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Trade In Fantasy Ch. 4: Modes Of Transport, Pt 2


This entry is part 10 in the series Trade In Fantasy

Rivers provide a natural alternative to roads and overland travel, if the river happens to go where you want it to. That’s more likely than it might initially seem, because rivers provide natural resources and defenses that make them natural locations for settlements, with transportation of cargo a bonus on top of those advantages.

While it fits the general subject matter of travel, this doesn’t really fit the subject of today’s post – but it was too good to leave out, and the relevant images that I did find were not as evocative. So here it resides. Image by Sean Wareing from Pixabay

Table Of Contents: In part one of this chapter:

Chapter 4: Modes Of Transport

4.0 A Word about Routes

    4.0.1 Baseline Model
    4.0.2 Relative Sizes
    4.0.3 Competitors
    4.0.4 Terrain I
    4.0.5 Terrain II
    4.0.6 Multi-paths and Choke Points

      4.0.6.1 Sidebar: Projection Of Military Force

    4.0.7 Mode Of Transport

4.1 Backpack / Litters / Shanks Pony

    4.1.1 Capacity
    4.1.2 Personalities / Roleplay

4.2 Horseback

    4.2.1 Capacity
    4.2.2 Requirements
    4.2.3 Personalities / Roleplay

4.3 Mule Train

    4.3.1 Capacity
    4.3.2 Requirements
    4.3.3 Personalities / Roleplay

4.4 Wagons

    4.4.1 Capacity
    4.4.2 Requirements
    4.4.3 Other Exceptions – Animal Size

      4.4.3.1 Sidebar: Road Trains

    4.4.4 Fodder / Food & Water Needs

      4.4.4.1 People
      4.4.4.2 Horses
      4.4.4.3 Mules
      4.4.4.4 Oxen / Cattle
      4.4.4.5 Elephants
      4.4.4.6 Other

    4.4.5 Personalities / Roleplay

In today’s post:

4.5 River Boats & Barges

    4.5.0 A Splice Of Maritime History

      4.5.0.1 Dugouts & Canoes
      4.5.0.2 Rafts
      4.5.0.3 Boats
      4.5.0.4 Poled Rafts & Barges
      4.5.0.5 Oars
      4.5.0.6 Land-based motive power
      4.5.0.7 Sail
      4.5.0.8 Better Sails
      4.5.0.9 Trading Ships
      4.5.0.10 Warships & Pirates
      4.5.0.11 Beyond the age of sail
      4.5.0.12 Riverboats
      4.5.0.13 Sources

    4.5.1 Riverboat Capacity
    4.5.2 Favorable Winds

      4.5.2.1 The Beafort Wind Scale

    4.5.3 Favorable Currents
    4.5.4 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Oarsmen Requirements
    4.5.5 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Sail Solutions
    4.5.6 Extreme Weather Events
    4.5.7 The Tempest Scale
    4.5.8 Vessel Rating
    4.5.9 Weather Cataclysms

And, in future installments:

4.6 Seagoing Vessels

    4.6.1 Capacity
    4.6.2 Favorable Winds
    4.6.3 Favorable Currents
    4.6.4 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Oarsmen Requirements
    4.6.5 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Sail Solutions
    4.6.6 Extreme Weather Events
    4.6.7 Vessel Rating
    4.6.8 Weather Cataclysms

4.7 Exotic Modes Of Transport

    4.7.1 Flight
    4.7.2 Teleport
    4.7.3 Magic Gates & Portals
    4.7.4 Capacities

.8 Loading & Unloading

In future chapters:
  1. Land Transport
  2. Waterborne Transport
  3. Spoilage
  4. Key Personnel
  5. The Journey
  6. Arrival
  7. Journey’s End
  8. Adventures En Route
4.5 River Boats & Barges

If I were to use the term “River boat”, depending on where you are from, one of two images probably come to mind; Either a paddle-wheel steamer, like this one:

…or, perhaps, one of the canal-going houseboats of Europe, which could house whole families but are these days more synonymous with a mobile retirement lifestyle:

…which are often open-sided these days and used for tourism. But there are other classes of river-going vessel and some are explicitly devoted to trade and cargo-carrying, and those are easily overlooked. Perhaps a little historical context to start…

    4.5.0 A Splice Of Maritime History

    Boats pre-date writing and were actually built by Homo Erectus about 800,000 years ago, or so it is believed. Their simple vessels then enabled them to spread out to other parts of the world.

    The earliest known depiction of a maritime vessel of any kind is on a rock carving in Azerbaijan dating to 10,000 BC and showed a boat carrying about 20 men.

      4.5.0.1 Dugouts & Canoes

      The Pesse Canoe is the oldest known and confirmed vessel. Discovered in the Netherlands, it dates back to 8200-7600 BC. It’s three feet long and made from the hollowed out trunk of a single Pinus Sylverstris tree.

      Image from Drents Museum, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

      In time, people learned how to construct a wooden frame and stretch animal hides (or later, canvas) over it, which were coated in sap or fat to seal any gaps. Better materials for that job soon followed.

      4.5.0.2 Rafts

      The first method of using multiple pieces of timber in the one vessel was almost certainly a raft;

      A simple raft – in this case, with an unexpected passenger. Image by Ronald Plett from Pixabay

      A 7,000 year-old raft made of reeds has been found in Kuwait and is the earliest known example. However, the workmanship displayed is such that this was clearly not the first – it’s just the one that happened to have survived. Some have even suggested that the raft predates the dugout canoe, but what archaeological evidence there is argues otherwise.

      4.5.0.3 Boats

      There were any number of solutions to the problem of keeping the water out of vessels made of cut timbers, none of them completely adequate on their own, but eventually they were combined to create what we would recognize as a true boat.

      Of course, metal tools were needed to create the planks in the first place, so we’re talking after 3000 BC here. This also made possible the construction of masts, and therefore, of sails. So I’ll have to backtrack a little to talk about motivating power.

      This example is relatively simple and shows the construction more clearly than most. Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

      A more sophisticated boat that is – to my eye – slightly reminiscent of the Dragon Longboats of the vikings. Image by Uwe Jelting from Pixabay

      Early boats had a limit of about 400 tons, fully laden. Trips that took just days when winds were favorable become sagas of weeks and months when they weren’t. This had two effects that have persisted for centuries: First, sailors became very superstitious, adopting a ‘take no chances’ approach to the subject; and second, they became acutely interested in meteorology, because winds are an aspect of weather, and there are patterns both daily, periodic, seasonal, and annual – and they spelt the difference between a successful voyage and one where the crew arrived destitute and starving.

      Adding fuel to the first was the spread of disease – even back then, people knew that not being around other people who were sick made it less likely that you would get sick – but on a boat for weeks on end, there was no place to hide. On top of which, there were some maladies to which boatmen seemed especially vulnerable like Rickets and Scurvy. It was not until the causes of these diseases were understood that they ceased being a source of ongoing fear aboard. And if the only defense you have is rooted in superstition, then you had better be superstitious!

      4.5.0.4 Poled Rafts & Barges

      Rafts with some sidewalls created a barge, but they needed some form of locomotion to get them where they were going. In place of paddles (which probably came along not long after the original canoes), a long stick was used to push the floating assemble of vessel and cargo along – a technique still in use today in some parts of the world.

      Image by DEGAN Gabin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

      Barges rarely have their own source of motive power. They are pulled by another vessel, or (if used as a ferry) by ropes or chains attached to the shore, or by land-based motive power (see below). It is only in the industrial age when power sources improved massively that this has ceased to be the universal case – and even now, the old definition still holds true in most locations.

      What has changed is that the barges used to be towed by tug boats and are now more frequently pushed by “pusher boats” (not a terribly imaginative name).

      However, some river barges did have sails, especially when ship’s sails were not as well developed. Most river merchant barges in England in the 18th century had a mast, for example. They could carry 20-40 tons of cargo – an important reference value for us, going forward.

      4.5.0.5 Oars

      Oars meant that the work of moving the vessel could be spread amongst many, enabling greater speed and more reliable performance. This led, in time, from the humble rowboat to the Syracusia, the floating palace of Hieron, King of Syracuse, designed by Archimedes and alleged to have been the largest transport ship in history in ancient times. These days we have only estimates as to its dimensions, but it had a garden, a palace, and a temple, all on the main deck. It housed 200 soldiers as well as the court and the slaves to make it go, and everything those imply. The Syracusia could carry a cargo of some 1600 to 1800 tons and a capacity of 1,942 passengers, according to one Historian. She was reportedly too big for any port in Sicily, and thus only sailed once from Syracuse in Sicily to Alexandria in the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, whereupon she was given as a present to Ptolemy III Euergetes.

      This image is an exaggerated depiction of the vessel, a hand-colored copperplate engraving from Robert von Spalart’s “Historical Picture of the Costumes of the Principal People of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages,” Metz, 1810. Copyright on this image has expired, so it is in the public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

      If you look closely, the author has added masts and furled sails to his depiction of the Syracusia, but those were actually not thought to exist on the real vessel.

      4.5.0.6 Land-based motive power

      Where the terrain was amenable, it was possible to have one or more teams of horses pulling a barge along the river. Coordination of multiple teams was always a problem with this approach. The advantage was that the river was carrying the cargo, so it actually took relatively little motive power to get the vessel moving, regardless of the load it happened to carry.

      Some places and cultures even went so far as to make roads along the river bank (carefully removing any trees between the two) in order to facilitate this mode of transport.

      4.5.0.7 Sail

      Sails, when they appeared, were something of a game-changer. Early sails could only go with the wind, at best quartering it; if the wind wasn’t blowing in anything approximating the right direction, the sails had to be furled and the oars broken out.

      There is ample evidence to show that the Ancient Egyptians had sailing boats used for river travel – there are relief carvings showing the transport of obelisks for Temple Entrances along the Nile. These had (and needed) oars as well as a single square sail, and were about 100m long (328 feet).

      After about 500 years of using them for River travel, Egyptian boats were good enough to venture out into the Mediterranean and Red Seas.

      No maritime history is complete without at least mentioning the Phoenicians. From 1550 to about 300 BC, Phoenicians from the Canaan civilization (yes, the one referenced in the “Settlers Of” board-games) were making boats known as Galleys. The primary motive power was oars; most had multiple sails for gaining added speed, arranged in rows. They were used for trade, warfare, exploration, and piracy, and remained in use until the 19th century, though they were at their height in 16th-18th centuries.

      A Monoreme has one group of rowers; a Bireme, two; and triremes have three banks of oarsmen. Most galleys are Biremes, though the Greeks and Romans had a few triremes.

      In 1571, during the Lepanto war, hundreds of rowing ships and about 400 galleys were used, marking it as the largest naval war recorded in history.

      Almost 600 years earlier, from 1000 AD, Vikings used Long Boats for raiding, trade, war, and migration. These were rowed by 60-70 men and also carried a large Mainsail for when the winds were favorable. This made them quicker and larger but narrower than the Galleons and other ships of the time. It made them especially suitable for river travel as they did not have a huge draft.

      A lovely rendering of a Junk in a modern harbor. Image by Victoria from Pixabay

      And, about 100 years later, the Chinese started to build boats that we would now recognize as Junks, as warships and cargo vessels. They were much advanced over the European ships that – like these Junks – added rudders and watertight compartments to their designs, even though the Chinese were hundreds of years earlier in adding these innovations. The largest of these Junks measured 150m in length (nearly 500 feet) and had 9 masts.

      4.5.0.8 Better Sails

      People can be extremely clever, and eventually a way was found to configure sails so that vessels could sail directly into the wind.

      That meant no more need for oars, and smaller crews, and more space for cargo. Thus began the Age Of Sail.

      This example seems to be using its extra capacity to carry more people, though – and that was a legitimate purpose. Whole armies could travel under sail – all you needed was enough vessels.

      4.5.0.9 Trading Ships

      Ships could grow bigger, faster, and stronger, and trading ships took to the open seas. More on that sort of thing in the next post of the series!

      The largest vessels of the age of sail (16th-18th centuries) were, perhaps, the Galleons of Spain and Portugal. It’s when you start reading up on them that a term crops up that I have avoided using thus far: displacement. In essence, this is the weight of the vessel and cargo, which equals the amount of water that has to be pushed out of the way for the vessel to float; every vessel has a maximum displacement, and there is usually a lower figure that constitutes a maximum safe displacement.

      Load enough cargo onto a vessel and the sides will sink so much that water starts coming in over the sides. At that point, the vessel starts sinking. Adding to that are waves, which are generally fairly gentle on rivers, moderate on lakes (even in the stormiest of seas), but can be truly epic out at sea. And making this problem worse is the fact that most ships that don’t have flat bottoms tend to sail at an inclined angle because of the wind, so the water is a lot closer on one side than the other – and so are the waves. The amount of sail you raise increases both your speed and this angle, relative to the force of the wind – so it’s not a simple thing at all.

      4.5.0.10 Warships & Pirates

      Inevitably – and possibly even before trading vessels – boats were used for battle. These days, it’s considered normal for there to be specialized designs for our warships, but in the age of sail, vessels were far more multi-function. Ships routinely carried cannon and men; the major difference between a warship and a trading vessel was how many of these were traded away for cargo capacity.

      Once you have armed ships, and other vessels carrying valuable cargoes, the rise of piracy seems all but inevitable. These days, that adds to the romance of the era, but in the day, piracy was a scourge – especially once politics entered the picture.

      4.5.0.11 Beyond the age of sail

      We’re now entering waters that are less relevant to the subject at hand, so I’ll make this fairly brief. Steam power and then diesel power signaled the end of the age of sail, liberating vessels from dependence on the wind. Steel hulls made vessels stronger, and the combination plus better designs made them faster. Modern cargo ships can be awesome sights to behold and their capacities are stupendous. The current designs sacrifice gains is speed from the technological improvements of the modern age for size and capacity. Of course, this only makes for a bigger problem when something goes wrong – remember the ship stuck in the Suez Canal, or the problems caused by the Exxon Valdez?

      4.5.0.12 Riverboats

      With the historical context sorted, it becomes clear that there are three primary factors that determine how much a vessel can carry, and how fast it can travel when at its maximum safe loading:

           1. Motive power & sophistication
           2. Hull material and construction technique
           3. Size and shape

      Each advance in one of these areas increases the capacity, and/or speed, of the vessel. Quite often, an advance pushes the boundaries to the point where one of the other areas becomes the limiting factor.

      Riverboats are usually less sturdy than ships built for the open seas, as they don not have to withstand the high winds or large waves. There is also a perception that they tend to be slower, but this is only true when sea-going vessels are operating at their best possible speed, or in the modern era, where capacity is the number one design criterion.

      Critically, the design of a riverboat is restricted by the width and depth of the river they are designed to travel, as well as by the height above the water of any bridges that span the river. Mississippi Paddle-wheelers could operate in water less than 2 meters deep (6.56 feet).

      A riverboat can be considered a narrow barge for the purposes of defining cargo capacity. If a barge can carry 20-40 tons and a riverboat is the same length but only 1/5th the width, a rough rule of thumb would be that the riverboat could carry 4-8 tons of cargo.

      The reality is not so encouraging because riverboats don’t have a square shape. They are more going to approximate one of the shapes below:

      The diagram above looks very complicated, but it isn’t really. Let’s take them one silhouette at a time.

      The top one has a distance from bow to widest point of the vessel of a and a length down the middle to a line connecting both widest points of b. Half the width is obviously e. It equates the size of the craft with an area formed by four triangles, a-b-e. This is exactly 1/2 of the area of a rectangle 2e-2b, by definition – and that rectangle is what we used earlier to get an estimate of 4-8 tons of cargo, earlier

      The reality is overlaid and shaded – the hull curves outside the a line. And the stern is closer to the mid-line than the simple method given above, by a distance, d. I have seen suggestions that the two stern triangles should be (b- 1/2 d) by e as a means of correcting the estimate. I’m not having it – I contend that the extra area at the stern closely balances the lost area at the sides, close enough for gaming purposes, anyway.

      The second diagram shows an even more complicated approach. It only takes one glance to say that the shape more accurately reflects that of a real boat.

      It divides the length of the boat into three pieces – b, c, and f. Instead of measuring to the broadest point, it measures to a point some undetermined distance forwards of that, at which point, the boat has a width of 2g. It then extends two lines parallel to the mid-line of the boat from those points until they again intersect with the hull, giving the width of g; this defines the length of c. While I’ve shown it to be roughly the same as b, the reality is that it could be more, or it could be less. Anyway, this defines a square, c-by-2g. On each side there are a couple of triangles (h=e-g)-by-(1/2 c), 4 of them in total, two each side of the boat. And then we are left with the stern – you could use the total length and subtract b and c to get f, or you could pretend that f is b again as I did in the first diagram. The problem is that the compensatory mechanism isn’t there any more. So now we really do need to shorten the length by some fraction of d – but what fraction? There are too many variables. This model looks more accurate, but it actually has a boat-load more fudge factors built into it. As a means of estimating the cargo capacity, it is worthless.

      I should also fess up to having made a deliberate error in the diagrams – the mid-point of the port side (the bottom side as you view these diagrams) is just a little closer to the bow than the one on the other side. As a result, this boat would have a tendency to turn – my instinct says to the right, but I’m not sure of that. This sort of manufacturing defect is all too common when you’re talking about manual labor and craftsmen without modern conveniences.

      4.5.0.13 Sources

      I cherry-picked a lot of different sources in compiling the above, extremely abbreviated though it is.

           ▪ Google
                □ especially extracts from When Were Boats Invented | Marine Insight.com, and
                □ the entry for “Ship” | Encyclopedia Brittanica

           ▪ The Complete History Of Boats | Newswires

           ▪ Rioverboats | Wikipedia

           ▪ Early History | Everything About Boats.org*

           ▪ The History Of The Barge and Why It’s Still A Crucial Part Of The Supply Chain | OpenTug

           ▪ The History Of Barges | Archway Marine Lighting

           ▪ Barge | Wikipedia

           ▪ An Insider’s Guide to the History of Barges | European Waterways

           ▪ Asian maritime & trade chronology to 1700 CE | Maritime Asia

           ▪ Publisher’s Summary, A Maritime History of East Asia ed. by Masashi Haneda and Mihoko Oka | Kyoto University Press

           ▪ Maritime History Of Ancient China | China Underground, and, finally,

           ▪ Naval History Of China | Wikipedia

      * NB: one of the security certificates at Everything About Boats.org expired 40-odd days ago, so my Antivirus and browser both chucked a fit over visiting this web-page. Hopefully the issue gets resolved soon.

    4.5.1 Riverboat Capacity

    If you have defined a trade unit as the cumulative carrying capacity of X people of a specific average strength – which we have – then it’s easy to get a total weight for one. Divide the capacity of the vessel – determined above to be 2-4 tons – by this to get an exact number of trade units.

    But we don’t care about exact numbers very much – we want something sloppy and simple.

    What’s more, if river transport is the key to the operation set up by the PCs (or by an NPC), then that approach is putting the cart before the horse – it’s very much simpler to define the boat as having a particular cargo capacity in Trade Units and worry about the manpower situation and loading / unloading later on.

    Abstracting vessels in this way makes everything a lot simpler.

    My suggested values:

      Rafts: Sm 0.25, Me 0.333, Lg 0.5 TU.
      Canoes: Sm 0.125, Me 0.25, Lg 0.333 TU.
      Small Boats: VSm 0.333, Typ 0.5, Lg 0.75 TU.
      Medium Boats: VSm 0.5, Typ 0.75-1.25, Lg 1.25-2 TU
      Large Boats: VSm 0.75-1, Typ 1-1.75, Lg 1.75-2.5 TU
      Barges: Sm 2, Me 4, Lg 6-8, VLg 8-12 TU

    You can also multiply those numbers by any of the following factors to get a smaller unit of measurement if that’s more convenient: 3, 4, 6, 10, 12, 20, or 24.

    Those last couple are pretty extreme. I think 6 or 12 would be the most useful.

    Factor of 6:

      Rafts: Sm 1.5, Me 2, Lg 3 TU.
      Canoes: Sm 0.75, Me 1.5, Lg 2 TU.
      Small Boats: VSm 2, Typ 3, Lg 4.5 TU.
      Medium Boats: VSm 3, Typ 4.5-7.5, Lg 7.5-12 TU
      Large Boats: VSm 4.5-6, Typ 6-10.5, Lg 10.5-15 TU
      Barges: Sm 12, Me 24, Lg 36-42, VLg 42-72 TU

    Factor of 12:

      Rafts: Sm 3, Me 4, Lg 6 TU.
      Canoes: Sm 1.5, Me 3, Lg 4 TU.
      Small Boats: VSm 4, Typ 6, Lg 9 TU.
      Medium Boats: VSm 6, Typ 9-15, Lg 15-24 TU
      Large Boats: VSm 9-12, Typ 12-21, Lg 21-30 TU
      Barges: Sm 24, Me 48, Lg 72-84, VLg 84-144 TU

    Remember: You control the design and parameters of the vessel. You can define its capacity as whatever is convenient to you, and the definition of a Trade Unit that you are going to use derives from that. Try to stick to simple fractions, though!

    Complicating everything is the fact that our measurements are in tons (presumably short tons) while everything else in this work is measured in kg, except when it’s in lb..

    1 short ton = 2000 lb = 907.2 kg.

    So, 2-4 tons = 1814.4 – 3624.8 kg.

    If the higher number is 24 trade units (factor of 12, Medium Boat, upper end of the scale), each TU would weigh 151.03333333 kg – close enough that I would call it 150 kg.

    Or, using lb, it’s 8000 lb total = 24 TU, then 1 TU = 333.333 lb. Which is highly inconvenient – I would round it to 325 lb.

    Double to get lift equivalent, look up the highest capacity in the maximum encumbrance bracket on the STR table, and this defines a TU as 1 character of STR 23.5. Or 2 of STR 18.5. or 3 of STR 15.5. Or 4 of STR 13.5. Or 5 of STR 12, which is by far the most reasonable average STR that’s been mentioned, assuming that loading and unloading freight is a job that attracts somewhat stronger-than-average types.

    You can see how everything starts to fall into place very quickly – in the space of a couple of paragraphs, we’ve defined a large vessel, a Cargo Unit / Trade Unit (by weight), and a Labor Unit (5 men of STR 12).

    4.5.2 Favorable Winds

    How fast can a riverboat powered by wind, go? Well, ignoring currents for the moment, and looking only at how good favorable winds are, let’s stick a top value of 30 knots (empty) – simply because that’s the speed of a strong wind.

      1 knot is 1.15 mph

    (actually, it’s slightly more, but that’s close enough).

    So 30 knots is 34.5 mph, or 55.56 kph.

    If the wind isn’t strong enough, the vessel goes nowhere. The wind needed to get a vessel underway and sustain it despite friction / resistance from the ocean is the area of sail divided by the mass of the vessel, including cargo.

    Too complicated!!

    Let’s instead define a standard size of sail that’s equivalent to the size of the boat, which is defined as a certain number of trade units.

      Maximum Speed at full sail = 34.5 mph (or one of the other units as is convenient) × Weight of boat / (Weight of boat + Cargo).

    So, we need to know how much a boat weighs. Or whatever sort of vessel we’re using.

    This sort of information is incredibly hard to track down, I know from past experience. So let’s cheat and simply assign some numbers.

    A large riverboat weighs as much as two large pick-up trucks. There, done. Call it about 5 tons, or 10,000 pounds.

    So, our formula now becomes:

      Maximum Speed at full sail = Base Speed × 10,000 / (10,000 + Cargo).

    Still not the most useful of formulas. Let’s rearrange it a little to see if that helps:

      Maximum Speed at full sail × (10,000 + cargo in lb) = 34.5 mph (or one of the other units as is convenient) × 10,000 = 345,000.

    But wait, it gets even more convenient: Simply divide both the 10,000 and 345,000 by the weight assigned to one Trade Unit (650 lb in the example), and round appropriately to get a bespoke formula specific to your choices:

      Maximum Speed at full sail × (15.25 + cargo in TU) = 530.

    This is starting to get somewhere. Now, that’s at a full 24 “Sails” – so multiplying the speed by the actual amount of sail available and dividing by 24 takes another factor into account. That “530” is an idealized situation, after all. The reality might be that this vessel can only provide 20 sails out of an ideal 24.

      Maximum Speed at full sail × (15.25 + cargo in TU) = 530 × Sails / 24.

    530 × 20 / 24 = 441.67. Less convenient than I would have hoped, but you can’t have everything.

    Next, let’s consider how “perfectly ideal” the wind direction is. Consider a compass, as shown to the right:

    As you can see, it’s a simple trigonometry calculation to derive the effective wind speed from the actual wind speed and direction.

    Too Complicated!

    So let’s simplify: we know that any wind direction other than perfect is going to reduce the effective wind speed to something less than the actual wind speed, yes? So let’s define Effective wind speed as a fraction – in tenths, maybe – of Ideal wind speed.

    100% (perfect) drops off to 90%, then 80%, 70%, 60% and so on, all the way down past 10% to 0% at 90° to perfect wind direction.

    All we have to do is incorporate that into our personalized formula:

      Maximum Speed at full sail × (15.25 + cargo in TU) = 5.3 × %Wind × Sails / 24.

    What’s good about this formula is that it lets you trade off one factor for another. You can see how much faster the vessel will be if you drop 50% of the cargo – or add an extra 50% onto the top.

    Or you can set a desired speed, make a reasonable assumption about the wind, and determine how much cargo you can carry.

    Which brings in another factor to consider (this one’s helpful): Statistics. We don’t want to have to waste time as GMs rolling for weather when the PCs aren’t even going to be there to experience it. Instead, define climate as typical averages, and assume that no matter what happens, over time, the average experience will trend toward that typical average.

    The typical average for summer is 70% favorable winds, and only a 10% chance of zero favorability? The average wind speed is 20 knots? We want to carry 5 TUs of cargo? Our vessel only carries 18 sails out of a possible 24? What is our average speed?

    Let’s plug those numbers into our formula:

      Average Speed at full sail × (15.25 + 5) = 5.3 × 70 × 18 / 24
      = S × (20.25) = 278.25
      S = 13.74 mph. In an 8-hour day, that’s about 110 miles.

    What about that 10% chance? That simply means that there’s a 90% chance of some progress, with the minimum defined as being 10% of whatever speed we can usually expect.

      10% of an 8-hour day is 48 minutes. On a typical day, we’ll make average speed for 7 hrs 12 minutes. At worst, we might have to slowly limp along and wait for the wind to change for 2×48 minutes = 1 hr 36 minutes. But if our normal speed is 13.74 @ 70%, then our speed at 10% is 1.96 mph – so even in this worst case, we will make 3.1 miles progress in that 1 hr 36 minutes, and about 88 miles in the rest of the day – so even in the worst case, we get 91 miles traveled.

      Things aren’t quite as rosy if we look at a bigger picture. 10% of a 3-month season is about 12.2 days. So, conceivably, we might experience those worst-case conditions for up to 12.2 days.

      The average is going to be less – a lot less. There are 6 × 6 × 6 possible results on a 3d6 roll; define each season as that many rolls of 3d6. The results will range from 3 to 18, a range of 16. The bottom 10% is 1.6 – so we want only 3-4.6. Everything else is fine and covered by the 70% average.

      It’s really hard to get a 4.6 on dice that only roll integers. But, using a 3d6 graph, like the one below, we can get estimate it.

      The above shows a quick graph showing “at least” results for 3d6. I’ve drawn a red bar at more-or-less where 4.6 is and noted where it crossed the curve. A Horizontal line from that point shows the % chance, or in this case, of time that the average event duration is going to be. Eight of those adds up to about 25%, so 25/8 = 3.125. But that’s an average – while there might be an event up to twice this long, there would need to be multiple much shorter events to get the average back down.

      If there are 9 other events:

      9 × X + 6.25 = 10 × 3.125 = 31.25
      X = (31.25 – 6.25) / 9 = 25 / 9 = 2.78 days.

    If there are 19 other events:

      19 × X + 6.25 = 20 × 3.125 = 62.5
      X = (62.5 – 6.25) / 19 = 56.25 / 19 = 2.96 days.

    If there are 121 other events, i.e. the double-length happens once a season, but at least part of every day in that season is worst possible conditions:

      121 × X + 6.25 = 122 × 3.125 = 381.25
      X = (381.25 – 6.25) / 121 = 375 / 121 = 3.1 days.

    Here’s the trend: the smaller the incidence of double-length periods, the closer to the 3.125 days the rest of the time has to be to get the average to work out. The deviation from that average just gets smaller and smaller.

    So, if your market is 100 miles away, once a season it might take you a week; most of the time, it will take 1-4 days. And, with the 10% figure still in mind, 9 times out of 10 it will be the one-day number.

      The practical upshot: Use the 1-day time with a 10% chance of it taking longer. Use 3d6-3 to determine how much longer, dividing the result by 4 to get the number of additional days.

    Of course, if your chance of worst-case results is 1 in 122, or 1 in 365, or 1 in 3650 – or 1 in 5 – you will get different answers. This shows how I derived that simple statement, to be used only when it matters, so that you can make your own settings and determine the results.

      4.5.2.1 The Beafort Wind Scale

      I was going to link to the US National Weather Service’s page on the subject, but given recent events there, I don’t think I can rely on it. Nor was the Australian equivalent much more helpful. So, instead, here’s a link to the Royal Meteorological Society‘s page on the subject of Wind Scale.

      In a nutshell:

           0 Calm = <1 km/h = <1 mph = <1 knots.
           Probable wave ht = 0 even at sea.

           1 Light Air = 1-5 km/h = 1-3 mph = 1-3 knots;
           Probable wave ht = 0.1 m at sea.

           2 Light Breeze = 6-11 km/h = 4-7 mph = 4-6 knots;
           Probable wave ht 0.2 m, max 0.3m.

           3 Gentle Breeze = 12-19 km/h = 8-12 mph = 7-10 knots;
           Wave ht 0.6m, max 1.0m.

           4 Moderate Breeze = 20-28 km/h = 13-18 mph = 11-16 knots;
           Wave ht 1 m, max 1.5 m.

           5 Fresh Breeze = 29-38 km/h = 19-24 mph = 17-21 knots;
           Wave ht 2m to 2.5 m. Crested wavelets on inland waters.

           6 Strong Breeze = 38-49 km/h = 25-31 mph = 22-27 knots;
           Wave Ht 3m to 4m. Incidence of large waves increasing.

           7 Near Gale = 50-61 km/h = 32-38 mph = 28-33 knots;
           Wave ht 4m to 5.5m. Foam blown in streaks across the sea.
           Vessels should seek shelter.

           8 Gale = 62-74 km/h = 39-46 mph = 34-40 knots;
           Wave ht 5.5m to 7.5m. Wave crests begin to break apart into Spindrifts.
            Be prepared to cut sails loose if they cannot be lowered quickly enough.

           9 Strong Gale = 75-88 km/h = 47-54 mph = 41-47 knots.
           Wave ht 7m to 10m. Wave crests topple over, spray affects visibility.
           Risk of masts being torn free if ship is under sail.
           Do not attempt to quarter or sail against the wind.

           10 Storm = 89-102 km/h = 55-63 mph = 48-55 knots.
           Wave ht 9m to 12.5m. Sea surface is largely white.
           Uproots trees, may blow down masts & rigging even if sails are furled.
           Structural damage is likely and extensive.
           Seldom experienced inland.

           11 Violent Storm = 103-117 km/h = 64-72 mph = 56-63 knots.
           Wave ht 11.5m to 16m. Rarely experienced even at sea.
           Accompanied by widespread damage.
           Medium-sized ships become completely lost to view behind waves.
           Seas are covered in white foam and visibility is seriously impaired.
           Masts and rigging almost certain to be lost.
           Decks likely to buckle. Keels may break. Ships may be torn apart.

           12 Hurricane = 118+ km/h = 73+ mph = 64+ knots.
           Wave hts 14m+. May generate tsunami-like waves.
           Virtually zero visibility, there’s too much water in the air.
           Almost everyone knows what Hurricanes are capable of.

      Tornadoes: The enhanced Fujita Scale lists the following:
           65-85 mph = EF0 (light damage)
           86-110 mph = EF1 (moderate damage)
           111-135 mph = EF2 (considerable damage)
           136-165 mph = EF3 (severe damage)
           166-200 mph = EF 4 (devastating damage)
           >200 mph = EF5 (incredible damage)

      It’s worth comparing those speeds with the Beafort Scale for wind speeds – EF0 essentially starts part-way through B11.

      This Wikipedia Page also describes the sort of damage that accompanies each level on the EF scale. The information has limited relevance to vessels, however, given that buildings are essentially attached as solidly to the ground as possible, and therefore are liable to be torn apart; that’s not true of a boat, which is likely to be lifted into the air (perhaps to some considerable height). Note that the damage to “large vehicles” described assumes vehicles constructed of steel; for wooden vessels, such damage would occur one category sooner.

    4.5.3 Favorable Currents

    Wind isn’t the only thing that moves boats – there are also currents in the water. These are typically a fairly languid pace, because unless they are specifically designed for it (and not for carrying cargo), boats and barges can’t cope with raging river currents.

    The average speed of a river current, Google informs me, is 3-4 mph (5-6 kph). The actual value depends on the river’s size, gradient, water volume, and conditions. In a flood situation, a fast-running river can achieve speeds of 15 mph.

    The fastest water flow in a river is typically in the middle of the channel and around the outside of bends.

    Unless you’re talking about some sort of river ferry, the situation is simple: the current is either for or against you, because you want to head either upstream or down. So it either adds to the effective windspeed (going downstream) or subtracts from it (going upstream).

