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Post by Red Baron on Jul 11, 2021 8:18:24 GMT -6
Red Baron, from the wikipedia section you quoted upthread: So... this is saying that almost half of farmers had insufficient land to feed their families. So an important question is: How did almost half the farmers in England survive? Some back of the envelope math: Assuming 7 bushels per acre 60 lbs grain per bushel 1500 cal per pound grain 1 in 4 seeds must be saved for replanting 365 days per year An acre of land can provide about 1300 calories per day. Presumably, 1. They could produce most of their calories from their cultivated acres 2. Supplement diet with fish, herbs, eggs, etc 3. Recieve some charity from the church or local lord 4. Work other farmers excess land for cash 5. Take up a trade for extra cash (roofing, etc) Land tax also seems surprisingly low. At 2 shillings per 120 acres, a family with 10 acres would pay only 2 pence per year. |
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Post by Red Baron on Jul 11, 2021 8:55:14 GMT -6
It would probably be easier to simulate romanesque commerical farming estates staffed by hired workers and slaves.
You can arbitrarily assign values for x amount of land requires y workers and the net monetary yield is z gp per year after expenses.
Assuming vaugely similar numbers to our medieval anglo-saxon village, maybe
X = 21.65 sq miles or one 5-mile hex
Y = 1000 able bodied men
Z = ? coins profit per estate
Adjacent to coast: fish sauce factory
Adjacent to hills: wine
Grassland/plains/open hex: grain
Adjacent to desert: olives
This is how I would describe "villages" in the "civilized" parts of the wilderlands.
Alternate models for a village could then be
1. Trade towns in nomadic areas, where pastoral peoples come to winter and aquire urban manufactured products they cannot produce themselves. The profits here could be similar to feudal land yields, and dairy or meat products could be exported to urban centers. These settlements would keep nomads happy and prevent them from pushing into civilized areas, also serving as recruitment hubs for steppe mercenaries.
2. The anglo-saxon feudal model would be how "barbarians" live.
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Post by Vile Traveller on Jul 11, 2021 10:48:37 GMT -6
Or, we could assume the mountains indicate uplifts and place plateaus in the plains surrounding them. That would allow us to make some canyons where the river flows from upland to lowland. Then, you could flood the board with some water on one or more side, make the mountains into chains of islands, then turn the land nearest the water into coastland. Ahem.  odd74.proboards.com/thread/10587/blueholme-world |
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Post by tetramorph on Jul 11, 2021 10:50:44 GMT -6
Vile Traveller, that is awesome. Do you have one with the hexes still on it?
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Post by Vile Traveller on Jul 11, 2021 12:39:02 GMT -6
In the thread linked there's my Photobotch of the original board.
I think I might have a hex layer on the Alyssa Faden map but my temporary setup (while renovating) can't fire up that monster file.
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 11, 2021 20:08:52 GMT -6
Presumably, 1. They could produce most of their calories from their cultivated acres 2. Supplement diet with fish, herbs, eggs, etc 3. Recieve some charity from the church or local lord 4. Work other farmers excess land for cash 5. Take up a trade for extra cash (roofing, etc) What's neat about this is we start to see how/what/why of the "other stuff" (besides farming) going on in a village. That around half the population is engaged in foraging, paid labour, and other crafts (fencing, thatching, etc.) to supplement their basic dietary requirements paints a certain picture of village life  |
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Post by cometaryorbit on Jul 12, 2021 14:09:18 GMT -6
City/clear are probably terrain with some human use, so there's lots of life, but it's people and their domestic animals (not necessarily farmland - the "clear" terrain would presumably also include plains/steppes with nomadic horse cultures, etc.) Perhaps. On the other hand, cities and towns are the economic power centres. They attract and generate wealth, which attracts thieves, bandits, circuses, pageants, cults, heroes and superheroes, villains and super-villains, mercenary companies, hunting parties, spies, plots, pretenders, and all manner of intrigue and adventure. Meanwhile, a desert is quintessentially about miles and miles of hot sand A very good point... but I think there is maybe a distinction here between random encounters and "planned" ones?
Strongholds don't get random encounters, but there is the possibility of invasions, wars, sieges etc... just not randomly rolled ones.
And not all deserts are all that devoid of life... the Blue Dragons must be eating something. Perhaps these are closer to the Chihuahuan Desert than the Sahara.
This does seem quite strange.
And why was it so limited anyway? I don't think the population density in this era was all that high...
