[PnP] Herbalists and Miners

Fri Feb 23 15:46:47 CET 2007

In a somewhat related not I have been recently working on a missive dealing with population support in the Perilous Lands, again coming about due to the actions of the players in my game.  They intend to carve out and empire in the "pocket", that set of hills under the arch of the Elder mountains, north of the elven capital in the wild forest.

(NOTE: this prompted another map-making project, my largest to date. Core map was created at 10,000x6,000 pixels.  Broken into west and east maps, each PDF weighs in at 11MB or so.  But you can blow it up nicely without much pixilation.  Wout, what sort of capacities can your mail handle?  Can I email them to you one at a time or will your server choke?)

Anyways, In determining population support I have looked at both game and historical resources.  To summarize, it takes 1,000# of foodstuffs in production to support the "average adult" (2.5FP, the average of 3FP human male and 2FP human female) at station 0 for a year, including seed for next year.  This bare minimum is "1SP".  Using the coin type as a guide, the number of copper coins for the station is the number of SP required to support that lifestyle. (i.e. a station 2 merchant requires 10SP of support).

Now, to the tangent. :) 1000# of grain costs 2GC, so internally to a culture 2GC of trade (1 trade point, or 1TP) equals 1SP.  Borrowing from RuneQuest's "x2.5 per change of market",  5GC can bring in 1SP from external sources.  Thus, if you have the cash you can purchase all your food and resources from outside your region for 10GC in order to live at station 1 for the year.

I'm putting together the notes on farming (done) to generate cultural SP and still need to finish up Herding, Hunting/Gathering and Fishing.  From there I need to work up the ways various trades (mining included) that can be used to generate TP (again, at a rate of 5GC = 1TP).  If you can figure out rules for your mining or herbalism that can equate to how much money x miners can generate in a mine of y quality over the year, I can make a module for that.  Same for herbalists.

Open call -- if anyone has notes on this I'm more than happy to look over and see about hammering it into the ruleset, with attributions of course. :}

Oh, side-side note: For my game this involves my player's attempt to help a non-canon Elder race of giants re-establish themselves in the middle world.  Going over my rules it turns out these guys need 6SP each.  Given the rules I had on just farming has started to shape how this society can survive as more than hunter/gatherers.  Even as a farming culture (they are omnivores) they start to hit the limitations of how much cropland you can tend in a day, and don't have the excess margins that a human culture can enjoy.  This is forced me to lead them in an almost socialistic/communistic society structure, which has been interesting in the least.

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-----Original Message-----
From: pnp-bounces at abroere.xs4all.nl [mailto:pnp-bounces at abroere.xs4all.nl] On Behalf Of James McCulloch
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2007 4:40 AM
To: pnp at abroere.xs4all.nl
Subject: [PnP] Herbalists and Miners

Hey all

As skills, my group played with the idea that both herbalists and miners 
could recognize and exploit areas that would potentially produce particular 
types of herbs or minerals.  This became useful and somewhat important while 
traveling, since any particular route might lead past a patch of growth or 
an interesting outcropping, or a campsite might allow a scouting expedition 
to find either a specific plant or mineral, or cast a net to see if any 
interesting plants or minerals happened to be in the area.  I saw the 
general tables for herbs and where they might grow, but it only provides for 
specific growth areas that the DM has to build.  Is anyone else playing with 
random tables for either of these things?  If not, I might still have mine 
laying around...

J.D.

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