    In comparison to the wind speed, it’s a relatively minor variable, but something to be aware of, nevertheless.

    One important thing to remember is that what helps you coming, hinders you going – if currents were all the same speed, all the time, it would be, overall, a non-factor across a round trip.

    But that’s not the case. Tides raise water levels, and that changes river size and (effectively) deepens channels, and those factors make currents run faster if the tide is going out and slower when it is coming in. Get your timing right, and the river gives you a little added boost to your efficiency; get it wrong, and it will fight you.

    As a very rough rule of thumb, tides occur 1 day + 50 minutes apart. Over a 7-day period, that 50-minute ‘drift’ totals almost 6 hours; over a 30-day period, it’s 25 hours. Over a year, about 12.674 days – or 12 days, 16 hours, and some minutes. But there are variations according to time of year and local geography and many other factors. In fact, calculating tides used to be so difficult that a calculating machine was developed exclusively for the purpose. You can get a lot more information on the subject at this Wikipedia Page..

    4.5.4 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Oarsmen Requirements

    The one thing you can be sure of about the weather is that there will be times when it seems dead-set against you.

    When that happens, you have two choices: drop anchors and (effectively) moor yourself to the bottom, or fight back – with oars.

    The right place to start is obviously by thinking about the use of oars in a completely becalmed situation, and then to extend that to cover situations where one or both of these natural forces is opposing you.

    So I’m going to do it the other way around, because I can.

    Whatever speed the oarsmen can generate under ideal conditions has to be enough to counter the effective wind speed (allowing for the current) that is trying to push you in some other direction.

    Obviously, if the sails are up, that gets a lot harder – multiply the wind speed by the square root of the Sail Number +1 before applying the effects of the current.

      If you have 15 “sails” up, that’s 4 × the wind speed for the purposes of determining rowing speed.

    Clearly, if the effective wind speed is more than your oarsmen can generate, you’ll go backwards. This is so unnatural in any sort of marine vessel that helmsmen have been known to turn their tillers and rudders the wrong way – go hunting for footage of someone trying unsuccessfully to reverse with a trailer and you’ll get some idea of how confused they can get. You can literally tell someone to turn left and they will turn right. Either comedy or disaster soon follows.

    The problem with currents is that they flow whether the sails are up or not. On a river, that’s not too bad, because they are (generally) predictable to at least some extent; at sea it can be disastrous.

      So, to get the rowing speed of the vessel, total it’s weight and that of any cargo on board, and divide by the total carrying capacity of the oarsmen, then multiply by 84%, and multiply all that by the typical rowing speed over distance of 14 km/h.

    If the oar design is more primitive than the best modern oars, reduce that 84%. Even the most primitive oars can manage 25-30% efficiency, though. For simplicity, I would use 24%, because that gives a nice, round 60% loss of efficiency – so all I have to do is estimate where on that 60% scale the current state of the art is.

    Another factor that has to be taken into account is vessel size, because that impacts oar size and therefore the difficulty of manhandling the oar. Large vessels may have three or four people manning each oar, they are so long and heavy. If you have only 3 people when you should have 4, that’s going to reduce your efficiency to 75% of what it otherwise would be.

      Let’s take the vessel we described earlier – 15.25 Trade Units, plus 5 TUs in cargo, for a total of 20.25, with one TU being defined as 650 lb.

      If the average STR of the oarsmen is 12, that’s a lift value each of 130 lb, or a carry capacity of 65lb. So 10 oarsmen is enough to get 1 TU up to full speed. Which means we need 10 × 20.25 = 202.5 oarsmen.

      We have only 60 oarsmen, let’s say. That’s 60 / 202.5 × 84% (at best) × 14 = 3.484 km/h = 2.165 mph = 1.88 knots.

      With the sails furled, any current faster than this can’t be overcome. If the current is assisting, on the other hand, it adds to this speed, and the oarsmen are as much assisting in steering the vessel as they are propelling it.

      And that’s with the full 84% efficiency (reduced for the shortage of crew). If it was only 64%, the speeds would be 60 / 202.5 × 64% × 14 = 2.655 km/h = 1.65 mph = 1.4336 knots.

      The long and the short of it is that 60 oarsmen aren’t really enough for a vessel of this size.

    4.5.5 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Sail Solutions

    The invention of the lateen or latin-rig sail – a triangular sail mounted at an angle and in a fore-and-after direction – permits a vessel to tack or zig-zag around an overall direction upwind.

    In practice, the closest you can sail toward the wind source is 45 degrees.

    This creates the zig-zag with 90 degree turns (approximately), each of which requires the lateen to be reset.

    The technicalities of how the Lateen achieves this motion aren’t all that important. What matters is this: if you don’t have a lateen sail, you aren’t sailing closer then broad-side to the wind; your vessel simply isn’t configured to do it.

    Obviously, if you have such a sail, things become possible that weren’t before.

    The most efficient lateen is effectively only 2 or 3 sails worth; most are only 1 “sail”. So speed is obviously going to be compromised.

      Let’s look at the example from earlier – 20 sails out of 24 possible, 15.25 TU in vessel weight and 5 TU in cargo. Let’s say that the remaining “4 sails” are dedicated Lateen sails – so, when the wind is in slightly the wrong direction (up to 45 degrees from perfect), they can make for at least some of the losses. 4/24 or 1/6th of the total, in fact.

      But, when there’s nothing else for it, let’s drop those mainsails and see how these 4 Lateen sails manage.

      Average Speed at full sail × (15.25 + 5) = 5.3 × 70 × 4 / 24
      = S × (20.25) = 61.83
      S = 3.0535 mph.

      To that, let’s add 1.65 mph for 60 oarsmen, or a total of 4.7 mph. This is at a 45-degree angle to the direction we want to travel, so we need to multiply by sin (45) to get the actual amount of travel in the direction we really want to go – this is × 0.7071. So, all told, progress without a current is 3.32337 mph.

      If the current is in our favor (3-4 mph) then that’s 3.5 × 0.7071 = another 2.47485 to our speed at the 45-degree headings, for a total of 7.175 mph – which translates to 5.07 mph in our desired direction of travel despite the winds.

      If the current is not in our favor, then that 2.47485 difference gets taken off our speed, slowing it to 2.22515 mph in a straight line – or 1.57 mph in the direction we want to travel.

    Rivers seldom run in a straight line. We turn one way and the wind becomes our enemy, we turn the other and we’re best buddies.

    Here’s a realistic river that I threw together. Our vessel starts off getting 94% of the benefit of its mainsails, which rises briefly to 100% as we curve to the left before dropping back to 94%. As we start to curve to the right, it again goes up to 100% before dropping back, first again to 94%, and then to just 64%. As the river continues to curve to the right in the loop, the mainsails continue to drop in efficiency until, just past the half-way mark, they drop to 0%. I’ve changed the river from white to yellow at that point.

    Furl the mainsails and raise the Lateen; unship the oars, and pay close attention to the currents. While the river is yellow, we can continue directly down it’s course, but it isn’t long before we exceed the 135° mark and the river goes from orange to red. From that point until we enter the bend left, we’re fighting the wind.

    Once into that bend, we can again sail directly using the Lateen, until finally, we can raise our Mainsails once again.

    The overall measure of the wind angle is shown as 79°R – so, effectively, our Mainsails work at an average of 19% or not at all.

    Do we have to subject every journey to this kind of detailed analysis? Of course not. What matters is the vector sum – so long as it’s within 135° of the wind direction, we’re traveling in the right direction. For 1/3 of that, we’re using the lateen and sailing direct – slower, but still progress.

    So, what’s the shortcut? Draw a line between start point and end point. Measure the greatest distance in the direction of the wind to that line. 2/3 of that we’re zigzagging, which increases the length 1 / 0.7071 = about 40%. The rest of it, we’re at our slower speed. Combine those and you get 1.4 × 2/3 + 1/3 = 126% of the distance at lateen speed plus oars plus current. The rest of it, we’re under mainsail – for roughly the same distance. So, if our mainsail speed is X and our Lateen speed is Y, we get a combined speed of 1/2 X + (1/2 Y / 1.26). If you know the ratios of sail to lateen – 20/24 and 4/24 in relative terms in our example – then we have 20 / 2 + (1/2 × 4 / 1.26) out of 24 = 10 + 0.79 = 10.79 out of 24.

    Add to that the current, always in our favor, and the oars contribution × 1/2 / 1.26, and we get our net speed. And it will work out to 19% of our mainsail speed.

    The overall direction of travel relative to the wind and the actual length of the journey are all we actually need.

    But we don’t even need that – because we have already determined that 70% of the trip will have favorable winds. It’s right there at the start of the definition of the journey. So 30% of it is at lateen speeds plus oars and current, and 70% is at mainsail plus current.

    And if that doesn’t match up to what you have on the map, you have to remember that geographic features get distorted by speed. In effect, slower sections are larger and longer than fast sections by the ratio of the two – 20/4 = x5 in the case of our example. So the upwind slog is effectively 5 × the size shown in length.

    4.5.6 Extreme Weather Events

    If the weather seems out to get you when it’s just fighting you, what do you call it when it goes to war with you? This makes simply fighting the wind seem like playing with an aggressive kitten in comparison.

    I’ve already discussed the Beafort and Fajita scales and what the wind can do. Some areas are more prone to this sort of event than others, as Florida residents know all too well. But it’s not just the equatorial regions, as the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald makes clear (the Gordon Lightfoot song doesn’t get everything right but it’s close enough to make the point).

    Extreme weather events can happen anywhere, any time – they are just more predictably likely at some places and times.

    So, what are the odds?

    A once-in-five years event will happen once in 1825 times. Such an event with no warning is probable twice as rare – once in 3650 times.

    That’s 0.0274%. Or, to phrase it more usefully – you need to make a daily d% check and get an 01 to have a 2.74% chance of it happening.

    Maybe there’s 5 such events, all different. Then you would expect one of the five to happen, on average, every year. But some (bad) years, there will be two of them, and some years, there will be none.

    And some years, the event will be (comparatively) mild, while others, it will be relatively severe.

    Sounds like we’re in need of a statistical approach.

    So a 1 in 5-years event means that you expect one every 5 years, i.e. that there’s a 20% chance each year. If there is a 1 in 4 chance of greater severity and a 1/4 chance of an extremely mild version of the event, that means that there’s a 5% of a weak event, a 10% chance of a typical event, and a 5% chance of a severe event, each year. Call these outcomes A-, A, and A+ and a 0 for no event.

    If there’s a second 1-in-5 event that can occur completely independently of the first one (and those are comparatively rare), then no matter what the outcome of the A check, we get the same chances of a B event.

    5%: A-.
         ▪ 5% × 5% = 0.25% A- and B- in the one year.
         ▪ 5% × 10% = 0.5% A- and B in the one year.
         ▪ 5% × 5% = 0.25% A- and B+ in the one year.
         ▪ 5% – 0.25% -0.25% -0.5% = 4%: A-, no B.
    10%: A
         ▪ 10% × 5% = 0.5% A and B- in the one year.
         ▪ 10% × 10% = 1% A and B in the one year.
         ▪ 10% × 5% = 0.5% A and B+ in the one year.
         ▪ 10% – 0.5% -0.5% – 1% = 8%: A, no B.
    5%: A+.
         ▪ 5% × 5% = 0.25% A+ and B- in the one year.
         ▪ 5% × 10% = 0.5% A+ and B in the one year.
         ▪ 5% × 5% = 0.25% A+ and B+ in the one year.
         565% – 0.25% -0.25% -0.5% = 4%: A+, no B.
    80%: No A.
         ▪ 80% × 5% = 4%: B-.
         ▪ 80% × 10% = 8%: B
         ▪ 80% × 5% = 4% B+.
         ▪ 80% -4% -4% -8% = 64% neither A nor B.

    But if I generate 5 random d400 numbers, and divide by 4, each time there is a 64% chance of nothing happening – that might be only 10.73741824%, but it’s a non-trivial chance.

    Generate a sixth. 6.87% chance of nothing.
    Generate a seventh. 4.4% chance of nothing.
    Generate an eight. 2.8% chance of nothing.
    Generate a ninth. 1.8% chance of nothing.

    In fact, we have to extend the run to 14 years before there’s a less than 0.25% chance of nothing happening. That makes it near-certainty that something will happen in that time-period.

    We can use the same principle to add a third event to the possibilities, and then a fourth and fifth. But each time, we make the smallest chance only 5% of the previous smallest chance – so we have to increase the size of the roll 20-fold. From d400 to d8,000 to d160,000 to d3,200,000. And the number of entries in the resulting table would be 16 × 4^3 = 1024 entries.

    The last one – of nothing happening – will remain by far the biggest. We used 16% out of 80% for the cases with just two events; with a third event, the chance will drop to 80% of 64% = 51.2%; with a fourth, 80% × 51.2 = 40.96%; and with a fifth, 80% × 40.96% = 32.768%.

    There’s 100 × 0.32^5 = 0.37779% chance of nothing happening in a given 5-year time-span.

    Every time there’s an A event, be it A-, A, or A+, there is a 4% chance that it’s a once-in-25-years event instead (100/25=4). And a 0.8% chance of a one-in-125 event. And a 0.16% chance of a 1-in-625-years event.

    Having tossed all these numbers around like confetti, it’s time to bottom-line it: Events like this will happen at the speed of plot. If it suits the GM’s plans for something to happen, it will – and unless that’s the case, it won’t.

    4.5.7 The Tempest Scale

    Let’s say something does happen. How severe is it going to be?

      Divide the B scale number from 1 to 11 by 2.5. Add 1 for each F number. Then square each number

            B0 = 0^2 = 0.
            B1 = 0.4^2 = 0.16.
            B2 = 0.8^2 = 0.64.
            B3 = 1.2^2 = 1.44.
            B4 = 1.6^2 = 2.56.
            B5 = 2^2 = 4.
            B6 = 2.4^2 = 5.76.
            B7 = 2.8^2 = 7.84.
            B8 = 3.2^2 = 10.24.
            B9 = 3.6^2 = 12.96.
            B10 = 4^2 = 16.
            B11 = 4.4^2 = 19.36.
            F1 = 5.4^2 = 29.16.
            F2 = 6.4^2 = 40.96.
            F3 = 7.4^2 = 54.76.
            F4 = 8.4^2 = 70.56
            F5 = 9.4^2 = 88.36.

    4.5.8 Vessel Rating

    Every vessel receives a rating for their capacity to withstand storm and wind damage. The rating depends on the vessels (1) resilience, (2) construction methods, (3) materials, (4) magic, (5) captaincy, (6) Maintenance history, and (7) karma, which can add to or subtract from the other factors. When confronting a potential disaster, the GM rates each factor except karma out of 5, and Karma out of plus-or-minus five.

    The highest score (or one of them if there’s a tie) and the lowest score (or one of them, again) then get reduced by 1, representing age and wear-and-tear since the last time the vessel was checked.

    For every score of 2 or better after the first, he adds +1 to the total.
    For every score of 3 or better after the first, he adds +2 to the total.
    For every score of 4 or better after the first, he adds +3 to the total.
    For every score of 5 after the first, he adds +4 to the total.

    That’s six opportunities to record a 5, so 4 opportunities for +4, giving a maximum of (5×5) + (4×4) +4 = 25+16+4=45.

    The total score is divided by 2 and rounded down.

    Karma is then applied, so the maximum score is 27.

    This is subtracted from the Tempest scale to get the % chance of the worst outcome associated with that weather phenomenon taking place (a total of <0 = no chance of that happening and the vessel will survive the event just fine).

    If it doesn’t, this is also 10 more than the % chance of the next worst happening, and so on, until you get to B7 unless condition or maintenance history are 3 or less. If one of those is the case, go to B6; if both, to B5.

    And at this point, I should remind readers of one of the earliest notes made with reference to riverboats and barges: “Riverboats are usually less sturdy than ships built for the open seas”.

    4.5.9 Weather Cataclysms

    How much damage will experiencing a weather cataclysm cause?

    The answer is the damage chance + the total of the basic six ratings + a d20 roll. The bonuses for multiple high scores remain.

    Half of this total, or 20 points maximum, is minor incidental damage – 1 point for each item. Ropes, rigging, hatch covers, etc.

    Half of what’s left, or 20 points maximum, is more significant damage – 2 points for each item. Anchor chains snapped, cannon lost overboard, fires on board, crew lost, etc.

    Half of what remains, or 24 points maximum, is non-fatal structural damage. Missing prows, broken decks, lost masts, and such are worth 3 points per item.

    Whatever remains is potentially fatal structural damage. Holes in the sides, fires in the powder magazine (if there is one), cracks in the keel (2 cracks = 1 actual break), missing officers, etc are worth 5 points each – partial damage mean that an officer isn’t lost overboard, but is badly injured. Two breaks in the keel and it’s lost and the ship will break in two. It’s likely to be taking on water and may even have overturned if it isn’t a barge.

    Of course, wind isn’t the only potential disaster to befall a vessel – but, with the possible exception of river pirates and the odd pleiosaur, everything else is more likely to afflict a seagoing vessel.

And that brings this part of this chapter to a close. It’s covered quite a lot of territory, and that means that the next post should be relatively small, as I turn my attention to the deep waters… But first, it’s time for another Time Out!

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The Potential Benefits Of A Session Minus-One


Cover art by Jason Stewart. Click the cover to buy a copy.

I was recently offered the opportunity to review a copy of Mythwoven, a new RPG supplement by Sphynx Tale Games, by the Author Brett Moore. His description sounded intriguing: a collaborative worldbuilding game designed to enhance session 0 and immerse players in the game world’s lore.

From the additional details that his email disclosed, I got the impression that it gave players greater input into the worldbuilding in the course of Session 0 than is usually the case, which I found intriguing.

And so, here we are…

As always, this review is predicated on the questions of ?”Would I use this?”? and “?How would I use it?”?. Other people may have different ideas and standards ? and that’s fine. But there’s an inherent bias in all reviews ? and this at least gets the perspective that biases this review out in the open, so that readers can take it into account. I should add that I have received no incentives or financial benefit from this review beyond the sample copy.

The Purpose Of A Session Zero

The purpose of a Session Zero, in my book, is to introduce the characters to the game world and the way it is actually going to operate in play. Characters in a session 0 are not set in stone; players are free to tweak elements of what they have created that don’t work as well as expected or intended, and the GM is able to make suggestions to better integrate them into the world.

Specific world-building content that impacts one or more PCs will be highlighted but not necessarily disclosed in detail in a session zero, giving the GM the chance to refine his ideas after exposing them to the ‘real world’ of actual play. In particular, he can get some idea of what sort of adventures the players want to get involved in, and tailor the planned campaign accordingly.

It’s important to separate overall design, concrete campaign elements, overarching campaign theme, and specific plans for implementation; these are all different parts of campaign design, and some of them should be essentially complete before a session 0 is even contemplated.

Overall Design relates to optional rules, mythology, and the fundamental flavor of the world; it is sometimes described as ‘the campaign setting’ because any number of different campaigns can be set against this backdrop.

Concrete Campaign Elements are things like what races there are (at least initially), how they are impacted by the overall design, what the major cities are, where most of the plot ‘action’ is to take place, and so on. The principle of sandboxing is also important: it means that only vague generalities need be in place until an adventure extends into contact with one of these elements.

The Overarching Campaign Themes are the broader overall story that the GM wants to set against the backdrop. It does NOT include how that theme will generate specific plotlines affecting one or more PCs; it’s more about how the previous two elements will evolve in the course of the campaign.

Specific Plans For Implementation deal with what adventures the PCs will have, how they will change over the course of the campaign in response to the Overarching Campaign Themes, how the PCs are going to interact with and change the game world – and how the Game World is going to try to force the PCs to change. It necessarily incorporates character-level creations – the ultimate Villain of the background (Sauron, if you will) might have little or nothing to do with the lives of the PCs, who have an entirely different enemy to overcome. The Villain of the campaign, in other words, doesn’t have to have anything to do with the Villain of the Background.

Click the image to buy a copy.

The Purpose Of Mythwoven

Mythwoven provides an opportunity and a process for the players to collaborate with the GM in developing the ‘sets’ that will be used as backdrops to Act I of the campaign (and possibly beyond). The players learn (in abbreviated thumbnail form) the things they need to know about the Overall Design, the Concrete Campaign Elements (in at least general terms) and the Overarching Campaign Themes and how those will impact PCs at least in the early part of the campaign.

There are all sorts of benefits to this – in particular, it’s a process of evolving a local setting that integrates the PCs and their immediate ambitions more integrally. This gives a slice of ownership of the setting to the players and makes them likely to be more interested in the campaign. It also gives players the opportunity to design characters that fit into the local world.

There is a ‘getting-to-know-you’ phase at the beginning of any romance. You want the players to have a romantic entanglement with your campaign and the world in which it is set; Mythwoven permits the players to contribute to the design of that campaign and its setting, so that it will be more attractive to them when they embark on the ‘getting to know you’ phase, and that – ultimately – is it’s true purpose.

A Session Minus-1, then

What it isn’t is a process for a Session 0 – more for a session “minus-one” that precedes the actual session 0, designing (some) of the key specifics of the Fourth Element Set of Campaign Design – the initial home base around which adventures will revolve.

Necessarily Sandboxed

This approach not only encourages sandboxing, it actively demands it. At some point, it is virtually certain the the adventuring ‘world’ will move beyond the initial seeds set up through Mythwoven, or that the outside world will impose itself upon that locality, or both. Mythwoven has little to say about that; it sets the initial stages of the campaign in a setting that is vibrant and ‘real’, with a history and a touchable foundation.

Mythwoven: The Digital / Physical Reality

Okay, so that’s a general overview of Mythwoven and how it will fit into the campaign creation process. There are lots of specific details about that integration that I haven’t covered, that will be discussed more specifically later in the review.

    The Layout

    Mythwoven is 29 pages, full color, including front and back covers. The last three pages are process elements that need to be printed and cut out, and possibly pasted on cardboard in between those two steps.

    Most of the text is in two columns and just about readable when a digital full page is displayed. My review copy totals 18.3 Mb.

    The front cover doesn’t really show itself off to best advantage when reduced to a Campaign-Mastery-Fitting 556 pixels wide. So, to the side, you can see an enlargement of the bottom right corner, giving a clearer idea of the detail provided.

    Art

    There’s a lot of spot art throughout, all by Jason Stewart. This is strongly fantasy / medieval in nature, even though – as the back cover text describes – the process of Mythwoven can be applied to many different genres, under the direction of the GM in his setting of the initial parameters.

    It’s quite passably well-executed (I’ve seen a lot worse), but also has a slightly generic feeling to it that I think was probably inevitable, given the nature of the product. Still, one or two depictions of other genres would not have gone astray; there is a sense of paying only lip service to the applicability to other genres that I don’t think is entirely warranted and the art contributes to that impression.

    Hopefully, this usage doesn’t count as “Distribution!” Click the image to buy a copy.

    I also don’t think that this impression is entirely warranted – but it’s hard to shake. (There’s half-a-page of white space on page 24 – maybe something could be dropped in there, in a future edition).

    The pages in the review copy are all splashed with an overlay that reads “Media Sample Not For Distribution”, and this mars the art that I can display for readers to look at. For the most part, I’ve ignored the problem and left it to readers to take it into account.

    Next to this text is a thumbnail of Page 1 which illustrates the effect – chosen because it doesn’t give away any of the ‘trade secrets’ of the process; for those you will have to actually buy the product.

    Make no mistake, the art is very well executed.

    Art by Jason Stewart. Click the image to buy a copy.

    An excerpt from the above at 100% scale.

    Some of it could even be labeled ‘iconic’ – which, regular readers will know, is a big thing with me (see my recent post, Looking At A Bigger Picture, part 1 and part 2).

    To the right of this text there is a full-sized rendering of part of the village scene above. The architecture, the fortifications that are clearly around the settlement, and the castle on a lofty peak in the distance, all have a definite cohesion.

    Content

    The GM sets out some guiding principles and initial elements. A deck of cards is broken up into three sub-decks: the four Aces, the number cards plus a Joker, and the remaining face cards and second joker. Each player (and possibly the GM, especially in games without a lot of players) then takes it in turns to develop the setting using these cards as prompts.

    The initial phase is dealt with using the four aces. These establish “crucial aspects” of the settlement / community / space station / castle / city / whatever. Each of the four presents the player with a choice between two options, specified in the product.

    A ‘turn’ consists of three stages:

    1. Draw a card and act on it according to the instructions. This might involve adding elements to the community or making decisions that can alter its circumstances and direction. Decisions are to be made without consensus or discussion, the only exception to this being the four aces, which are specifically collaborative and necessarily consensus-oriented – in a very specific way.
    2. Vote on an unresolved issue. Three votes for either of the alternatives (and there are only two for any issue) and the decision is made by the town; you get to outline the decision, how it’s implemented, and what the outcome / consequences are.
    3. Take an Action (singular) – you have a choice of three alternatives:
      • Create introduces a new element to the settlement – it could be a location, group, event, whatever. You don’t get to specify any details – those get added later.
      • Detail adds information about something that has been previously created by yourself or someone else.
      • Choice raises a question to be voted on by the “community”. You get to set the question and outline (broadly) two alternatives. Others then cast votes in their turns in stage 2 of their turns.

    Once all four aces are dealt with, the process moves on to the number cards. These are less fundamentally definitive than the aces but still significant. These happen in a random sequence, so you never know what is going to shape a given community next.

    At some point in the number cards, someone will draw the first Joker. This is an instruction to the GM, not to the player; the GM then reveals “The Twist”, some discovery or event that introduces a significant change that disrupts established assumptions (there is an option for the GM to cede creative authority over The Twist to the player who drew the joker). This is the GM’s opportunity to introduce one or more of the overarching themes of the campaign, shaping the setting into one that is appropriately manifests that theme. Twists can be ad-hoc or carefully pre-planned – and the GM can change his mind at the last minute. If the GM doesn’t cede control of the twist to the player, the player draws another card when the GM is done revealing the twist, and progress resumes under the new set of circumstances. If the player was given control, after announcing the twist, he or she completes their turn as normal and play continues.

    When you run out of numbered cards, players start using the face cards. These are geared towards resolving some of the issues raised while exacerbating or developing others, and as such, tend to be a bit more severe than the numbered cards.

    At some point in the picture cards, the second Joker will appear, which ends the construction of the settlement. There is a mechanism for resolution of plot points and conflicts, but ultimately this will leave some plot threads hanging, and some decisions still undecided.

    Flaws

    The process seems well-developed, and the interpretations available for each of the cards sufficiently diverse as to create a number of different events. Some flexibility or creative interpretation of the instructions given is permitted (and necessary, if the process is to be applied to a non-fantasy genre) though a lot of the events should broadly apply anywhere.

    There is an example offered (but not spelt out in full) to help give a handle on the process, and there is at least one grammatical error that seems to have escaped the attention of all three editors – “Amidst this eerie backdrop, the faint echoes impending war” – there should be an “of” before impending.

    There is a slight predictability to the content that comes from all the numbered cards being used. I have two solutions for this:

    1. Instead of using all the numbered cards, the GM should shuffle them and then remove four, eight, or twelve of them from the ‘deck’. Since no-one knows what’s not in the deck anymore, what predictability there is gets strongly eroded.
    2. Each player has the option, once per ‘game’, of not drawing a card, but instead choosing a numbered card that has previously been played and returning it to some random position within the deck of unplayed numbered cards. Lightning can then strike twice (in general terms). This option is only available until play moves into the face-cards stage. It means that the predictability of something having already happened once, and therefore is not going to happen again, vanishes. The card that is chosen is secret – no-one else knows until that card again sees the light of day during play. The GM may exercise an option to shuffle the deck after a card is returned, so that the player who replaced it in the deck has no idea when it will come out.

    The original map of Dunkland provided within Mythwoven.

    While on the subject of flaws, something that did nag at me a bit (though it’s relatively trivial) – the example makes a point of mentioning “patches of wild forest”. To me, that implies that these patches are surrounded by less dense timber (though the trees could mostly have been removed for farming). But the map provided offers no indication of where those patches – or the less densely-wooded area around them – might be, as you can see. (I did my best to clean up the overlay, so that I could produce the map that follows).

    The map on the right, below, is what I would have presented if I were the GM of the example offered. I’ve added a couple of extra mountains for two reasons: (1) just having them in the corners made the whole thing look too symmetric and artificial, and (2) it explains the northern part of the road and the way it deviates to one side. Around the mountain peaks are (presumably) lesser mountains, with scattered trees and a few thicker clumps – I’ve shown three but more could be added. These obscured the text, so I’ve copied that to the lower part of the circle.

    My edited map of Dunkland.

    It’s a small set of changes. Clearly, there are going to be streams and/or a river that feed into the lake, and a river that drains it; the first are presumably somewhere to the north of Dunkland, and the second either south or East – with the latter sounding more asymmetric and therefore more ‘natural’.

    The same thing happens with numbers. If a list of numbers has too many fives and too many even numbers, it looks and feels ‘faked’ – but, paradoxically, when people make a fake list of numbers, they will overcompensate and include too many 1’s, 3’s, 9’s, and especially, 7’s, and not enough 0’s, 5’s, and even numbers. And it will look more believable to the lay eye!

    In the digits 1 to 100, there will be:

    • 10, 20,30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 = 9+2 = 11 zeros;
    • 1, 10-19, an extra for 11, 21, 31, 41, 51, 61, 71, 81, and 91, and 100 = 1+10+1+8+1 = 21 ones;
    • 2, 20-29 and an extra in 22, 12, 32, 42, 52, 62, 72, 82, and 92 = 1+10+1+8 = 20 twos;
    • 20 threes, 4’s, 5’s, 6’s, 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s.
    • 11 + 21 + 8 x 20 = 192 digits.
    • about 5.73% will be zeros; 10.94% will be 1’s; and the remaining 83.33% will be evenly divided between the other eight digits, about 10.42% each.

    For numbers 1 to 1000:

    • There will be 192 zeros;
    • 301 ones;
    • and each of the other digits will appear 300 times.
    • That’s a total of 192 + 301 + 300 x 8 = 493 + 2400 = 2893 digits.
    • 6.637% will be zeros. 10.404% will be 1’s. The other 8 digits will appear a combined 82.959% of the time, or 10.37% each.
    • Notice that the percentage of zeros went up, the percentage of everything else went down, but 1’s didn’t go down as much – and there will be roughly 63 ones for every 100 zeros.

    You can look up the digits in 1 to 10,000 or 100,000 if you like. The identified trends will continue.

    There will be some natural variation. You can’t say definitively that a series of numbers has been ‘cooked’ unless they show a repeated pattern. As a rough rule of thumb, if there are supposed to be 192 zeros, anything more than 1.5 times this (or 288), or less than 0.5 times it (96) would be suspicious, and so on.

    Availability & Price

    Mythwoven was released on January 7 in both print and digital formats. You can buy Mythwoven from DriveThru RPG for AU $16.02 (PDF) or AU $32.05 (Softcover), with an option in the latter case for an additional free digital copy.

    There is a SWADE edition specifically for Savage Worlds, same prices, at this link.

    You can get a card deck with the various options in place for AU $1.60 (PDF) or AU $15.95 (embossed playing cards), again with the option of a free copy of the digital version, from this link – but you will need the supplement to use them.

    I suspect that these prices are US$10, US$20, US$1, and US$9.90 or something along those lines. Drivethru will automatically display the prices in your local currency if you’ve told them where you live.

    Limitations

    There are some limitations imposed by the process. Complex designs may not render down sufficiently to be readily grasped within the scope provided; there’s very little room for historical backstory; and some players may have trouble coming up with ideas. There are solutions to all of these problems, which I will go into below.

    A bigger problem is that campaign creation and world-building can take weeks or months, and not all of it can be carried out until the ‘session minus 1’ is complete. That is also manageable, but does require some advance planning by the GM.

    There is no way to build the elements of a character background into the mix unless you have already decided what sort of character you want to play – and doing so without the information provided and developed in the course of the Mythwoven process defeats the purpose, at least to some extent. Again, there’s a solution to this problem outlined below.

    None of these problems are really addressed within Mythwoven itself, and therefore, no solutions are offered, and that’s a bigger limitation. Other problems and potential limitations are addressed and resolved.

    All content on Campaign Mastery is copyrighted, with a free license for gamers to use or adapt it for any gaming purpose so long as authorship is respected. So I’d like yo officially extend an invitation to Brett and Sphynx Tale Games to adapt any of the content in this review for use in any future second edition of the product- no charge, but acknowledgment of the contribution would be great!

    Okay, so there are a few problems. Let’s deal with them them…

The Necessity of a Physical Copy

There are two ways of implementing a Mythwoven session: either the participant draws a card, and announces what it is, and the GM then looks it up and explains the meaning to the participant, or there is a physical copy of the book that gets passed around so that participants can look up the results for themselves.

I don’t much like the first option. It sounds slow, because it’s always faster to read something for yourself than it is to read it out loud (and not by a small margin).

There are times when digital copies are just as good as physical ones. This sourcebook is not one of them – not unless you intend to print and bind it yourself.

The Timing Of The Sessions

The GM should prepare 90-95% of the big-picture stuff in advance of prep for a session minus-1. And then ruthlessly sandbox 90-95% of that content because it won’t be relevant to session minus-1.

The trick is knowing which 5% will be relevant. Make your best guess – and if a player’s creation introduces another 5% to the mix, you’ll be ready to step in, though your pre-campaign work may have to evolve a little to incorporate other acts of player creativity.

