) allow for “fractional tanning” via cottage industry in small locales . c) admit this is a bridge to far and hand wave it away. Hate C. Increasing number of tanners lowers cost of their labor. Decreasing number of cobblers increases the cost of shoes. Much of our math so far is based on “support population.” But perhaps rather than just looking at how much population it takes to support one tradesman we should (also) be looking at how many lower level tradesmen it takes to support a later stage. A little back of the envelope math indicates that (roughly) one tanner can support eight cobblers. So I rewrote the formula. Calculate tanners. Calculate cobblers. If “cobblers*7” > tanners, cobblers equal tanners. If C*7<tanners the cobblers equal cobblers. CAN have tanners w/o cobblers. As I find similar occurrences I'll use a similar corrective. Not going to chase them down.

Note:  When calculating the cost of a manufactured item we take the cost of the raw materials divided by a labor factor and add the  cost of raw materials again (A/B)+A.  The labor factor is the cube root of the available references. 

As we approach a thousand words I'll end this lengthy (for me) post. PLEASE ask any questions. I'll gladly fill in any gaps I've left, and I've left quite a few.   

In which we experience FOMO

 For those of you closer to MY age FOMO is "Fear of Missing Out."  It's a thing.  Not going on a rant here (although I could) but rather sharing a bit of a table story.  Party has set off on the road "south" looking for adventure.  A few random encounters.  A few interesting sights/landmarks.  And one of the players sez "I wonder what's happening in Brethamney?"  They left the small town a couple months (IRL) ago (maybe a week in game time) with some unresolved issues, most notably the Wood Elf refugee problem and the growing blighted forest.  The expression of FOMO means I'm doing something right.  They cared about the village and the growing threat/problem.  Which means I can keep escalating the Fronts there and allow the PCs to hear rumors of what's going on as they're on the road.  And THAT makes this "garden game" work.   I feel like I can pull 'em back there any time I want without  railroading.

In other news, here's what I have going on outside of basic sesion prep:

1.  My NTME system crashed a couple weeks back so it's being rebuilt.  Personally I HATE working on just one aspect for a prolonged period of time.  I get cranky.  I start cutting corners, getting sloppy and resort to hand-waving.  So I just do one or two entries on a handful of things so as not to lose the edge.

2.  Do one step on my storefront table (calculating how many of each shop are in each market town (over 150 globally.)  

3.  Rebuild one storefront (which determines what's available from a merchant along with its cost.)  Last night I did fletchers, bowyers and armorers.  One issue here is that many of these are interdependent so I leave notes for things I need to add/re-evaluate.  Really need to hit the textiles chain: from raw material to thread, cloth, yarn, clothing.  Kinda important and far-reaching.

4.  Found a nice article on random generation of caravans.  Have been VERY disappointed with my random encounter tables in this regard.  They don't really reflect road travel well.  Rather than rebuild them for that purpose I've decided that unless my table gives me a GREAT encounter I'll make it a caravan, and use THIS generator to design it.  

5.  All of the above are related to the import/export question and I'm working on "designing" the math to determine what's coming in and going out of a given market.  So far so good but there's a LOT of "formula writing" issues.  

6.  I've had the hex crawl data for MOST of the trip the party is currently on but I need to do three-horizons prep for the new destination.  AND the new destination.  The city, layout, power structure, and the beginnings of Fronts.

7.  Also noticed I need to prep random encounters more.  Was very disappointed with my play of combat encounters on the road.  Solution?  Have one in my pocket!  So part of weekly prep is now spending some time to build a GOOD encounter at the deadly, easy and in-between level.  As an offshoot I need to prep the encounters suggested by the current encounter table so they're ready to go when they come up.  Viva la spreadsheet.

That's pretty much where we are.  PCs will be jumping to 4th level soon with all of the fun THAT entails.  Then at 5th they'll make "The Choice."  They create new characters.  We'll either do the traditional random roll, OR a Lvl 0 funnel OR maybe even a point crawl.  Old characters may be retired ("settle down") or kept active.  New characters may EITHER be tied to the existing party (the B team) OR plugged in to their own campaign somewhere else. 

In which the DM smiles

     Our last session was roughly the 10th in the new campaign.  Party had decided to hit the road.  After exploring a mysterious keep, with the aid of a mysterious stranger, they headed for "the crossroads," a caravanserai.  There they were hired as night watchmen to try to catch/kill an unidentified "monster in the woods."  I thought this was a one-night adventure but it turned into three.  PART of that is because 80% of us play in the same FFL and it's a busy time of year so a LOT of off-topic convos.  But still!  