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 12, 2021 16:41:49 GMT -6
Strongholds don't get random encounters, but there is the possibility of invasions, wars, sieges etc... just not randomly rolled ones. I agree when players are specifically travelling to a known stronghold, encountering it is not random; it is planned. But when the players are exploring unknown wilderness, they can randomly/unknowingly encounter a strongholder's entourage (who have ventured forth or are patrolling the region), or the stronghold itself. In this sense, a stronghold can be a random/rolled encounter that occurs during wilderness exploration. And why was it so limited anyway? I don't think the population density in this era was all that high... Farming technology and crop yields were low. Incidence of pestilence, disease, war, and famine were high. Food production was (and still is) the ultimate limiting factor for population growth. |
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Post by cometaryorbit on Jul 12, 2021 23:52:01 GMT -6
Sorry, I meant the lack of encounters in "cleared territory" around a PC stronghold, not random encounters with castles/strongholds by traveling PCs.
Right, all I was saying is that you'd kind of expect that if land was the limiting factor there wouldn't have been much if any forest left...
But that wikipedia article also says "These poor farmers were often employed by richer farmers, or practiced a trade in addition to farming", and refers to farmers working on the lord's land as well - so I think this is just talking about land ownership not total amount of land worked (or productive land) per person.
Historically, yeah, but this often isn't the case today - birth rates are below replacement in most developed nations, and these areas certainly aren't food-limited.
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 13, 2021 1:15:05 GMT -6
How would that effect the calculations for the use of an arable 5m hex? Including both pasture and cultivated area: For a village if 100 families this results in 22% land utilization. For a village with 250 families this results in 56% land utilization. For a village of 400 families this would be 90% land utilization. The remaining portion of the hex would be filled by the village, manor, and some light woods and hedges where firewood can be gathered. Hilly and rocky areas can be used for common pasture leaving the more arable land for cultivation. I revisited my calculations up-thread to correct the amount of land a family/tenant worked. I found some additional figures here that say: << A survey of 104 13th-century manors in England found that, among the landholding tenants, 45 percent had less than 3 acres (1 ha). To survive, they also had to work for larger landowners. 22 percent of tenants had a virgate of land (which varied in size between 24 acres (10 ha) and 32 acres (13 ha) and 31 percent had one-half virgate. To rely on the land for a livelihood a tenant family needed at least 10 acres (4 ha).>> This is similar to what Red Baron quoted above, except that this says the poorest ~half of farmers had fewer than 3 acres, rather than fewer than 10 acres. That's an interesting nuance, but in the end I agree with Red Baron that a family (a tenant farmer) required around 10 acres to sustain themselves. The overall average amount of land held by a tenant/family seems to be somewhere around 13 acres per tenant/family, with another half of this amount being demesne land. It's therefore convenient to work with a total of around 20 acres per tenant/family. Regarding pasture for livestock, the above link also has: << Non-arable land was allocated to common pasture land or waste, where the villagers would graze their livestock throughout the year, woodland for pigs and timber, and also some private fenced land (paddocks, orchards and gardens), called closes. The ploughed fields and the meadows were used for livestock grazing when fallowed or after the grain was harvested.>> So I'm now inclined to not add any extra land explicitly for pasture; it seems pasture was had in demesne lands, fallow or harvested fields, private closes, and in the otherwise non-arable land on the manor. The graphical map of a generic manor at the top of the linked page is interesting. It shows maybe one third to a possibly one-half-ish of the total area on the manor was wood, marsh, pond, or otherwise non-arable. Following this, I think we should include an allowance for this non-arable land when calculating the footprint of a village or manor. So, I've revised my original numbers and arrived at this:  The x20 acres includes c13.5 acres per family plus c6.5 acres of demesne land per family. Notice that I doubled the total area occupied in the "footprint" column to account for non-arable land on the manor. This might be a bit generous, but the convenience of simply multiplying the population by 10 acres to arrive at an area in acres seemed compelling. In any case, I suppose there would be additional unused/rough patches of land between manors/villages, which would likely occupy the best/most arable patches. Red Baron figured that a village of 100 families would occupy 22% of a 5-mile hex; my numbers show the same 100 families occupying around 29% of the same 5-mile hex. So... pretty similar, despite a few subtle differences in the inputs. |
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Post by dicebro on Jul 13, 2021 13:59:45 GMT -6
Hold up, how does any of this help me referee my OD&D campaign? I’m overwhelmed with information!