For example, the GM may write up Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and Halflings as part of his big-picture, with each being nuanced to make them just a little different from the stock-race versions in the rulebooks. He might anticipate that Humans and Elves will be part of the session minus-1 mix, and specifically rule out Gnomes and Half-breeds, but when a player adds a group of Halflings to the racial mix, they are not part of the 5% that he anticipated. Until it gets back to his turn, he has to live with whatever the players in between might specify about the Halflings (but if the GM is lucky, they will focus their details on other creations).

When it gets to his turn, he can throw a key detail about the Halflings that he wants to be in this campaign into the mix, establishing that part of the campaign concept. Simply repeating some basic fact about them from the source material is a wasted opportunity, because all that is implied simply by using the term, “Halflings” – so use the opportunity to flag one of the important differences between your Halflings and the standard ones.

It will be extremely advantageous for the GM to have boiled and compressed his concepts down into single-sentence summations that are ready for use in this way. That’s not an easy thing to do, so it, too, is best done in advance.

If many / most of the other differences are logical consequences of the major change, it’s reasonable to expect any other player contributions that are inspired by this change to dovetail with the broader concept, even though the players at this point don’t know fully what it is.

(For the record: Another 20-25% of the background will then be relevant to a real Session zero and the PCs that are generated prior to that session – and NO PCs should be generated prior to session minus-1. Conceptualized, maybe – with the caveat that these concepts will have to change if they conflict with the setting as it ends up being.

The rest can be introduced a little at a time as specific adventures bring the ‘facts’ to the PCs attention. I figure that by the time the PCs get to somewhere between levels 6 and 11, all should be known to them, so that the second half / three quarters of the campaign can deal with the major thematic elements and the overarching plot. There’s some latitude, so consider these guidelines, not rules to be followed religiously).

Next, the GM will need time to refine his background in light of the session minus-one results, and then distribute the selected 20-25% to the players so that they can make decisions about character construction, leading into a genuine session zero. Depending on the game system, it may be possible to generate the characters and have the session zero on the same playing day – that’s for the GM to decide.

The more work that has been in advance, the more likely it is that parts of it will need some revision or expansion – and the easier that revision / expansion will be. it might sound self-contradictory, but it’s true. But it does take time, and the scheduling of that session zero (or session one if there is to be no Session Zero) has to accommodate that.

As a rule of thumb, one ‘missed’ game session should provide enough time; in extreme cases, or when the GM is going to be unusually busy with the real world, this can be stretched to two missed sessions – but no further! If you are playing once a week (in theory), that gives 2-3 weeks to make the necessary changes and distribute them to players. If you play once a month, that’s 2-3 months, and I would try very hard to confine it to the first of those numbers.

If your ideas are too vague, your session minus one has jumped the gun and you won’t be fully prepped for a session zero in time, and probably perpetually behind from that point on. It takes 5-10 times as long to be creative as it does to simply edit and tweak material already created. Maybe more. So remember that, or it will come around to bite you – frequently.

Integrating a historical Backstory

If the GM decides that this is important, the best solution is to add a couple of actions to his turn, and an action to the turns of each of the other players.

In addition to everything else he gets to do in his turn, the GM gets to announce some event from the history of the game world or the location. No details, no outcomes, just the fact of the event. These should be events that have an impact far beyond the local region, but that will still be relevant, locally. It’s Major Backstory.

On their turns, each player then extends the story without bringing the event to a resolution. Again, no details outside of that one ‘plot development’.

When play again returns to the GM, he or she can either announce a resolution of the historical event or decide that it’s even more epic / sweeping and simply add to the story, in which case it continues developing until the GM again faces this choice.

Electring to enlarge an event in this way sacrificest the development of one other event, so it shouldn’t be done lightly.

At the end of the session, these stories have to be set in a logical chronological sequence and expanded into more substantial narratives.

Art by Jason Stewart. Click the image to buy a copy.

The GM can also choose to forego introducing a new piece of backstory, in which case the option to do so passes to the next player to act. The GM does not have any right of veto over this contribution, though he can twist the event massively in his contribution to the narrative; nor does he have the option of bringing it to a conclusiom, that’s now in the hands of the player who instigated it.

Suggestions For Slow Creators

Some of my players have trouble being spontaneously creative; they need a minute or two to think of something or whatever they create is going to be half-baked – and I have former players who were even worse. I also have some players who are really good at spontaneous creativity, and some who are great at throwing ideas out but lousy at examining those ideas for nuance, ramifications, and consequences.

I imagine that the above statement is true to at least some extent of almost every gaming group out there.

Mythwoven makes no allowances for this; it assumes that everyone is going to achieve a minimum standard of spontaneous creativity, and that assumption is a thorn in the side of the process. I have three suggestions that can alleviate the problems.

    1. The discussion phase

    Every time the ‘game play’ returns to whichever player went first, the game is halted for a set period of time – between 1 and 3 minutes – specifically to discuss possible concepts and ramifications. Not only will this help to spark ideas when players next get a turn, it gives the GM the chance to expound on any logic or confluences with other parts of his background prep.

    Alternatively, this might happen each time play gets back to the GM.

    The GM should also have the option to extend the discussion for another couple of minutes if the table’s creative juices are really flowing – and he needs to take careful notes of the ideas thrown out and generally accepted at the table.

    2. Sneak Peeks with a second copy

    I didn’t notice it actually saying so anywhere in the supplement, but there is a clear implication of the cards for each phase being stacked in single piles. There would be an advantage to actually dealing them out, face-down, to the participants, in advance.

    When it gets to the turn of the player before you in the turn sequence, you are permitted to look at the top card in your stack and to look up its meaning in a copy of the rules. That copy should circulate from one player to the next as a signal that it’s time to prep for your turn.

    This would be made far more convenient with a second copy – which is why the hardcopy plus digital bonus copy is such an attractive option to me. The GM uses the digital copy to manage and administrate the process, while the physical copy does the rounds of the table.

    Players might have to hold onto the physical copy until they have actually fulfilled whatever creative act is required by their cards and then pass it along.

    This offers one more advantage that’s worth bearing in mind – it obviates the need to read the card’s directions aloud. So long as the player obeys the instructions given (and the GM has his copy to ensure that happens), he need only announce his response to the instructions given, at least 99% of the time – on rare occasions, he may need help in interpreting those instructions, though they seemed pretty clear to me when reading through them.

    3. Genre-relevant Resources

    The third suggestion is to have a small stack of genre-relevant resources – sourcebooks – for players to thumb through looking for inspiration or the specific detail that will nail an act of creation. This – at least partially – solves the “silly names” / in-jokes problem that Mythwoven itself points out.

    Need a name for an NPC? Don’t call him “Bob” (which happens all the time at my table with one particular player) – flick through something which contains inspiration for appropriate names and pick something.

    Want to flesh out a fortress but are having trouble ‘seeing’ it in your minds’ eye? A quick browse through some relevant material and extract something that seems pertinent. Others can build upon that seed, so even if the basic concept can be traced back to its source, the final implementation will almost certainly be more original.

Between them, those three suggestions should accommodate just about every level of creativity.

Something like Mythwoven relies on the fluid and rapid exchange of ideas and leading suggestions; as a process, it can fall apart if it’s too stop-and-start. These suggestions should alleviate that.

The significance of the final Joker, and an alternative

The appearance of the final joker – it’s SOMEWHERE amongst the face cards – signals the end of ‘yesterday’ and the arrival of ‘now’ in the act of creation. Whatever face cards have not yet been played do not get to be played. This makes the makeup of the face-cards phase impossible to predict.

That’s all well and good if the position of the joker is in the second half of the face-cards somewhere. It doesn’t work so well if it can appear prematurely.

As an alternative, GMs might be able to declare that the Joker means that this round is the final one, not this turn. Instead of playing / interpreting a card, the player who drew the joker then gets to perform two actions instead of one, and play proceeds until it gets back to the first player to act.

I would suggest that this rule only be implemented if there are more unplayed cards than there are participants in the ‘game’. This preserves some of that unpredictability of the Joker without the abruptness of development ending that it can cause.

Keeping Some Cards Close To Your Chest – Editing the GM’s Concepts

The key to managing your concepts list and boiling the session minus-1 details down to the absolute bare minimum is a short series of simple questions:

    Q1. Do the players really need to know about this before they can generate characters?
         — if no, summarize it in a single sentence and leave it out.
         — if yes, continue.

    Q2. Is the answer conditional, i.e. only a yes for a character of specific race and/or class and/or background?
         — if yes, summarize the main concept(s) into single sentences & leave them out until a choice triggers their inclusion.
         — if no, continue.

    Q3. Does the information relate specifically to the main campaign plot arc? If so, do you really need it to be known before that arc begins?
         — if no to the second half, summarize it in a single sentence and leave it out.
         — if yes to the second half, continue.

Anything that makes it this far needs to be known by Session zero. Now to prune even more for a session minus one.

    Q4. Is the information intended to be definitive of the campaign, overall?
         — if yes, summarize it in a single sentence and include it.
         — if no, continue.

    Q5. Is the information definitive of the initial adventuring location regardless of where that might be?
         — if yes, summarize it in a single sentence and include it.
         — if no, summarize it in a single sentence and leave it out.

That’s really all there is to it.

Let’s take an example concept and break it down and see how the key parts fall through that filter:

    “Demons walk the earth, committing good deeds despite their inherent natures in a desperate bid to earn forgiveness for past transgressions, after the destruction of Hades and the Abyss in a final conflict. There are those who oppose these wannabe reformed characters because they can’t let go of their entrenched ideologies. Earth is now the arena where these conflicts play out.”

While it would be possible to include that whole blurb as the definitive information for session minus-1, it’s a little bit lengthy and there’s a lot going on. So let’s break it down:

    1. There was an Armageddon and both Abyss and Hades were destroyed.
    2. Those who survived now wander the earth, divided into three camps.
    3. Some seek forgiveness and rehabilitation. They will aid the inhabitants and create adventurers to oppose those in 4 and 5.
    4. Some cannot let go of the ideologies of Anarchy and Might Makes Right. They continue to fight for The Abyss under the flag of this former Demon Prince or that, oppose those in 3 and 5, and threaten the inhabitants. They will empower monsters.
    5. Some cannot let go of the ideologies of Hate. They continue to fight for Hades in the name of this former Arch-Devil or that, oppose those in 3 and 4, and threaten the inhabitants. They will empower Undead and the corrupt, creating hidden monsters within the general population of civilization.
    6. Implied by 3: All adventurers have a ‘guardian spirit’ that grants them powers and abilities beyond those of the normal population.
    7. Implied by 4: While some creatures are inherently dangerous, selected individuals amongst them are heightened and given additional powers beyond those normal to their kind.
    8. Implied by 5: Some corrupt individuals will have a ‘guardian spirit’ that drives them to commit foul deeds and rewards them with abilities beyond those of the normal population.
    9. Implied by 3: Characters have only had access to class levels since 2 began. it’s possible this is the first generation of classed characters and they don’t know what makes them different.
    10. Implied in general: The overall campaign arc describes the course of the three-sided conflict. It may or may not resolve it.

It’s possible to further break down 3, 4, and 5:

    3. Some seek forgiveness and rehabilitation.
         3a. They will aid civilized inhabitants of the world.
         3b. They create and empower adventurers.
         3c. Adventurers oppose 4 and 5 and those that they empower.

    4. Some (Demons) cannot let go of the Ideologies of Anarchy and Might Makes Right.
         4a. They empower selected individuals within the monster population.
         4b. These attempt to destroy civilization by force.
         4c. They fight under the banner of a specific (former) Demon Prince.
         4d. They despise and oppose both 3 and 5.

    5. Some (Devils) cannot let go of the ideology of Hate.
         5a. They empower Undead and selected individuals within civilized population.
         5b. These attempt to destroy civilization by corruption and subversion.
         5c. They fight under the banner of a specific (former) Arch-devil.
         5d. They hate and oppose both 3 and 4.

Right away, I can see three possible pathways through this campaign.

Route 1 starts with the PCs dealing with 5. If 9 is the case, then they are also discovering the backstory and their own natures and capabilities. They then face menaces from 4, which leads into the overall three-way conflict (or two-way with the PCs caught in the middle).

Route 2 starts with the PCs dealing with 4. If 9 is the case then they are also discovering the backstory and their own natures and capabilities. Just when they think they are secure, they have to deal with 5. This leads eventually into the general war between 4 and 5 with 3 opposing both.

Route 3 starts with the PCs discovering that they are different (9) while dealing with ordinary monsters and threats and maybe some low-level Undead. The threats posed begin to escalate due to 4 and the backstory gets pieced together. They acquire allies from 5 only to discover that they are being manipulated into fighting 4 on 5’s behalf. They have to deal with both 4 and 5 because neither can be permitted to win.

I don’t much like Route 1. It under-powers 5 simply because that makes achievement by the PCs possible.

Route 2 is better; there is a clear progression and escalation. But 5 seems overly confrontational and not nearly subversive enough.

Route 3 would be my choice. It starts off with the focus on the PCs and is otherwise a fairly traditional D&D campaign. As the PCs start to learn what makes this setting unique and original, and has done so from the very beginning, there is an escalation as 4’s minions pose greater and greater threats. In response, 5 does what 5 does best, and with the aid of 3 (or vice-versa), the PCs hold off the initial threats. But they need to learn why 4a have become so dangerous, leading to an intelligence / scouting mission behind “enemy lines” which begins to reveal the truth – and that 5 has been consolidating its power and authority while using 3 and 4 to keep each other occupied and out of the way. Big finish is the ousting of 5 – at least for now.

On that basis, let’s run these 21 precepts through our filters. To avoid confusion, when I’m referring to one of the precepts from this point on, I’ll put it in brackets.

    Q1. Do the players really need to know about this before they can generate characters?
         (1) no. (2) no. (3), (3a), (3b), (3c) – no. (4), (4a), (4b), (4c), (4d) – no. (5), (5a) (5b), (5c), (5d) – no. (6) – perhaps yes. (7), (8) – no. (9) yes. (10), no. Right away, we’re down to two items.

    Q2. Is the answer conditional, i.e. only a yes for a character of specific race and/or class and/or background?
         (6) no, (9) no.

    Q3. Does the information relate specifically to the main campaign plot arc? If so, do you really need it to be known before that arc begins?
         (6) yes and no, respectively. (9) no, so the second question doesn’t even apply. (6) is archived, (9) remains.

    Q4. Is the information intended to be definitive of the campaign, overall?
         Arguably, (9) yes.

    Q5. Is the information definitive of the initial adventuring location regardless of where that might be?
         Arguably, (9) no – not until session zero, when the PCs emerge as superior to the common townspeople in terms of being able to do things.

Wait, that was our last campaign precept? Where does that leave us?

Obviously, we’ve missed a precept or two! try these for size:

    11. Pre-campaign, there are no characters with character levels or level abilities.
    12. Characters will have to figure out in-game what their level abilities are, how best to use them, and why they are different from normal people.
    13. The community where the campaign begins is in the fringes of civilization, with Monster threats on all sides. Orcs, Bugbears, etc, specifics unknown.
    14. A community of Elves lies somewhere to the North.
    15. A community of Dwarves lives in mountains to the West.
    16. Between this community and 15 are hills where Halflings abide.
    17. To the East lies the Kingdom of which this is an outpost.
    18. To get to any of these places, you have to run the gauntlet of 13. This is a besieged outpost.
    19. Nevertheless, there is trade and the occasional contact with 14, 15, 16, and 17.
    20. News of the world outside the locality is sporadic, often vague, and usually months out of date.

Now, we’re talking! These are all about the population where the game begins, and deliberately implants potential for Elves, Halfling, Dwarf and Human PCs, as well as the seeds that will sprout into the campaign. Arguably, (12) is what the whole campaign is about, with (1) through (10) being backstory and ramifications. I would probably bundle (14), (15), and (16) into a single item. (12) doesn’t make sense without (11), so I would package them together, too. (13) and (18) also marry up, as do (19) and (20).

I end up with:

    (11)+(12);
    (14)+(15)+(16);
    (17)
    (13)+(18);
    (19)+(20).

There are additional ideas that haven’t even gotten a mention. Dungeons, for example, might be lairs for (4) and (5), protected by monsters when the owners aren’t around. That can be discovered in-game and tease at the broader picture, but it wouldn’t make the cut into session minus 1, and maybe not even session 0.

Making room for characters

I’ve already covered this to some extent in discussing the implanting of ‘seeds’ that open the door to various PC races. Seeds can also be contributed by players to ‘make room’ in the setting for the foundations of a specific class – “a mighty wizard builds a tower in the town” is a legitimate act of Creation. Others get to add their 2-cents worth and eventually the focus will move on to other items – but this means that there is the potential for a Wizard PC to be apprenticed to this ‘mighty wizard’. Without that, the player has to create both Wizard and character and the DM to integrate the wizard into the location, just to permit the player to have the class he has chosen.

For this reason, the GM gets to specify certain races and / or classes that are off-limits; it may not mean that there are none of them in the game world, but it probably does.

Did someone say, “Session Minus Two”?

As I was reading Mythwoven, the thought of a sequel product that made initial PC creation collaborative kept recurring to me. Obviously, it would proceed a little differently – each player would start by defining some initial trait of the PC that they were going to play, and there would have to be a limited option for a player to veto something someone else had ‘imposed’ on their character as one of the options within their turn.

Aces – define race, class, social class, and a key personality trait. If any of these are vetoed by the owning player, they have to replace the factoid with something else immediately.

Numbered cards: Ones, twos, threes, fours, fives, and sixes: player generates a stat value and places it somewhere on a set of six lists. A veto means that the player demands a re-roll – because this is a significant investment by them, the re-roll is on 1 extra dice, keep the best 3. When all six have one entry per PC, this phase ends and an auction phase begins. The lists are reordered high to low and labeled by stat in the usual sequence. Each player has a budget of so many construction points which they use to bid for ownership of that stat value for their character. Unused construction points can then be used to ‘buff’ one or more of the resulting stats, before any racial modifiers are applied.

Sevens, Eights, Nines, and Tens: deal with character backstory and personality and special possessions. When the numbered cards phase ends, social class for a PC can be used to buff one item one plus and acquire additional (normal) equipment and cash.

Face cards: these deal with circumstances surrounding the character just prior to and as play begins.

Vetoes: Each player should have ten chits. Each veto costs them one of these. With 4 aces, 6 stats, up to 4 details from other numbered cards, and 5+ details from face cards, that’s 19 specifics – so almost half of the character comes from group input / group ideas. The player gets to reject things that don’t fit the character concept that emerges to ensure that it is coherent and something they want to play.

The Limitations Of The Sandbox

There’s one specific type of campaign structure in which I don’t see Mythwoven working all that well without some additional creative input from the GM, and that’s one where the campaign opens with one or more PCs en route to what will be their initial base of operations – something like an apprenticeship scheme for adventurers. I employed this very structure in Fumanor: The Last Deity, because it phases campaign background into smaller bites. It also let me add PCs to the mix a few at a time, as the party naturally grew – it started with two, added a third, fourth, and a fifth (an NPC) – and then took one of the five away as he was transformed (naturally) into a draconic state. But the players had been developing their characters to mesh into a five-part team – and suddenly they were bereft of their ranger / scout, in the middle of nowhere, a long way from any help. By the time they had returned, they had found ways to cope with the loss and continued as a foursome, but it made the beginning a greater (and different) challenge to what they were expecting. They also had the option to replace that fifth member if they found they really couldn’t cope.

To make it work, this has to develop not the location where the adventures begins, but that eventual home base. Make that change, and Mythwoven fits right in.

Similarly, I’m not sure how well it would have fitted into my Dr Who campaigns, which are inherently about traveling from place to place while a broader story shapes individual episodic adventures; the initial settings for those were always carefully chosen to establish the foundations of the campaign while avoiding campaign elements that I wanted to save for inclusion in later adventures. So it’s not going to be a universal tool that I reach for, each and every time.

Take the two Zenith-3 campaigns – in the first one, several adventures were driven by the need to find and establish a suitable home base, in the second, one was provided for them as is and they had to adjust to it and to its requirements of them, and in the sub-campaign that’s been running lately, it’s once again been all about the journey to the approximate site of their new home base and then finding something they wanted to adapt into becoming that home base – and the compromises and activities needed to make it work. One of the key characteristics was selecting the size and type of community around it, with many options offered for them to contemplate. I have the feeling that using Mythwoven to create that base would have made my job easier (I wouldn’t have had to come up with all those alternatives) but would have both sucked a lot of credibility out of the plotline and had a sense of railroading the players to the destination they had chosen, at the same time. Restoring the first and avoiding the second would mean incorporating a lot of possibilities that I knew were not what the players had decided on – and would have led to frustration. Again, Mythwoven would not have been the right answer.

But other times, and other campaigns? Absolutely yes.

Summing Up

So that’s Mythwoven. The heart of what you are paying for is the process, the conflict heighten / resolution mechanism, and the integrated card interpretations. I’ve summarized parts of the first (but left out key details), and only mentioned the other two without getting into specifics. If you want more, you’ll have to buy a copy.

I think it’s a clever idea with definite potential to be useful. There may be future iterations that are more campaign-specific, with the overall one providing a template; that’s up to the publishers / author. I recommend you buy either the hardcopy with free digital bonus copy or the digital copy and then print a hardcopy and bind / collate it. I’ve offered a few tweaks and suggestions that I think improve it’s utility, identified a few limitations and (potential) flaws, and found ways around them.

It’s definitely worth the consideration of every GM out there.

I want to end this review with an invitation to Brett, the author, to comment on the various findings of this review and the contributions / suggestions that I have offered, in the comments below. I hope that he finds them to be enhancements that are worth considering into the future.

Comments (2)

Trade In Fantasy Ch. 4: Modes Of Transport, Pt 1


This entry is part 9 in the series Trade In Fantasy

The 4th chapter of the Trade In Fantasy series looks at Modes Of Transport and trade route planning (9th post in the series).

Table Of Contents: In today’s post:

Chapter 4: Modes Of Transport

4.0 A Word about Routes

    4.0.1 Baseline Model
    4.0.2 Relative Sizes
    4.0.3 Competitors
    4.0.4 Terrain I
    4.0.5 Terrain II
    4.0.6 Multi-paths and Choke Points

      4.0.6.1 Sidebar: Projection Of Military Force

    4.0.7 Mode Of Transport

4.1 Backpack / Litters / Shanks Pony

    4.1.1 Capacity
    4.1.2 Personalities / Roleplay

4.2 Horseback

    4.2.1 Capacity
    4.2.2 Requirements
    4.2.3 Personalities / Roleplay

4.3 Mule Train

    4.3.1 Capacity
    4.3.2 Requirements
    4.3.3 Personalities / Roleplay

4.4 Wagons

    4.4.1 Capacity
    4.4.2 Requirements
    4.4.3 Other Exceptions – Animal Size

      4.4.3.1 Sidebar: Road Trains

    4.4.4 Fodder / Food & Water Needs

      4.4.4.1 People
      4.4.4.2 Horses
      4.4.4.3 Mules
      4.4.4.4 Oxen / Cattle
      4.4.4.5 Elephants
      4.4.4.6 Other

    4.4.5 Personalities / Roleplay

In future installments of Chapter 4:

4.5 River Barges

    4.5.1 Capacity
    4.5.2 Favorable Winds
    4.5.3 Favorable Currents
    4.5.4 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Oarsmen Requirements
    4.5.5 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Sail Solutions
    4.5.6 Extreme Weather Events
    4.5.7 The Tempest Scale
    4.5.8 Vessel Rating
    4.5.9 Weather Cataclysms

4.6 Seagoing Vessels

    4.6.1 Capacity
    4.6.2 Favorable Winds
    4.6.3 Favorable Currents
    4.6.4 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Oarsmen Requirements
    4.6.5 Unfavorable Winds / Currents – Sail Solutions
    4.6.6 Extreme Weather Events
    4.6.7 Vessel Rating
    4.6.8 Weather Cataclysms

4.7 Exotic Modes Of Transport

    4.7.1 Flight
    4.7.2 Teleport
    4.7.3 Magic Gates & Portals
    4.7.4 Capacities

4.8 Loading & Unloading
In future chapters:
  1. Land Transport
  2. Waterborne Transport
  3. Spoilage
  4. Key Personnel
  5. The Journey
  6. Arrival
  7. Journey’s End
  8. Adventures En Route

4. Modes Of Transport

Roughly half the types of business in the medieval-equivalent world involve moving something from one place to another – and that number has only increased in the centuries since. Whether it’s raw materials, components, produce or finished products for sale, until the internet came along, ingredients had to go to the point of manufacture. and product had to go to point-of-sale. The first still holds true, but the second now has exceptions.

A mode of transport, in game terms, is defined as a Carrying Capacity measured in Trade Units.. Most modes of transport also have a maximum Weight limit as well, consisting of the total weight of the vehicle and the cargo added together.

Some modes of transport define the route that has to be taken; others have that route defined for them by climatic and environmental factors that can be overcome with the application of manpower; and some just seem to grow organically.

It therefore seems prudent to have a word or two about routes and their impact before considering the modes of transport that might utilize them. Note that this chapter is largely an overview, aimed at selecting a mode of transport more than anything else; the primary modes have dedicated chapters to follow.

4.0 A Word about Routes

Business ventures fail for all sorts of reasons. The negative impact of all of these reasoms is exacerbated by any form of inefficiency. It follows that trade routes are even more important than they might initially seem.

The simplest trade route of all is a river – fixed in it’s course, it takes you from one point adjacent to the river to another one. If that second one happens to be downstream of the first, the current alone (if strong enough) can provide all the motive energy that you need – at least until it’s time to go back upriver.

That’s where complications set in. To avoid those complications, disposable floating contrivances may be employed – ‘trains’ of barrels or rafts – which do not have to be returned; they are a tradeable commodity as much as the products / produce that they carry.

To go back upriver, though, you need a boat. If the winds are favorable, a sail can provide the motive power to overcome the current; and this also provides a means of conveying goods downriver if the current is insufficient. So they are a lot more flexible. If and when the winds are uncooperative, it may be necessary to use oars instead. This is hard work, and because the vessels (even unladen) tend to weigh quite a lot, requires a LOT of manpower. So much so that this is almost universally indicative of a culture that practices slavery.

The main alternative is to use smaller boats – a lot of them – and even though this is less efficient in terms of cargo carried per Labor Unit, it can be a lot more efficient than hiring a large crew to move a bigger vessel. But there are less common answers to consider – a larger, barge-like boat that is hauled up-and-down river by teams of animals on the banks of the river, for example. Such exotic approaches are beyond the purview of this game resource, but I’ll mention them on occasion just so that you know they are there.

The other extreme also involves boats – and the open seas and oceans, where you can go anywhere you want to along any course you want to – so long as the winds cooperate. These are more reliable in certain places (due to topography and geography) at certain times of the year (due to the climatic conditions). Whole gaming supplements have been written about such sailing (I have several of them) and I don’t propose to incorporate another one into this series – but there’s still more than enough to say about ocean-going transport that it also has its own section in this chapter and a dedicated chapter later on.

In between these two are all forms of land transportation, and in many ways – because they aren’t reliant on winds, currents, tides, and such – they are a lot simpler. So those are the right places to start a closer examination of the impact of trade routes.

    4.0.1 Baseline Model

    Let’s start with a baseline model that’s almost as simple as I could make it:

    This diagram shows four population centers. No two of the distances between them are exactly the same. Straight Roads – which were not a thing until the Romans came along and followed straight lines no matter how inconvenient it might be as much as humanly possible – connect A, B, C, and D. There’s also a smaller path or trail through the space in between, connecting A and C and B and D. These cross at E, which is nothing at the moment in terms of population but may become a settlement in the future if there is enough traffic to justify it.

    Such a settlement would begin as either a military outpost or as an inn for travelers, and then someone would set up a house and a business to supply the outpost / inn (probably a bakery), and then another house and a business like a blacksmith to supply travelers and patrols, and on it grows from there.

    If these four markets are all of the same size – I’ll define that in a moment – and there’s nothing noteworthy in the terrain (I’ll cover that a little later) – then the only factor to consider is distance.

    A will ship to D rather than B or C. B will ship to C rather than A or D. And E, if and when it comes into existence (which seems unlikely from these trade routes) would be supplied by A. Because the distances are less, these are the shortest distances, and hence the greatest profits.

    If the A-E distance looks a little different to the others it’s because I made a mistake and quickly created a patch to cover it with the correct information. My bad.

    4.0.2 Relative Sizes

    We don’t care about the size of the population in a given community, per se. We very much Do care what the potential profit is at each community.

    While this can be considered in Generic Terms, it’s more accurate to assess it on a per-commodity basis – but that’s a nuance that’s too extreme for this general discussion.

    The diagram above is exactly the same as the first one, except the relative profit potential has been depicted by increasing the apparent size of the population center. And, in truth, most of the time, they will be proportional.

    I took B to be the standard, and increased the size of A, while shrinking C and D.

    The impact is profound:

         Base Efficiency = Size (Profit) / Distance

         A->B = 100 / 43.4 = 9.47
         A->B->C = 80 / (43.4+28.66) = 1.11
         A->D->C =80 / (37.2+54.4) = 0.87
         A->E->C = 80 / (18.8+29.8) = 1.65
         A->D = 40 / 37.2 = 1.08

         B->A = 450 / 43.4 = 10.37
         B->C = 80 / 28.66 = 2.79
         B->A->D = 40 / (43.4+37.2) = 0.50
         B->C->D = 40 / (28.66+54.4) = 0.48
         B->E->D = 40 / (36.9+37.5) = 0.54

         C->B->A = 450 / (28.66+43.4) = 6.24
         C->D->A = 450 / (54.4+37.2) = 4.91
         C->E->A = 450 / (18.8+29.8) = 9.26
         C->B = 100 / 28.66 = 3.49
         C->D = 40 / 54.4 = 0.74

         D->A = 450 / 37.2 = 12.1
         D->A->B = 100 / (37.2+43.4) = 1.24
         D->C->B = 100 / (54.4+28.66) = 1.2
         D->E->B = 100 / (37.5+36.9) = 1.34
         D-> C = 80 / 54.4 = 1.47

    But this only tells half the story – once the transport reaches its destination, it has to come back again, and empty transports earn nothing, they simply double the distance.

         A->B and B->A = 9.47 + 10.37 = 19.84
         A->E->C and C->E->A = 1.65 + 9.26 = 10.91
         A->D and D->A = 0.87 + 12.1 = 12.97

         B->A and A->B = 19.84
         B->C and C->B = 2.79 + 6.24 = 9.03
         B->E->D and D->E->B = 0.54 + 1.34 = 1.88

         C->E->A and A->E->C = 10.91
         C->B and B->C = 9.03
         C->D and D->C = 0.74 + 1.47 = 2.21

         D->A and A->D = 12.97
         D->E->B and B->E->D = 1.88
         D->C and C->D = 2.21

    Total flowing through E = 10.91 + 1.88 = 12.79

    This is slightly smaller than the A-D route – but E would be even closer to A. Once a community got started there, it would grow to somewhere between D and C in size very quickly, from an economics standpoint.

    4.0.3 Competitors

    These thoughts aren’t exactly rocket science. Others will have the same idea. Which brings me to the following diagram, which adds two other communities of C and D size that are trading with A, and are even closer.

    The effect of competition is to reduce the potential profit of those markets serviced by rivals if they can do so more efficiently than you can. If it costs them less to get their goods to that marketplace, they can achieve greater profits than you can (permitting growth and the recruitment of more Labor Units) and/or can undercut you on price. You get whatever demand is left over – assuming the goods being offered are of equal quality.

    As a result, F & G are going to soak up the best available deals in A and shrink it’s market so far as B, C, and D are concerned. It’s still a bit bigger than B – but not by a whole lot. (Actually, this supposes that there are also H & I doing the same thing).

    A: total market 450, -80 (G) -40 (F) -80 (H) -40 (I) = 210. That’s more than half the potential earnings taken away.

         A->B and B->A = 9.47 + 10.37 × 210 / 450
         = 9.47 + 4.84 = 14.31
         A->E->C and C->E->A = 1.65 + 9.26 × 210 / 450
         = 1.65 + 4.32 = 5.97
         A->D and D->A = 0.87 + 12.1 × 210 / 450
         = 0.87 + 5.65 = 6.52

         B->A and A->B = 14.31
         B->C and C->B = 2.79 + 6.24 = 9.03
         B->E->D and D->E->B = 0.54 + 1.34 = 1.88

         C->E->A and A->E->C = 5.97
         C->B and B->C = 9.03
         C->D and D->C = 0.74 + 1.47 = 2.21

         D->A and A->D = 6.52
         D->E->B and B->E->D = 1.88
         D->C and C->D = 2.21

    The A-B trade is still dominant, but not as massively so. It’s now more profitable for C to trade with B than it is A. And E has lost a significant part of its growth potential as a result.

    Of course, there’s more to the story than these few variables. So let’s start taking them into account and see what happens:

    4.0.4 Terrain

    The simplest method of factoring terrain into the equation is to determine how much slower the terrain makes your goods and lengthen the distance between the two proportionately. The problem with this approach is that it will impact different modes of transport, differently. The factor that you have to apply for Horses might be quite different to the factor applied to a wagon. I’ll deal with terrain types quite extensively in Chapter 5.

    But, for the moment, and in the interests of simplicity, let’s assume a uniform impact and see what happens when we plonk some terrain down: Swamp on route A-D and half of route C-D, with an impact of x2.5 distance.