    The OTHER reason it took so long was because of player agency.  On several occasions throughout the story they reached decision points and took .... creative paths.  They DID uncover the monster, reveal the twist, bring the true miscreants "to justice."  And then left town.  Had they been able to tie the wrong-doers to their higher-up the caravanserai would've rewarded them with a pony and a wagon - something they can definitely use and have been asking about (and can only just barely afford.)  <edit to add> I would note that there was some questionable writing in the otherwise good product I pulled the adventure from.  Too much RR and not enough SB.  Thankfully The Alexandrian has taught me well about the three clue rule, so I was able to "add" undiscovered clues in a couple more areas to smooth the road.  Better writing could have eliminated this necessity.   

    So why the smile?  At the session conclusion there was MUCH discussion over their new-found freedom and agency.  There was SOME last campaign but this time around I've listened, forced myself not to over-plot, and let them go.  They THINK they're being naughty murder hobos.  They DID kill two people on the way into the first village and the rest of the Night Watch given the opportunity.  In reality, ALL of the death sentences were meted out to the local equivalent of the Thieves Guild, unbeknownst to our heroes.  So THEY think they've been given a crap-ton of agency (which they have) and I've been able to to run fronts, short form adventures and random encounters that meet their needs.   There's a blighted forest spreading.  There's a green dragon keeping an eye on them.  They're learning of the Noble Houses which run the realm (and learning that perhaps there ARE no good guys.)  

    Also on the up-side I'm incorporating some of the journey techniques from Adventures in Middle Earth and using the hex crawl techniques from the good folks at Infinium to improve long travel and exploration.  "Lonely fun" as we used to call it.  And we're gonna try to bring back Skill Challenges from 4e!  ChatGPT is your FRIEND!  I'm currently using it to generate NPC's (using the GreatGameMaster's OGAS technique,) fix formula problems in my extensive spreadsheets, design the aforementioned Skill Challenges, select actions and grim portents for Fronts, write short adventures(!), and management of climate and weather. 

    On the DOWN side my hand has been forced on upgrading to NTME23.  I moved all three base files into the same folder and instantly fouled up/destroyed all of the links.  Think I have enough into to run Tuesday's session but there will be some intensive work to get it all reconnected.  ONE document.  Some new raw materials.  Storefront calculator incorporated.  Manufacturing pages cleaned up to be made a bit more uniform.  And an attempt at an "easily" updatable shopping list.

In which we visit the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker

As usual Alexis started it.  Still noodling the numbers on wages.  Figure something might gel by Labor Day.  In the meantime it provoked me to revisit one factor of the trade system I've never been comfortable with.  for h in hexes and I have been "corresponding" about our approaches to the mechanic.  He's a coder.  I'm a spreadsheet guy.  But we benefit from comparing notes.

To recap:  each settlement in the world produces things, dependent on size and location.  These things are disbursed over the planet based on distance from the source.  These resources can then be acted upon by those with the proper skills to make secondary (or tertiary, etc) products.  At each step the craftsman impacts the cost of the finished product.  This impact is determined by a factor, somewhere between .5 and 2 (?.)  The factor CAN be assigned to achieve whatever price range is desired for the product but that seems arbitrary.  

I had already adopted a system for deciding what businesses existed in a city, based on it's population, using MDME.  Why not plot the businesses for EVERY settlement, then determine how much impact they have on neighboring villages using the trade table.  The numbers the raw system gave me were WAY too large, but using the quad root proved to be ideal (so far.)  More testing to follow.

End result: the cost of anything you wanna buy is determined by the cost of raw materials, cost of the skilled tradesman to convert them, and the distance both of THOSE are from the purchaser.  As a general rule no settlement deals in anything that costs more than 1 gp per 10 pop (so 10%.)  So I can keep the shopping lists limited in small or out of the way locations.  Rarity creates conflict.  Conflict creates plot hooks.

In which we revisit equipment

 I've been spending WAY too much time watching TTRPG Youtube videos and recently stumbled across a spate of them talking about equipment.  What, how much, where, how - all the good stuff, much of which I've touched on before.  There's a lot of handwaving going on at a lot of tables due to cost, encumbrance, etc.  Not at mine.  You either have it or you don't.  But what DO you have?  Or what MUST you have?

A quick perusal of the starting equipment in 5e and PF2 yields some good but not definitive answers.  is Both are crawling with packs and kits.  Excluding specialty stuff it appears the generic adventure starts with a backpack, bedroll, mess kit, tinderbox, and a waterskin.  Also frequently mentioned is rope, chalk, soap, torches and the dreaded iron rations.  Surprisingly no clothing.  Or footwear!  Inadequate.  

So here's what WE do:  we follow RAW on starting equipment, but after that there's a "required minimum."  Players are responsible for their own equipment list but I tinker with it.  I use a "wear" table.  All items are either new, used, worn or useless.  I check on my "decay table" after a month OR three days in the wilderness OR one day in the dungeon.  Players are notified when an item becomes worn (time to replace.)  Last campaign we had a bard and a druid whose main contributions were just keeping all the equipment in good repair via their Mend spells (house ruled to 1st lvl.)  Run out of torches?  Or tinderbox?  Tough luck Skippy.  

