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Thread: Harvest god: Erik or Avani?
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12-25-2006, 04:37 AM #21
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Originally Posted by kgauck
-FizzLast edited by Fizz; 12-25-2006 at 04:39 AM.
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12-25-2006, 06:04 AM #22
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Originally Posted by kgauck
Nomadic transhumance doesn't imply livestock, but rather herds which are followed.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/transhumance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumance
Don't get me wrong- i understand the point you're making here, and transhumance isn't a completely wrong term for it. Doesn't seem like a word a Rjurik would use though.
If the Rjurik have their own metal working and weaving (hence forges and looms) they must have settlements, because you can't move these things every couple of months as nomads do. These things stay put.
So, either we have to abandon the Rjurik as nomads and migrants, or we have to abandon the Rjurik as chain mail (and improved chain mail) wearing peoples, confining these heavy crafts either to foriegners (like the mongols) or to a small portion of settled people.
Going on attempting to save the appearances of a few lines in books which never attempted to make a serious social analysis is requiring increasingly absurd efforts.
Earlier, we established that it is numerically possible for the Rjurik lands to support the entire population as nomads. (Our 3 people per square mile.)
So there is ample food. The distibution of people doesn't matter because there is trade. In the extreme case, the Rjurik nomads getting all the food via hunting/gathering, and the settled Rjurik doing all the crafting, forging, weaving, etc. The two sides then trade with one another- food for supplies, gear, shelter, etc. It's sustainable.
That's the extreme case of course. There wouldn't be an absolute distinction of duties between the nomads and settled. Some nomads will craft while they're holed up for the winter, and some settled Rjurik will herd sheep, year-round. But since we've shown the extreme case can work, the hybridized case is possible too (more likely in fact).
The very last thing we should do is cling to some phrases in the published materials when they are contradicted by other parts of the same materials, are hard to justify in terms of in-game principles (like the domain system), and make no sense in terms of normal game economics.
To me, the setting comes first. The mechanics can be tweaked.
The books themselves leave much of this open-ended. When it reads "many Rjurik still live in the traditional lifestyle", what does "many" mean? It never says anywhere that X% of Rjurik are nomads. It could be 10%, 50% or 75%. I suspect such vagueness is deliberate, if only to allow for different tastes, such as we have.
-Fizz
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12-25-2006, 08:42 AM #23
You're right, the books are vague to allow for different interpretations. The problem isn't a right or wrong reading of the books, the lend evidence to a variety of approaches.
But from my point of view the question isn't an aesthetic question of which I find most desirable for a setting, the question is, given that I want a world that makes the most sense, so characters can interact with it, what makes the most sense.
Since nomadic peoples produce no surplus (and checking up on the Mongols, all I find is leather and hide armors, captured Chinese, Arab, or European metal tools and weapons, and their own native bow) they are effectivly invisible to the domain system. Even if I assume they are only nomadic part of the year, if I imagine that proportion is 33%, I need to increase populations by a third to get the same results I would expect from Anuire.
And if hunting is competative with agriculture, I have to wonder if there is any suprlus in Rjurik lands at all, and perhaps prohibit any but light taxation.
And then what do you do with Rjuvik, "where traditional Rjurik nomadic life has almost completly died out," except in the province of Hjarrsmark?
Any attempt to estimate the productivity of people based on real world analogs (and without them, how do you value a PC action like building a mill?) show such a radical difference between intensive agriculturalists and other forms of economies that hunters, pastoralists, and hortaculturalsts are, as I mentioned, invisible to the domain system.
Originally Posted by FizzLast edited by kgauck; 12-25-2006 at 08:48 AM.
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12-25-2006, 11:28 AM #24
If the Taelshore tribes are migratory across the continent, presumably they spend winter in the Taelshore and summer in the northlands – on the grounds that the northlands are a tad chilly and prone to storms in winter.