         A->D: 37.2 × 2.5 = 93 km
         C->D: (54.4 / 2) + (54.4 / 2) x 2.5 = 27.2 + 68 = 95.2 km

    Base Efficiencies (with comments):

         A->B->C = 80 / (43.4+28.66) = 1.11
         A->D->C =80 / (93+95.2) = 0.425 (was 0.87)
         A->E->C = 80 / (18.8+29.8) = 1.65

    So the least efficient route to C became even less so.

         A->D = 40 / 93 = 0.43 (was 1.08)

    More than 60% of the profitability of this route has been lost.

    (other A-> routes unchanged)

         B->A->D = 40 / (43.4+93) = 0.29 (was 0.50)
         B->C->D = 40 / (28.66+95.2) = 0.32 (was 0.48)
         B->E->D = 40 / (36.9+37.5) = 0.54

    The most efficient route between B and D remains through E; the other options, which were competitive at 0.5 and 0.48, are now definitely second-string.

    (Other B-> routes unchanged)

         C->B->A = 210 / (28.66+43.4) = 2.91
         C->D->A = 210 / (95.2+93) = 1.15 (was 2.29)
         C->E->A = 210 / (18.8+29.8) = 4.32

    (Note that these have been adjusted for the F-G-H-I competition effect).

    The two secondary routes from C to A were reasonably close in efficiency – they aren’t, any more. The route through D is clearly a third-best choice, now.

         C->D = 40 / 95.2 = 0.42 (was 0.74)

    43% loss in efficiency.

    (Other C-> routes unchanged)

         D->A = 210 / 93 = 2.26 (was 5.65)

    That’s a big drop. 60%, in fact. The size of the market in A still makes it the preferred trade destination from D, but the other destinations have increased markedly in comparative value.

         D->A->B = 100 / (93+43.4) = 0.733 (was 1.24)
         D->C->B = 100 / (95.2+28.66) = 0.81 (was 1.2)
         D->E->B = 100 / (37.5+36.9) = 1.34

    These three routes were all reasonably competitive, close enough that other factors would have been decisive. The D-E-B route was already the most profitable, but the margin is now significantly higher.

         D-> C = 80 / 95.2 = 0.84 (was 1.47)

    As you would expect, the 60% drop goes both ways.

    Putting these together:

         A->B and B->A = 9.47 + 4.84 = 14.31 (unchanged)
         A->E->C and C->E->A = 1.65 + 4.32 = 5.97 (unchanged)
         A->D and D->A = 0.43 + 2.26 = 2.69 (was 6.52)

         B->A and A->B = 14.31 (unchanged)
         B->C and C->B = 2.79 + 6.24 = 9.03 (unchanged)
         B->E->D and D->E->B = 0.54 + 1.34 = 1.88 (unchanged)

         C->E->A and A->E->C = 5.97 (unchanged)
         C->B and B->C = 9.03 (unchanged)
         C->D and D->C = 0.42 + 0.84 = 1.26 (was 2.21)

         D->A and A->D = 2.69 (was 6.52)
         D->E->B and B->E->D = 1.88 (unchanged)
         D->C and C->D = 1.26 (was 2.21)

    Comparing these with the figures from 4.0.3, the net effect has been to isolate D even more than it was already – to such an extent that you have to wonder why D even exists.

    There are any number of possible answers to that question – natural resources, or another community farther away from A that is only reachable through D, for example.

    4.0.5 Terrain II

    It could be argued that isolating the smallest of the four communities this way masks the effect of the terrain, so now let’s add some more – hills and mountains on the A-B, B-E, and B-C routes – and also, the unshown H-A and I-A routes. So A would grow somewhat as a trade destination.

    Mountains can be trickier. Some of what you lose on the uphill can be recovered on the downhill side, but paths tend to be more twisting and complicated, and you run the risk of bottlenecks. I’ll deal with those in a moment.

    Mountains and hills are therefore specified as two factors – one going in each direction – and that those factors are actually determined as two sub-factors, an uphill and downhill.

    First, let’s take a look at our new map:

    Notice that there are only a few foothills on the B-C route, while A-B is far more difficult. You would have to carefully assess whether or not B-C-E-A is more efficient than A-B direct.

    It can be assumed from the topography that D is significantly lower in elevation than B, and slightly lower than A or C.

    First, let’s do what we have to do in order to reassess A as a trade destination:

         Mountains H->A: x3.5 up, /1.25 down, 3:1 ratio:
         3.5 × 3 / (1.25 × 1) = x8.4;
         the trade was worth 80, now only 80 / 8.4 = 9.52.

         Mountains I->A: x3 up, / 1.25 down, 3:1.2 ratio:
         3 × 3 / (1.25 × 1.2) = 9 / 1.5 = x6
         the trade was worth 40, now only 40 / 6 = 6.67.

         A: base 450 – 80 (G) – 40 (F) – 9.52 (H) – 6.67 (I) = 313.81

    Note that I have not bothered to calculate the reciprocal, i.e. A->H and A->I. I can’t get away with that for the A, B, C, D, and (potential) E routes!

         Mountains: A->B: x3.5 up / 1.75 down, ratio 2.5:7.5:
         3.5 × 2.5 / (1.75 × 7.5) = 8.75 / 13.125 = x 2/3
         Mountains: B->A: x3.5 up / 1.75 down, ratio 7.5:2.5
         3.5 × 7.5 / (1.75 × 2.5) = 26.25 / 4.375 = x 6

    The ratio describes how much uphill there is relative to downhill. The factors describe how steep the climbs are and how gentle the descents. 3.5 up is fairly steep, 3.0 up is a little less so; 1.25 down is also fairly steep, 1.75 down is quite a bit more gentle.

         Mountains B->C: x 1.75 up / 1.25 down ratio 2:2.5:
         1.75 × 2 / (1.25 × 2.5) = 3.5 / 3.125 = x 1.12
         Mountains C->B: x 1.75 up / 1.25 down ratio 2.5:2:
         1.75 × 2.5 / (1.25 × 2) = 4.375 / 2.5 = x 1.75

         Mountains B->E only affect 2/3 of the route, 1/3 is unchanged; x 2.75 up, / 1.15 down, ratio 2:3.5
         2.75 × 2 / (1.15 × 3.5) = 5.5 / 4.025 = x 1.366
         Mountains E->B only affect 2/3 of the route, 1/3 is unchanged; x 3 up, / 1.15 down, ratio 3.5:2
         3 × 3.5 / (1.15 × 2) = 10.5 / 2.3 = 4.565

    Base Efficiencies:

         A->B = 100 / (43.4 × 2/3)
         = 100 / 28.933 = 3.456 (was 9.47)
         A->B->C = 80 / ([43.4 × 2/3] + [28.66 × 1.12])
         = 80 / (28.9333 + 32.3232)
         = 80 / 61.2565 = 1.31 (was 1.11)
         A->D->C =80 / (93 + 95.2) = 0.60 (was 0.425)
         A->E->C = 80 / (18.8 + 29.8) = 1.65 (unchanged)
         A->D = 40 / 93 = 0.43 (unchanged)

         B->A = 313.81 / (43.4 × 6)
         = 313.81 / 260.4 = 1.21 (was 10.37)
         B->C = 80 / (28.66 × 1.12)
         = 80 / 32.0992 = 2.49 (was 2.79)
         B->A->D = 40 / ([43.4 × 6]+93)
         = 40 / (260.4 + 93)
         = 40 / 353.4 = 0.11 (was 0.29)
         B->C->D = 40 / ([28.66 × 1.12] + 95.2)
         = 40 / (32.0992 + 95.2)
         = 40 / 127.2992 = 0.31 (was 0.32)
         B->E->D = 40 / ([1/3 × 36.9] + [2/3 × 36.9 × 1.366] + 37.5)
         = 40 / (12.3 + 33.6036 + 37.5)
         = 40 / 83.4036 = 0.48 (was 0.54)

         C->B->A = 313.81 / ([28.66 × 1.75] + [43.4 × 6])
         = 313.81 / (50.155 + 260.4)
         = 313.81 / 310.555 = 1.01 (was 2.91)
         C->D->A = 313.81 / (95.2+93)
         = 313.81 / 188.2 = 1.67 (was 1.15)
         C->E->A = 313.81 / (18.8 + 29.8)
         = 313.81 / 48.6 = 6.46 (was 4.32)
         C->B = 100 / (28.66 × 1.75)
         = 100 / 50.155 = 1.99 (was 3.49)
         C->D = 40 / 95.2 = 0.42 (unchanged)

         D->A = 313.81 / 93 = 3.37 (was 2.26)
         D->A->B = 100 / (93 + [43.4 × 2/3)
         = 100 / 121.9333 = 0.82 (was 0.733)
         D->C->B = 100 / (95.2 + [28.66 × 1.75])
         = 100 / (95.2 + 50.155)
         = 100 / 145.355 = 0.69 (was 0.81)
         D->E->B = 100 / (37.5 + {1/3 × 36.9] + [2/3 × 36.9 × 4.565])
         = 100 / (37.5 + 12.3 + 112.299)
         = 100 / 162.099 = 0.62 (was 1.34)
         D-> C = 80 / 95.2 = 0.84 (unchanged)

    Combined Runs:

         A->B and B->A = 3.456 + 1.21 = 4.666 (was 14.31)
         A->E->C and C->E->A = 1.65 + 6.46 = 8.11 (was 5.97)
         A->D and D->A = 0.43 + 3.37 = 3.8 (was 6.52)

    Trade between A to D is now almost as profitable as trade between A to B, and both are a lot less profitable as A to C via E. The terrain has massively impacted the A->B->A route, which used to be the most profitable by far, and the changes have improved the efficiency of the A->E->C->E->A route.

         B->A and A->B = 1.21 + 3.456 = 4.666 (was 14.31)
         B->C and C->B = 2.49 + 1.01 = 3.5 (was 9.03)
         B->A->D and D->A->B = 0.11 + 0.82 = 0.93
         B->C->D and D->C->B = 0.31 + 0.69 = 1.0
         B->E->D and D->E->B = 0.48 + 0.62 = 1.1 (was 1.88)
         B->E->D and D->A->B = 0.48 + 0.82 = 1.3

    The B->C run has been affected just about as badly as the A->B route. They are still the most profitable from B, but are nowhere near as dominant as they were. The other effect that the terrain has had is to make the routes between B and D far more even in efficiency (0.93 vs 1.0 vs 1.1). But a joker has been added to the deck – the first triangle route: B->E->D->A->B takes advantage of the market power of A and the downhill slope from A to B to edge out all of the more straightforward back-and-forth routes. And yes, I was watching for this to happen!

         C->B->A and A->B->C = 1.01 + 1.31 = 2.32
         C->D->A and A->D->C = 1.67 + 0.60 = 2.27
         C->E->A and A->E->C = 6.46 + 1.65 = 8.11 (was 5.97)
         C->B and B->C = 1.99 + 2.49 = 4.48 (was 9.03)
         C->D and D->C = 0.42 + 0.84 = 1.26 (unchanged)

    Here, the direct route through E is so much more efficient than any of the alternatives that it is the obviously preferred choice. Trade between B and C has roughly halved, and most of that now travels the inner trail.

         D->A and A->D = 3.37 + 0.43 = 3.8 (was 2.69)
         D->A->B and B->A->D = 0.82 + 0.11 = 0.93
         D->C->B and B->C->D = 0.69 + 0.31 = 1.0
         D->E->B and B->E->D = 0.62 + 0.48 =1.1
         D->A->B and B->E->D = 0.82 + 0.48 = 1.3
         D->C and C->D = 0.84 + 0.42 = 1.26

    A is the only place on the map that it is worthwhile for D to trade with. That route got a much-needed boost from the increased trading capacity of A.

         Total flowing through E = 8.11 +0.48 + 8.11 = 16.7

    That’s such a solid number that a community at E seems inevitable, and sooner rather than later. When there is one established, it will be very interesting to compare A->D and D->E routes – they are almost the same distance, but one runs straight through a marshy swampland while the other does not. Balancing that, the destination for the swamp road is a much bigger community (measured in potential profit, remember), which may compensate – to say that the balance could tilt either way is an understatement at this point!

    4.0.6 Multi-paths and Choke Points

    This is what is called a ‘heat map’ showing the difference that having multiple routes between two points makes, and the impact of having to move through a choke point.

    I’ve actually done this more infographic style because the image on it’s own was rather boring.

    When there are multiple paths, the sections near town where those paths converge is always going to be the most heavily trafficked, all things being equal – but as the previous sections of this chapter have shown, things are never equal. So:

    1. Shorter = more efficient (assuming that you have corrected distance for terrain factors, etc).

    2. More efficient = more traffic because it’s more profitable.

    3. More traffic = more danger. I’m not just talking bandits, but anything looking for a free lunch. The nature of the encounters should change on the hot-spots – more aggressive creatures should dominate. Arguably, you could even need completely different encounter tables.

    4. It costs money to hire guards, and it costs more money to keep them healthy if they are engaging in combat on your behalf. The greater the danger of an encounter, the more this will eat into your profits.

    5. And, less profitable is less efficient – so following the most heavily-trafficked route is not necessarily a good thing.

    In fact, given the principles and logic just outlined, it can be assumed (all else being equal again) that all paths are equally efficient – some balance speedier travel against greater risks and expense, others are slower but allow you to slip under the radar.

    I also make the point that the regions of greatest danger, the locations that enemies know are going to offer regular pickings, are the areas just outside of town – where protection will be at its strongest.

    4.0.6.1 Sidebar: Projection Of Military Force

    Feel free to ignore this sidebar at will.

    A very rough estimate of the military protection offered by a standing force is easy to determine.

         F = number of men
         A = % Archers
         N = % Combatant Non-Archers
         T = Training (score of 1-5, low to high)
         P – Armor (rating of 1-5, low to high, of the average soldier)
         R = number of hexes force can be projected (1 hex = 5 miles)
         H = number of hexes away from Force
         EF = Effective Force

         R = log(F x ([1.5 x A] + N) x T x P / 80)

         use F x 1.25 if A is between 25% and 50%
         use F x 1.125 if A is between 10% and 25%
         use F x 1.125 if A is between 50% and 65%

    R x 2 if the army are mounted on something reasonably fast like horses. R x more if they are mounted on something even faster – magic carpets, eagles, dragons, whatever.

         EF = F x (R – H) / R

    Example:

    500 men are garrisoned in a fort. They have typical training and equipment levels (both rated 3 out of 5). 40% of them are archers, 50% are non-archer combatants, and 10% are bureaucrats. None of them are mounted..

    R = log ([500 × 1.25] x ([1.5 × 40] +50) x 3 × 3 / 80)
    = log (625 x (60 +50) x 9 / 80)
    = log (625 × 110 × 9 / 80)
    = log (7734.375)
    = 3.8884

    40% archers + 50% non-archers = 90% combatants

    0 hex away: EF = 90% x 625 = 562 men

    1 hex away: EF = 90% x 625 x (3.8884 – 1) / 3.8884
              = 562 × 2.8884 / 3.8884 = 417 men

    2 hexes away: EF = 90% x 625 x (3.8884 – 2) / 3.8884
              = 562 × 1.8884 / 3.8884 = 273 men

    3 hexes away: EF = 90% x 625 x (3.8884 – 3) / 3.8884
              = 562 × 0.8884 / 3.8884 = 128 men

    4 hexes away: EF = 0

    To project power 4 hexes, R needs to be > 4
    10^4 +1 = 10001
    10001 / 7734.375 × 500 = 647 (rounding up)

    So an additional 147 men are needed, assuming the same breakdown. Or the army needs to be transformed into a cavalry.

    This calculation sidesteps all sorts of real world complications to arrive at a rough-and-ready figure. Applying the results should be a matter of standardized tactical assessment.

    EG: an ambush multiplies the ambushing group’s numbers by 5. You need 2:1 for a probable victory, but you will lose half your force in the process. At 3:1, you will lose 1/3. At 4:1, you will lose 1/4 (notice the pattern?)

    So 128 men are enough to defeat 64 bandits (unlikely to see that many under the one banner) or an Orc raiding party of 64 (that’s more likely).

    You can even use Labor Unit values to estimate the comparative strength of non-human opponents where these differ significantly. It’s not the best or most reliable, but it’s quick and fairly easy.

    4.0.7 Mode Of Transport

    The final factor to be considered are alternative modes of transport. Sometimes, carting goods overland is better than floating them downriver, especially if the vessel doing the transportation then has to fight its way back up-river.

    Even within the confines of overland travel, there are multiple options. The size of a load, the available manpower for transporting it, the maintenance requirements of the different modes – there are often multiple ‘fairly right’ answers, and unless you get lucky, no perfect ones – and always remember that others will be looking for the best answer, too.

    It’s not going too far to assign every business operation in a game world something that its owner perceives as a “competitive advantage” or “edge”. They might have sewn up the market in Hill Giants for loading and unloading, or know a better route, or pay a premium to attract the best personnel, or any of a thousand other things. Any given competitive edge might not even exist outside of the mind of the owner! But that’s what they perceive as their advantage; it’s then up to them to leverage that advantage into profits.

    It’s also worth noting that unless it detracts from a business’ profits, they won’t give two hoots about competition. If anything, by allying together, they may be able to more effectively lobby for laws and civic improvements that benefit both.

    Not all ‘rivals’ will be enemies.

4.1 Backpack / Litters / Shanks Pony

The simplest mode of transport is the most personal – people walk from place A to place B while carrying something. As indicated by the title of this sub-section, there are many variations, and this doesn’t list all of them.

We’ve all seen, for example, pictures of African women with huge pots on their heads – that qualifies. There are small wagons designed to be pulled by a single horse – but which can be pulled by a strong man – those are covered under wagons. But the Asian strong-stick across the shoulders with a load suspended from each end? That’s absolutely covered within this category.

The biggest benefit to this mode is that people are adept at breaking trails. If there is a possible way from A to B, a human will find it. Depending on how you characterize them, that quality may be shared with other races.

    I can picture the scene: a party of three – an Elf, a Dwarf, and a Human – have arrived at the foot of a mountain with impassably steep cliffs, and are surveying the path ahead.

    “There’s no hope for it,” says the Elf. We will have to head West and look for a passage from valley to valley until we find one headed in the right direction.”

    “Don’t be daft,” replies the Dwarf. “Let me get the word out to my kin, we’ll cut a passage straight through like a hot knife through butter. Let me see – six Dwarves times three shifts, plus another six cutting and installing timbers to shore up the ceiling, 50 meters a day, about 70 days.”

    “Bah,” answers the human. “That’s no obstacle. A bit of free climbing here over to there, some hammer and pitons, a rope staircase, we’ll be at the summit this time tomorrow.”

The big drawback is that individually, most humans and humanoids can’t carry much. Those that can do so tend to be slow and clumsy, or not interested in manual labor like porting things around.

The secondary drawback is that breaking trails frequently requires the use of both hands, further compromising what can be carried; the only way out of this problem is to leave stuff behind while the trail is forged, then going back for it – progress in stages. Some of that may be obviated by carrying a rope attached to the cargo, perhaps even mounting it on a sled of some kind, then pulling it to you – but that’s at best a compromise.

A tertiary drawback is that there are places a small group of one or two experts can go, but a larger group can’t. That’s why trailblazers and explorers don’t usually carry cargo – any such capacity is consumed with resources to be used to overcome obstacles and sustain the expedition for a little bit longer. Once a trail has been found and marked, and perhaps a few rough patches dealt with by a work-gang, others can follow it while transporting cargo.

So this answer may provide a baseline for gauging efficiency, but it’s really too compromised to be much more than that – most of the time.

Terrain is a huge factor to consider. If the land is mostly flat and passable, or there are already fair trails blazed, it can be a different story. As soon as the path begins climbing toward the sky, litters and such stop being all that practical.

    4.1.1 Capacity

    Precise measurements are determined in earlier sections – it very much depends on the racial profile of the Labor Unit(s) transporting the goods. But, by the time supplies and tools are taken into account, a good rule of thumb is 0.25 Trade Units / person. Some will have a higher capacity, but that’s a fair standard to aim at.

    4.1.2 Personalities / Roleplay

    I have always considered slavery (including wage slavery) to be a form of oppression, and therefore characterized the people occupying that social class as oppressed. From that fundamental, all other natural variations on personality will play out. It must also be acknowledged that there are far harder labors extracted from slaves than simply carrying things from A to B.

4.2 Horseback

I discussed horses extensively in 3.1.2.

As beasts of burden, they are compromised in just about every way imaginable. Light loads, high sustenance requirements, very fast but can’t sustain it – until wagons and such enter the picture, horses are limited to small, light, loads that are carried short distances at speed. Or small, light, loads that are carried long distances slowly – if there’s no better choice of pack animal available.

The only benefits that a horse brings to the table are relative ones – they are less fractious and easier to work with than mules, for example, and faster than oxen on their slowest day. The fact that they will defer to the judgment of their rider and hence cooperate even when being driven to death by a whip is one of the species’ greatest assets (it’s a bit rough on the individual, though).

All that changes when they get hitched up to a wagon or sled of some sort. The deferment of judgment means that they work together fairly naturally, and the horse has been evolved to work in this way by man’s selective breeding.

    4.2.1 Capacity

    One rider can generally only control two horses outside of a team / wagon arrangement. More can be led, hitched together into a train, but the rider only really controls the mount under him and the first in the train; the trick is training each horse to subsume it’s own instincts in favor of those of the horse in front of it.

    The sequence in which they are hitched is therefore very important. They get used to a particular arrangement and become docile within it after a period of adjustment, but change the order and you have to begin that period of adjustment all over again.

    As a rough rule of thumb, a horse can carry 0.5 Trade Units – but there are multiple compromise points in terms of pace and capacity above this baseline.

    4.2.2 Requirements

    Again, as a very rough indicator,

      +1 Horse per 5 carrying fodder
      +1 Horse per 3 carrying water

    If you don’t have enough horses to achieve this requirement, divide these requirements by the number of horses that you do have and reduce their carrying capacity accordingly.

    The methodology described in 3.1.2 is far more precise, but this is a good rule of thumb to employ.

    Four horses, for example: 1 horse is carrying nothing but water. 1/3 of another needs to be dedicated to the purpose, so it’s capacity is only 2/3 of 0.5 = 0.333 Trade Units. Fodder accounts for 0.2 Trade Units on one of the animals, possibly the same one. So the four-horse group has a capacity of 0.5 × 2 + 0.3333 – 0.2 = 1.13333 trade units.

    But that’s if they are led. If one is being ridden, it permits greater speed than walking – but the rider’s weight also needs to come out of that capacity. Effectively, four horses can carry a rider and 1 Trade Unit – as a rough rule of thumb.

    There are all sorts of tricks that riders can use to extend the range of a horse. Eddings, in one of his novels (and I don’t recall which) goes into some detail about some of them.

    4.2.3 Personalities / Roleplay

    So, one or more PCs find themselves in charge of a train of horses. Excellent – for the GM, and for a roleplayer.

    First, there can be only one leader. One of those PCs is that leader, and the other is an adjunct or assistant, who won’t be obeyed by anyone except any horse that he happens to be riding (and sometimes not even that one).

    Second, there can be only one lead horse. This horse needs to have a personality that will dominate the others. Put the wrong horse at the head of the train and you will have nothing but chaos. The second horse in line might defer to the first, while the third becomes willful and disobedient, and is followed by the fourth, fifth, and so on.

    This is very much a reflection of the mental states of horses in a herd setting; they are simply arranged differently.

    That dominating personality can be the obsessive/compulsive neatness-and-organization type; it can be the heroic leader type, or the charismatic leader type, or the eldest (and presumably wisest), it can be the nagging wife or the Jewish mother, or any other variant that you can conceive of.

    When separated, individual personalities will tend to emerge. When linked together, the leader’s personality dominates, and getting the ‘herd’ to obey means working with that domineering personality.

    In another of Edding’s novels, part of the Belgariad, much is made of their personalities of horses, especially in a herd setting, at one or two points. That interpretation is not 100% consistent with the above analysis but is close enough for it to be used for further guidance.

    In particular, this can be useful in crafting encounters with horse trains led by NPCs. The implication is that if you have put some effort into understanding the unique aspects of how a horse thinks, you will have done so for all the other creatures encountered, adding a lot of depth to the game. Of course, you will then have to live up to that standard!

4.3 Mule Train

3.1.3 dealt with burros, donkeys, and mules as beasts of burden. They are very different from Horses in many respects; not least of which is greater endurance. They are often not as smart as horses, and their internal social rankings are subject to frequent challenge. They make up for this by being stubborn, i.e. far less inclined to cede judgment to a human authority. In fact, it’s more accurate to say that they expect humans to defer to their judgments.

They don’t have a human leader the way that horses do, in other words; they will permit a human to function as navigator and the broader scale, but once the general direction of travel has been set, they will decide for themselves how to go about heading in that direction.

Some of them tend to have pretty good instincts for this, and over time this leads to entrenchment as pack leader – but this is regularly challenged, because the position has all sorts of privileges attached.

These are all smaller than horses, and have slightly smaller carrying capacities, but they make up for that by needing a lot less sustenance. And it’s almost as easy to control 20 mules as it is to control two.

    4.3.1 Capacity

    Individually, these beasts have lower capacities than horses, but they cope better with being overloaded, and their requirements are lower, so with weight of numbers they become more efficient.

    As a general rule, use 1 Trade Unit / 3 mules / donkeys / burros. But mules can cope with being overburdened – it simply slows their pace a little and increases their rest requirements. In fact, loads of up to 5 Trade Units can be carried by 3 mules / donkeys / burros, though this is pushing the limits fairly hard. A good compromise is 2 Trade Units / 3 mounts..

    4.3.2 Requirements

    Again as a general rule of thumb:

      +1 Mule per 4 carrying fodder
      +1 Mule per 8 or part thereof carrying water

    So those 3 cargo-carrying animals need to be supplemented with 2 more, and one of them needs to carry a little extra in fodder, which it will be relieved of as quickly as possible.

    But, a team of 6 carrying 4 trade units need only be supplemented by 3 more, not 4. It’s at this point that their fabled endurance begins to really impact their relative efficiency.

    But 6+3=9; so three of the six need to carry a little extra – two fodder and one water. Or you can add a fourth animal anyway, for a total team of 10 – and a little capacity up your sleeve.

    Again, 3.1.3 gives a more robust and detailed reading on these.

    4.3.3 Personalities / Roleplay

    The cliches would suggest that aside from being stubborn willful, and completely convinced that they are always right (and so if you disagree with them you must be wrong), these beasts of burden have no personalities.

    I beg to differ – other aspects of their personalities may be i fourth place behind those common factors, but they do exist and can sometimes manifest in unexpected ways. The mule who likes natural beauty and can never resist a field of flowers in bloom, or with a taste for spicier plants than most, or who likes to “sing”. The one with a sense of humor, always playing ‘practical jokes’. Or perhaps a cruel and/or heartless streak.

    Of course, a PC encountering a mule train led by an NPC has (at best) a 50-50 chance of noticing any of these – and it defeats the purpose for the NPC to mention it out of hand. But a PC actually running a mule train will get to notice these traits in a hurry!

4.4 Wagons

I’ve dealt with carts in even greater detail and specificity than horses and burros – all in section 3.1.4.

Ultimately, any sort of platform on wheels or rails that is pulled or pushed by a living thing qualifies – including rickshaws. But the more traditional view is a flat platform with some sort of guardrails on one or more axles which have wheels attached.

Because they are a made contrivance, they can be made bigger or smaller as needed. The size dictates how large a load they can carry, and the combined weight of wagon and cargo, the size of the animal train needed to drive them.

This system recommends putting the cart before the horse – instead of size specifying load, choose a load capacity and use that to determine the size.

    4.4.1 Capacity

    Wagons and carts come in 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 Trade Unit capacities. 3 and 5 are also possible but relatively uncommon. 5 or more trade units definitely requires 2 axles and 4 wheels. Some 4-unit sizes also have this configuration.

    The reason is that it’s generally a lot better to distribute the weight over four points of contact than it is, two. Beyond a certain point, though, it becomes not just “better” but Necessary.

    4.4.2 Requirements

    Drawn by a minimum of one horse per 2 Trade Units
    2 per 2 Trade Units if mules / donkeys
    1 per 4 Trade Units if oxen
    1 per 8 Trade Units if elephants

    4.4.3 Other Exceptions – Animal Size

    Elephants are big, but in most fantasy worlds, there are bigger creatures. Convince one of them to pull your wagon and you won’t need as many as you do elephants, and may even be able to get a special wagon commissioned – or, more likely, daisy chain several of them together to form what in Australia is known as a “road train” – except that ours are semi-trailers being hauled by prime movers.

    Sidebar: Road Trains
    Only in Australia do the conditions exist to make road trains of significant size a practical consideration. Most countries will go so far as to stack two semi-trailers behind a prime mover but here, it is routine to have three or four.

    Some photos of road trains to illustrate the point:

    Image by Siggy Nowak from Pixabay. With a small family car and a small fold-up caravan for size comparison.

    Image by Meridy Scott from Pixabay. This is actually two road trains, one right behind another, both 3-trailer configurations.

    The longest practical road trains are special mining tipper-trucks. These travel only on purpose-built roads carting iron ore from mines to dropping-off points, which allows them to bypass government restrictions on vehicle size.

    I found this image on Pinterest (author unknown) – it has seven trailers, but there are larger ones.

    Image via Pinterest, photographer unknown.

    To give some context to my comments about ‘only in Australia’, it’s not just jingoism. The largest road train outside of this country was a publicity stunt in Gothenburg, Sweden, when a single prime mover hauled 20 trailers with double-stacked (loaded) containers – a total length of 300 meters (984 feet) and total weight of 750 tonnes.

    Compare that to the Australian record (also just a publicity stunt), 113 loaded trailers, 1474.3 meters (4836′ 11″) in length, a total weight 1300 tonnes (1279 long tons, 1433 short tons). Distance traveled: 100m (328 feet).

    Now a fully loaded cargo container has a maximum weight of 36,000 kg, and the weight of a semi-trailer large enough to carry one is about 15,000 kg. A typical wagon in a fantasy game would weigh no more than 5,000 kg and probably less, fully laden – so that’s a ratio of 51:5, or about 10:1.

    A train of three wagons in a fantasy environment would be about 15,000 kg capacity, including the weight of the wagons – or about 1% of what one of those three-semi road trains could carry.

    How many trade units are in that 15,000 depends on how you have defined a standard Trade Unit. It wouldn’t surprise me for this to be a 30- or 60- trade unit approach.

    To haul that much weight, the roads had better be pretty good, though….

    3.4.4 Fodder / Food & Water Needs

    Everything that lives needs food of some kind (it was a thought along those lines that led me to think up the Golden Empire, in which everyone not at the bottom rung of society was Undead).

      4.4.4.1 People

      Refer 3.1.1.13 & 3.1.1.14 in Ch 3 pt 2, plus racial variations in 3.1.1.10 from Ch 3 pt 1 & 3.1.1.17 from Ch 3 pt 2 (again).

      4.4.4.2 Horses

      Refer 3.1.2 from Ch 3 pt 2, plus the notes above.

      4.4.4.3 Mules

      Refer 3.1.3 from Ch 3 pt 2, plus the notes above.

      4.4.4.4 Oxen / Cattle

      Typical weight for an ox is 280kg, but they range from 200 to 400kg.

      Typical weight for a bull (depending on the breed) is 450-1800 kg.

      Typical weight of a cow also depends on the breed, ranging from 360-1100 kg.

      An ox, or a bull, needs about 2% of its body-weight per day.
      A cow needs 4% of body-weight if a high-producing breed, 3% of body-weight if a more efficient breed, 2% if not lactating.

      Low quality forage – no more than 1.8% of body-weight.
      Average quality forage – no more than 2.1% of body-weight.
      Good quality forage – no more than 3% of body-weight.

      This must be supplemented by Hay – a maximum of 5kg per day – or Silage (half as nutritious as hay, so twice as much).

      If the combined feed is not enough, the bovine will lose 0.5%-1% of its body-weight per day, to a maximum loss of about 12%, at which point it will refuse to work and begin to die.

      An Ox needs 30-80 liters of water per day, generally around 8% of body-weight.

      A bull needs 20-30 liters of water per day, generally around 8% of body-weight.

      A cow needs 30-80 liters of water per day, less if not lactating. Again, this is about 8% of body-weight.

      These numbers increase 10-20% on very hot days, and another 5-10% if it is also very humid.

      4.4.4.5 Elephants

      Elephants eat 149-300 kg of food a day, mostly grasses supplemented with the occasional piece of fruit. They have to spend up to 18 hours a day feeding.

      This ceases to be an issue if the animal handler can contrive a way of feeding the elephant while it is on the move.

      Elephants generally consume 100-200 liters of water per day. Apply the same increases as for bovines regarding temperature and humidity. 100 liters of water weighs roughly 100 kg.

      African elephants generally weigh 2700-3600 kg (F) and up to 6800 kg (M). So 100 liters is roughly 3% of the female body-weight and 200 liters is roughly the same % of the male body-weight.

      Asian elephants generally weight 1800-4500 kg and the females 1600-4000 kg. Their water needs are similar in quantity to that of their African cousins, yielding a higher % of body-weight: 3.5% (F) and 4.45% (M).

      4.4.4.6 Other

    No one game supplement can possibly cover all the fantastic creatures that could be turned into beasts of burden. Everything from Dinosaurs to Dragons can be pressed into the role – some creatures more successfully than others. That’s why I’m careful to show my working – so that, when presented with an unusual option, you have the tools to make your own decisions as to the implications and repercussions.