But some things it seems to me MUST be "owned."  Clothing.  Footwear.  Backpack.  Bedroll.  Mess kit.  Waterskin.  So when those become useless (ie, if the players didn't replace when "worn") I'll replace them when they're available.  If they give out in the wild?  Exposure, slowed movement, no rests (long becomes short, short vanishes), dietary distress, dehydration.  A tent might join this list.  Previous party had a couple members skilled at "roughing it" so it wasn't required.  We'll see what happens when they hit inclimate weather.

Side note:  calendar has turned to spring so the party was peeling out of their winter clothes and into something a little lighter for travel.  I was checking prices in the small settlement they were occupying when I saw that WINTER clothes cost over 600 gp!!  Figured there was an error somewhere in the numerous formulas and recipes that go into the calculation so I started tracing it back.  And found the issue.  No sheep!  This community has no shepherds.  So all wool and wool products must be "imported."  I casually mentioned this to the party.  Not directly but I DID mention that the incoming caravans were carrying, among other things, iron (ingots, bars, rods) as there's none mined locally, other metals, and raw wool as well as wool clothing!  They've JUMPED at the chance to clear a mine so they could claim part of the income.  Wonder if they'll try to help out a family in need by setting them up in the sheep biz? 

In which we start over, sort of

I have another "starting over" post set for next week but this is kinda different. Different KINDS of starting over. First I spent some time re-evaluating my campaign. Players needed to "direction." Stumbled acrtoss Colville's old "lore delivery system" video AND Baron Garop's "Plan Your Campaign in One Hour" (or is it evening?) BOTH provided some GREAT suggestions that I'd overlooked. Or rather had SEEN and TRIED to implement but hadn't gotten done well. So I grabbed a trusty spreadsheet and FIXED things. List of populated areas. List of Towers. List of "other special locations." Then EVERYTHING got linked to at LEAST two others. Now wherever they go they SHOULD be able to find at least ONE piece of candy. The session immediately following this re-start yielded a LARGE lore dump, but it all fit into the role playing and seemed seemless. We'll see if these bits are enough to get them "back on track." The second "start over" is with my economics system. Gotta get a few kinks worked out. My various and sundry "metalsmiths" need cleaned up. Most other products are in good shape but I DID design a wonderful "harvested products" system that never got used and now I need to revisit it so I CAN implement it if it DOES come into play. Additionally I made some decisions when I set this thing up about what did and did not exist. I now want to flesh it out just a tad more. Example: horses are scarce (ie expensive) but mules and donkey's might need to be more plentiful. Need to address. Need to add a few resources like alabaster and obsidian. Third I need to "start over" with my mapping and infrastructure development. Hourglass will be a challenge. Probably have it done by spring: sooner if needed, put off if bypassed. Alexis over at Tao is doing yeoman's work. And my fourth project for 2023 is to work on a randome encounter generator. Been using the tables from Infinium Game Studio. Wanna automate it. Like I did with their Interaction charts. Enjoy yor year!

In which we harvest

 

A few months ago I stumbled across this website and began incorporating it in my sessions. Was kinda neat but needed soe work to be fully actualized and then I found out the guy had a book. Actually THREE books.

So I read the books and I did some tinkering and here's how I'm going to complete the integration …. and how you can too!

Step 1. Appraising. What can the party do with that carcass before it? Somebody makes a a check against 8 + the critters CR. The skill used is determined by the type of creature. Success means the character has knowledge of what they can get and how hard it will be, along with risks and how long it will maintain efficacy.

Step 2. Harvest. Make a DEX check with the same skill used above. The higher the roll the more items may be harvested. It will take the DC/5 minutes to harvest.

Step 3: Buying and selling. And out comes the spreadsheet. Long version. Using my economics spreadsheet I give every city, based on its infrastructure, its appropriate terrain. This provides supply/demand prices for critters. Spreadsheet has a drop down for terrains and pulls cities valuation based on that. Also a field for DC of production. Dropdown based on occurrence, based on this site. Then a bunch of math based on that and I get how much an apothecary would would charge for the item and how much the party can get for selling it.

If an item isn't listed and the party wants to harvest it anyway, use the following table:

Material	DC
Blood and fluids	5
Soft Tissue (tongues, ears, genitals, etc.)	5
Hard Tissue (claws, teeth, spikes, horns)	5
Bones	10
Eyes	10
Internal Organs (heart, stomach)	10
Limb (leg, arm, tail)	15
Hide (fur, plating, scales)	15
Complicated lim (wing, tentacle)	20
Brain	20

The Drive

 In a well-constructed world the stories write themselves.  Party has been traveling up and down the Great Northern Road pursuing leads but a recent vow of vengeance took them off the road and into the woods to the east - toward the mountains.  There's another small village a week away.  No trail connects them bacause south flowing rivers provided better passage.  Snowtall.  It's existence had been plotted and it's economy created but I needed to flesh it out.  Nothing fancy.  Nickel mining with an occasional peridot.  Sable habitat nearby suitable for trapping.  And goats.  As the party approached the village the biome changed.  More pine forest.  And they climbed about 1,000 feet.  Colder.  Just enough different from where they've been to make it interesting.  And goats.  Chevon to the French.  And all the differences it makes.  Goat milk.  Cheese.  