Now on the grounds that the Taelshore tribes cannot fish in the north (boats take time to build, any boat left unattended over a northlands winter will not be usable when the tribes return, even if it had not been stolen) they are presumably hunting. That makes a some sense since summer is the best time to hunt – most animals give birth in spring, and the young animals will be both in their prime growth phase and too inexperienced to avoid hunters by late summer. Unfortunately given that the White Witch is hostile, that makes for a lot of hunters in Hogunmark during summer.
Further this means that in the winter, the tribes are in the Taelshore, so either the tribes plant in spring before migrating north and the harvest on their return or they are stuck with hunting and foraging in the south as well, with no agriculture at all. This is because farming takes constant attention, herds of domesticated animals cannot simply be left to tend to themselves, and they will either disperse, or if confined, deplete the local resources and require moving. Crops need to be planted, tended, guarded and harvested.
So I would say that if many Rjurik still migrate, they probably don’t migrate very far – certainly not the hundreds of miles between the Taelshore and the North (particularly given that the direct route through the Bloodskull barony is unhealthy). So when considering population levels the different areas of the highlands should be considered separately.
I would say that I disagree philosophically with the idea that the Rjurik are settled half the year and migratory the other half, settled people worry about theft, both of land and of moveable property. A craftsman who leaves their tools, stock, etc behind will find much of it gone when they return – even in a very honest area, someone will take the easy route to wealth, similarly fortifications must be constantly be guarded or become a haven to enemies.
I would also note that settled people produce more food (farming is far more efficient at producing food – that’s why civilisations do it), produce more, better goods (they have specialised tools and buildings to produce the goods, the nomads have to make do with what they can find/carry) and have a very different perspective on land ownership. The nomads may have some furs, etc but only what can readily be carried, that may buy some tools, and a few weeks food, but won’t last the nomad half a year plus in the Taelshore.
The nomad can’t hunt on settled land (game is absent, herds are property), can’t forage on settled ground (this is called theft by farmers), they can get by in provinces with a small population as these have a fair amount of wild unclaimed land – although this is also hunted by the locals, but in general the nomads are so impoverished compared to the settlers that co-existence is not a viable strategy long term – either the nomads settle down, or the settlers – who breed at twice the rate and have far better survival prospects – push the nomads to the marginal areas. You only have to look at the attitudes towards gypsy's to see how settlers and nomads get on in the world.
This suggests to me that nomads are fairly rare in the more populated areas, although as they travel a lot and stand out from the settlers they probably have a much higher visibility than their numbers would indicate.
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12-25-2006, 07:26 PM #25
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Originally Posted by Fizz
To me, the setting comes first. The mechanics can be tweaked.Originally Posted by kgauck
It's like the Rjurik Musters rule in Highlands. In most domains, when you muster troop you get levies. But since all Rjurik are trained in combat from an early age, they are allowed to raise units of irregulars instead. This is the case of a rule being adjusted to account for the setting.
And then what do you do with Rjuvik, "where traditional Rjurik nomadic life has almost completly died out," except in the province of Hjarrsmark?
Since nomadic peoples produce no surplus (and checking up on the Mongols, all I find is leather and hide armors, captured Chinese, Arab, or European metal tools and weapons, and their own native bow)
But Page 10 of Highlands explains where they get their gear: "... settle down in their ancestral wintering grounds ... reclaim existing structures or build new ones ... including tribal longhouses, larders, sweatlodges ... Fabric and clothing are loomed and sewn during the winter, and most of the Rjurik's arms and armor are forged during this time."
Even if I assume they are only nomadic part of the year, if I imagine that proportion is 33%, I need to increase populations by a third to get the same results I would expect from Anuire.
(particularly given that the direct route through the Bloodskull barony is unhealthy).
There is no doubt that settled Rjurik and farming are becoming more prevalent though. I think an agricultural revolution would be great inspiration for many plots and stories.
Ah well... good discussion...
-Fizz
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12-25-2006, 10:56 PM #26Originally Posted by Fizz
Well, the Mongols must have had their own forges for some things- hard to maintain a campaign if you can't repair arms and armor. Regardless, i think most Rjurik would wear leather and hide most of the time too. Wearing chain mail for hunting is awkward and noisy, after all.