    4.4.5 Personalities / Roleplay

    The cliche is that elephants embody wisdom. Throw away that notion right away – they are far more complicated than that. Every elephant has the following traits in some measure:

      1. Attentiveness
      2. Sociability
      3. Aggressiveness
      4. Intelligence
      5. Empathy
      6. Self-awareness
      7. Cowardice
      8. Bravery

    Notice that Wisdom is not on that list.
    For 1-6, roll d10 and record the score. For 7, roll d6; and for 8, roll a d4, +4 for a male. Then list the attributes in sequence of high scores to low. That puts the traits in sequence of dominance in the case of this particular elephant.

    One cliche that is absolutely proven fact – elephants are scared of mice. No-one knows exactly why. It’s not just an animated cartoon cliche.

Made It! There were times when I was uncertain, and thought that the entire post might be the section on Trade Routes, but despite melting in the heat today, this post contains everything that I wanted it to include.

Next week, though, I’ll be interrupting the series to review a new RPG product that readers may find interesting – and, since it’s not a fundraised product, it’s available right now!.

Comments (1)

Trade In Fantasy Ch. 3: Routine Personnel, Pt 4


This entry is part 8 in the series Trade In Fantasy

The last installment of the third Chapter of the series looks as worker productivity and how race and other factors influence it.

It’s been an interesting 2025 so far, characterized by things going wrong in unexpected and unusual ways and recovering from those problems.

It actually started on New Year’s Eve, when I rebooted my laptop after a clean-up, just as I’ve done twice a week or more for the last 12 or so years – and it refused to boot up. Eventually I was forced to reset the Windows installation, only to find that it couldn’t complete, either.

Fortunately, two things came to my rescue: My brother, who’s done a lot more laptop installs than I have, and a Christmas gift of 16Gb of RAM instead of the paltry 2GB it’s been living with for all that time. With the new RAM installed, the windows reset did everything it was supposed to do, and all I had to do then was to reinstall all my software (that part of the recovery process is still ongoing).

At least it happened in a global holiday period, so email was smaller than usual and I had no difficulty catching back up.

But the recovery process led me directly into event #2: the photo-editing software that I installed was a later version of what I had been using, and somewhere in between version 3.3 and version 5.whatever, it had lost the intuitiveness that had always been its hallmark. I could figure out how to do most things, but there were always extra steps involved – and not everything seemed to work properly. It didn’t matter what setting I chose, for example, the brushes all delivered a somewhat transparent color. And it had real problems saving any work done.

So I had to go back to their download site and ferret around until I found their archive of past versions. I tried regressing just one step, to an earlier version of 5 – problems persisted. So I went back to a sub-version of 4 – some of the problems went away, but not the big one (save dialogue wouldn’t open). So it was back to the old 3.3.3 version – the last in that development cycle – and wonder of wonders, everything went back to normal! I was back in business!

In the middle of this process, the wing screw in my glasses broke. In fact, it sheared in two partway along the shaft of the screw – something I’ve never seen happen before, and I’ve been wearing glasses for something like 55 years!

I have a glasses repair kit for such problems, so there was no panic; until I tried to remove the embedded shaft end of the broken screw. Tweezers could not furnish an adequate grip on it, and needle-nosed pliers were too big and bulky to grasp it and turn it.

Fortunately, enough of the shaft remained that I could fit it back into the part of the frame that it had come from and then hold everything together with a small strip of insulation tape. Last week, after a doppler ultrasound on my legs (all clear), I had time to stop in at an eyeware shop for some emergency repairs. They had never seen anything like this happen before, either! But by clamping the frame down, they were able to extract the broken screw and replace it – and they were good enough not to charge me (they kept the screw as a souvenir). Big shout-out to the helpful staff at Owndays in Westfield Burwood!

So, if things come in threes, hopefully that’s an end to the surprise breakdowns! Some people disagree with my occasional assertion that the greatest disruptions occur when something we take for granted stops working – but these three situations are all examples of that, and each was – until patched or repaired – totally disruptive to my life and routines.

A huge number of sources were compiled to create this image, which deliberately mashes several different Asian cultures together to create something that isn’t quite any of them. It is based around Buffalo Farmer (source image by Sasin Tipchai (Sasint)), but I needed a background that was easier to extend, so I used rice-cultivation-4165415.jpg (Image by Pixabay User 12322747, otherwise uncredited) and rice-5712910.jpg (Image by Vien Tran Tri) for that purpose, together with trees etc from rice-paddy-5354864.jpg (Image by Dennis Peterson (dep377) and tropical-3134680.jpg (Image by romeuramosribeiro), and also paddy-field-7253640.jpg (Image by thinh dam). For perspective and framing, a foreground piece of bamboo (Image by Thanh Phong (duythan1989)) was added. I then inserted huts from several sources – village-5521554.jpg (Image by Pixabay User 17131402, otherwise uncredited), terraces-7878191jpg (Image by ThanhVu68), rice-5104525.jpg (Image by Cong Vu), vietnam-8047523.jpg (Also an Image by ThanhVu68), and landscape-5578712.jpg (Image by Duyet Tran), with various edits to make them look similar in construction. Behind them, a temple (actually gyeongbok palace, image by LongShot24), and behind all that and part of the background, a mountain (Image by sfkjrgk). I threw in the elephant (Image by Jean photosstock), the dragon (Image by JL G (ractapopulous)), and the centaur (Image by Parker_West), just because I could. Some misty rain by me in front of all the distant elements and some color tweaking and other edits of the source images completed the composite. By my count, that’s 16 image elements depicting 3 or 4 different nations…

The image was always conceived as a panoramic Triptych that could be divided into three equal panels for spot illustrations. See main image above for image credits.

Table Of Contents: In part 1 of Chapter 3: Routine Personnel

3.1 A Choice Of Four Trade Unit Standards (actually, 8)

    3.1.0 Principles of Comparative Modes Of Transport
    3.1.1 Humans as a beast of burden

      3.1.1.1 Lift from STR
      3.1.1.2 Average isn’t Average
      3.1.1.3 4d6 keep 3 vs 3d6
      3.1.1.4 Career Paths & STR

           3.1.1.4.1 Linear vs Non-Linear

      3.1.1.5 Lift, at last
      3.1.1.6 Encumbrance

           Sidebar: Behind The Curtain

      3.1.1.7 Load & Load Capacity
      3.1.1.8 Load Balance

           3.1.1.8.1 Adding a Staff to the equation
           3.1.1.8.2 Relating Load to Encumbrance (D&D)
           3.1.1.8.3 Relating Load to Encumbrance (Hero / Superhero)
           3.1.1.8.4 Relating Load to Encumbrance (Hero / Adventurer’s Club)

      3.1.1.9 Load Distribution
      3.1.1.10 Humanoids

           3.1.1.10.1 The Size Factor
           3.1.1.10.2 The Proportions Factor
           3.1.1.10.3 The Racial Factor
           3.1.1.10.4 The Human Advantage
           3.1.1.10.5 The Iconic Reference
           3.1.1.10.6 Elves
           3.1.1.10.7 Dwarves
           3.1.1.10.8 Halflings
           3.1.1.10.9 Orcs
           3.1.1.10.10 Ogres
           3.1.1.10.11 Bugbears
           3.1.1.10.12 Trolls
           3.1.1.10.13 Hill Giants
           3.1.1.10.14 Stone Giants
           3.1.1.10.15 Other Giants
           3.1.1.10.16 Others

In Part 2:

    3.1.1 Humans as a beast of burden (cont)

      3.1.1.11 Time: 8, 12, 16, 24
      3.1.1.12 Speed
           3.1.1.12.1 Non-D&D Scales

      3.1.1.13 Provisions: Food
      3.1.1.14 Provisions; Water
      3.1.1.15 Replenishment: Foraging / Hunting / Buying
      3.1.1.16 Distance
      3.1.1.17 The humanoid bottom line

           3.1.1.17.1 Elves
           3.1.1.17.2 Dwarves
           3.1.1.17.3 Halflings
           3.1.1.17.4 Orcs
           3.1.1.17.5 Ogres
           3.1.1.17.6 Bugbears
           3.1.1.17.7 Trolls
           3.1.1.17.8 Hill Giants
           3.1.1.17.9 Stone Giants
           3.1.1.17.10 Other Giants
           3.1.1.17.11 Other Humanoids

    3.1.2 Horses as a beast of burden
    3.1.3 Burros as a beast of burden
    3.1.4 Carts as a ‘beast of burden’

      3.1.4.1 Strength of the Axles
           3.1.4.1.1 Cart & Wagon Stats: High-Score Option
           3.1.4.1.2 Cart & Wagon Stats: Low-Score Option
           3.1.4.1.3 Cart & Wagon Axle Reinforcement

      3.1.4.2 Strength of the Wheels
           3.1.4.2.1 Spoke Thickness
           3.1.4.2.2 Number Of Spokes
           3.1.4.2.3 Solid Wheels

      3.1.4.3 Strength of the Connection
      3.1.4.4 Strength of the Bed
      3.1.4.5 Rolling Resistance
           3.1.4.5.1 Slope (aka Grade, Gradient, Stepth, Incline, Mainfall, Pitch, and Rise)

      3.1.4.6 Gravity Vector

In Part 3:

    3.1.4.7 Pulling the Cart or Wagon
    3.1.4.8 Simplification
    3.1.4.9 Storytelling

    3.1.5 Choosing Your Unit
    3.1.6 Ramifications

      3.1.6.1 Freight Management
      3.1.6.2 Base Loading Time
      3.1.6.3 On The Road: Drivers, Guards, Cargo-masters, & Handlers
      3.1.6.4 Base Unloading Time
      3.1.6.5 Sales Prep
      3.1.6.6 Sales and Customers

3.2 Recruiter / Personnel Manager

    3.2.1 Assumption #1: The best available gets hired

      3.2.1.1 Any Relevant Skill
      3.2.1.2 INT + WIS
      3.2.1.3 Substituting CHAR
      3.2.1.4 Supplemental Magic

    3.2.2 Assumption #2: They Hire The Best
    3.2.3 The Principle Of Labor Unmanagement

3.3 The Labor Unit

    3.3.1 Eight man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.2 Twelve man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.3 Sixteen man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.4 Twenty-four man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.5 Choices and Expectations

3.4 The Labor Market
3.5 Basic Pay-scales

    3.5.1 Loyalty Index

In today’s post:

    3.6 Productivity

    3.6.1 Premium & Limited Labor Units

      3.6.1.1 Example: Dwarves
      3.6.1.2 Example: Halflings
      3.6.1.3 Example: A mixed Labor Unit (Humans and a Hill Giant)
      3.6.1.4 Loyalty Factors, Premium Labor Units
      3.6.1.5 Loyalty Factors, Limited Labor Units

    3.6.2 Production Of Labor Units

      3.6.2.1 The One-Page standard
      3.6.2.2 Reminder: Profit per Trade Unit, not costs or prices

3.7 Pay-scale Variations

    3.7.1 Massively Overpaying workers
    3.7.2 Overpaying workers / Elite Quality Workforce
    3.7.3 Standard Wages
    3.7.4 Underpaying workers / Lower Quality Workforce
    3.7.5 Oppression through underpayment

      3.7.5.1 Sidebar: Adventuring Economics

    3.7.5 Oppression through underpayment (cont)
    3.7.6 Family as Employees
    3.7.7 ‘Friends’ helping ‘Friends’
    3.7.8 Slaves
    3.7.9 Minor Stakeholders

      3.7.9.1 Non-voting shares

    3.7.10 Combinations & Complications

3.8 Technological Impact

    3.8.1 Major Breakthroughs
    3.8.2 Incremental Gains
    3.8.3 Trade Secrets & Industrial Spies

3.9 Key Personnel & The Labor Unit
3.10 The Personnel Bottom Line

In future chapters:
  1. Mode Of Transport
  2. Land Transport
  3. Waterborne Transport
  4. Spoilage
  5. Key Personnel
  6. The Journey
  7. Arrival
  8. Journey’s End
  9. Adventures En Route

I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I don’t think that a recap will add that much to today’s post – it would either be extremely long and mostly irrelevant or extremely short and not worth the effort. So let’s dive right in…

Second of the Triptych. See main image for credits.

3.6 Productivity

So far, the focus has been on defining a standard, generic, labor unit, but – as anyone who has ever worked in the real world knows – there are always some who are more productive than others. The larger the organization, the more closely the overall workforce will come to matching the generic unit defined, overall.

Rather than fuss over detailing each and every specific labor unit, the approach taken by this system is to assume that the overall average accommodates both the occasional ‘lazy unit’ and the more efficient ones, overall. It’s not unreasonable to set aside a small slice of the profits – 5 or 10% – and allocate these to bonuses for productivity, effectively increasing the pay-scale slightly while providing an incentive for hard work.

Given the way the Recruiter has been defined, if left to run the business the way it should be run, such a bonus scheme is extremely likely to be instituted – you would have to be fairly incompetent in management not to thing it was a good idea. We’ve discussed employee loyalty already, and bonus payments are a good way of buying some of that loyalty. I’ll get into that side of things a little deeper in section 3.7, where I’ll look at variations on the basic labor unit.

So, clearly, that’s not what this section is going to focus on. Instead, there’s a ‘reality’ within the concept of a Fantasy (or Sci-Fi for that matter) environment that needs to be taken into account: Non-humans (“Augmented” humans and non-humans will be considered in section 3.8).

To start with, we need some way of distinguishing all these kinds of labor units. Without defined specifics, it’s too easy to get ourselves into a tangle, talking about one thing when we think we’re talking about another.

So, some definitions to get us under way:

  • Standard Labor Units – This is what we have defined as the backbone of the workforce, taking the assumption that they were human.
  • Elite Labor Units – These are human-based Labor Units that are more productive or effective than the standard. Their contributions in general are assumed to average out with Substandard Labor Units. Labor Units with an Elite rating tend to be preferred hires, but everyone is competing for them. They have to be paid more or their loyalty declines, rapidly – and it becomes easier for some other employer to steal them out from under you.
  • Substandard Labor Units – Human-based Labor Units that are lazier or less productive than the standard. This can be the result of social norms – the afternoon Siesta, for example, has to be accommodated where that’s normal, even though it means for 1-2 hours a day, workers are unproductive. As a general rule, these are the least-desirable units to employ, but in some places you have no choice because the entire labor pool qualifies as “substandard”.
  • Premium Labor Units – Labor units that are non-human and consequently are more efficient than a human Labor Unit would be. Like Elite Labor Units, they can reasonably expect to be paid more, and that’s a good thing from the human workforce’s point-of-view; it provides a disincentive to discriminate in favor of non-human labor.
  • Limited Labor Units – Labor units that are non-human and consequently less efficient than a human labor unit would be. The presumption is that they are local, however, and not hiring them can negatively impact the public’s willingness to trade with the business. While employers would no doubt love to pay these Labor Units less than a standard Labor Unit, and these Labor Units members would generally expect to be paid less, there are limits to how closely economic theory can match social reality. Instead, the expectation is that the Labor Unit consists of enough additional members to off-set any Limitations. A Labor unit of Halflings might have 12 members instead of 8, for example, or 3 instead of 2. That means that the individual members will be paid less per person per hour, but the overall labor cost will remain the same. But this principle can break down in smaller labor-markets, where there simply aren’t enough people available to be hired.
  • Combinations: Elite Premium, Substandard Premium, Limited Elite, Limited Substandard – Since the two factors – Elite/Substandard and Premium/Limited – have entirely different derivations, combinations are quite possible. This can get quite confusing it you don’t keep your terminology straight and be extra-careful when using casual speech.

The basic approach to both sets of factors is the same – if a Labor Unit does 2 × X (%) more work than a Standard Labor Unit, it gets paid 1 × X (%) extra. The business saves 1 × X (%) on it’s labor costs, earning it extra profits, and the workers get an equal share of those productivity gains.

Where there is some factor making them less efficient than standard, the pay is still standard, and the assumption is that extra hands will be added to the Labor Unit to make up the deficit, whatever it may be.

Note that if a better Labor Unit does not get paid what they are worth, they will either go work for someone else or they will voluntarily adopt work practices that bring their productivity back into line with the standard. They will get lazier, in other words, until they are earning just what you’re paying them.

    3.6.1 Premium & Limited Labor Units

    So, how do you determine X%. as describe in the section above? Section 3.1.1.10 holds the key, from all the way back in Part 1 of this chapter. Size, Strength, Physiology, Social Habits – everything I could think of gets taken into account. All you have to do is determine whether the work that they are doing has, as its limiting factor, Distributed, Semi-distributed, or Point loads (and, 99% of the time, the latter will be the correct answer).

      3.6.1.1 Example: Dwarves

      Load Capacity × 0.7 × 1.41 × 1.43 = × 1.41141 Adjustments for distributed & Semi-distributed loads are not applicable.
      So +41.141% relative to human.
      2 × X% = +41.141;
      X = +20.5705%. Call it +20.6%.

      If the normal pay per day was 5sp, this would make it 6sp in a Dwarven port or city – but you can expect loading and unloading to take 1 / 1.41141 = × 0.7085 = only 70.85% as long as usual.

      70.85% of 1.206 pay rate = 0.854451 = 85.4451%, so Labor Costs are effectively down to 85.4451% of expected. If your human cost was, say, 5000 SP in a year, this would cost only 4272.255 SP over the same period, producing 727.745 SP in extra profit.

      3.6.1.2 Example: Halflings

      Load Capacity × 0.3 × 2 = × 0.6. Adjustments for distributed & Semi-distributed loads are not applicable.
      So -40% relative to human.

      For every human, it takes 1 / 0.6 = 1.667 times as many Halflings to do the equivalent work.

      Or, to put it another way, each individual Halfling gets paid 60% of what a human would be paid. Your operating costs don’t go down, but you don’t lose any profitability, either.

      3.6.1.3 A mixed Labor Unit (Humans and a Small Hill Giant)

      Small Hill Giant:
           Load Capacity × 3.4 × 2 / 1.25 = × 5.44

      If a normal Labor Unit is 8 humans, this labor unit needs only 2.56 humans to be as productive as a standard unit.

      If a normal Labor Unit is 10 humans, this labor unit needs only 4.56 humans to be as productive as a standard unit.

      If a normal Labor Unit is 12 humans, this labor unit needs only 6.56 humans to be as productive as a standard unit.

      Let’s take the middle one, and list this labor unit as 1 Small Hill Giant and 5 humans.

      5.44 + 5 = 10.44 = 1.044 × standard
      So +4.4% relative to human.
      2 × X% = +4.4%;
      X = +2.2%.

      If the normal pay per day was 5 SP × 10 men = 50 SP, this would make it 52.2 SP – but you can expect loading and unloading to take 1 / 1.044 = × 0.95.7854 = only 95.8% as long as usual.

      95.8% of 1.022 pay rate = 0.979076 = 97.9076%, so Labor Costs are effectively down to 98% of expected. If your human cost was, say, 5000 SP in a year, this would cost only 4900 SP over the same period, producing 100 SP in extra profit.

      Making the presumption that these humans and this Hill Giant are used to working together, they all qualify for the higher pay scale. So the humans would get 1.022 × 5 × 5 = 25.55 SP between them, or 5.11 SP per man per day; while the Hill Giant would get the rest (52.2 – 25.55 = 26.65 SP per day).

      3.6.1.4 Loyalty Factors, Premium Labor Units Example: Halflings

      Premium Labor Units expect to be paid more than a standard Labor Unit. It follows that it’s harder to buy their loyalty, and easier to lose it by short-paying them.

      Take the Dwarves example: they expect to be paid 1.206 times the normal. If you actually pay 1.5 times normal, that earns the same loyalty bonus as paying an all-human Labor Unit 1.5 / 1.206 = 1.244 as much as usual.

      On the other hand, if you only paid 0.8 × as much as you would usually pay an all-human Labor Unit, for whatever reason, the effect on the loyalty of this Premium Unit would be as though you only paid 0.8 / 1.206 = 66.335% of normal to an all-human Labor Unit. If you were one of the best employees at a business and everybody knew it, how loyal to the business would you be if the boss told you “I’m cutting your pay by 1/3 next week”? Most people I know would be out of there within the hour!

      3.6.1.5 Loyalty Factors, Limited Labor Units

      It works the other way, too – Limited Labor Units expect to be paid less per person, so paying them extra has a disproportionate effect. Halflings, as shown, have to throw an extra 0.667 people at a job for every human in a normal Labor Unit. Ten humans or 16.67 Halflings to do the same amount of work in the same amount of time – at the same amount of pay, between them.

      5 SP × 10 humans = 50 SP; 50/16.67 = 3 SP per Halfling, per day, or 60% of normal. So paying them extra earns loyalty at the rate of 1 / 0.6 = 1.667 normal, while paying them less also has a × 0.6 effect – the wrong way, because they are already underpaid (in their opinion).

3.6.2 Production Of Labor Units

From the perspective of the GM, the more generic and less individualized he can make the Labor Units, the better. The easiest way of doing so is to view the business or trade as a globalized whole, and balance a more efficient workforce in “A” with less-efficient ones in “B” and “C” – just inefficient enough by virtue of race, conditions, geography, sub-population, and/or social traditions to balance everything out so that you end up with effectively two Standard Labor Units.

And, for a long time, that was the concept that I was working toward in this series. But, as a concept, it can’t coexist with the principle of less-productive units throwing additional manpower at a job for the same overall pay (i.e. less per individual); I had to choose which abstraction was the most useful for the GM and rewrite whole tracts of my notes around that decision.

Nevertheless, some legacies of the alternate approach linger, because I’m doing minimal revision to past posts – once something is published, it stays essentially unchanged and any revisions or amendments happen in a future post.

Clearly, the decision was to have Standard and less-efficient units cost the same per shift and deliver the same level of total man-hours or equivalent, while more efficient units simply cost a little more – and if they don’t get paid that extra, they either slow down to the Standard pace, or get replaced with Standard Units because the good workers get poached and replaced with new hires, all completely invisibly to everyone.

GMs should populate their trading and commerce centers with a workforce that is reasonably representative of the local population, determine their efficiency based on racial and social makeup relative to a ‘standard unit’, determine the size of the available workforce, also measured in standard units, and get to a bottom line of “it costs X per time period to do business here.”

    3.6.2.1 The One-Page standard

    Most trade operations and businesses won’t have a customer base sufficient to average things out to a daily cost; even a weekly or monthly average is a bit optimistic, especially if seasonal impacts have to be taken into account (harvest time is ‘this month’, for example, and in ‘that month’ the roads take longer to travel because everything’s muddy from rain some of the time, or blocked by snowdrifts, or whatever).

    A far better approach is to look at the annual costs – start by figuring out what they will be given reasonable conditions, then just keep adjusting that total for all the different local and seasonal factors until everything is taken into account. Keep notes, because they can be useful if you ever need to provide a narrative description (because the PCs have gone there) – but don’t waste a lot of time on it.

    At the end of the day, the ideal would be to be able to spend a whole single page describing the entire business. That should cover everything – and that gives a target level of abstraction vs specificity to aim for.

    3.6.2.2 Reminder: Profit per Trade Unit, not costs or prices

    It’s also worth reminding readers that the goal is not to detail annual incomes and costs, it’s to combine these into an Annual Profits figure. If you don’t think about costs as such, but as reductions in potential profit, businesses of any sort become far easier to manage.

      “The usual profit level of an operation is X GP per year. This business has eight of them. Four deliver higher profits in Autumn when sales and distribution of the summer harvest is complete and pay relatively little the rest of the time; the rest are more consistent performers. What those operations are actually doing may vary from month to month, but the earnings remain about the same. #3 and #5 are more labor-intensive for social and racial reasons but don’t cost more because workers get paid less. #7 costs more but get their work done more efficiently, increasing the profitability of that operation by 22% because it’s shipping ore from a Dwarven mine to a Dwarven city.”

    If the average profit level is 5gp / week / operation, × 50 weeks a year, that’s 250 GP / year, × 8 operations = 2,000 GP. Factoring in the extra from #7 means using x8.22 instead of 8, so that’s 2,055 GP / year. Half of the base arrives over a 2 week period at the start of Autumn (1,000 GP), the rest is spread evenly through the year (87.917 GP / month or 21.1 GP / week).

    The players and the plotlines include no details unless they operate to improve the narrative. The trade operation is simply “there”.

3.7 Pay-scale Variations

It’s overly moralistic to suggest that some employers look after their employees better than others. It’s more accurate to say that some employers find that doing so makes good business sense. There is an old saying that appears to have gone out of fashion: “Bind not the mouths of the kine that tread the grain”. The saying is a paraphrasing of the bible.

Kine are cattle, and an old way of threshing grain was to let them tread on the harvested crop, separating the kernels of wheat from the stems and chaff. Some miserly farmers would bind the mouths of the cattle to prevent them eating the better (more valuable) gain and then feeding them on poor-quality (cheap) grass. This sometimes led to the cattle falling ill and generally being less efficient, while those who sacrificed a little of the product of the cattle’s labor had healthier beasts which served them better in the long run. The principle could be, and was, extended first to slaves and then paid employees.

There is a well-known manufacturer of chocolates here in Australia whose policy is to permit their workforce to consume as much product as they want, completely free. They find that after a week’s bingeing, most employees stop eating chocolate almost completely, while being more niggardly resulted in ongoing theft and consumption. The alternative would be draconian security measures, and that was tried a time or two – and it led to workers being easily stolen to work in other factories, after the chocolateers had spent money training them up and making them productive.

There are five standards of payment available to PCs who establish or purchase a business operation that is to be worked on their behalf by NPCs:

★ Paying way too much;
★ Paying more than standard
★ Paying standard wages
★ Paying less than standard
★ Paying way less than standard

In addition, we need to examine how unpaid workers fit into reality:

★ Family
★ ‘Friends’ Helping ‘Friends’
★ Slaves

I’ll round out this section by looking at alternative payment schemes and Combinations & Complications.

    3.7.1 Massively Overpaying Workers

    I’m not talking about one-off bonuses or even seasonal rewards, but regularly paying 50% or more on top of standard.

    If you were an office worker making around $80,000 a year ($40,000 in the US, £25,000 in the UK), and someone approached you with a job offer performing the same duties for $120,000 / $60,000 / £37,500, the pay-scale is so significantly above what’s normal that you automatically start looking for the catch. And if you don’t spot one fairly quickly, paranoia sets in.

    Is this a scam or a front? Will you be left holding the bag for something? Will you be dealing in stolen property? Are you risking your reputation or even jail time? After all, if it seems too good to be true, “it probably is,” as the saying goes.

    It might seem like this is the best way to lure the best workers from other employers – but many of them have a sense of loyalty to their existing employer that has been cultivated, and almost all of them will be wary of such an over-generous offer.

    Contrast these reactions with how you would feel if told, “We need to recruit good workers quickly so that we can hit the ground running, so for the first 12 months we will pay 50% over normal wages” – there’s a limiting caveat out in the open and a justification that seems plausible, and an implication that this offer will only be made to a select workforce, which adds an element of flattery – so suddenly, this offer doesn’t seem “too good to be true” even though it probably still is. That’s when people find themselves getting into trouble – when the red flags are muted or at half-mast!

    There are occasions when it might be necessary to go to this extreme – for example, if an employer has acquired a bad reputation for mistreating workers, or if unusually arduous conditions are involved – but those tend to get factored into what is ‘standard’ for this role, so those mostly don’t apply.

    The other time someone might make such an offer is in a willful attempt to sabotage a competitor. That possibility can’t be ignored if it’s an NPC making such an offer to employees of a PC, and the GM should consider carefully how competitors might react to a PC making such an offer; they would probably assume exactly that. Bidding wars for a workforce are never cost-effective, so they would almost certainly look to other avenues – bribing officials, recruiting ‘specialists’ from the local Thieves’ Guild (if there is such a thing), getting laws passed, etc. The one certainty is that this will immerse the campaign in the local politics and society – right up to the PC’s necks!

    3.7.1 Overpaying workers / Elite Quality Workforce

    Paying a better-than average wage – especially if the extra is in the form of bonuses that can be and have to be, earned – is a whole different kettle of fish.

    As a general rule, one Labor Unit in ten does the work of 1 1/2 (or more) standard Labor Units – if they are rewarded commensurately. If they are not, their productivity declines until it achieves parity with the proffered wage scale, as explained earlier.

    Offering Premium Wages is a good way of recruiting people in a competitive market, but puts the business on more of a profitability knife-edge. But it’s also an effective way of rewarding and encouraging loyalty.

    From the point of view of the GM simulating the business operation, it’s the owning players who set the policies; the Recruiter / Manager will make the best deals he can within the limits of his abilities, but he can always be overridden by instructions from his ‘bosses’ to be a little more generous (or vice-versa).

    Do not let the game bury itself in employment minutia. The modern world has the accumulated baggage of centuries of lawyers and governments carving out rules and regulations and standard employee contracts in changing social and technological conditions, and all of it is too complicated to make for a reasonable and fun game.

    If the PCs want to be a little more generous as a way of buying a little loyalty ‘protection’, let them add whatever percentage they like to the bottom-line wages bill and leave it up to the Recruiter / Manager to translate that into actual terms and conditions.

    The usual arrangement would be (at best) a small increase over standard, a signing bonus, possibly partially paid after the first week / month, and the balance as bonuses that can be earned.

    Let’s say that the PCs suggest a 10% increase (that’s quite a lot, as anyone with any human resources experience will realize). A smart implementation of that might be: +2% over standard wages, +1% in signing bonuses / Christmas bonuses each year, and 7% in earnable bonuses. If only 1 in 10 Labor Units are to get that 7%, that’s a potential 7/(1/10)= +70% bonuses. If only 1 in 20, that’s 7/(1/20)= +140% in bonuses.

    A more likely number would be +5% or so to the wages bottom line. That might reflect +1% over standard wages, +1% reserved for emergency employee assistance, +0.5% in annual loyalty bonuses, and +2.5% in earnable bonuses. If 1 in 10 are to earn such bonuses, that’s potentially +25% to their annual earnings as a bonus (which won’t push elite workforces to their maximum potential, but will use some of their capability); if 1 in 20, that’s +50% (which will extract full efficiency from half of the Elite-quality Labor Units in an organization, but will leave half of them under-utilized), and so on.

    A still better approach would be for the PCs to mandate, and/or the Recruiter/Manager to advise, setting those percentages independently and seeing where the bottom line comes to as a result.

    +2.5% over standard wages, +1% reserved fro emergency employee assistance, +0.5% annual loyalty bonuses, comes to a total of +4%. One in ten units are Elite Quality, who should earn maybe +60% in bonuses; so that adds +6% to the total. And here we are, back at the +10% overall total – but with a far more efficient wage structure. This is the sort of package that could tempt even a reasonably loyal employee – if you lived up to the promises. More importantly, it’s the sort of package that would let a business hold onto good people once they found them – so it’s a business operation that would grow more successful over time.

    3.7.3 Standard Wages

    There’s not a whole lot to say about Standard Wages. They are neither niggardly nor generous, and they earn no loyalty in and of themselves – but there are other ways of doing so. Another way of looking at the standard wage is leaving yourself vulnerable to other loyalty-affecting impacts and policies, for good or ill.

    3.7.4 Underpaying workers / Lower Quality Workforce

    Your workforce will always be the best that can be recruited, given the current labor market. Sometimes, that’s not saying much, and sometimes, it’s saying entirely too much; this is a function of local social conditions more than anything else. The presumption is that if there are workers available for temporary hire, warm bodies will be thrown at the workload until a standard Labor Unit’s effectiveness is achieved; this results in lower wages per worker, but no overall change in the wages bill.

    The implication of the caveat is that there are times and circumstances under which even mediocre people are hard to find – in feudal societies in times of war or pestilence, for example, or in tiny backwaters.

    If the temporary labor needed is simply not available, there are only two solutions, neither of them all that attractive: you can pay workers what they are worth, and live with only having effectively-partial Labor Units available, so that things take longer; or you can pay someone extra to move in to cover the shortfall, buying efficiency at a premium.

    A lot of potentially-profitable trade routes are under-developed or unexploited simply because they run through so many back ways and tiny way-stations that they are excessively vulnerable to such problems. This creates an opportunity for canny PCs and other business newcomers to exploit. And it’s also a truism that lying on ANY active trade route spurs local growth, so it can be a serous opportunity that will inevitably lead to a connection between the operators of the business and the local community. That’s plot gold, if it’s not forced on the players!

    3.7.5 Oppression through underpayment

    The scrooge ‘solution’ – screw maximum profits out of a business in the short-term regardless of any long-term damage that may result.

    The greater the available workforce, the more employers can get away with this sort of attitude.

    There is a ‘healthy’ level of unemployment within any given society (the specifics will vary from one society to another). In modern Australia it’s about 4.3% – that’s regarded as ‘full employment’, i.e. virtually everyone who wants a job can get one. In the US, it’s generally considered to be about 4.4%. If there is greater reliance on day labor markets, it can be considerably higher, because the day laborers are considered ‘unemployed’. 6%, 8%, 10% or even 12-15% are not out of the question, even in reasonably modern settings.

    The unemployment that goes with ‘full employment’ is the result of employees changing jobs, switching from full-time to part-time or casual employment, and so on. There’s always a certain amount of this, and if/when the unemployment rate drops below this level, you have a worker shortage that begins to damage economic growth – which creates more unemployment until you get back to the ‘ideal’ level (and frequently more).