Goat meat replaces pork on the menu.  Cabbage and onions.  Carrots when you can find them.  Beer and vodka.  Kefir for ceremonies.  And then there's the neighboring town of Lireverc.  It's a 9-10 day journey.  But it sits in the lowlands.  And they raise pigs.  So over the years a trade has developed.  In the fall the goat herders and the swineherds cull their animals and begin driving toward each other.  Many a peasant and workman make the trip as well.  For the boys it is a rite of passage, for they carry the heavy packs of salt and provisions.  The drovers meet at a halfway point and the slaughter commences.  Huge bonfires are lit with hogs and goats roasting for three days.  The animals are skinned: the goats more carefully as their hide is more valuable.  Amateur tanners set about their task.  Then the butchers.  Entire carcasses are prepared as are specific cuts.  The salters prepare the meats for shipping.  And after three days of slaughter, hard work, story-telling and passing the news each side packs up and heads home to prepare for the winter.

Our party missed this years slaughter by about three weeks.  But they'll hear about it.  Probably eventually pass the site of this years event.  Might lead to an adventure.  But regardless it makes the world real.  And it wasn't some fanciful die-roll on a pre-generated "festival" table.  It was what the world gave them. 

In which we discover a LOT of scarcity

 

Scarcity creates conflict. Conflict creates adventure. And there you have it.

And so we're ready to implement NTME2022. A FEW things still need a tune up. Carpenter, Cartwright, Mason and Alchemist all need work. Kinda saving them until needed. When the party decides they need to buy a wagon, or build a fence, or an eye of newt I'll start fleshing those out, and the tools will be in place for that to happen. Distiller, Brewer, Furrier, Metalsmiths, Outfitter and “Inns and Taverns” all need some touch-up work to be done. Example? Since sugar is rare I haven't set up rums yet.

To catch up, the resources of my world are loosely based on reality. They're placed according to geology, climate, long & lat, altitude, etc. Many are dependent on other resources. About a month ago I placed all of my precious metals and stones. This weekend I set up my lapidary store based on size, rarity, location, etc. Which brings me to aquamarine. Emeralds are currently the most expensive stones. There are seven known sources in the world, based on the presence of tin and granite. Diamonds SHOULD probably be next, found only deep in dwarven mines and occasionally those of Orcs. But the second most valuable stone in MY world happens to be the lowly Aquamarine. Found where the geology has conspired to place but tin and copper. Which just so happens to be ONE place: the neutral berg of Baram, in the rough lands bordering on Dunnir, the land of the hill dwarfs. This town of 4,000 souls is cut off from most of the world. Pirates, sea monsters, brigands and the lawless wilderness make any journey there treacherous.

Stones occasionally make it out via the black market but let me give you some idea of value. An almond sized emerald would cost about 1 million gp here in Crysrift. A plum sized diamond would got for about 1.5 million gp. That same million would get you an almond-sized aquamarine – IF you could find one. There's a campaign story arc all on it's own. As currently constituted it would take over two DECADES to get there from Crysrift. Opening up the trade route ALONE might take years and earn millions.

Think anybody will?  Maybe.  Once they figure it out.

In which we watch old movies

 Took the opportunity to watch two old movies I've always enjoyed.  Errol Flynn in The Sea Hawks and Captain Blood.  But it was different this time.  THIS time as these two large 16th Century ships began firing broadsides at one another, splintering wood everywhere I heard (?) Alexis' voice describe the following:  timber cut down in the forests of England and Spain, transported, converted to lumber and probably transported again to a location specially designed for the purpose of ship-building.  Hemp, cotton and flax grown, harvested, spun into thread, woven into cloth or twisted into rope.  Iron ore dug from the ground, transported to puddlers, converted to pig iron then cast iron.  Transported again to be formed into cannon, balls, and fitting.  Brass and bronze going through the same transformation.  

And all of the work of all of those people over all of those months and years being sent to the bottom of the ocean in a matter of minutes.

Dan Carlin (Hardcore History) touches on a modern version of this when discussing WW II at sea with the massive expenditure of time and treasure to build battleships, destroyers and carriers.  And for my money Leonard Read kicked it all off with I, Pencil

Should players care about ANY of this?  Probably.  Do they?  Maybe.  Should we MAKE them?  Slowly, my friends.  Slowly.

In which we begin designing NTME '22

 NTME is working just fine.  Providing some interesting story hook type material.  Getting the requisite player buy-in.  But it's time for the next steps.