But Page 10 of Highlands explains where they get their gear: "... settle down in their ancestral wintering grounds ... reclaim existing structures or build new ones ... including tribal longhouses, larders, sweatlodges ... Fabric and clothing are loomed and sewn during the winter, and most of the Rjurik's arms and armor are forged during this time."
You don't need to worry about the surplus, nor competing with Anuire. The province levels take care of that already. Everyone is contributing something year round. No one said Rjurik has to produce as many arms and armor as Anuire. What matters is that the economy is being driven by something. It's something different during the winter than it is during the summer, but it's being driven. Levels and the domain system as a whole are very abstract- they can support a lot of variations.
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12-25-2006, 11:36 PM #27
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Originally Posted by kgauck
You keep trying to explain it as if some social order could be constructed around these statements, but what this all comes down to is that you're just willing to ignore the effeciency of medieval labor and simply declare that these things are possible in the numbers you want them to be. But, that's a statement, not an argument. I know what you want, I just don't believe its remotely possible without inventing a whole new BR economics.
Now, if there is enough food to feed everyone without any farming or fishing at all, then there's enough food to feed everyone if only a significant percentage are nomads, because you've got the added benefit of some farms, significant fishing, etc. Once you've fed everyone, the settled folk take care of their crafts on their own.
Case A:
Completely nomadic
No farming
Case B:
Completely settled
Farms everywhere
Case C:
Some nomadic, some settled, some semi-nomadic
Some farming
If Case A and Case B are both viable (as we agreed) then Case C can also work because it lies in the middle of the two extremes. There is nothing inherently implausible about this, and it is consistent with the books.
That something has to look like something on the ground, in towns, in camps, in fortresses, in guildhalls. For the life of me I can't imagine what you think it would like on the PC level where the game spends nearly all of its time.
No surplus? So the ruler of Halskapa is taking food from the mouths of babies?
-FizzLast edited by Fizz; 12-26-2006 at 12:02 AM.
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12-26-2006, 01:10 AM #28Originally Posted by Fizz
This reveals that you are unfamiliar with this approach to gaming. The approach I advoce does not simulate the real world, but rather attempts to construct a model that will predict conditions anywhere, rather than having to invent them. So I construct rules that govern how towns are formed, what happens there, why they exist, and then when players go to a new town, I don't have to figure this out, I just apply the model. A lot of work up front, much easier to adjudicate during play.
There are good reasons to use real world data if the setting doesn't call for an alternative. The players are reasonably familiar with the real world. I have seen DM's invent new names for common items, like foods, tools, &c, but then players either substitute or they have to learn an entire nomenclature for mundane items. So, the sun plus water plus fertile soil yields plants familiar to players in approximatly the same conditions and proportions that you will see in reality. This allows me to estaimate how much a farm produces or how many deer are in a forest of given size, climate, and so on.
This is much easier than back calculating from the BR materials because you end up with radically inconsistant numbers and various kinds of paradoxes.
When I employ a fantastic element, such as magic, divine power, or the Shadow World, I look for analogs in mythology, literature, or natural philosophy. This works so well because often players are also familiar with these things (what portion of players has never heard of a druid before playing RPG's?) and because they have often been systematized by theologins, philosophers, or authors attempting to make sense of the real world or their fictional world.
The bottom line is that the magical system, divine cosmology, and Shadow World has to make as much sense to me as the economics of farming or selling Khinsi spices. They have to make sense internally, and they have to make sense with each other. So magic, divinity, sources, bloodlines, the shadow world, all get rationalized so that I can predict what happens when a player does something unexpected. It may be fantastic, but I know how it works.
I have explained how the books can be consistent with a real-world situation. You agreed earlier in the thread that the low-ball population counts could make an entirely nomadic society plausible.
Now, if there is enough food to feed everyone without any farming or fishing at all, then there's enough food to feed everyone if only a significant percentage are nomads, because you've got the added benefit of some farms, significant fishing, etc. Once you've fed everyone, the settled folk take care of their crafts on their own.