    A huge element of modern economic management is about creating business conditions that maintain employment at the ideal level for maximum growth, but so many factors are outside of anyone’s control, and can only be responded to after the fact, that this is almost impossible to get right all the time. The results are, inevitably, cycles of economic growth and recession. Feudal systems tend to be more resilient and less subject to these cycles, but they still exist; the more modern the society, the more these cycles will have an impact.

    Increasingly, since (I think) the 1980s, the practice has been to base government decisions not on the current value, but on the trend since the last measurement. This is more reactive but less precise, with a greater risk of not doing enough or of doing too much.

    If unemployment exceeds the ideal level, then there are more workers than there are positions for those workers to occupy. Anyone who has a job is less inclined to rock the boat, and workers are easily replaced – so wages tend to get cut at such times, and business push for greater levels of profit per transaction as a result. From the government perspective, that’s the worst possible choice, because it increases the number of people struggling to make ends meet, which increases the number who can’t hold onto a job, which increases the already-too-high unemployment rate. This is why, left to sort themselves out, economic recessions tend to turn into economic Depressions.

    What is usually most effective at such times is putting more money in the hands of the lowest-paid workers, because they tend to spend all of it. This feeds into a middle-class, who also tend to spend most of it, eventually trickling up to bolster the wealth of the major businesses. Each individual boost is small, but add enough of them together and you get significant movements of wealth. I remember reading somewhere that the average circulation of dollars at the lowest levels of society is a factor of 6.7, i.e. each dollar passes through 6.7 sets of hands before ending up in the government’s hands or sequestered by the mega-rich. But the memory could be wrong, and I can’t remember exactly what the term is for this currency circulation to look it up – and it might be different in other nations, my memory relates to the Australian economy.

    With few positions in-between, feudal and fantasy societies tend to have fewer opportunities for such transfers, so the factor is likely to be smaller – maybe only 3 or 4. That means that to have the same level of impact on the economy, the amount of cash placed into circulation needs to be about twice that of a society with more layers in a middle class.

      3.7.5.1 Sidebar: Adventuring Economics

      In Sparkle and Clink: Objective-Oriented Loot Placement, way back in 2009, I derived tables of how many D&D adventurers of a given character level can be expected within a general population, based on the number of characters of a given level who will survive to reach their next character level.

      In the article, I assumed that 9 in 10 would survive, found that the economics didn’t make sense, tried 1 in 10 and found that it was too extreme, then tried a 1-in-5 which was closer. That then led on to revising the value-of-treasure-per-character-level tables, and then a long list of forms of loot, most of which would soak up excess cash without destabilizing the economy.

      Breaking The Bank: controlling treasure in D&D, also from 2009, looks at a different economic problem: how much are monsters worth, and how much of it should be cash – and what are some alternatives?

      Understanding the realities of economics within any given world or campaign is not essential – but not doing so leaves the GM vulnerable to various campaign-corrosive problems, like the PCs having too much cash, or even so much wealth that it undermines believability. I once played in a campaign where, at 15th level, the average PC had fifteen Billion GP. So we each hired a dozen 12th-level NPCs to go around doing most of our fighting for us. And they were being payed enough that they each recruited four 8th level clerics to keep them in prime fighting trim. And they were being paid enough that they each bought a litter and eight 1st-level characters to do nothing but cart them around. Plus we had cooks and entertainers and various others hanging-on to the payroll. When the 6 PCs and our entourage of about 3,000 people found a dungeon, we didn’t explore it so much as infest it, and when we went to a village, we quite often outnumbered the locals 5-to-1 or more. We were a band of locusts, moving from place to place, with nothing short of an army able to stop us… needless to say, the campaign began to collapse very quickly.

      Now, if the opportunity to invest the loot had been there – with losses – it would not have solved the problem; only delayed and magnified it. The problem was with those ridiculous levels of wealth in the first place. But the GM thought that GP were just a way of keeping score, and had no bearing on economics or behavior…

      What should have happened is that our 12th-level surrogates should have seen how much wealth we had, allied together as a bandit army, and taken us down one by one, only for them to then be sucked dry by the clerics, who could then build opulent temples – almost 300 of them, worth around 50 million GP each!

    3.7.5 Oppression through underpayment (cont)

    So, what actually happens when the PCs decide to boost profits without sharing the wealth?

    Every little niggle about the work experience or work environment gets magnified in the eyes of the workers who are being short-payed. Any concept of loyalty quickly goes south, starting with lurid-but-true tales of workers being exploited. These cultivate an atmosphere in which even more extreme-and-untrue tales and rumors circulate freely, until things reach the point where people would rather be tortured on the rack than work for the business. As this attitude pervades the business, it first stops making money at all (because the workers aren’t doing their jobs) and then begins an accelerating decline as the few workers you have start stealing the company blind.

    A large workforce availability can buy a temporary cushion, nothing more. It’s easy to literally drive a business into the ground until it’s worthless.

    But, usually, long before that point is met, a competitor will spring up offering a better deal – even if it’s only standard wages and a more generous attitude – probably started by someone who used to be in the PCs employ, and who was trained by them, who knows all of their contacts and suppliers – and the business completely collapses virtually overnight.

    If the PCs are smart, they might get out having lost nothing more than their initial investment – but if they were smart, they wouldn’t have behaved this way in the first place. The vastly more probable outcome is that someone convinces the PCs that the setbacks are only temporary and can be solved by what is effectively throwing good money after bad. In the worst case scenario, the PCs will be completely beggared, left destitute, and forced to go back to work for a living. And it would be richly deserved, too.

    What about the Recruiter / Manager? Why didn’t he sound warning bells, do something to head this doom and destruction off?

    Under this scenario, he is probably the most likely person to set up a rival operation, possibly anonymously – until it’s too late. It follows that the loyalty of the Recruiter / Manager is the single greatest factor in the survival of the business operation. Burn him, and your business operation is doomed. Keep him loyal, and it still might not survive – there will come a point at which bribing him to stay loyal is no longer enough.

    This policy can be implemented in harsh economic times for a brief period; anything more, and the rot will set in.

    3.7.6 Family as Employees

    One of the obvious ways to cut costs and boost profits is to use family members as part of the workforce, assuming they can be trusted. The compromise is that they may not be as productive or skilled as people who actually do this (whatever it is) for a living.

    There does come a time when it may become necessary to start paying these family members wages. Generally, a little pocket money is good enough for younger family members, and the transition should start when children are a couple of years short of being considered an adult and be phased in to full wages when that milestone is achieved.

    However, some business operators levy a wages ‘discount’ on the basis that the children will one day inherit the business, for good or ill, and profits in the meantime support the family, including the children. This starts to bring into issue a whole range of social values and societal norms – do adult children normally live at home with the family, for example, or is it expected that they begin to establish independent lives, or something in-between? If they are expected to become independent, can they do so while continuing to work in ‘the family business’? What are the general attitudes toward nepotism? Is it allowed for adult children employed by the business be granted privileges, or are they expected to be treated the same as everyone else?

    The ‘phased transition’ is good enough if the GM hasn’t put any effort into answering these questions, but actually defining answers and then applying them is a better answer.

    Last of the Triptych. See main image for credits.

    3.7.7 ‘Friends’ helping ‘Friends’

    Aside from the occasional helping hand from another PC or their family connections, one source of assistance that would never be neglected in real life are Chambers Of Commerce and the like. These are associations of business owners operating in the same region as the PCs business.

    Membership is sometimes free but usually not, though dues and fees may be waived for the first year or two of a new businesses’ operation, and it’s almost always worth it. Not only does the resulting body have enough clout to negotiate with higher authority with a single voice (which gets attention), but they have all dealt with local issues like laws and zoning and whatever else, and there are often other services available.

    Some such bodies may make low-cost business loans available to new start-ups, for example, or may offer a discount to dues-paid-up members. They can usually connect the owner of a business with legal representation and financial advisors and other professional services that would otherwise consume valuable time to run down.

    In more modern eras, there may be newsletters or other advertising opportunities.

    These are all good, solid, benefits, and it would generally be inadvisable not to take advantage of them. A business is never so vulnerable as when they are first starting out.

    But there is a downside, one that the canny GM can exploit. The problems of one member tend to become the problems of all, and the Chamber Of Commerce (it’s not always called that, by the way) can serve to inform players of changing business conditions that they haven’t noticed.

    Levies and temple donations to particular deities on behalf of the body collectively may be part of the deal. It’s often the case that existing members are expected to make themselves available to assist new members.

    There may even be an offer of a business ‘mentor’ to help smooth the path to prosperity.

    No two such bodies are exactly alike. Again, this brings a whole new range of social and world-building questions to the fore – who’s eligible? Who’s not? How much help can you expect if sharp dealing descends into criminal charges? Who runs it, and how did they come to that position? What’s the local group’s reputation? How corrupt are they? Do they actually sanction bribery and corruption, when it’s deemed necessary? Are there religious connections of significance? The list goes on and on.

    Racial and religious restrictions are also key questions. Would they accept an Orc-run business? Would they try and force the Orcs to clean up their act?

    What’s the position of the local Thieves’ Guild? Can they become members? Are members considered exempt from Thieves’ Guild harassment and ‘protection’ charges? Is the entire Chamber of Commerce a ‘protection’ racket given a respectable public face?

    How about jobs and businesses that are often shunned on moral grounds, like Brothels? Can they join, and does doing so afford a level of credibility as valuable parts of society? Or are they anathema?

    It’s also sometimes the case = when there are enough potential members to justify it – that a particular religious, social, or racial group have their own bespoke such body, entirely separate from the general one that anyone can join. There may be considerable peer-pressure exerted on members of those groups to join the more specialist group instead of the broader one. Such specialist groups are usually more expensive than the common ones!

    If there are any such specialist representative bodies, do they actually send a representative to the common bodies? Or are the two at arm’s length? Are they required to enforce religious or racially-based doctrines or restrictions that others are not – such is often the case with Arab and Jewish -operated businesses, for example.

    3.7.8 Slaves

    The third way of cutting down labor costs is the use of Slave labor. Personally, I find the slave trade to be abhorrent, but not to the point of myopia on the subject – I’m very well aware that for centuries, this was considered acceptable.

    Even if there are no slaves in the society, there may well be caste issues that leave some in the category of second- or third-class citizens.

    As a general rule of thumb, it costs as much to feed, house, and maintain 20 slaves as it does one free worker. If wages are depressed, that number may come down to the region of 10-15; if wages are elevated, it may rise as high as 25-30.

    But slaves are easily mistreated and don’t need to be fed or accommodated to any reasonable standard – you can cut their rations and crowd them into substandard accommodations and boost that ratio to 40 or 50, if you have enough work for such a large group.

    From these numbers, it’s easy to see why – once it has been baked into a culture and an economy – it is so hard for slave cultures to give up the practice. In general, it requires some circumstance that drastically reduces the dependence on slave labor before any such socially-progressive change can even be contemplated. Outside of that, anything that renders the practice economically unviable can trigger social change – but expect slave owners to resist any such measures tooth and nail. And beyond that, there is only force.

    One may think that religious enlightenment may offer a third recourse before things get so severe, but in general religions are very good at setting their morality aside when it come to subject populations like slaves. Whether that remains true in a world where the Gods actually turn up and have their own opinions on matters is another question entirely. If the Gods are okay with people owning slaves, the question then has to be asked, do these Gods keep slaves, too? Think about that one for a bit.

    Also as a general rule, for every 25 slaves or part thereof, you will need a Slave-master or -Supervisor(the title may vary). These are paid as much as any other employee if not more, because the slaves they command can make or break an operation.

    My personal preference is always to make the slave trade something only ‘bad cultures’ do in my games – but that’s my own personal conviction showing through, and I recognize that. So I have no problem with Gnolls keeping slaves, or Orcs – but would not be in favor of Dwarves or Elves or Humans doing so.

    Servants and other lower-class types – fine. But not slaves – not in my games. Usually.

    3.7.9 Minor Stakeholders

    One way to buy loyalty cheaply that the sub-system described earlier doesn’t take into consideration is the idea of offering long-term loyal employees a small stake in the business, either for ‘free’ or to purchase, or a combination of the two. I’m not talking big percentages or frequent offers – 0.5% for 10 years’ service seems about right, and maybe an option to buy another 0.5%..

    You have to remember, when assessing this kind of offer, that multiple employees might qualify. If there were 20 such NPCs, that’s potentially 20% of the company every 10 years – after 50 such years, the employees could own 100% of the company.

    Avoiding that is the concept of shares. This breaks the business into smaller amounts each time you issue more shares – which you do, every time such loyalty bonuses are about to come due.

    Let’s say, instead of 0.5% and 0.5%, the offer is 50 shares and the option of buying another 50. That initially divides the company into 50/0.005=10,000 shares. If, each time, you release another 500 shares, you get the following pattern:

    • 10,000 shares initially, all yours = 100%
    • 10,500 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 8,500 or 80.9%.
    • 11,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 7,000 or 63.63%.
    • 11,500 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 5,500 or 50%.
    • 12,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 4,000 or 33.3%.
    • 12,500 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 2,500 or 20%.

    An employee with the maximum ownership would have amassed 500 shares over those 50 years, giving them half the ownership that you have.

    But you might not be comfortable with that – any six of the 20 ‘loyal’ employees could overrule you on any given business decision. There are two solutions: more shares, or non-voting stock.

    More shares, first – let’s make it 1,000 every 10 years:

    • 10,000 shares initially, all yours = 100%
    • 11,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 9,000 or 81.8%.
    • 12,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 8,000 or 66.67%.
    • 13,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 7,000 or 53.85%.
    • 14,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 6,000 or 42.86%.
    • 15,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 5,000 or 33.33%.

    Or, 2000 shares every time:

    • 10,000 shares initially, all yours = 100%
    • 12,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 10,000 or 83.33%.
    • 14,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 10,000 or 71.437%.
    • 16,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 10,000 or 62.5%.
    • 18,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 10,000 or 55.56%.
    • 20,000 shares, (50+50) × 20 = 2,000, leaves 10,000 or 50%.

    Or, you could split your existing shares 3 for 2, and offer 1/40th of the additional shares outright and 1/4 for purchase:

    • 10,000 shares initially, all yours = 100%
    • 10,000 -> 15,000; 1/40 × 5,000 = 125; (125+125) × 20 =5000; leaves 10,000 = 66.67%
    • 10,000 -> 15,000+5,000=20,000 total; 1/40 × 5,000 = 125; (125+125) × 20 =5,000; leaves 10,000 = 50%
    • 10,000 -> 15,000+10,000=25,000 total; 1/40 × 5,000 = 125; (125+125) × 20 =5,000; leaves 10,000 = 40%
    • 10,000 -> 15,000+15,000=30,000 total; 1/40 × 5,000 = 125; (125+125) × 20 =5,000; leaves 10,000 = 33.33%
    • 10,000 -> 15,000+20,000=35,000 total; 1/40 × 5,000 = 125; (125+125) × 20 =5,000; leaves 10,000 = 28.57%

    Notice how this keeps your holding a steady 10,000 shares.

    A dose of realism before moving on to a (brief) discussion of voting vs non-voting shares:

    • It’s totally unrealistic for the number of employees who earn the bonus to remain at 20 the whole time. There might initially be 10; then some of them die off or leave the company, so only 5 remain, but the five who are gone are replaced with 10 new people who earn their first chance to buy; then, over the third decade, half of each group die or leave, so there are just 3, and 5, and 10 newcomers earning their first purchase option; and then 1, 3, 5, and 10; and then 1, 1, 3, 5, and 10 (a total of 20) at the end of the 5th decade. Everyone who doesn’t qualify for the bonus leaves additional shares in your possession.
    • This makes it much harder to amass the votes needed to overrule your decisions. The people who have stayed the longest have the most power – but if they keep amassing profit because of your management, enough to stay with you all that time, they will also have the least inclination to change.
    • Not everyone will have the financial resources to take up the option, in whole or in part. Every share that isn’t bought from you remains yours.
    • This also makes it harder for employees to challenge you.
    • The purchase option transforms some of your shares into additional cash on top of whatever dividend the shares may pay. There’s no reason why you can’t issue still more shares and buy them all with that cash. Or you might diversify – owning a slice of a key supplier makes an awful lot of sense.
    • Regarding the last version of the ‘additional shares’ concept: it would be more normal for the shares held by employees to also split. But that makes it more complicated – so I deliberately simplified the option by excluding that effect.
    • Non-voting shares
      In the end, though, there’s a simpler option: designate the free shares as ‘non-voting’ shares. While both have the same initial purchase price and the same nominal book value, the lack of voting authority does discount the non-voting shares a little. According to stout.com and public.com, there’s a real-world discount of 0-5% in actual value.

      But this adds its own layer of complication, one thing more for the GM to keep track of – so, while it’s probably the real-world answer most commonly utilized, it’s not the best game answer. Which is why it’s being tucked away in this sub-sub-sub-section, where it can be profoundly ignored and quickly forgotten.

      Ah, but what if your players insist? They know as well as I do that this is the ‘realistic’ answer.

      Sod them – they shouldn’t be that close to the business operations, anyway. The whole point of this series / e-book is to put a firewall between entities that play the game and the operation of a business of some kind, and such hands-on control violates that principle.

      What they would, in fact, be doing is overriding the authority of their hand-picked Recruiter / Manager. Should they insist, they make it harder for the GM to keep the business at arm’s length from the game play, and the normal human reaction of a manager who supposedly had ‘full authority’ to such professional betrayal would be to walk away, possibly ruthlessly.

      The GM should let them get away with proposing something like this – once – and make sure that the protest of the Recruiter / Manager is clearly heard. Then he should draw back the curtains (briefly) to point out the issues of making the game harder to run and other consequences that could result – and be prepared to blizzard the PCs with business decisions both major and trivial as an object lesson. One single game session in which nothing but business operations minutia takes place should be all it takes for the PCs to start the next session in a very different frame of mind. A mea culpa to the estranged Recruiter / Manager is all it will take – the first time – for the status quo ante to be restored.

    3.7.10 Combinations & Complications

    I’ve canvassed lots of alternatives in the course of section 3.7, and – while I don’t recommend it – the practical reality is likely to be some combination of two or more of the alternatives. From the outside, a business or commercial operation may appear to be a seamless monolith, but the more closely you look, the greater the complexity that becomes possible.

    I’ve had four different PCs belonging to four different players operate businesses or commercial enterprises in my superhero campaign – Behemoth, Nebula, Backlash, and Warcry. My handling of all these was based on the way it was done in Marvel Comic’s Iron Man, and while a commercial operation in a fantasy campaign will not be the same as such an operation in a superhero setting, the general principles should translate across and map onto a Fantasy setting fairly readily.

    • Behemoth – Started off as a Tony Stark with a tech company to provide resources and funding for his experiments in high-tech. And, as long as he stuck to that, all was well. But then he started to micromanage outside investments, like buying up the entire Brazilian coffee crop. At the same time, he began to engage in research that the rest of the team would find problematic because it broke the peace treaty between them and their biggest enemy. When this research eventually came to light, the character responded to the rebuke, censure, and loss of authority within the team by going completely feral, appearing on a late night talk show to reveal the other character’s secret identities. Somehow, the key moments of that transmission never made it to air. The character was then killed in a confrontation at his main factory – only to wake up back in his secret lab missing the last six months worth of memories, his place having been taken by an ‘evil’ (mentally unstable) clone. But the character’s actions as that clone continued to have repercussions; Nebula decided that he couldn’t be trusted, and launched a hostile takeover of Behemoth’s business, a business that he had invested character points in. At which point a fairness doctrine kicked in: the way the takeover was set up, it was almost certain to succeed, so that was what was going to happen, transforming the business into a pule of cash – which he could then use to create a new business operation, which could utilize new technologies to establish itself as a worthy successor to the old.
       
    • Nebula – had the ability to transmute one substance into another, spent a lot of time figuring out how it worked in the early days of the campaign, and then built a business around the mining and production of rare materials. Got heavily into deep-sea mining. The company was actually run by an AI developed by the character, so that the PC had no need of dealing with the boring minutia and could concentrate on high-level plot decisions. Orchestrated the take-down of a major rival (being used to fund an enemy organization), then used the cash that resulted to launch a hostile takeover of Behemoth’s company, as described above. Later discovered to be a parallel-world duplicate of the original Nebula whose memories had been manipulated by an enemy so that she would act as a ‘fifth column’ on their behalf from time to time. Nebula’s player could never resist trying to wring some unfair advantage out of the game system, no matter how many times it caused the character to come a cropper (link included in case anyone is unfamiliar with the term)
       
    • Backlash – Had a computer consultancy, a specialized software engineer whose business never actually appeared in-game. He simply specified that it kept him busy 8-10 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, and earned him so much disposable income a month.
       
    • Warcry – Started as a weapons engineer. Introduced color television to a parallel world based on the 1950s. Built a factory to assemble the sets using 1980s industrial technology (carefully guarded as a trade secret) – effectively matching or slightly bettering the prices of the existing black and white sets. Gave every TV studio and production house two color-TV cameras, free, with the option to buy more at discounted prices, then continually introduced refinements to the original 1960s / 1970s technology. Used the proceeds to fund his team’s operations. Unless I brought it up as part of a plot (didn’t happen often), the business was never mentioned again – only the resources that he was able to employ as a result of it. On a metagame level, paid character points for a large and successful business and provided the concept as an in-game interpretation.

    I’m sure you can see, in the above summations, the seeds upon which this entire supplement has been built. The key principles are the same.

    Just keep the bottom line in mind as a guiding principle – PCs can start a business if they want, or buy an existing one if they have the cash. That business is depicted as an abstract entity in the game background that produces a certain level of resources / profits over time. Everything about it that can be firewalled away from actual in-game play has been; it should only appear when the plot demands it.

3.8 Technological Impact

I find myself in two minds when it comes to applying magic on an industrial scale. It can be a wonderful way of making campaign settings unique, on the one hand; and it can have catastrophic effects on the underlying assumptions of campaign economics, on the other.

The first usually wins out in the end – every campaign I’ve run has done something large-scale based on magic, from enchanted street lamps (a whole new industry to be manned that requires low-level mages to make these things) all the way through to impossible bridges and buildings floating in the air. Unfortunately, my Shards Of Divinity campaign ended before the PCs made their way to the Dragon City that is built on a cloud, where they would have learned that the Dragons invented Magic and taught it to Elves, who (in turn) taught humans, and Dwarves, while the Dragons were teaching the Fey, for reasons. At the same time, the Shadow Fey were corrupting the Dragons, giving rise to the Chromatics, and in particular, Tiamat. Tiamat’s brother, Bahamut, siphoned off everything that was good from his Brother before expelling him from the Dragon City, in the process elevating himself from their leader and font of wisdom (think Confucius) into their one and only deity. Which all ties into the campaign mythology, because the Fey were driven to do what they did by the corruption of outside forces.

Anyway, the point is this: there are a great many low-level spells that can be inordinately useful if applied to a work setting, something that becomes possible with the crafting of wands and similar. That, on it’s own, gives Wizard-owned business operations an unfair advantage, but few of them are actually into that sort of thing, so it’s not usually a serious problem.

It’s when Magic becomes available more generally, and becomes the dominant technology of a setting, that things change.

I spent quite a lot of time and effort looking at the logistics of an Empire Of Undead for my Fumanor campaign, “Seeds Of Empire”, and the impact of workers who never tire, never need sleep, and don’t need to eat or drink, is absolutely monstrous. I explored the subject relatively briefly in a sidebar, “Why Is The Golden Empire Such A Threat?” in IInventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 5, about half-way through the post. The section of text that follows it describes the origins of the Golden Empire, providing additional insights.

I actually considered excerpting the two passages of text for direct inclusion here, but it’s only semi-relevant, and so decided not to.

Magic can be just as large a force amplifier to the workers within a society where it’s readily available. GMs could so a lot worse during their world-building than to skim through the list of (relatively low-level) spells (both clerical and arcane), looking at how it could be used for business-related purposes.

You don’t have to be exhaustive, and it may be better if you are not, because that leaves room for different ideas the next time you need them. Consider the resulting list to be a guide to the things that could be applied; the next great question is, how many of them have actually be picked up and applied by the citizens. It’s tempting (and probably more realistic) to say ‘all of them’, but the results are too complicated to assess.

If you insist on going down that particular rabbit-hole, I recommend starting small – just two or three – and then adding the others a few at a time.

The other factor that can be relevant is cost-effectiveness. The use of a spell has to earn or save at least as much as it costs to replace the source of the magic. That might be hiring wizards or clerics either periodically or full-time. It might be buying a replacement magic wand. or a crate of potions.

Magical Lanterns work, economically, because the normal function of government is to operate at a loss, i.e. to provide services that are funded through collecting and aggregating taxes. If the ‘service’ these magic items provide is deemed important enough or valuable enough, the government responsible can provide them, even at a loss.

It’s up to you to decide what practices are society-wide, which ones were tried and didn’t catch on, and which ones have (rightly or wrongly) been banned – – but do make sure that you have some justification for such bans, however flimsy!

Beyond that, if the PCs want to be clever, they are more than welcome to show off. But do make sure that they aren’t misreading the spell information even the slightest little bit – tiny nuances multiplied a million-fold can make a huge difference, and at that scale, every technicality matters.

Of course, that’s not the sum total of the story of human ingenuity. The subsections below deal with the more prosaic technological developments and the lessons of history.

    3.8.1 Major Breakthroughs

    As a general rule, these are a big no-no. There can be exceptions, but by and large, I don’t want and won’t permit players to import twentieth (or twenty-first) century approaches and attitudes and policies and practices and technologies.

    This image is copyrighted, it’s use here to represent the film in question is believed to qualify as fair use insofar as the image is being used to refer to and provide commentary on, the film itself, which is the purpose of the image, and that this usage does not greatly expand the availability of the image nor impair its intended purpose. Sourced from Wikipedia, refer to the image’s page on that site for additional information.

    Some have tried – everything from Labor Unions to Mass Production / Assembly Lines to Carbon Fiber & Kevlar. Shades of Yahoo Serious, I’ve even had a bard try and invent the electric guitar so that his ‘renditions’ of Beatles songs could sound more ‘legitimate’!

    (For the record, I had no problem with him claiming his Bard had written the Lennon-McCartney song catalog. It helped give his Bard a distinctive flavor, and the catalog. of songs is broad enough that he could usually pull out something appropriate to most situations).

    The operative rule is that modern processes require infrastructure and understanding of subjects that are beyond the people of the time, and may rest on assumptions that, in this fantasy world, are not applicable.

    Probably the biggest one is the concept of the assembly line. It rests on the concept that the same thing done each and every time by the same worker with the same tools and parts will have the same outcome. Nope, doesn’t work – not in this game. The parts will vary within the tolerances of the engineering capabilities of the era, which are nowhere near precise enough for production-line manufacturing. As a result, no two parts will be exactly alike, no two parts will fit together perfectly, and no production line will produce reliable devices. At least, in my book.

    Another concept that doesn’t translate very well is the modern approach to science, the scientific method. There’s a hidden assumption at the heart of science called reproducibility – do the same experiment in two different places at two different times, and if the first experiment was valid, you get the same results (within a margin of error) in the second.

    Science has now proven that this sort of predictability is far less common than was thought in the 18th and 19th centuries, and well into the 20th as well. Many seemingly stable systems are actually extremely unstable and predictable only in the relatively short term, if at all. Weather is like that; Orbital mechanics is like that; in fact, all sorts of systems are inherently chaotic, in which tiny (possibly immeasurably tiny) differences in the inputs ripple and accumulate until they lead to extremely divergent outcomes.

    Magic is another of those systems. It’s not quite at the point of a butterfly flapping it’s wings in China to influence the weather three days later in London, but it’s not far from it – and you don’t have three days of stable predictability, either. In general, spells work, and work reliably – but only because “reliable” has been so broadly defined.

    Let’s take D&D’s Fireball, cast by a 6th-level wizard. Since it does 1d6 per caster level, that’s a range of 6-36 points. The average is going to be (6+36) / 2 = 21 points. It will be a bit more predictable than that, due to the concentration of results on a bell curve:

    A probability analysis of different results from 6d6

    But really, if you proposed a supposedly scientific theory that said there was an 87.84% chance of getting a result somewhere between 15 and 27, you?d be laughed out of the room. That’s not measuring certainty, it’s displaying un-certainty.

    There have been a number of attempts by PCs to conduct a ‘scientific analysis’ of magic in my superhero campaigns – some of their most dangerous enemies use magic – and the bottom line is that within it’s own world of cause and effect, there is an internal logic and rationale to what happens, but no predictability about how much of it will happen. Or exactly when. Or even, precisely where. Those answers all come up the same: “Tilt!”

    3.8.2 Incremental Gains

    Until relatively recently, there’s been a popular consensus that the middle ages, the medieval period, whatever you want to call it, was not a great time for technological advance. “The called it the Dark Ages for a reason” says the wise old fool in a desiccated voice.

    That reason was to contrast the historical period past with the “age of enlightenment” that followed, when scientific discoveries were emerging hand over fist. it’s pro-government propaganda, really – “Listen, people, I know times have been difficult, but things are getting better; don’t throw away all the progress that we have made together in frustration at the apparent pace of change. We need no revolutions here, thank you very much!”

    Just about any political figure from any regime past or present could make that speech and it wouldn’t seem out-of-place.

    The more up-to-date thinking on the subject of technological development in the periods of history upon which Fantasy Game environments are usually based is that there was actually a fair bit of progress made – but it was made in the form of slow and incremental improvements and by trial-and-error, not by new understandings of the theory describing a natural process.

    Everything from crop rotation to armor design to stirrups – compare any technology from the end of the time-span to what was around at the start, and you will find measurable, discernible, improvements. In most cases, they didn’t know exactly why they worked – only that they did.

    And that’s in a world where there is no serious challenge to the general principle of science. Even religious authority was quite happy to live in a world where the way God worked his miracles was better understood – it was only when people began to take God out of the equation completely that they got their backs up, for the most part.

    Each generation is able to do some things just a little better, a little more easily, a little faster, and a little more reliably.

    Technology in a Fantasy environment has just such a serious challenge on its hands – the chaotic nature of magic, which demonstrably works, and which undermines one of the chief tenets of scientific research. It’s uncertain whether or not science could even mount a serious defense of its principles when that can be held out as an example of unpredictability.

    And, with such a limited understanding of cause-and-effect, speculation on the subject of why things happen in a logical, predictable, manner are seriously undermined. Without that, all you are left with are Incremental gains by trial and error.

    Some people (PCs whose players are used to a science-based worldview) may attempt to exclude magic as some sort of ‘override’ of what is natural, placing it in the category of ‘outside intervention that invalidates the inviolability of cause-and-effect’ – that’s fine. But with such a huge caveat, science would be extremely limited in it’s capacity to garner respect and any sort of serious backing for study and research.

    Gains in understanding would still be possible – but they would be small and isolated, and always with that huge caveat on the top. Leonardo da Vinci or his cultural analogue can still be fascinated with the idea of flight like a bird – but when a magic carpet really works, it takes a lot of the impetus out of the research.

    One final way of looking at the question, then: a natural world in which magic works, and clerics can summon up the power of the Gods, or request their actual presence, is so much vaster and more complicated than the natural world that was perceived in the middle ages, even in the age of enlightenment, that scientific understanding would have been set back centuries. You can’t simplify such a world enough to make progress on rational explanations of natural phenomena – not as quickly, at any rate; there’s just too much to understand.

    It follows that if there is to be any sort of progress that improves profitability of a business, it’s going to be small, and it’s likely to be a trade secret, closely held within the confines of that particular operation.

    Which brings me to:

    3.8.3 Trade Secrets & Industrial Spies

    In many ways, the fantasy world is more akin to that of the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s than it is the modern world of today. These days, the default assumption is that nothing stays secret for very long, that anything will eventually leak out, and that the way you protect your intellectual property is not with secrecy, camouflage, and misdirection, it’s with legality and restriction.

    But, back then, the Trade Secret was still a credible approach; every business had it’s own way of doing things that they believed (rightly or wrongly) gave them an edge over their rivals, and the protection of that secret was an essential part of operating the business.

    There are still some legacies of that older world-view in the arena of genetic modification of crops, but – for the most part – it’s assumed that a product can be reverse-engineered within minutes, hours, or at worst, days of it being publicly available.

    When secrets are important, spies are a natural and inevitable way of trying to get hold of those secrets. After all, if you have your brilliant innovations and add those of one or two of your rivals, you will be unbeatable – and, unless they penetrate your cloud of secrecy, they will never know.

    It’s even possible for two different people to come up with (essentially) the same idea at much the same time. It’s happened through the last 120 years or so on any number of occasions. If neither of them ever has to reveal how they achieved their results, neither would know of the other’s innovation.

    As soon as you have an innovative idea, you have something that needs to be protected.

    You know, it’s really questionable whether or not the same rate of progress in technological innovation would have resulted without the acceptance of regulations regarding trade marks and copyright and patents. These protect the right to profit from intellectual property while making the underlying idea itself available for others to understand.

    While there might be such things in a steampunk setting, most Fantasy campaigns don’t operate in such a political / social space. The world of trade secrets, then, would be well and truly alive.

    And under more serious threat than ever they were in our reality. A wizard with a crystal ball can penetrate any business practice, if they know what they are looking for, and describe to a rival, in precise detail, exactly what it is that they do that’s different from your business practices.

    This is something that most fantasy worlds don’t pay anywhere near enough attention to. Which generally means that players and PCs won’t pay enough attention to it, either.

    The generous GM will make certain that the players understand all this when they first look into starting or investing in a business operation, reasoning that their characters are of the game world and would know about these sort of business environments, having been exposed to them from birth.