We've HAD the "outer trade areas" simplified to one source.  No more.  All 190 burgs are getting their appropriate trade distances.  So there goes January.  Will make scarcity more accurate (see below.)  Will keep the "wilderness" burgs out of the world network ... until they're brought on-line by the party or by world events.  When that happens they'll be connected for one year, after which they'll disconnect from burgs still in the wilderness.  This will also allow other world events to disrupt the supply chain (!?)  Already have a few things planned.  Increased pirate activity will be my test run case.  Remote avalanche cuts off a trade route?  Earthquake causes bridge collapse?  "Hey, why can't I buy that neat thing I bought here last month?"  Because an earthquake in Colquinal destroyed the bridge over the Chishore river and the major supplier can't ship it out!  Hopefully somebody's trying to get a boat there.  They might make a fortune!

Started differentiating resources in '20 with cereals.  And now I'm going nuts with it.  Have used the climate and biome to set up crop production for every burg.  Differentiated nuts, fruits, veggies and a handful of other things.  Alexis differentiates building stone.  Not ready to take THAT jump (yet.)  But what about wood? I'm thinking pine, spruce, fir, oak, chestnut, maple and walnut.  Might throw in one or two more.  

Next step will be to set up the production of all of those 190 burgs.  I have "rules" for who'll get what and roughly how much but I need to tweak, fine tune, and actually allocate.  So there goes February.  And probably March.

And THEN I'll start playing with the production tables.  The tables from '20 are good and workable and all, but they're a muddled mess, need organizing, cleaning up and rejiggering to reflect the aforementioned differentiation. 

Once that's workable I have a couple pet projects that I think spreadsheets will facilitate.  Using lookup, MAX, and conditional formatting.  Hopefully I'll be able to design my storefronts to reflect the scarcity inherent in the system.  Providers will base offerings on scarcity and provide local flavor.  Meat/spice/veg offerings will vary with local.  So will the beverage selection.  Even the breakfast gruel, porridge, mush or oatmeal will be localized.  And candy.  

I'm looking fwd to ALL of this!

In which we try to figure out (the easy way) what grows where.

What crops grow where? What wildlife is prevalent where? And to a lesser degree, what gemstones are found where? In MOST games the answer to these questions doesn't matter. Hell, the questions are never asked. All taverns have the same ale. Everyone eats the same Soylent. And gems magically appear in treasure troves. Swords are forged from air and imagination. Salt isn't a consideration. Neither is clay. But that's not how I'm trying to roll, as you know if you've ever read any of the worldbuilding or NTME posts on this blog. Resources exist. They COME from someplace. And their value varies from place to place depending on availability and the presence of craftsmen.

Minerals were pretty “easy” to allocate. So was livestock. But then came more specific variations. “Game” was easy. But there's a difference between muskrats and snow leopards. “Fowl” was easy but ducks and turkeys vary. “Cereals,” “Fruits,” and “textiles” were easy but corn, rye, cotton, apples and oranges each have specific requirements. And then there's gemstones, as mentioned in an earlier post.

So I started with the Koppen-Geiger classification. Can also use the USDA “hardiness scale” but no overarching info exists on this either. Already have the temperature profile, rainfall data and elevation information for every city on the planet. The current location of the party is ALL Cfb or Dfb. But what crops grow in which climate. And what wildlife thrives where? For H in Hexes uses the K-G system overlayed with global production data to determine what crops grow best where. They've provided the data for six crops, but replicating their data is well beyond my ability. I've written to request data use. We'll see. I've done hours of online research and this is the closest thing I've found to compare crops to Koppen.

Next up? Wildlife. So beaver and otter need sufficient water. Wolves need sufficient prey. Snow leopards need … snow. But I want some kind of crunchy system to determine what's hunted where, based on climate and maybe dominant flora. And perhaps altitude. ALL of these searches have been overly cluttered with climate change data. Nice that it's out there but not what I'm looking for <G>. And I'm not finding what I'm looking for. I'd love find a chart wherein I can look up an animal (wolf, ermine, deer) and it'll tell me in what habitat it thrives. But no love.

All the above applies to gems as well, but I'm not NEARLY as worried about it. I've plopped the gems into the dwarven areas, the precious stones (and all black stones!) in the Orc homeland. The Celtic area gets all the green stones. Norse culture gets Scandinavian stones. Halflings get ornamental stones. Pearls found in harbor cities with rivers. Coral found in harbor cities without a river. Rare. Distributed.

How much more time to I spend looking for a panacea before I do it one item at a time.

In which we find gemstones

 

Having a BALL tinkering with the trade system. Got the first draft implemented and working smoothly so it was time to branch out.

First giant step: Gems. Followed up on The Tao's handling of gems and jewelry and LOVE the result. We'll see how it stands up to practice.

