Project: Economics and demography from the ground up

[EhtoZ]

So, please tell me what you think, where additional information is needed, how to make the whole more reader-friendly and point out any obvious errors.

To summarize the results, here's Pierden's stock:

• Poultry: 11 hens and a rooster, 3 geese, one drake and 5 female ducks are kept throughout the year.
  
• Pigs: 3 sows and a gilt (a younger sow) are kept throughout the year. During the autumn mast this rises to 4 sows and 3 porkers/gilts.
  
• Winter flock: Pierden maintains 2 Oxen, 2 milk cows (a young one and an older milk cow) and a calf, 3 goats and 2 sheep.
  
• Summer flock:Pierden maintains 2 Oxen, 2 milk cows, 1 heifer and 2 calves, 5 goats and 4 kids, 2 ewes and 3 lambs.

This has been a very interesting read. I wonder if you've done any more with this yet?

I'm also curious to find out how HarnManor and A Magical Medieveal Society handles livestock. How do they match up to what Beruin came up with?

Here's hoping this thread isn't dead yet. I'd love to see more brainstorming.

[kgauck]

Magical Medieval Society only provides income from total livestock by manor. It is calculated at a rate of 17 gp per acre of pasture, meadow, and fallow fields. With 426 acres, the village considered would earn 7242 gp for the lord of the manor.

If I wanted numbers, I would look at S. John's demographics page, where he suggests 1.5 foul per person, and .7 meat animals per person. If the village has 102 people, that's 153 foul and 71+ meat animals.

Of course meat to grain is a widely variable figure and I would avoid hard and fast numbers except for behind the scenes averages.

[Beruin]

This has been a very interesting read. I wonder if you've done any more with this yet?

I'm also curious to find out how HarnManor and A Magical Medieveal Society handles livestock. How do they match up to what Beruin came up with?

Here's hoping this thread isn't dead yet. I'd love to see more brainstorming.

Well, I've taken a bit of a break from this project during the past weeks, but I'm definitely still working on it. The next steps are not that hard to calculate, but also a bit routine. The peasants of the manor simply maintain a total of eight times the number of livestock determined for Pierden, i.e. 16 oxen, 16 milk cows, eight calves, 24 goats, 16 sheep make up the peasant herd in winter and 24 sows and 8 gilts are kept throughout the year.

I decided to include the animals needed for reproduction in the demesne herd for ease of calculation. In addition to a bull, a billy, a ram and a boar, Sir Norvien as a minor knight maintains a heavy warhorse, a riding horse, a pack horse and also two medium draft horses. I still have to figure out how much fodder this leaves for other animals and whether the large number of horses can really be maintained (after all, they alone need 192 bushels of oats a year, the produce of about 32 acres).

With regard to A Magical Medieveal Society, it doesn't really say that much about livestock apart from assigning 17 gp's of income to the manor per acre of pasture and fallow. XPR's Silk Roads however has a long list of trade goods including livestock. The main difference here is that apart from horses the animals have a significantly larger weight. (e.g. 1,000 lbs for a cow and 150 lbs for an ewe). I guess these numbers were probably derived from modern breeds and I believe my numbers a probably a bit more realistic for a medieval/renaissance setting. Also, larger animals need more fodder and the manor could therefore only support a smaller number of animals. I have finally managed to acquire Harnmanor on ebay for a reasonable price, but as it hasn't arrived yet, I can't say anything in this regard yet.

For brainstorming, I still haven't got around to calculate the agricultural production and meat and dairy yields for Pierden and the manor. If this is done I would like to calculate the food consumed on the manor and the remaining surplus (and also the taxes/income for the manor). I would like some input on daily/yearly food requirements here. So far, Dragon 94 had an article 'An army travels on its stomach' that assigned a daily ration of three pounds of grain and one pound of mixed other foodstuffs like cheese, meat, fruit and vegetables per person. The following link also has some excellent data:http://www.geocities.com/chybisa/economic/bread.html

I also would like to tie my write-up to the d20 skill system, something like assigning a DC of probably about 15 for an average yield, with higher results increasing yields and lower results decreasing them, all modified by climate, terrain and weather. Well, there are certainly some people here with a better grasp of d20 mechanics who might have some ideas here. This will probably not be used everytime, but could be useful for a campaign where the PCs start from scratch, i.e. something like recreating the foundation of Endier in the Spider's Test novel or the setting portrayed in the Giantdowns accessory.

Speaking of the Giantdowns, I would also like to hear ideas for cultural adaptions for the Rjurik, the Khinasi and the various non-human cultures like dwarves, elves and even the goblins.

I would also like to see resource management, crafts and industry and the trade rules a bit more developed. Mongoose's Strongholds&Dynasties has some basic ideas in this regard.

Finally, the questions remains how the rules for manors could be incorporated into the domain rules. There are three general possibilities here:
- the income generated by manors is already figured into the domain income, assuming that every regent just holds a number of manors.
- manors can be regarded as assets generating additional income. The PS of Roesone does something similar I believe.
- the Ruins of Empire pbem house rules introduce the manor holding as a new holding type. This is probably somewhat similar to Kenneth's administration holding and introducing another income-generating type of holding might be problematic.

Okay, this was a small extract from my 'things I would like to develop' list. After all, I called this a project for a reason and I don't expect to finish this anytime soon. Anyway, I'd love to hear your ideas...

[Beruin]

As an afterthought, I'm expanding my 'worldbuilder' library at the moment and would like to know if anyone has checked out Gary Gygax' Nationbuilder and whether it includes something useful for BR.

[Thelandrin]

Whilst Mongoose's Ships of Blood has a fun trade system, it does lend itself to making money rather fast, unless you are ruthless at enforcing taxes, sinking ships, sea monsters, pirates, inadequate supply of goods etc.

[kgauck]

A good trade system should produce break-even results with average talent. So the ways to make money include:
Better negotiation for cargos, but cheap, sell dear.
Better navigation and piloting, make one more run in the same amount of time.
Better seamanship throughout the crew, take less storm damage and toss less cargo overboard during storms.