    The more wary GM will hold the information close to his chest until such time as the whole business operation threatens to take over or derail the campaign – and then hit the PCs with it where it hurts.

    Which sort of GM do you want to be? Personally, I think the players in the latter case would have justifiable reason to be upset with the GM. But it’s up to you.

3.9 Key Personnel & The Labor Unit

There are some key individuals with whom, under certain circumstances, the PCs can be more frequently expected to interact. These have a chapter dedicated to them (chapter 8), so I won’t go into too much detail here.

The duties that these individuals perform may or may not contribute to the work undertaken by Labor Units – there are too many variables and too many cultural variations to explicitly rule one way or another. Their ‘official duties’ will always take precedence, and any such contributions are carried out only in any time remaining.

It’s another source of (effectively) free labor, since the PCs would be paying these characters anyway.

Whatever the cultural answer imposed by the society in which the business operates, the answer to this question can go completely out the window if a PC takes on this role – but this is an all-or-nothing situation; either all the PCs adopt relevant roles or none of them can be permitted to.

And that can get tricky, because who is going to tell the player ‘no’ when it saves the rest of the PCs money / reduces their operating expenses to have one of the business owners occupy that key position within the organization. Certainly, the GM can’t do so – not directly, at any rate.

What he can do is make it clear to the PC in question what the consequences are: while the others are off adventuring, earning cash and XP, his opportunities to do so will be limited. The business operation will still be held at arm’s length, unless and until something happens in which the PC could make the difference. That probably means one encounter per dungeon explored by the rest, maximum.

Of course, the reality is not quite that simple. Are you really going to punish the player for exercising character agency? Time for a 1-2 punch, then. Explain that the alternative is to throw additional roadblocks in the way of the business, leading to loss of profits greater than the savings of having a PC take on the critical role – roadblocks in the form of encounters that only exist because there is a PC there, sticking his neck out – and that it means that sometimes the other players will have nothing to do for an hour or more at a time while the focus is on the PC going their own way.

This not only enlists the other PCs against the notion (by way of complete metagaming, I admit), but more importantly, summons peer pressure against the notion on the part of the other players.

But, before your blood gets too het up over this angst-laden proposition, there is an alternative, and it can even be a desirable solution to a completely different problem: you could split this PC off from the main campaign into an occasional side-campaign. Quite obviously, if the player is having trouble with over-commitment or changing real-world circumstances, this is a much better answer than having them drop out of the game completely – and it leaves the door open for them to return, should the restricting circumstances no longer apply.

Fairly early on in my superhero campaign, I had to do something similar, when one of the players joined the Army. He expected to be unavailable for most of the next year, but wanted to be able to bring his PC back when he was again available – so we designed a solution in which a brief solo campaign book-ended his military service, in the course of which the character would pick up skills that would reflect the things the player was likely to learn during his early service – tactics and logistics and the like. As a solution to the problem, it worked perfectly. I have no hesitation in recommending it if you encounter similar circumstances.

3.10 The Personnel Bottom Line

Everything about this implementation of business in a fantasy campaign is designed to abstract the entirety as much as possible while detailing specifics sufficiently sharply that you can dig into them should that prove necessary. Like an iceberg, at least nine tenths of the business should lie hidden from view.

Personnel are no exception to this principle. Except in very rare circumstances, or when the GM can make use of them as plot-hook delivery mechanisms, they should be faceless, nameless, building blocks, black boxes with transform money into (hopefully more) money.

Whenever it seems like you need to provide specific details about an NPC within the business operation who is not a Recruiter / Manager or some other Key Personnel, and the reason is not because this makes plot hook delivery more convenient, take a second, harder, look, specifically seeking an alternative. There might not be any – but that usually means that one or two PCs are poking too deeply into non-adventuring matters, something the systems are intended to reject and resist as much as possible.

You may not always be able to avoid manufacturing specifics about something that’s considered abstract within the system. But the more you let your implementation of the PC’s business operations adhere to these principles, the more everyone can have their cake and eat it, too.

Heck, it’s even possible that starting a business opens the door to even more adventuring, simply by tossing more hooks the way of the players and giving their characters additional motivation to get involved in whatever’s happening. It’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that you will get to world-build parts of the society, culture, economics, politics, theology, geography, and history that would otherwise never even get mentioned. That’s one heck of a bonus benefit to entice all concerned!

Okay, that’s a wrap for this chapter of Trade In Fantasy. Lots of food for thought and a few bones for you to chew over. Chapter four awaits – again, probably split into two or three parts. I may offer a quick fill-in post to give myself a chance to get ahead of the game in the writing – I’ll probably make a start on it and see how it progresses.

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Looking At A Bigger Picture, Part 2 of 2


Landscapes are wonderful things, more significant & useful than many GMs realize. This post focuses on using Landscapes, both literal and metaphoric, using the lessons from the first part of the article. This is Part t 2 of 2.

Image by Karl Egger (shogun) from Pixabay

Time Out Post Logo
This is the 4th of my time-out posts in between the Trade In Fantasy series, which I expect to resume next week.

I made the time-out logo from two images in combination: The relaxing man photo is by Frauke Riether and the clock face (which was used as inspiration for the text rendering) Image was provided by OpenClipart-Vectors, both sourced from Pixabay.

Part 1 gave non-artists the tools to analyze landscapes (and other images). Part 2 is all about using landscapes (both real and metaphoric), and picks up right where I left off. Everything below (unlike part 1) is outlined in my original draft of this article – in a way, it is the landscape, and the first part are the discrete elements that have been included.

Landscapes as Generic Symbols

Everything that’s been presented in this article so far doesn’t exist in my half-page outline of this article. It’s all information and understanding that’s going to be relevant, but it has all been added outside of that framework, and for that reason, this section brings about a major shift in focus and direction.

Let’s think for a moment about generic icons and symbols. What symbolizes a campaign, generally (as opposed to specific content relating to a specific campaign).

There are three choices, really – and most people can only think of two.

The first is the hex grid – but that’s less ubiquitous now than it once was. Nevertheless, the association is enough that I employed it as the foundation of Campaign Mastery’s icon:

The second is a die, or set of dice. These could be d6s, or a d20, or even a combination of different dice types. Symbolic of playing a game, the association between polyhedra and RPGs is strong enough to make the connection.

Image by PIRO from Pixabay, cropped by Mike

And the third choice is, I would argue, a landscape – a representation of an environment through which the characters can or are traveling.

Just about any landscape works as symbolism for a campaign generally..

Specific Associations

It follows that there has to be at least one “perfect” landscape that is perfectly symbolic of a specific campaign.

It may not contain everything that’s specific to the campaign (in fact, it usually won’t) but it will contain something that can be uniquely associated with that campaign, and no other, by the people who have played in it.

Initially, it may have to be fairly representational, but familiarity will permit abstraction. For example, the big bad from the early days of the campaign may have been an Orc with an eye-patch and one gold earring. As the campaign progressed, it was eventually discovered that he was a pawn of a bigger bad whilst secretly in the service of an enemy worse still. But he remains symbolic of the entire campaign, and eventually, an eye-patch and gold earring are all you need to graphically represent that campaign.

That’s a bad example, in that it’s a portrait and not a landscape, but the contention is that there will be a landscape that is just as iconic and symbolic of that campaign, a location so evocative that it can represent the whole.

Environment

Landscapes have that power because they don’t just depict a location or a setting, they display an environment – a climate, a geography, and possibly a society and an economy, all summed up in the one image that still follows all the rules for a good image.

Those include a clear focus, a good design, internal cohesion, an emotional impact, and prioritized detail.

    A Clear Focus

    It’s really easy to overload a single image with too many elements that demand to be the focal point. I’ve done it myself, many times – most recently, one of the chapter title graphics for the Trade In Fantasy series (you’ll know it when you see it).

    How can you tell? If a clear and prominent element is in the image but not there to support the primary focus, then the image is – as my old art teacher used to say (his name was “Art”, by the way) – ‘confused’.

    The problem increases exponentially with every other such element. On top of that, any element that needs to be explained adds to the confusion. Anything that’s not self-evident and self-explanatory is counter-productive.

    I wrote once that A Picture Should Be Worth 1,000 Words – that point tends to get lost if you need to use 500 words to explain what’s in the image!

    By way of illustration, let me close out this section by analyzing three of the graphics from the Trade In Fantasy series.

      Example 1: Composite 9 (Poseidon & Time) from Chapter 3 Part 3

      It’s really hard to find Fantasy Images that symbolize or show time. In the end, I had to make my own. In the background, the Posiedon image is by Enrique Meseguer (darksouls1). Dominating the foreground is a gravity-defying hourglass which is actually a combination of this image by gunter (moritz320) and an extract from this image by Alexander Lesnitsky (AlLes), with various color trickery to get the two to match up. The edges of the upper surface of the sand have been treated with a textural extract based on dry lake bed by Dimitrios Savva (Photography), https://polyhaven.com/all?a=Dimitrios%20Savva, https://web.archive.org/web/20230623201912/https://polyhaven.com/all?a=Dimitrios%20SavvaJarod Guest (Processing), https://polyhaven.com/all?a=Jarod%20Guest, https://web.archive.org/web/20230623201919/https://polyhaven.com/all?a=Jarod%20Guest, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons with some additional texture extracted from this dry lake bed
      by Forest & Kim Starr, CC BY 3.0 US, also via Wikimedia Commons. “Floating” in the sand as though it were a liquid are two elephants, one extracted from elephants-1535881, image by Monika (MonikaP), and the other from elephant-5083580, Image by Mansour Obaidi (Msobaidi). Unless stated otherwise, all images were sourced from Pixabay“.

      There’s a lot of work gone into this image, and it arguably tries to do too much. The hourglass – that’s actually a composite of several. The blue sand that is liquid in the center. The elephants swimming in that liquid. And the image / statue of Poseidon on the rock in the background. Plus the sea and the sky.

      The topic was time, hence the hourglasses. The elephants and textures of ‘sand’ are to imbue a sense of strangeness, of Fantasy, of the incredibly improbable being possible. And its the presence of Gods / Magic that achieves that transformation.

      So it all holds together – just barely. Why Poseidon, though? Answer – because I came across the background (with sky and sea) and loved it too much not to use it.

      That’s a terrible reason. “I needed a background and it was there”.

      Furthermore, it breaks depth of field. The elephants are as sharply in focus as the Poseidon\, while the hourglass itself is not quite as sharp. The rule of thumb is that if the foreground is in focus, the background should be blurred, and vice-versa. I get away with it in this image simply because the whole composite is such a bizarre combination of elements.

      As a spot illustration, this is fine; it is in no way good enough to be a Chapter Title graphic and besides, it’s orientation is Portrait – because the dominant element is the hourglass, and that’s more vertical in orientation than it is side-ways.

      Example 2: The Watering Hole, also from Chapter 3 Part 3

      Image by Pexels from Pixabay. I’ve painted out some rock climbers in obviously modern clothing and extended to the image slightly to the right.

      The most interesting part of this image, from a technical standpoint, is this part over to the right. I’ll explain why in a moment; let me start by taking about the rest of the image, to get it out of the way. There are obviously people bathing in this lake – and that in itself is interesting because there’s a risk of contaminating it. It suggests that the water is either (a) unsuitable for drinking already, or (b) reputed to have some magical properties – fountain of youth, anyone?

      The setting is lush and green, which adds to the latter impression. There’s a crystal-clear waterfall, which would provide water that’s almost certainly potable, diminishing any concerns regarding the lake.

      Critically, the figures of the people are way too small to make out any hint of what they are wearing or not wearing.

      One of the things that immediately grabbed me about this image is the composition – there are so many ways for the eye to be drawn, but all roads lead back to the ‘beach’ and the crowd there:

      Every time you examine this, new details will be revealed. So it was that the defects (in terms of my purposes) weren’t even noticed for a very long time. Which brings me back to that right-hand-side:

      Let me run through the list:

    • a. a string of hikers were following a climbing track, heading toward the viewer, obviously in modern clothing.
    • b. some of the people had clambered up these rocks and were seated there.
    • c. Another hiking trail heading to join a, with more hikers on it.
    • d. And a fourth.
    • E. A large plastic bag was wrapped around two bushes, rather spoiling the ambiance once it was noticed.
    • f1 through f8: climbers seated here and there, some with colorful plastic drink bottles. This is where I think they were located (I’m working from memory). In some of the locations, the merest hint of what was there remains – a hint of legs at f7, a blue shoe at f8, an arm at f6.
    • at h (I think it was) (it should have been labeled g but I lost track of where I was up to), there was some spray-painted graffiti.
    • And, finally, I have a clear memory of photo-editing the rocks in the right-hand foreground, but no longer remember why I thought it was necessary.

    A lot of the work was done with tools that I hadn’t previously done much with, like the pencil shader and the pallet knife, employed in conjunction with copy and paste and other tools with which I was already familiar. I’m quite proud of the results – you simply can’t tell that it’s been so heavily modified.

    I want to talk about those hikers, in particular. If they hadn’t been wearing obviously modern clothing – shorts, joggers, t-shirts, and baseball caps, specifically – and if they had been heading toward the bathers and not away from them, they might have been acceptable, because as visual elements, they would have then supported the main focus of the image, which was supposed to be one of those wonderful landmarks all the locals know about and that travelers love to discover.

    Third, Composite 7 from Chapter 3 part 2

    This composite starts with the ruins background, by Dorothe (Darkmoon_Art), to which I did a quick-and-dirty extension off to the right. The “dragon” image in the sky midground consists of the wings from an eagle (photo uncredited), which I attached to the body of a Seahorse extracted from Hippocampus_coronatus_1.jpg by Leo D’lion from Flikr via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License. Finally, in the foreground (minus a bush and some indications of ground) is an image of a heavily-laden Hiker by Clker-Free-Vector-Images, with some 3D toning and shadows added by me. Unless otherwise noted, images were sourced from Pixabay.

    The original version of this that I did extended quite a bit further off to the right – there was a second, smaller, tree (you can just see the left edge of its foliage), and a rolling plain sloping down, and a dragon flying between the two and looking toward the guy with the big backpack.

    I had made the Dragon by combining the body of a seahorse with the wings of an eagle and a lot of color filtering and scaly textures over the top, and I thought it looked great.

    That dragon was the problem. It didn’t seem to matter where I positioned it, it didn’t look right. I tried mirroring it horizontally – same problem. I tried it in front of the cathedral, behind it, to the left of it, to the right of it, you name it. I spent easily two hours moving that dragon around, but the only solution that I found was to have it in the air above the trees, which shrunk both cathedral and hiker – to the point where you could no longer see his spindly little legs.

    And that was the whole point of this image, that was the focus: the overloaded character truckin’ right. I was so so busy with the dragon that I didn’t even notice the second building in the distance on the right until the Dragon covered part of it. That was when I decided that the buildings alone were enough to convey the “Fantasy Element” of the environment, and left the dragon out completely, permitting a closer focus on the building and the overburdened traveler (The dragon might yet reappear if I use this in chapter-title format, though – or maybe I’ll use it in a standalone spot image somewhere).

    The bottom line: the dragon wasn’t just not supporting the main focus, it was detracting from it. So it had to go.

    A Good Design

    I’ve touched on this in discussing the examples, above. A good design has good composition – it moves the eye where you want it to go in order to convey a total impression. In particular, it makes sure that the viewer sees all the important elements that add context to the focal point.

    A still more advanced technique employs the movement of the eye to tell a sequential narrative (or, at least, to hint at one). That’s really hard to do well – I’ve managed it in comic book form but not in a single image, at least not yet. The “serendipity” image linked to earlier comes close, though.

    Internal Cohesion

    If you know what you’re doing, the incorporation of one or more visual elements that don’t match the rest of the landscape can be definitive, an outright statement that there is an environmental discontinuity. But even if you do know what you are doing, it’s incredibly easy to mess this up, and hard to get right.

    It’s all about the suspension of disbelief; the more strain you put on the viewers sense of this being ‘real’, the more expertly the disconcerting elements have to be integrated.

    For the most part, then, internal cohesion is incredibly important. Everything has to feel like it ‘belongs’ in the environment depicted, or the credibility of that environment is compromised.

    An Emotional Impact

    The best images capture a mood or emotion in addition to depicting the contents of the scene. Take ‘Composite 7’ from the Trade In Fantasy series, shown above. There is a sense of adventure inherent in the landscape – the buildings, the man alone and seemingly equipped to prosper on his own, the pathway receding into the distance, while running past one strange structure and heading in the general direction of a second, and even the fact that the scene seems quite serene, as though the world were holding its breath and waiting for something to happen – it all adds together to have an emotional impact.

    Compare that with ‘Composite 9’, also shown above. Here, there were so many fantastic elements that I was so busy ensuring internal cohesion – things like the shadows from the elephants were redone a dozen times before I was satisfied, and I’m not sure they are even noticeable when the image is reduced to “Campaign Mastery Size.” I mean, I notice them because I know they are there, but anyone else? I’m not so sure.

    Prioritized Detail

    Some elements are going to be more important, more definitive, than others. “An Aztec-style pyramid in a jungle full of threatening eyes in the foliage” – that’s fine as a concept. To determine what elements should be, or are, prioritized, insert the word “generic” in front of each of the nouns and see if the overall description still makes sense:

    • A generic Aztec-style pyramid in a jungle full of threatening eyes in the foliage – nope. The pyramid is a prioritized detail.
    • An Aztec-style pyramid in a generic jungle full of threatening eyes in the foliage – that works. The jungle is an important component of the setting’s totality, but not a prioritized one.
    • An Aztec-style pyramid in a jungle full of generic threatening eyes in the foliage – “generic eyes In the foliage” would work, but the inclusion of the emotion-laden adjective “threatening” makes this element incompatible with ‘generic’. These are a prioritized detail.

    This test can be used even if what you have is a visual, not a description. Just pick out one element after another, give them a label – “Cliff,” “Rock”, “Tree”, “Dragon”, “Castle” – and try the word generic in front of that label, or try imagining the image with some variation on the content actually present.

    This is a very rough sketch to give you some idea of what I had in mind when describing the assessments below. As an exercise in everything that has been discussed, there is a deliberate error in the image, made twice. See if you can spot the problem – I’ll tell you what it is at the end of this section.

    • A different Cliff? (I’ll come back to this one).
    • A different rock? Yep, no problem.
    • A different tree? Again, no problem.
    • A different Dragon? Not really – see the discussion on ‘cliffs’ below.
    • A different Castle? Maybe in theory, but the architecture is far more suggestive and informative than most people realize, so using a different castle would probably change the overall impression of the image. So that’s a (qualified) ‘no’.

    It doesn’t matter how specific the element, as rendered in the image is – what matters is whether or not it could be replaced with something similar without subtracting from the total sum of the content and what it tells you about the location, and that’s what this tests. I spent quite a lot of time on the cliff (and thought about doing more). The castle and dragon, by comparison, took no time at all.

    So, a different cliff, yes or no? To some extent, one cliff is exactly the same as another. So that would argue for a ‘yes’ answer. But there are subtle details that matter – perspective, and the nature of the cliff face, and the underlying geology – and they say ‘no’. But the trump point in this discussion is that the cliff is a key design / composition element, drawing the eye back to the left from the bottom right corner, where the sequence clouds -> sky -> leaves -> tree leads it. And to do that job properly, it has to have the right shape.

    That, incidentally, is why the rock is important – without something to interrupt the eye’s passage from right to left along the cliff edge, it would simple exit the image on the left. The rocks pull the eye up, and the castle then grabs attention.

    What about the dragon? located where it is, the eye can be drawn to it from the rocks, or from the castle, and the natural inclination is to follow it’s line of sight – up into the clouds and leaves, for another loop around the composition.

    But if that doesn’t happen, it doesn’t matter too much, because the image is adequately framed by its content. Arguably, it would be more effective if the Dragon was on the opposite side of the Castle – enough so that if I were trying to create anything more than a quick sketch, I would try that. But that’s not important enough to distract from the main point – which is that the posture and positioning of the Dragon then becomes critical. Where is it going? What is it looking at? These provide the eye with the cues that it needs to move on from that element of the image.

    So, to the deliberate mistakes – readers have had ample opportunity by now. Answer: In both the castle and the dragon, the shadows are on the wrong side. The tree, cliff, rocks, and clouds, are all highlighted on the right and shadowed on the left. The castle’s highlight is on the right, and shadows on the left. And it’s the same with the Dragon, though that’s a bit less obvious. How did you go?

The GMing Trap

It’s very common for GMs to fall into the trap of focusing on specific elements of their metaphoric landscape and overlooking the bigger picture, simply because the latter seems to be a lot more work.

This encounter, this town, this road, this river, this villain. It’s easy to do, But each and every one of these has some context that needs to be defined, and that context provides the connections that join it to the bigger picture.

I thought it might be useful to run through the above list and look at what the relevant context is likely to be. And then I thought of another category, and another, and another. This might take a while….

    This Encounter

    Even the most mundane encounter has the context of the environment in which it transpires.

    Some encounters involve creatures that are definitively magic-based, which therefore have an additional context of Magic in nature, and the nature of Magic.

    Some are (literally) spiritual – fiendish. demonic, devilish, Undead, Divine, Good vs Evil, Law Vs Chaos – and have a moral / moralistic context. the latter usually demand that the players define where their characters are going to stand on specific moral issues, and accept the consequences of those choices.

    All encounters will reveal at least part of a “natural” ecology – the mere existence of a particular kind of creature forcibly creates an environmental niche for them to occupy, usually by force and at the inconvenience of whatever is already in that niche. The mere fact of properly defining the encountered creatures and specifying how they exist and how they propagate creates an ecology around them that can then be assembled like Lego.

    This Town

    It’s a similar story when it comes to population centers. The larger they are, the more self-defining they tend to be – they grow so large simply because they can and inevitably will do so. The resulting concentration of population is sufficient to create demand for services and that fuels further growth in what seems like a never-ending spiral of growth.

    Things are different when it comes to smaller population centers; they need a reason to continue to exist in their current location. The more amenable the location is to a settlement, the more self-explanatory that reason is. So the more difficult the location, the stronger the external justification needs to be.

    Every population center is defined in part by its relationship with its’ neighboring populations and with the nearest larger community and with the seat of administrative power each step up the social ladder. It’s leaders will have relationships with each of these and those relationships will, in part, define the circumstances and existence of the community.

    One of the key aspects of those relationships, and one that probably deserves separate consideration, is the economic relationship. In particular, what do they need in the community that they cannot supply (even if the supplied item is a local substitute) and where do they get it from?

    You simply can’t make up a town out of whole cloth without defining these things (even if they are also to be made up complete) – which defines the surrounding region and the neighbors.

    I would still consider this community to be sand-boxed if there was no reciprocal creation – make a town, define its relationships with its neighbors, but don’t create any of those neighbors until it becomes clear that the PCs are actually going to go to one.

    This Road

    Roads don’t just exist, they connect one place to another. If it’s a small rural road or pathway, that might be all it does; if it’s larger or more important, then it will need to do more, probably connecting a series of small towns to a larger hub, which will usually be the regional administrative power. And, if it’s larger and more important again, then it might well connect a regional authority to the national authority center.

    Roads are hard and expensive to build well, and even more expensive to maintain. Using the best modern technology, roads built in the 1930s and not maintained are close to undrivable now, less than a century later – and they were reasonably well maintained for about half of that time.

    Roads built in medieval and fantasy environments will be even more expensive (in relative terms, per mile / km) and of far lower quality and resistance to wear and tear – which is to say they will have higher and more expensive maintenance demands and will deteriorate even more quickly if those demands are not met.

    To justify that maintenance, there needs to be one or both of two reasons: the rapid movement of goods and supplies, i.e. commerce & economics, or the rapid movement of troops, i.e. a military response / purpose. If the latter, there will be various barracks and staging points along the way, plus a string of forts to maintain control over the road. If the former, there will be less such.

    How is the maintenance paid for, and by whom? What is the economic and social impact of the road on the communities through which it passes? Where is it considered to begin, and where does it end? And what is the terrain through which it travels?

    Most sci-fi campaigns will have access to 1930s road-building techniques or better. But the economic realities are such that maintenance is begrudging at best, impacting the condition of the road. And it might be that the campaign conditions impact on the need for maintenance; at best, there will be no such impact.

    Every alternative transportation method increases the reluctance to maintain the road while diminishing its criticality – a double whammy that more than compensates for any reduced wear-and-tear. It doesn’t matter if that’s a-dragonback, teleport booths, interstellar gates, flying cars, or dirigibles.

    This River

    Unlike roads, rivers don’t need a lot of maintenance; leave them alone, and they will keep on doing what they are doing for as long as the climate is stable. Egypt may have been swallowed by desert, but the Nile still flows.

    Depending on winds and other prevailing conditions, it’s a lot easier to float things downriver than carry them upriver, and that impacts on availability and price. But I’m not going to go into that too deeply in this post, I’ll save that for the appropriate chapter of Trade In Fantasy.

    Erecting Dams for irrigation can, however, have a major influence on the quality and size of a river – to the point where it may need to be replaced by a road running alongside it.

    Absent such interference, a river has one other property of great interest to authority figures – it’s just as easy to ship troops downriver (or up-river) as it is cargo. Furthermore, rivers join other rivers to become bigger rivers, and the points of such joining have such natural advantages that communities naturally super-size over time, which magnifies the relevance of such troop movements. And. on top of that, because of irrigation, rivers also run alongside the most productive farmland, on which those larger communities rely. So every cent that isn’t spent on maintenance, and then some, would logically be spent on forts to monitor and control river traffic.

    The other critical thing that rivers posses are bridges and fords and the like. These are a lot less common than most fantasy mapmakers would have you believe – and everywhere that one is needed but not available, a ferry of some sort will spring up to act as a substitute. But these imply the presence of other communities and roads.

    A river is therefore surrounded by the regional context and a vital component of it.

    It’s only when sci-fi or steampunk technologies provide cost-effective alternatives that rivers begin to diminish in significance.

    This Villain

    I hate creating villains in isolation. Heroes can wander, so their context can be at arm’s length, but villains are rarely vagabonds (unless and until they have fallen from grace). Villains therefore have a power base, and their authority over it not only affects that power base but also their actions and capabilities beyond personal combat.

    In a dungeon, a power base might be confined to a single room. It may or may not be under constant threat from the inhabitants of neighboring rooms – but either way, the context matters to the condition of the room and the trappings and appointments within.

    What’s more, with rare exceptions, even villains need to eat. Where does their food come from, and if that creates a point of vulnerability, what have they done about that?

    What additional resources can the villain command by virtue of the domain that they claim power over?

    The most richly-detailed villain is a cardboard cutout if the context and its implications aren’t spelt out. And remember, the PCs will almost certainly encounter that context and/or ripples of it, long before they actually get to confront the villain himself (there are circumstantial exceptions).

    This Vista

    This image of an Italian Sunrise is by Ida (IdaT) from Pixabay

    My, but that’s a pretty picture. It ticks all the boxes in terms of eye-catching scenery. One look at that and you can tell exactly how a PC traveling through it is going to react.

    But there are parts of the picture that you can’t see – what’s the rest of the story?

    There are parts where objects within the landscape are hiding what’s on the far side – forests and mountains and deserts and oceans are all pretty good at this. But so are plains, if they are vast enough. What’s beyond?

    Most, of not all, of the wildlife are not especially visible – what lurks, and where?

    Land always has a history, often told through remnants and ruins (especially in a D&D campaign). Where are they, how have they not been pillaged, and what abides within?

    These places never exist in isolation – they are always found en route from one place to another. What and where are these places? If there’s no road or path, why not?

    What secrets are hidden in this pretty little landscape? That’s the context that a GM needs to answer – before he can put this pretty image in front of the players.

    This Administration

    No matter what the politics of the region – even in an absolute monarchy or dictatorship – there will be political factions, alliances, and disagreements. If one side has the authority, they may seek to suppress / persecute the other, but that doesn’t mean the other has gone away, just that it’s more secretive and furtive. Many a dictator has been surprised by the vehemence displayed during their overthrow.

    Whenever you create a government – be it local, civic, regional, state, national, global, para-dimensional, multidimensional, interstellar, or galactic empire – always determine who the major factions are, what they disagree on, and how much protection / authority members of the non-dominant faction have.

    Why? Well, when PCs encounter the ruling authority, one of two things will happen:

    1. They will get along fine with the current administration and so become enemies of the opposition; or,
    2. They will confront the current administration about something, maybe try and make them do something they don’t want to do, in which case the opposition will see them as potential friends and allies.
    This Faith

    Religion and religious issues are some of the biggest headaches a GM will encounter when world-building, because Clerics have genuine powers that have to come from somewhere and those automatically give their beliefs – whatever they may be – credibility.

    Is there one pantheon in the world? Or are there multiple pantheons? And if the latter, what are the relationships between them? And what is tolerated, what is forbidden, and what exists in a gray zone in between?

    There are multiple levels of the pious hierarchy to consider.

    • The gods themselves. Are they friends, rivals, allies, enemies?
    • The religious doctrines and higher leadership – what are the official policies?
    • The rank-and-file priesthood, who have to live in the real world and try to guide it.
    • The ultra-zealots.
    • The ordinary citizens.

    Throw in official links between a faith and a government, internal politics, corruption, factions, schisms….

    And, once you’ve done all this work, one of two things will almost certainly happen:

    • Religious issues will rise to dominate the game; or
    • Everyone will find them boring, and do their very best to ignore everything that you’ve created, most of which will be wasted effort.

    Striking a happy balance between these extremes is one of the hardest things to do successfully. But if you don’t find either of those choices palatable (I generally don’t), you have no choice.

    This Beginning

    Some lyrics from Semi-sonic’s “Closing Time” are relevant:

      So, gather up your jackets, move out to the exits,
      I hope you have found a friend.
      Closing time, every new beginning
      Comes from some other beginning’s end, yeah

    Nothing ever starts in complete isolation; it is always surrounded by, shaped by, whatever was there before this new beginning. This is absolutely essential to showing the contrast between old and new.

    Of course, this immediately begs the question, where did the old situation come from? And, it you aren’t careful, you can find yourself writing centuries of history of only limited relevance.

    What’s needed is to Temporally Sandbox the campaign history. That means that recent history is well-known and easily accessible, and most of the last century’s history can be found out (incompletely and in broad) just about everywhere – but there will be, as the illustration puts it, “Pointers, Hints, & Isolated Details” – signposts to the past, offering tantalizing glimpses into what once was, but completely without context. And if you ask a local about one, at best you’ll get folklore and myth that has a very small kernel of truth buried somewhere deep inside.

    For a while, it was my habit to make those myths up out of whole cloth and decide as I went what the kernel of truth was – then to make everything else the complete opposite of the true story. If there was a Necromancer involved, for example, he might be recorded in myth as the Darkest Evil (true fact) or as a misunderstood hero (myth). His foe might be an arrogant righteous knight (true fact) or a despotic fallen knight (myth). Who won and who lost? Complete opposite of the true story – and so on. But then my players at the time began to cotton on to this simplistic approach, as the underlying reality got exposed a time or two, and I had to develop more sophisticated tools for the creation of myths.

    Another point was that I paid no attention at all in the construction of these myths to internal consistency, and that also became recognized as an immediate tip-off.

    These days, I create half-truths, exaggerations, and romanticized superstructures around those kernels of truth. Sometimes, history gets it mostly right, sometimes it is breathtakingly wide of the mark. But it’s no longer as predictable.

    Getting back to the main point: there’s an immediate payoff for wrapping your history in a temporal sandbox: every pointer to the past holds the potential for a plotline. It may be short, or long, conclusive or inconclusive, but there can be an adventure or sub-plot that results from the difference between myth and truth.

    Quite often, the idols that a (romanticized) history places on pedestals turn out to have feet of clay – and, in some cases, be not very nice people at all.

    Temporal Sandboxing is one of the primary purposes of a simple tool that I provided here at Campaign Mastery some time ago – Throw Me A Life-line: A Character Background Planning Tool. The purpose is to divide history up into first-hand experiences, second-hand experiences related by an elder, and third-hand experiences that can only be derived from books, museums, artifacts, and other leftovers.

    This Plot Development

    So something has happened in-game that has advanced a plot or sub-plot – that’s all very well and good, but there is a context that has to be considered.

    Every plot development links what’s already known to something new – it might be a new source of information, a new political perspective or force, a new location where the event happens. It may introduce a new antagonist or a new ally.

    So that’s part of the ‘landscape’ thereafter. The other detail in the landscape, aside from the development itself and logical consequences thereof, is the person who is behind the plot development, and their motivations.

    That’s either a PC who has done something, or an NPC. But, even if the act was performed by a PC, the ripples that spread from the event will do so through NPCs. Every time someone does something, the first thing that a GM should ask themselves is “what will the locals think of that, and how will that affect the PCs?”

    This Location

    Everywhere that something happens in a game should have a landscape comprising a history, and/or an atmosphere. That could be as simple as stumbling over an old lost coin, hinting that a former empire’s reach was vaster than previously thought, or it could be as complicated as an old rotting library in the bowels of a Lich’s mansion or tower.

    In the second-ever RPG game session in which I played, in a particular room in a dungeon, the treasure included a (magical) book. I pointed out that either this was not the only book present, and the GM simply wasn’t mentioning the others for some reason, or there was something noteworthy about this particular book that it was the only one present. Either way, there was a story that wasn’t being told.

    The reason for this was, obviously, because the GM hadn’t thought about the landscape surrounding that particular treasure; the random tables said the book was there, so the book was there. To cover this gap, he hurried us right along before too many difficult questions could be asked – his usual technique was to have a wandering monster appear out of nowhere, posing a distraction.