Second step: Textiles. Everything was woolen until I added cotton, hemp, flax and silk. Cotton's lengthy growing season makes it very limited in my world. Would love to construct denim but it just doesn't make sense. GREAT opportunity for an enterprising party that catches on to this. But now when there's cloth to be purchased there are options and the players have choices to make. Oh – I threw two bolts of silk into a treasure chest a few weeks back. They still haven't figured out what it is or how much it's worth.

Third step: game/wildlife. Haven't done NEARLY as much as as I need to here but have made a start (with winter approaching) so I wanted to have SOMERTHING in place. Much work remains to be done here re: value, volume and locations. See also fish: fresh/salt water.

Fourth step: Horse differentiation. Draft, war and riding. There's also a horse breeding culture which produces the top quality of each but they're rare. Should provided some “amusement” down the road.

Fifth step: Cereals. Barley, wheat, oats, corn, rye, rice and hops. Am now working my way through the various craftsmen to produce specialized products. Different breads, brews and distilled beverages. A variety of livestock feeds. And different other food products – can't have oatmeal without oats!

The rest of my prep for the coming session will involve tweaking inn and tavern offerings, designing some specifically requested leather goods, and an attempt to tweak my availability and buy-back numbers, based as usual on the groundwork (both productive and “this way lies madness”) from Alexis.

My other “vanity project” is including some “cultural specialties.” Example: Dwarven ale requires dwarven hops which only grows in dwarven territory. The aforementioned horses. There's a Celtic based music culture that produces the best musical instruments. You can find instruments in many places but those with their “touch” (ingredient) are more expensive and far superior. A misuse of the trade system? Also need to differentiate fruits, vegetables and fowl. Considered beef and dairy cattle but doesn't seem worth it right now. Also tinkering with a “page” mentioned by Alexis which will automate providing a crude shopping list to players based on resource availability. I am LOVING this lonely fun.

In which I muddle a bunch of stuff together.

 Haven't posted for a while so here goes.

1.  Wilderness travel.  Party was gonna go from Point A to Point B.  Four options.  The main road, south along the lake, north along the lake or by boat across the lake and up river.  All KINDS of things lay along the main road.  A couple interesting possibilities lie along the southern route.  Across the lake and up the river lies a small village with several other opportunities.  About the only route that DIDN'T hold much in the way of interest was the route going north around the lake.  Guess which route the party took?

2.  NTME.  Have found a few errors and fixed a few things.  Have almost all the artisans roughed out to the point of usefulness.  So what happens next?  More resource detail.  Cows (beef & dairy?)  Fowl.  Game.  Fish.  Then cereals.  Oats, corn, rice, barley, wheat, hops.  Fish.  Fresh and salt.  Fruits, not, veggies and tubers?  

3.  "We're out."  Wanna fiddle with a mildly crunchy method for determining when a shop doesn't have something.  This one's minor but might add a nice touch.  ALSO wanna tinker with a system for who buys back what and for how much.  I misplayed a recent opportunity.  Two silver statuettes the published adventure said were worth 20gp.  I back engineered enough silver for them and gave them a weight.  Realized workmanship needed to figure in.  Duh.  So I back-engineered the math and got a significantly SMALLER statuette.    But who would buy?  A silver smith?  Probably.  An art collector?  Few and far between.  A blacksmith?  Why?  Need to get this codified and into the spreadsheet.

4.  Spell components and poisons and one-offs, oh my.  I COULD wait until I need them but I'm thinking it'll be sooner rather than later so I'd best get started.

5.  And finally a little geographical differentiation.  Alexis does some nice groupings with his cities and regions.  Might try pulling that together in my "spare time," especially if I find a reason t make it work in some kind of system.

In other news ... party is starting to hit 4th level ..... has a follower ... finding some small magic items ... and still hasn't touched on anything even vaguely resembling a story arc.  And that's just fine.

In which we implement the new NTME stuff

 

Peargulf is a hamlet of <250 souls. Logging with a little grain and livestock. Edge of civilization stuff. They were eventually tasked with getting rid of a giant boar in the wilderness which they did so. Residents repayed them in the only way they could (according to the economy.) Fresh baked bread and a pound cake (which one of the players had suggested a MONTH ago!) upon their successful return. As they were leaving the village the next day there were further gifts: enough salt pork and biscuits for a week, fresh whole milk, butter, a plug of tobacco, a torch, a pair of woolen socks, a bag of flour, a bag of potatoes and a bag of dried fruit. Based on local prices that's about 50 gp in value for each of them. Those using bows were given two fresh bow-strings and a dozen arrows. The Baron gifted the Ranger with his old suit of leather armor. It's early fall and with winter coming they all realized how dear these foodstuffs were to the locals. No buckets of gp. No precious gems. No jewelry. No magic weapons. They LOVED it. Because they'd earned it. AND because they realized, if not the exact value, then the TRUE value of the bounty.