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Post by tdenmark on Jul 13, 2021 14:18:22 GMT -6
Hold up, how does any of this help me referee my OD&D campaign? I’m overwhelmed with information! Yeah, this really went off in to the weeds. The kind of detail I don't want in my RPG. |
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Post by cometaryorbit on Jul 13, 2021 14:29:09 GMT -6
Well I think the result -- 20 acres/family of "farmed" land, 40 acres/family "footprint", or whatever --
is actually useful, even if the way of getting to it is "into the weeds".
That gives a rough physical size for a given village or manor, and a feel for how much of a hex or a 20-mile-radius barony is actually cultivated or directly-used land, vs. still 'wild' (if cleared of monsters) and available for further settlement/development.
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Post by dicebro on Jul 13, 2021 15:27:38 GMT -6
Well I think the result -- 20 acres/family of "farmed" land, 40 acres/family "footprint", or whatever -- is actually useful, even if the way of getting to it is "into the weeds". That gives a rough physical size for a given village or manor, and a feel for how much of a hex or a 20-mile-radius barony is actually cultivated or directly-used land, vs. still 'wild' (if cleared of monsters) and available for further settlement/development. What kind of monsters? |
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 13, 2021 17:23:06 GMT -6
Hold up, how does any of this help me referee my OD&D campaign? I’m overwhelmed with information! It tells you that all five of your Lord's new villages fit into a single, 5-mile wide, arable hex. |
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Post by dicebro on Jul 13, 2021 17:46:20 GMT -6
Hold up, how does any of this help me referee my OD&D campaign? I’m overwhelmed with information! It tells you that all five of your Lord's new villages fit into a single, 5-mile wide, arable hex. from 2–8 villages of from 100–400 inhabitants each? It is now time to grab the Chainmail rules and go off to war in the service of the King! Surviving veterans get to desert the army and become first level fighting-men in my new campaign! |
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 14, 2021 18:08:25 GMT -6
The average number of villages (2-8) is 5. The average number of people per village (100-400) is 250. Each of these five average-sized villages appears (per the above homework) to occupy less than one-fifth the land area of a 5-mile wide hex. In which case, all five of them could fit into a single 5-mile wide hex. Clearing a 20-mile radius around a single, cultivated 5-mile hex requires clearing a total of 37 hexes (if we include the central, populated hex in the 20 miles), implying a sustained effort to chase off the natives. But assuming that has happened, another question is: Where will the Lord's "new" villagers actually come from?? Presumably, there could be a small local population of pioneers, frontiersmen, or itinerant types. The rest could be refugees or other migrants looking for somewhere to settle. Perhaps some of them could be subdued bandits defeated by the player? Understanding who these folks are--and how they are brought into the player's demesne--could be rich fodder for campaign development |
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Post by rustic313 on Jul 14, 2021 19:49:57 GMT -6
I've done similar math.
I've concluded that a logical arrangement of villages is this:
- "Barons" occupy a stronghold at the intersection of three hexes (a la Cataan).
- Villages occupy the adjacent three hexes and are placed in the middle of the hex. The max number of villages is 4 minus move factor of the hex (thus 3 villages in a grass hex, 2 in a forest, 1 in a Mt or swamp).
- Roads (and navigable rivers) that reduce movement costs also allow for an extra village in difficult terrain.
- Ocean hexes allow two villages; they are assumed to be fishing and trading towns perched on the hex edges.
- Each village is ruled by a henchmen and thus governed by the CHA based limit.
Thus a barony perfectly laid out with three grassland hexes could have up to 9 villages (or the lord's CHA limit). Typical baronies will have about 3-8 which matches 3LBB.
Multiple baronies make up a county which is run by a count.