Depends on the type of game being played. If it's primarily a game of rulers, a huge portion will be at the domain level. If it's more of a typical adventuring game, then the details of level holdings aren't as important.
If players are just adventuring, the holdings still describe the most important institutions of human activity: temple, market, fortress, court. I can only ignore what goes on here if my gaming style were dazzle players with attentions to some other part of the game. My preference is to create a game where the players go and do as they please, and I can relate consequences from known and explicit principles and rules.
[regarding the nature of a surplus] I said you don't have to worry about it- it'll take care of itself. The level-domain system is deliberately vague as to what each holding type does.
"What are my holdings in Sonnelind?"
"They are amorphous economic activities which generate 1d4+1 gold bars per season."
Not satisfying. Instead, if I have a PC guilder who is running Northern Imports and Exports, I locate all of his holdings, assign a NPC guild master to every province, an assistant for every holding (so the Guild 2 in Sonnelind has a guildmaster and two assistants). I run every realm through a demographic analysis and tweak it based on the PS descriptions or the trade section in Ruins or Highlands (or whatever) and figure out what each of these holdings really does. Then I locate these in the various towns, give the NPC's and locations names and descriptions, and backgrounds. And generally by the time I've done this, I've noticed patterns and circumstances which suggest many other additional details to color in the holdings still further.
Recently I've been adding the followers and cohorts of province level leaders too.
Each organization is given its own ideological position in relation to all of the other organzations it comes in contact with, and frequently I detail cleavages between ideologies within an organization so I can have junior NPC's argue with each other and give the PC conflicting advice.
My goal is to have a Player's Secrets for every domain that has a player, and for each of the rival organizations as well.
3rd edition, and especially 3.5 has been producing rules for organizations in abundance. Using these is much easier when the organziation, that is domain, in question is detailed as opposed to being astract.Last edited by kgauck; 12-26-2006 at 01:13 AM.
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12-26-2006, 01:57 AM #29
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Originally Posted by kgauck
Originally Posted by kgauck
The last sentence doesn't follow. If the settled portion (say a third or a quarter of all Rjurik) are high medieval in our expectations of labor and productivity...,. What doesn't follow is that the settled folk can take care of the craft needs of the Rjurik on their own.
That's handy for using the same set of domain rules throughout Cerilia, but its useless for decribing the actual domain of a ruler, and in my experience this kind of question peaks their curiosity.
"What are my holdings in Sonnelind?"
"They are amorphous economic activities which generate 1d4+1 gold bars per season."
"During the winter, your province produces 1d4+1 gold bars worth of arms and woolens. During the summer, many families have gone north so your primary income comes from fishing and farm production totalling 1d4 gold bars."
Or whatever works for you. Nothing says domain income (or anything else domain-related) can't be adjusted for a semi-nomadic people. I think that would make running a domain here much more interesting with a unique set of challenges.
-FizzLast edited by Fizz; 12-26-2006 at 02:00 AM.
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12-26-2006, 03:22 AM #30Originally Posted by Fizz
I just felt that your `utter nonesense' was overly harsh considering that we are dealing with a fantasy world here.
Ah ha! Maybe here is where our disagreement lies. The BR core rulebook says the Rjurik are at a `middle ages' level technology. `Middle ages' is a very wide stretch of time, almost a 1000 years. I picture the Rjurik as being closer to the Dark Ages than the Late Medieval / Early Renaissance that the Anuireans and Khinasi are at.
Given the difference in our envisioned timeframe (my early medieval period to your high), and if you allow the semi-nomadic Rjurik to do some of their own crafting when they settle in for the winter, that situation ought to be more plausible to you. I think high medieval could still work, but it's certainly easier if they're closer to Dark Ages.
Maybe under the influence of more advanced neighbors, the settled Rjuirik are high middle ages in terms of what technology is available, what price lists look like, and what's a martial or an exotic weapon. While in terms of labor effeciency and so forth they are between middle ages and dark ages (would we call that Carolingian)? Interesting to consider.
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