On a side note …. the Great Road runs through Peargulf. North it runs into “The Great Grass Sea” - unexplored & unsettled wilderness for DAYS. South it runs to Crysrift and eventually the City-State of Hourglass. Want to kill savage beasts (but buy no “stuff”?) Go north. Want to resupply and have those “urban adventures? Head south. The PLAYERS are quite happy with game flow so far but have wanted to dip their toe into a traditional “tavern/inn/blacksmith” village. That's what Crysrift is. But it makes SENSE where it is. Fishing village on a large lake with a river, and a crossroads of a trade route. More stuff and more variety. Plenty to do but none of it advancing any of the three current “story arcs.” And that's just FINE!

In NTME news …. just “finished” the price sheet for the furrier. Happy with the results but they could be better. First, the provide the players with an idea of what a pelt will be worth if they trap something or bring one in. My Ranger might bite on this. Second, the prices aren't TOO out of whack at this point but I need to introduce specific animal types to introduce scarcity/plenty along the price scale. Bring that snow leopard pelt up and drop the muskrat price.

In which I get to do my best Colin Clive imitation

 "IT'S ALIVE!"  The trade/economic system that is.  MOST resources allocated.  System in place to determine what craftsmen are where.  And pricing tables are being rolled out.  Started with a handful of "easy" things.  Still have a few of those to plug in.  Rope.  Yarn.  Torches.  Doing equipment by provider as well.  Potter.  Armorer.  Cobbler.  Probably do Brewer, weaver and furrier next.  Each one of these might require some new second-step production but the more second-step production that get's done the faster it goes.  Hopefully will have MOST of these done by the end of the month.  Some (like apothecary, blacksmith) will be filled out later a) as needed and b) as resources become more specified.

Livestock will get some diversity.  Beef vs Dairy.  Draft vs war.  Cereals will get assigned better.  Corn, hops, rice, wheat, oats, barley.  With specific products for each.  Same with fruit.  Fish?  Fresh, salt, shell. Spices.  Pulses.  Grasses.  Tubers.  And then maybe the leap down lapidary.  Regional wines?  Cheeses?

And at SOME point I'll breakdown the "remote" areas.  Currently the only city-specific area I've resourced specifically is our starting state.  Have roughly a dozen to fill out.  Can do those one at a time, clarifying travel distances, etc.  And letting the party learn of the specialized good.  Rohanian war horses.  Keltish musical instruments.  Who KNOWS what direction they'll take me.

We play to find out what happens!

In which we tear it up and start over

Wasn't making the kind of progress I wanted to with world building and since my party's only covered about eight miles I only needed a small wooded area with mountains to the west to drop the CURRENT adventure into. Remember, if they haven't seen it, it doesn't exist yet.

Worldspinner is great. It does some wonderful things, like history, passage of time, adventure themes and hooks. But Azgaar does different things. Like longitude, latitude, altitude and downloadable sortable tables and lists and data and stuff. So I set aside what I HAD on Worldspinner and can go back and “import” stuff as needed. Then put a TON of timesink into Azgaar. It can actually be fun. But I wandered around and fiddled with most of the settings to see what I COULD do. Then I started building. Here's how I got what I want.

First I set most of the options to not include anything unnatural. No religion, culture, states, etc. Requested whole planet build but drier than Earth. Because I HATE tropical forests in a fantasy setting. I used the shattered map template to give me a variety of unconnected land masses. After looking at WAY too many offerings, for a deciduous forest to the west of a mountain range, and a large river nearby, I found one. Save.

Next I placed my cultures. Who developed where. The system provides SCORES of “preset” cultures which are nice, but I wanted the presence of some very specific ones: two kinds of elves, two kinds of dwarves, orcs, halfling, and a mess of humans (Vikings, Mongols, Anglo-Saxons, Celts and “generic.”) So I “added” a dozen cultures to the map, in a line in the center of a landmass. Then I modified each one to give me the elements I wanted. After those were assigned I placed them in their respective “birthplace.” Click on the “rebuild culture” and they spread across the map based on their proclivities. Save

I have one principle city and I know where I want it. So I plopped it down in the appropriate location, adjusted it's population, made it a “city-state” and locked it. Next up I needed States, Provinces and Cities (Burgs.) How many? About 200 cities seemed about right. Tell the system 200. Rebuild Burgs. And they pop up all over the map, placed according to elevation, water, culture, etc. The smallest were under 200 souls. The largest numbered over 10k. I didn't review them but they're easily changed if need be. Save.

Next: States. One state for each culture, except for the elves. Looking at how the culture spread I'm giving them two. To add a state one selects it's capitol city. I generally selected the largest city, but I also looked for cities near birthplace of the culture or near geographic features that lend themselves toward the culture. After each capitol was placed I did a rebuild. This did two things. First it spread the State boarders based on cultural and geographic features. Second it divided the larger states in Provinces based on pre-sets. Names, titles, “shields,” governmental types were all assigned based on culture but subject to change, which I of course tinkered with to make sure nearly every state was somehow unique and yet recognizable in-game. Save.