I worked with trying to put strongholds in the center of a hex with villages in the six surrounding hexes for a long while but that results in either too many villages or really low population density.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2021 12:39:26 GMT -6
Hold up, how does any of this help me referee my OD&D campaign? I’m overwhelmed with information! Yeah, this really went off in to the weeds. The kind of detail I don't want in my RPG. It's a fun intellectual exercise for world-building or understanding how a medieval economy might work, for sure, but as for being gameable it's a bit out of my wheelhouse, too. |
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Post by rsdean on Jul 15, 2021 16:18:10 GMT -6
As for being gameable, it depends on whether you want to use a village militia system to respond to invasions, or whether you need to ask questions like whether the village you just entered is likely to have enough surplus food to be happy about selling quantities (e.g. when your wilderness team is moving slowly because there are more than a thousand men and horses…), or even what you might be able to get if you sacked it.  |
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 15, 2021 17:20:10 GMT -6
Yeah, exactly. It's not all meant to be gameable; it's "homework" that helps with the underlying game design. It will be nice to eventually boil all the homework down to a few tables that are gameable, but we haven't quite got there yet |
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Post by dicebro on Jul 15, 2021 19:18:05 GMT -6
Yeah, exactly. It's not all meant to be gameable; it's "homework" that helps with the underlying game design. It will be nice to eventually boil all the homework down to a few tables that are gameable, but we haven't quite got there yet Here’s a great book for that. Instead of counting GP, trying to convert various resources into taxable revenue, and pulling hair out, this book gives a step by step method for converting hex resources into monthly credits. There are gameable tables. And Not too many! So the way I do it is that the Baron has his own private wealth (from adventuring), but also manages his credits to build roads, armies and ships over time. The two fortunes are never comingled and it makes for a playable campaign that can shift from individual expenditures to a country’s expenditures over time at a glance. here’s the link. www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Wargaming-Martin-Hackett/dp/1852602139/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Martin+Hackett+wargaming&qid=1626397599&sr=8-1 If you are going to get this guy’s book, then I recommend the hardback. The SoftCover came out later but doesn’t have the same tables. |
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Post by tdenmark on Jul 15, 2021 20:34:49 GMT -6
Yeah, this really went off in to the weeds. The kind of detail I don't want in my RPG. It's a fun intellectual exercise for world-building or understanding how a medieval economy might work, for sure, but as for being gameable it's a bit out of my wheelhouse, too. Yeah. Part of me loves A Magical Medieval Society and reading all the detail. I would never play it. |
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 15, 2021 20:41:40 GMT -6
Here’s a great book for that. ... There are gameable tables. And Not too many! Is it practical to post photos of the (not too many) relevant tables here for the discussion? |
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Post by dicebro on Jul 16, 2021 8:49:28 GMT -6
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Post by rustic313 on Jul 16, 2021 9:45:35 GMT -6
His economy using "credits" is pretty close to what I've derived as well. I think a reasonable unit for realm level coin is silver bars. Historically silver bars were often worth an even number of marks such as 20 marks. If you go with a middling bar of 20 marks value, that is worth about 14L (each mark is 2/3 of a L). In a happy coincidence, 14L is one stone of weight (it's convenient when these archaic units actually match up!). If you assume every D&D silver coin is a 4p silver groat, then 1L is worth 60 sp, which means a 20 mark silver bar is worth 800 sp more or less. The silver bar idea also nicely bridges man to man scale and encumbrance system ("you find a cache of three silver bars") and the larger dominion scale. Furthermore if you want to go with a 14th century English baseline, every hide probably nets about 1 bar of income annually; 10 percent to the church, 5-10 percent for a king; about half for support of local yeoman/lesser gentry; the rest for the Lord. So a village of 10 hides would produce 5 bars of silver for the Lord/baron (just like his 5 credits), or about 4000 SP... One bar for the tithe and one bar for the king (or count), with three bars left over for local gentry. It's be very easy to say that a hex produces one bar of silver for every move factor as well (so mountains, forests, etc if undeveloped are fairly profitable representing mines, lumber, etc) which also matches his credits. Then lastly to compare against LBB, in this model a hide has perhaps 50 inhabitants. So our hypothetical village of 10 hides is 500 people, who should generate about 5000 sp in tax at 10 sp a head. If you assume a silver standard it all meshes up really nicely. |
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Post by dicebro on Jul 16, 2021 12:13:42 GMT -6
Here’s a hypothetical campaign. Each kingdom has 1d6+6 (60 mile wide) hexes. Income from each hex is 0-5 credits per week: desert=0 cr, plain=4 cr, wood=3, mountain=2, swamp=1, capital city=5, sea= 2, river=3.
This tax revenue comes in 4 weeks per month. 9 months of income per year. I don’t count the winter months. Each king can spend on armies, navies, siege equipment and fortifications. Expenditures are at 1 credit = ~1000gp. Armies and ships take credits with them to spend on food/water & equip to sustain troop etc. all other credits are stored in a fortress in the capital city. Captured hexes produce less income than a regular hex for various political reasons. Random events can add to or deplete the treasury. By using credits I don’t need to worry about the headaches of accounting for various currencies.