Click rebuild routs to connect cities based on size and geography. This lays down trails and roads (few) and sea lanes. Save.

Most of the world has been touched by one culture or another. There is overlap. There is “wilderness.” There are contested boarders. Azgaar provides “zones” which can effect large geo areas (tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes) as well as in-game kinda things (like military action [it will also do religious events but I've omitted them as a preference.]) It also provides “markers” for specific features – bridges, mines, lighthouses. My intention is to “reset” these every so often. Don't wanna tell HOW often as players occasionally actually read things. Roughly every three months. More often as needed.

All of the above is done. Now I get to do the “lonely fun” stuff. First I'll take an area about the size of the State of Ohio (45k sq miles) and flip it over to Worldographer. I'll do 20-miles hexes, plot routes, cities and biomes. The program will then randomize the biomes for 6- and 2-mile hexes. I'll then use THOSE maps to record the infrastructure of the mapped area. No need to cover States I'm not visiting. I'll save that for a year down the road when exploration takes the party far afield. Infrastructure, technology, development and exploration will all be tracked on this map.

Next step is building the tables to determine the weather the party is experiencing. I have the template designed but I'll wanna pull the necessary date for every Burg to make it pullable as the party moves across the map. I'll likely do the “Ohio” Burgs first. I can then add to the table as needed when they travel.

And then, the great undertaking. The trade/economic system. Here's what I'm looking at: 1. Calculate the “trade distance” between every Burg on the map. This trail has been blazed but I need to collect the data for input. This is about 1/3 done. 2. Place resources. Currently looks like I'll be doing this on a State basis as opposed to city-by-city, for everything about my “Ohio” map. Again, a lot of the theory has been done but I'll need to accumulate the data for MY world. Target? End of this month. 3. Who produces what and how much? Based on resources, tech and developmental level. Again, the theory has been done but I need to acquire MY data. Also need to figure out best way to store and manipulate. A lot of work has been done is Python but I don't wanna learn an entire programming language just for this. I may change my mind if I can find a cheap (ie. Free) understandable class. Mid-October? 4. Determine the cost of EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE! By this step I'll know what raw materials exist where and in what producible amount. Calculate the cost/price of every raw resource, everywhere. I'll use “recipes” (again, a LOT of the work has been done, just not in an easily usable format) to determine cost and availability of SemiGoods (those items whose prices need to be calculated to produce more complex items.) These recipes can be modified and added to on an as-needed basis. Hope to have “completed” by end of the year. Then I can fine-tune State-by-state, province by province and burg by burg.

Quick answer to a quick question? Why? Because scarcity creates conflict and conflict creates opportunity

In which I finally get started on my trade/econ system

 after reading a metric boat-ton of stuff ... from Tao of D&D (pretty much the go-to on NTME but really scattered and somewhat hard to pull together, especially after ten years of corrections, updates and changes in direction), and for h in hexes (another GREAT resource but more about modeling than gaming, and VERY immersed in mineralogy, mining tech and metallurgy.)  And I FINALLY got a copy of Grain into Gold.

After a lot of noodeling and a few false starts I THINK I'm ready to jump in and just start building.

Step one - a list of resources.  About five dozen of them.  And the list will probably be expanded.  This is a somewhat generic list that will get some more depth added in it's next iteration.

Step two - assigning each of these resources to terrain types.  Done

Step three - taking the dozen or so "civilized" areas of the current world and assigning resources to them. Based on level of development and size.  Will also assume three other large land massed not currently "known" but traded with by my capital city and perhaps one or two others and incorporate their assumed production.

Step four - assigning craft people to each settlement.  You might grow cows for meat, milk and leather but without a tanner/leather worker you won't get much.  Development and size again a factor.  And MANY of these are mere cottage industries for local consumption, not for sale.

Step five - trade network.  Travel time between settlements have been calculated.  Need to decide how far perishable goods can be transported.

Step six - need to assemble the "recipes" for manufactured items.  Then revisit step four perhaps.  Gets kind of circular here.

Step seven - This was Tao's step two.  Takes some time but Grain Into Gold should help.  This is where I hafta start linking spreadsheets and data and cells and formula and I THINK I know the approach I want but time will tell.  

Step eight is then kin of an amalgam of all the skipped steps above.  Make sure I have a price for all undeveloped goods, manufactured goods and a final "menu" for each city as to what is available and how much it costs.

My first day back in the classroom will be August 16 once there I should have a few more hours a day to spend on these tasks.  Step one and two are done.  Give me a week on step three and we'll see what happens.  This will ALSO involve figuring out my spreadsheet layouts so it might take a lot of starting and stopping. 

Lonely fun indeed!