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 16, 2021 20:56:28 GMT -6
Thanks for posting dicebro and rustic313. I do like the additional scope that the "realm building" game brings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Hackett system appears to presume established/populated hexes change hands as players/Lords win or lose control. This is fine, but I think the U&WA angle is more about the process of establishing/populating previously wilderness hexes. There is doubtless space for both! The "realm building" game is kinda beyond the original topic around wilderness exploration/threat levels but clearly follows from it, and is super interesting My intuition is that there "should" be some kind of simple, gameable relationships between: . terrain-type and population limit; . population, work done, and income generation; . stability (patrols/policing) vs disruption (weather, monsters/banditry) and productivity. All that would be highly abstracted of course. Let me get my head around the details first... |
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Post by rustic313 on Jul 17, 2021 1:35:48 GMT -6
Thanks for posting dicebro and rustic313 . I do like the additional scope that the "realm building" game brings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Hackett system appears to presume established/populated hexes change hands as players/Lords win or lose control. This is fine, but I think the U&WA angle is more about the process of establishing/populating previously wilderness hexes. There is doubtless space for both! The "realm building" game is kinda beyond the original topic around wilderness exploration/threat levels but clearly follows from it, and is super interesting My intuition is that there "should" be some kind of simple, gameable relationships between: . terrain-type and population limit; . population, work done, and income generation; . stability (patrols/policing) vs disruption (weather, monsters/banditry) and productivity. All that would be highly abstracted of course. Let me get my head around the details first... Sorry we drifted off course! For the original point/question about threat level in relation to the stronghold and terrain, I feel like move factors for terrain hexes may be a useful and easy to reference variable. The higher the move factor (i.e. swamps, mountains, etc) then the rougher the terrain and thus the harder to patrol, and the more fearsome the monsters. Conceptually a stronghold in a bunch of open grassland should be able to patrol easily and keep things under control. The stronghold in the bottom left corner of the OS map (in the giant swamp) has a way more difficult problem to deal with. A way to incorporate the move factors would be to say that a stronghold's garrison keeps 42 (or 19) move-factors worth of hexes clear... Thus a stronghold in the grasslands can have that huge maximum radius, but those in the mountains/swamps/forests have more compact borders that tend to follow the natural boundaries. Borders would likely tend to flow down rivers/roads as well, which makes sense for patrols to cover. This would require quite a bit of prep work on behalf of the DM to sum up the move factors for the relevant terrain and draw out borders but seems like it would yield realistic and fairly repeatable results. Another possible mechanic to play with for clearing stuff out: - As a simple clearing mechanic, you could put one token per move factor on each hex. Spending some period of time in the hex with a scouting party lets you remove a token; every time a token is removed, there's some chance (1/6?) there is a lair that must be cleared (generate appropriate wilderness encounter). Thus grasslands are quick to clear out, mountains/swamps take way longer. - If a stronghold is never established or patrols stop, then replace a token on every hex every X period of time (year?) until they're all refreshed; this also nicely eliminates bookkeeping for the DM as in the absence of a stronghold, things reset to their natural state over time. If a stronghold is established then maybe there's a chance for tokens to spawn out of swamps, mountains, uncleared lairs/dungeons, etc. - Any tokens on a space should reduce economic productivity (people don't like living/working in areas where there are monsters rumored to be about). A confirmed lair would probably halt all economic activity until its dealt with. - I'm with you in that I don't think any more than 1-2 hexes distance from the stronghold should be assumed to be patrolled and kept clear of monsters (in this case, represented by tokens). |
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Post by dicebro on Jul 17, 2021 6:51:39 GMT -6
Thanks for posting dicebro and rustic313 . I do like the additional scope that the "realm building" game brings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Hackett system appears to presume established/populated hexes change hands as players/Lords win or lose control. This is fine, but I think the U&WA angle is more about the process of establishing/populating previously wilderness hexes. There is doubtless space for both! The "realm building" game is kinda beyond the original topic around wilderness exploration/threat levels but clearly follows from it, and is super interesting My intuition is that there "should" be some kind of simple, gameable relationships between: . terrain-type and population limit; . population, work done, and income generation; . stability (patrols/policing) vs disruption (weather, monsters/banditry) and productivity. All that would be highly abstracted of course. Let me get my head around the details first... You’re welcome. Have fun! |
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