    This then became part of the landscape, the background, when I was creating the Legacy Items for Assassins’ Amulet. These were all about the history that each one carried. Sometimes, that history was the creation of the item, and sometimes it was about the price to be paid for access to such powerful magic. But there was always a context.

    It’s the same with locations. This is your first time in the Great Library of Domasticus The Cruel? Why does someone with that name even have a library? What can the contents of said library tell you about the ruler? Was he as bad as the name suggests, or was there a softer side that no-one pays attention to?

    If it’s a more typical location – an overnight camping site on a trail from A to B – what is the scenery like? Did anything interesting ever happen here? Did anyone interesting ever pass this way? Are there any traces of the history of the place?

    This Dungeon

    And, if ever there was a place where that holds more true than any other, it’s a dungeon. What’s the history of the place and how does that impact what the PCs will see and find? Has anyone attempted to loot it before, and how does that impact the current day? Even if you construct it as nothing more than a few little vignettes of history – “a party once looted this room, disabling the traps and routing the inhabitants. They came to a sticky end in room XYZ, so the loot from this room will be found there, not here. The former inhabitants crept back, reset the traps, and reinforced their position – so the fight with them this time around will be much harder, with not as much to show for it”.

    That gives a history to the creatures that lurk in this room, to the room itself, to the contents of the room and their context, and to room XYZ, which (logically) should not be that far away and on a direct line from here.

    What’s more, it implies context to every location, every room, in between.

    And, when compiling a historical context like this, don’t neglect whatever loot those in-over-their-heads adventurers were carrying!

Playing Catch-up

Once you get behind in construction of these contextual landscapes, catching up is that much harder to do, but that’s not the biggest problem – in a moment, I’ll show you how to take a lot of the work out of playing catch-up. But first, the far bigger problem is when the context that you eventually create should have had a noticeable impact on the scene or location, and didn’t.

There are only three ways of handling this, and two are not all that satisfactory – and you can’t use the third all the time.

  1. The PCs simply didn’t notice the blindingly obvious except now, in hindsight.
  2. The PCs did observe the blindingly obvious but didn’t appreciate the importance until now, in hindsight.
  3. The PCs didn’t see anything of the context because someone has undertaken active measures to hide it.

The first two are unlikely to be more than thinly tolerated by players. This isn’t being determined by die roll or by referencing the history and abilities of the PCs – it’s being declared by GM Fiat to cover his own failures in an in-game context.

The third can be extremely useful but only on rare occasions; it’s very easy to over-use it. That said, I did once hear of a party whose mentor was a high-level wizard that had gone a bit strange in the mental department; he had an Unseen Servant roam ahead of the party and “tidy up” locations before the PCs got to them, muddling and even erasing the historical clues to what they were actually finding. (I wish I could tell you more about the campaign and what happened, but that’s all I know of it!)

Left without reasonable in-game answers, the wise GM looks beyond the game parameters to find a metagame solution:

  1. The GM admits that he messed up and got behind and that the PCs should have found X, and then enlists the players and their creativity to help explain it in-game.

Obviously, this too is a card that can’t be played frequently (and certainly not regularly) – it covers the occasional lapse, which everyone has every now and then, nothing more.

Clearly, the best answer is not to get behind in the first place. But, as I said, everyone has the occasional lapse, but there is a technique that can help when that happens:

    Coalescing Historical Landscapes

    This works from looking at the bigger picture (mentally) and applying selected parts of it to multiple areas that should have been detailed but weren’t. Traces of a past great empire, for example, in the form of portions of giant marble statues that dot the land here and there. The next time one then gets encountered (and it can be useful to deliberately seed one into the next session of play for this very purpose), simply mention as part of your descriptive narrative that the new one encountered reminds the PCs of something that they saw in Room A of dungeon B, and the town square at C, and outside the High Priest of D’s Temple. In other words, the PCs have been seeing these things regularly, but paying no attention to them because they didn’t seem important.

    A Plague Upon Historians

    Things can go even more rapidly downhill if one of the PCs happens to have a History skill at a reasonably high level. Presumably, this is then a subject that interests the character, and one that he would therefore notice things about. Those little lapses and omissions become far more significant when they are things the player is trying to hang his characterization ‘hat’ upon.

    That brings me to a useful game tip:

    Do this at your next game session: Get each PC to list, on a single sheet of paper, their top three skills. Not the scores, but the number of ranks they have bought in that skill. The player gets to break any ties.

    These are the things that the PC will particularly notice about each and every person, place, or thing. Use them to guide what you spend prep time creating.

If this is revealed as a problem, it’s definitely time to wheel out solution #4 – and to resolve to do better from this point out. And mean it.

Searching For Landscapes

Discussing metaphoric landscapes has taken us a long way from the original point of the article, about iconic representations of a specific campaign. It’s time to start looping back around in that direction so that the whole article can dovetail with a satisfactory conclusion (gee, someone might think that I actually plan this stuff).

There are a myriad of sites that you can search for landscape images. Google has a page for image search (see Finding Your Way: Unlocking the secrets of Google Image Search) and so do Bing and DuckDuckGo, and a few specialist operations like Tineye and Yandex. On top of that, you have image curators like Pinterest and Wikimedia Commons, and clip art sites like my #1 go-to for article illustrations, Pixabay.

So, if you’re diligent about it, you could probably spend hundreds of hours looking for the perfect image.

Don’t.

By all means, search for landscape images to fill particular campaign needs; and, if you’re lucky enough to stumble over the perfect representation, by all means appropriate it. You could also pay attention to the articles that I have posted on image editing and compositing, and learn how to make your own. But that’s not necessarily necessary; there is an alternative to consider.

    Using AI

    While you could use AI image generation to create what might seem to be the perfect representation, there are a number of problems with doing so.

    First, the technology isn’t there yet. It leaves things our, has problems comprehending relationships between objects, and fares poorly sometimes if you ask for something that doesn’t get photographed very often – like a crashed UFO.

    Second, as a general rule, it only includes things that you have told it to include or some of the logically implied content – with maddening omissions.

    Thirdly, AI-generated images that don’t require some hands-on editing afterwards are as rare as hen’s teeth.

    So, while it is a theoretical solution to the problem, it’s not an alternative to consider – yet.

    Keywords

    The heart of any image search are the keywords that you search for. With some search engines, the sequence in which these appear is also critically important. But the biggest factor in success is understanding the image search itself – they don’t pull up images that match the keyword criteria in most cases, they bring up images from pages that use those keywords in their text. Understanding this is critical to choosing the right keywords for an image search.

    Things are a little different if you’re searching Pinterest, or Wikimedia Commons, or DeviantArt. They rely on tags – which, as everyone should know, are little labels that the uploader has used to describe the content of the image. There is little or no AI assistance in this search – it won’t generally look for synonyms of your search term, for example, which would be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, in that it finds more images for you to consider; and a curse in that it would make it much harder to drill down to find the exact thing that you’re looking for.

    So either way, you end up with pages of images to wade through in search of the perfect result. And that can take considerable time. A search for “Mountains” offers up:

    • hundreds of thousands of results on Google Images
    • hundreds of results on DuckDuckGo
    • 1,201,398 results on Wikimedia Commons
    • uncountable thousands of results on Pinterest
    • 1,480 pages of results on Pixabay…

    You get the idea. I have found that a great shortcut is to select an analogous country, geology, or location, especially one with a matching climate, and inject that as a keyword – “Bolivian Mountains”, for example, or “Tropical Mountains”, or “Volcanic Mountains” – or even “Lunar Mountains”.

The Benefits of a Landscape Search

Let’s talk for a minute about the benefits that you reap from a landscape search, even if you don’t find an image that matches what you are looking for. You still get hundreds of results, for example, if you search Google Images for “Antimatter Mountain” – and it’s a near-certainty that none of them are even remotely what you’re looking for. So, why bother? There are three good reasons:

    1. Inspiration

    Take a look at each image result, and understand the relevance it holds toward your search target (even if that’s “none”). You will find additional ideas that enhance the specificity of what you’re looking for and any associated details.

    This is a great way of taking a vague idea and pinning it down.

    2. Language

    If you’re having trouble describing something to a search engine, how evocative do you think your language will be when describing it to your players? Taking the time to winnow through the search results, and refining the search keywords and parameters a time or two, can yield priceless dividends in terms of giving you something to describe, which then forms a starting point. Even if successive editing passes replaces each and every line of description from that starting point with something more specifically appropriate, that can still have been a worthwhile exercise.

    3. Representative Scenery

    And, finally, you might get lucky and uncover a scene that’s the perfect illustration for what you want.

The Perfect Landscape

Ultimately, it’s not up to you to decide what is the perfect landscape or the perfect representation of your campaign. As soon as you show the image to a player, they will either (a) disagree with your choice, or (b), start reading things into your choice, or (c) both of the above. And the moment one of those things is not something that you meant to imply, either your vision of the campaign has to expand, or the chosen image falls off the peak of \perfection.

That doesn’t mean that the quest itself is not worthwhile – it often is, refining mental images, suggesting new things, and depicting even a small part of the game world are all worthy outcomes of your efforts.

Growing your narrative and grounding events in context is always worthwhile. Even if the results are not perfect. And that’s true whether the landscape in question is visual or metaphoric.

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Looking At A Bigger Picture, Part 1 of 2


Before you can use a landscape, you have to understand them. Have no fear, this post will equip you with everything you need to know. Pt 1 of 2.

Time Out Post Logo
This is the third of my time-out posts in between the Trade In Fantasy series.

I made the time-out logo from two images in combination: The relaxing man photo is by Frauke Riether and the clock face (which was used as inspiration for the text rendering) Image was provided by OpenClipart-Vectors, both sourced from Pixabay.

Artists have been painting landscapes for a very long time, and there’s a good reason for that – nothing captures the total essence of a view or a location in quite the same way. Today’s post will give you the tools and knowledge to analyze a landscape image. Part 2, next week, will link campaigns and landscapes (both real and metaphoric) to show just what can be done with them – and what should be done, and why you might want to do so.

Orientation

Let’s start here: in art and documents, there are two basic orientations: Portrait and Landscape. Understanding the difference and why they are used the way that they are can be very helpful. Most art classes from 7th grade up (if not sooner) will cover this, but a lot of people won’t have paid attention or recognized the relevance, so starting with something fundamental seems like a good idea. Gets everyone on the same page, if nothing else (pun intended).

Most paper / images are rectangular in shape, with one longer axis and one shorter. In the US, the two most common page sizes are Letter and Legal, while in many other places, A4 is the go, and Foolscap is a legacy measurement from pre-metric times that still pops up here and there. Here are scale representations of all four, side-by-side:

Shows relative proportions of different paper sizes

If you look very closely, you’ll be able to see that the first three are all the same width (where that standard came from, I have no idea) but different lengths, obviously, while A4 is a little narrower and a little longer than letter size.

The exact measurements are:

  • Legal (US) = 8.5″ (21.59 cm) × 14″ (35.56 cm)
  • Foolscap = 8.5″ (21.59 cm) × 13.5″ (34.3 cm)
  • Letter (US) = 8.5″ (21.59 cm) × 11″ (27.94 cm)
  • A4 = 21 cm (8.27″) × 29.7 cm (11.67″)

A4 is defined by an international standard, ISO-216. The length of the long side is 2^0.5 × the length of the short side, for reasons that are far too technical to go into at the moment. The key point is that if you fold a sheet of A-sized paper in half along the long side, you get two sheets of the next A-size. A0 is defined as being 1 square meter in size (within rounding limits), so A1 is 1/2 m^2 and so on. You can also sometimes get larger sizes, such as “A-1” and “A-2” (read as “A minus 1” and “A minus 2”.

There is also a B-series and C-series of sizes, the latter defined by a different standard, but they are comparatively rare. In fact, there are two VB-series – Japan uses one different to the rest of the world.

The logic of the A paper-size series - each higher number is half the size of the previous one

While I’m on the subject of sizes, there are a couple of elephants in the room that need to be addressed.

    Exotic Sizes

    These are emphatically not the only sizes that can be encountered. In fact, they probably even the most common when you look at the totality of images to be considered. So I need to mention a few of the others that will commonly be encountered.

      Screen Size

      And the most common one is this – the standard screen aspect ratio, and the series of sizes, measured in screen pixels, that derive from it. 1024 × 768 and 1920 × 1080 are probably the most common sizes, but there are many more.

      Of course, there is a difference between Image Size and Paper Size – but an image has to fit into the space provided by the display medium. That could be a screen (which is where these sizes come from) or it could be a sheet of paper (for a hardcopy image).

      It must also be mentioned that paper printing requires a much higher resolution (pixels per inch or dots per inch) than any sort of monitor that you can point at. Standard screen resolution is 72 dpi, better is 96 dpi, and the minimum for full photographic quality is generally regarded as 300 dpi (though 120 dpi is sometimes used for low-resolution diagrams and 1200 dpi for extremely high-resolution images).

      Artists and editors have to be continually concerned with how an image is to be displayed and what compromises are necessary for optimum usage.

      If I have a 3000-pixel wide image, at 300dpi, that would be 10 inches across. If it’s a mere 1024-wide, that’s only 3.4133 inches across – at photo resolution. If I were to print that 1024-pixel-wide image 10.24 inches across, that’s a resolution of just 100 pixels per inch – and the printed image will be a little blurry, having only 1/3 the ideal print resolution.

      The downside to high resolution images is file size. A 1024 × 768 image is 786,432 pixels in size, and there generally are three color values for each pixel, so that’s 2,359,296 pieces of information, each 24-bits long for full color = 56,623,104 bits; divide by 8 to get bytes, divide by 1024 to get K, divide by 1024 again to get Megs = 6.75 Mb.

      Displayed at 72 pixels per inch, that’s an image 14.222 inches across and 10.667 inches high; if printed at 300 dpi, the image shrinks to 3.4133 inches × 2.56 inches high. If, on the other hand, the image is designed for printing, the file size will be × 300^2 / 72^2 = × 17.3611 file size, and without zooming in so that you can’t see the whole image, there will be details too small for you to see on a standard monitor.

      It’s a constant juggling act.

      But screen size is a natural size for digital artists to work at.

      The other screen size to mention is the ratio of 16:9, which are the relative dimensions size of widescreen TVs. Most photographic and digital art won’t use this unless the image was always intended to be displayed that way, and it’s quite common to photo/draw larger and crop to the needed dimension.

      This image compares the proportions of A4 and Widescreen.

      1024 × 748 or 1200 × 760?

      Like most computer users, part of my screen real estate is taken up with a toolbar – I keep mine two rows tall and at the bottom of the screen. When I am preparing an image for reference / display in a gaming session, I need to subtract the size of that toolbar from the height permitted for the image, if I want it to appear full-screen.

      Technically, it’s roughly 1024 × 748 – but I have found that 1200 × 760 is close enough with the software that I use. So an awful lot of the images that I create for my own use have those dimensions.

      Square

      When it comes to art, there are all sorts of alternative sizes, and square images are not uncommon, because these canvasses are comparatively easy to make. I’ll get into some of the consequences in an aside a little later, but for now, I’ll simply mention them and move on.

      Panoramic Sizes

      Panoramic sizes are image sizes that are deliberately wider than the display can show IF the image is full-sized vertically. This permits scrolling from one side to another, a manually-controlled “pan” across the image. This can be extremely useful in a game because it presents a general impression and then elements within the landscape that would have distracted from that general impression.

      Where it falls down is when you have to show it to multiple people – unless they can all see the screen at the same time.

      You can get around that by actually turning it into a gif or a movie, if you know what you’re doing and have the tools required for the job. These used to be phenomenally expensive, but there are freeware / open-source alternatives for almost everything these days. I can’t vouch for how easy they are to use, though.

      I have made a few using online tools, and especially to morph between multiple still images or variations. Unfortunately, these are all based on copyrighted images, so I can’t really offer any examples to show readers.

      Tower Proportions

      The final size to mention is any image that is designed to be taller than the available display at whatever width is intended – it could be full screen width, or it could be something smaller. Like the Panoramic pan, this permits a vertical scroll to reveal new details and the occasional surprise. This is an effect that I have used a couple of times here at Campaign Mastery.

      There’s the image that goes with Fuzzy Plastic Memories III – Application, which depicts a man digging for Free Worms. But as you scroll down, you discover that he is about to discover a Treasure Chest. And, if he keeps going, a Pyramid. And, if he keeps digging below that, Dinosaur Bones. This, of course, is symbolic of serendipity.

      Or, there is 2012’s Exceeding the Extraordinary: The Meaning Of Feats – at first, it’s hard to even recognize what you’re looking at, but as you scroll down, you realize that it’s cliff being defied by a bare-chested climber. Scroll down a little further and you get a hint of how far he’s already come.

      And then there’s Godzilla’s Eye, from Creating ecology-based random encounters: This Eats That… the unrelieved blackness above and below give the subconscious impression that the image size (relative to the eye) is representative of the head size (relative to the eye). You get the sense that the creature is too large to be contained within the panel, and since the eye is much larger than a human eye, that the creature it belongs to is both huge and right in front of you. The blackness above and below magnify the menace, many-fold.

    Portrait Orientation

    Okay, so we have our paper sizes – and a plentiful array of them, there are. For the rest of this post, though, I’m going to stick with the original four.

    There are two basic ways to orient one of these pieces of paper when they contain an image. The one that’s less relevant in terms of the subject of today’s post is Portrait Orientation, so it marks a relatively simple place to start.

    Portrait orientation gets its name from the fact that it is dimensionally-suited to focusing on an individual, and therefore is suitable for Portraits, as I’m sure most people will either know or be able to deduce (that said, I’ve had to explain it to some in the past!)

      Eye-line

      If you draw a line from an upper corner of a sheet of paper in portrait orientation at a perfect 45 degrees, and note where it crosses the mid-line of the page, you will find the eye-line of the sheet. This is a line across the page that represents where the viewer subconsciously places their perspective.

      Like this:

      Eyeline applied to Portrait Orientation

      The first thing to note is that because the first three all have the same width, the eye-line is in the same place relative to the top of the page for all three. The difference to the eye-line of the A4 page is barely visible, but it’s there – I’ve put an enlargement underneath to make it clearer.

      If a horizon line is above this line, those viewing the image will feel like they are looking down. If the horizon line is below it, those viewing the image will feel like they are looking up. This effect can be reinforced with 3D perspective, or contradicted by it; in the latter case, viewers will feel there’s something wrong with what they are seeing but most won’t be able to identify what the problem is. This can be very useful – if you don’t have an artist among your players!

      More importantly, if the image is a portrait, and the eyes are above the Eye-line, it creates an impression of height greater than that of the viewer, while below it, the viewer gets the impression that the subject is shorter than they are (potentially quite a lot shorter). This, in turn, is generally used to interpret visually the broadness of the image – a narrow character is thin, even emaciated, if they are tall, and even smaller if they are short, while a broad character is huge if tall and just wide if short.

      The other major difference lies in how much of the image lies below the eye-line. This dictates how much space there is for the visible part of the image – if the head is 1/3 of the width of the page, you may see the subject’s chest except with legal or foolscap, which might take you down far enough to see their belt. If the head is smaller, so will the rest of the body be – so you’ll get to see more of it at a larger size using a larger sheet of paper.

    Landscape Orientation

    Things abruptly grow more complicated when we’re talking about Landscape orientation, because all these paper sizes are of different widths when they are rotated 90 degrees.

    Eyeline, applied to landscape orientation

     

      Eye-line

      Readers should start by observing that our 45-degree line is now coming from the bottom of the page, not the top.

      With Legal and Foolscap sizes, there’s not a whole lot of room to put a horizon line above the eye-line. Even putting one anywhere close to the eye-line is still going to focus attention on the land and not the sky. Which is fine if that’s what you want – but trouble if there’s something in the sky of interest.

      Letter and A4 sizes offer greater flexibility – there’s a bigger gap between the top of the page and the eye-line.

      Horizon Line

      Because it’s important, let’s now show three more sets of images: One set with a horizon above the eye-line, one at the eye-line, and one below the eye-line:

      Horizon above and at eye-line, different page sizes
      Horizon below and well below eye-line, different page sizes

      These sets of layouts are Horizon above eye-line, Horizon at eye-line, horizon below eye-line, and horizon well below eye-line. There are three things to notice about them: the relative importance of ground-content vs sky-content, the emphasis on the horizon itself, and the impression of viewer’s height above ground..

      The shorter the page width, the more importance can be attached to the sky (because it takes up more space on the page). The closer to the mid-way point of the page, the more importance is placed on the shape of the horizon itself – i.e. the more the image is about context and where the ground-content is located and the less about what that ground-content is.

      These are fairly subtle effects, but they can make a big difference. Or, to put it another way, consider the Letter and A4 ‘well below the eye-line’ examples – with that much sky being shown, there had darned well better be something important in that sky to justify it!

    Natural Eye Movement

    With that all explained, it’s time to add another complication – one that I’ve discussed before (in Image Compositing Project No 3, a Blue Monkey, I think it was), but which bears a little recap: If you are used to reading left-to-right, then when you see an image, your eyes enter about 1/3 of the way down from the top and on the left-hand side, and travel to the right until they encounter something that redirects that motion.

    If your training is to read from right-to-left, your eyes enter an image from the right and track left.

    A lot of planning and design goes into manipulating the passage of the observer’s eye. Put something with strong contrast that extends down the page at some point, and the eye will follow it until it encounters something else. You can, through the careful structuring of image content, either induce the viewer’s eye to traverse the four corners of the image and land, repeatedly, at the point of central focus – the middle half of the image in the top 2/3, and centered there.

    At least, that’s what happens with Portrait Orientation.

    With Landscape Orientation, that central focus is a region almost as wide as the image itself. And that permits greater structural flexibility – the focal point of the image doesn’t have to be near the center, it can be off to one side (as it was in the Blue Monkey example linked to above), and the rest of the image is there to give that focal point context.

    It’s when you consider these effects in relation to the 16 diagrams above that the importance becomes clearer, and the reasons for the impact on the relative importance of ground vs sky. This also explains the “horizon effect” – if the horizon lies sufficiently above or below this initial line of passage, then it is deemed less important by the viewer (all completely subconsciously).

    Unusual Orientations

    Of course, artists love to break the rules and see what happens. Let’s take an A4 sheet and tilt it so that the horizon line runs more or less corner-to-corner. It’s what happens when we straighten it back again that gets interesting:

    Horizons at an angle relative to paper

    With the angled image, we pay attention to the top right corner and not much more – at least without some very clever design, such as using the space at the sides as negative space and ‘bouncing’ the eye off it. But straightening it back, the eye naturally follows the horizon down and to the right, giving a sense that we are banking to the right and therefore turning in that direction.

    In the third image, I’ve added something else flying – I did a simple aircraft shape, but it could be anything – and positioned it parallel to the top of the page. As a result, not only is there a sense that we are in motion, there is a sense that the other object is in independent motion, because it appears to be banking in the opposite direction to us.

    The wider the sheet of paper, the less extreme the bank angle that results from corner-to-corner horizons, and the less intense and more subtle the sense of movement – and perhaps, more realistic, as well. But we can achieve the same effect by applying a smaller angle to the horizon line, completely controlling it.

    And that’s with an absolutely flat horizon; manipulating it by adding in peaks and valleys can heighten the effect, and making the horizon a curve further increases it.

    To some extent, even without tilting the page, a similar effect can be achieved by greater variation in horizon. Here’s an A4 with a large mountain range to one side:

    Using asymmetry in composition

    But mostly, what an asymmetric image does is focus attention on the Asymmetry itself. In the example above, it’s the ruggedly steep mountain on the right – It’s green from bottom to top, so it’s not that tall, but in every other way, it presents as exceptional. And there’s just a hint of a second one behind it and to the right. Everything else in the image is there to provide context to that mountain – the dead-looking forest maze in the foreground, and the distant snow-covered peaks, both tell you something more about the mountain.

    It didn’t have to be a mountain; it could have been a tropical scene with one palm tree much closer to the viewer (and hence rising above the treeline). That would use the palm as a representation of the climate and a matching lifestyle and culture.

      Depth Of Field

      The other thing that this example does is present depth of field. You have something close up that is camera-blurred so much that it’s hard to make out – a hedge maze of very narrow passages with a lot of vertical rise and fall; you have the dominant element in focus, and behind the maze, making it further away and hence of greater size and importance; you have the snowy mountains behind the focal point, so they are farther away, and hence much bigger even though they take up less space in the mage; and you have a lot of wind-swept sky behind that, suggesting that wind might complicate any attempt to conquer the dominant mountain.

      Without depth, a place feels like a superficial impression. We are so used to depth of field being present that the mind takes any opportunity to accept its existence. Take another look at the ground texture in the earlier examples – it’s very simple one but perspective has been employed to once again present depth of field; the horizon is further away and the landscape feels ‘lumpier’, more 3-dimensional, as a result – and that tells you something more about the content even though it’s just areas of light and shadow, bereft of significant detail.

    Unusual Shapes

    There are other things that can be done. Unusual shapes, for example, can imply all sorts of things going on, using the visual shorthand of comic books – sometimes so subtly that you aren’t even aware of it happening, for example by thickening the borders in a fluid way, or introducing distortions and rotations in 3D

    Going any deeper into that subject is not something to be done casually; there’s very limited information available and it would demand weeks or months of experimentation to even begin work.

    The Impact of Ovals

    There’s one exception to that, and that’s an Oval shape. I don’t have to delve into this at all, because I’ve already done so, in my article on All about Frames ? Merry Christmas!.

    In a nutshell: the corners of an image are generally where the least important or immediate content is located. In some images, we’re only really aware of them subconsciously. A round frame strips them away and surrounds them with negative (empty) space – which suggests one of three things: either there’s nothing of importance in those corners, or there’s something there that would distract from the focus of the image, or there’s something there that for some other reason, the artist wants to hide from the viewer. It’s a literal expression of tunnel vision.

    Remember the tilted-frame demonstration? The eye gets repelled by that negative space, so an oval or round edge induces a natural trend for the eye to follow the edge of that negative space, circling the image over and over, and never actually paying much attention to the focal point of the image:

    The effect of a hard oval border on eye movement

    This illustrates a hard oval edge or frame. What this does is de-emphasize whatever is at the focal point, underplaying it. If it’s not something of great importance or significance, the framing only adds to that impression; but if it were a T-Rex or an oncoming train or a Gothic castle, it’s suggestive that these things are so ubiquitous that they are almost un-noteworthy. That’s a profound implication.

    But there is a price to pay – all in the visual information that would have been present in the shaded corners has been excised, and that’s a lot – it totals about 1/3 of the total image space.

    The effect of a soft oval border on an image

    The same thing happens where a soft border has been used. To illustrate it, here’s another Foolscap landscape, one created by stretching the Asymmetric A4 example from earlier. Aside from a central panel, I have successive blurred and faded the edges to create a soft oval.

    This has a completely different effect – the focus shifts completely to the spot indicated in the center. Our eye tracking starts above this line and tracks to the right until it hits the edge of the green mountain, when it gets pulled down and left toward the focal point. And suddenly, an almost-insignificant detail, only one or two pixels wide, becomes the most important element in the whole image: what appears to be a very distant path or trail between the mountains. It’s just below our focal point, but the eye gets led to it naturally. Suddenly all the context isn’t about the green mountain, it’s about that mountain pass – and the green mountain itself is just another addition to that context. What’s more, what looked like a forest maze now looks a bit more like what I intended it to be in the first place, a rocky cliff or range of hills between the viewer and the green mountain.

    As Mr Spock might have said, “Fascinating.”

Application in Illustration

Photographers have a limited set of options to work with. They generally have to accept whatever nature offers them, within the limits of camera angles, lighting, content, and natural framing. But they can take 1000 photos a fraction of a second apart and throw 999 of them away, if they have to (in practice, 3-5 would be more common, and usually with different cameras just in case there’s something wrong with one of them – like having left the lens-cap on. Even pro’s occasionally make that mistake!)

Artists and illustrators have no such excuse. If there’s something visible in an artwork, you more-or-less have to assume that it’s been put there deliberately, at least until informed otherwise – which is the artist wearing his limitations on his sleeve.

The artist is under an entirely different set of constraints, instead. Constraints of ability, of rendering, of design, of purpose, of tools, of techniques, and of time. It takes a fraction of a second for a photographer to capture an image; it can take hours – minimum – for an artist to render an image. Days and weeks are more common.

The time restriction is probably the biggest one, in many respects. It means that you can’t adopt anything close to the shotgun approach possible to a photographer; you might only have time to execute three or four rough designs and one finished artwork a week – or a month.

But there are some advantages to compensate. A pencil can depict anything that the artist can think of. It’s only a question of whether or not the artist has the ability and the techniques to transfer what he’s thinking of from the imagination to the page.

Entering the story at this point and complicating everything are digital art softwares. They make things possible that were almost impossible previously, and do it in a fraction of the time. But they can also create some absolutely appalling messes, and there’s a steep learning curve (at least at first) – actually, there are probably several that have to mostly be tackled all at the same time. I’ve touched on a few of them in this article – resolution and file formats and so on. Infinitely-adjustable page sizes can be both a blessing and a curse, requiring an entirely new skill: the ability to match a particular image size to a desired image design.

And, just starting to make it’s presence felt, the latest tool is AI. I’ve played around with the technology to know that:

  • It’s a whole new skill-set.
  • Getting one to cough up anything even vaguely related to what you want is difficult-to-impossible.
  • When it works, the results can be incredible.
  • When it doesn’t, they can be appalling.
  • The state of the art has severe and usually unstated limitations – some of which you may be able to dance around.
  • Almost inevitably, manual ‘tweaking’ of the results are necessary to achieve a satisfactory result. Sometimes a little, often a lot.

Some of those limitations bear mentioning. AIs have great difficulty with counting and normality – four fingers on one hand and six on the other. AIs have difficulty separating requirements into depth layers – “in the background,” is something they struggle with. In fact, any sort of relationship between objects and scene is often difficult. Action shots are frequently not possible – ask for a crashed flying saucer and it will just give you a flying saucer over a crater or burn mark. Distances are something they don’t really understand, either – we think of images as depicting objects located in a three-dimensional space; it doesn’t think of them as objects in space at all. There are more, but that’s quite enough to be getting on with.

One of my favorite tests is “a Kzin tourist in a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses.” The best I’ve gotten has been an orange-haired house-cat. Sometimes with a human-skinned torso.

Right now, at best, it’s a tool for a specialist artist. Often, it’s not even that.

And that’s where I’m going to draw the curtain closed for this article, which has grown immensely in the course of its development. Nothing that you have read today is part of the original 11-line outline that defined this article; today has been all about giving the non-artist the tools to analyze landscapes. In part 2, we’ll put those tools to good use as I move on to how non-artists can USE landscapes!

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Trade In Fantasy Ch. 3: Routine Personnel, Pt 3


This entry is part 7 in the series Trade In Fantasy

The 3rd of 4 posts looking at everyday personnel in Trade focuses on the Labor Unit and how to use it to make GMing a business easier.

Today’s post starts with a couple of short sections that were inadvertently left out of last week’s examination of carts. They had been written, but not where they were supposed to be, and I had failed to add them to the table of contents, which serves as a reminder of what’s supposed to be there – so that when I went through my checklist, it looked ready to post. It’s an error that’s not likely to recur, but it means that there’s just a little bit of crossing T’s and dotting i’s to be done.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay. I’ve painted out some rock climbers in obviously modern clothing and extended to the image slightly to the right.

Table Of Contents: In part 1 of Chapter 3: Routine Personnel

3.1 A Choice Of Four Trade Unit Standards (actually, 8)

    3.1.0 Principles of Comparative Modes Of Transport
    3.1.1 Humans as a beast of burden

      3.1.1.1 Lift from STR
      3.1.1.2 Average isn’t Average
      3.1.1.3 4d6 keep 3 vs 3d6
      3.1.1.4 Career Paths & STR

           3.1.1.4.1 Linear vs Non-Linear

      3.1.1.5 Lift, at last
      3.1.1.6 Encumbrance

           Sidebar: Behind The Curtain

      3.1.1.7 Load & Load Capacity
      3.1.1.8 Load Balance

           3.1.1.8.1 Adding a Staff to the equation
           3.1.1.8.2 Relating Load to Encumbrance (D&D)
           3.1.1.8.3 Relating Load to Encumbrance (Hero / Superhero)
           3.1.1.8.4 Relating Load to Encumbrance (Hero / Adventurer’s Club)

      3.1.1.9 Load Distribution
      3.1.1.10 Humanoids

           3.1.1.10.1 The Size Factor
           3.1.1.10.2 The Proportions Factor
           3.1.1.10.3 The Racial Factor
           3.1.1.10.4 The Human Advantage
           3.1.1.10.5 The Iconic Reference
           3.1.1.10.6 Elves
           3.1.1.10.7 Dwarves
           3.1.1.10.8 Halflings
           3.1.1.10.9 Orcs
           3.1.1.10.10 Ogres
           3.1.1.10.11 Bugbears
           3.1.1.10.12 Trolls
           3.1.1.10.13 Hill Giants
           3.1.1.10.14 Stone Giants
           3.1.1.10.15 Other Giants
           3.1.1.10.16 Others

And, in Part 2:

    3.1.1 Humans as a beast of burden (cont)

      3.1.1.11 Time: 8, 12, 16, 24
      3.1.1.12 Speed
           3.1.1.12.1 Non-D&D Scales

      3.1.1.13 Provisions: Food
      3.1.1.14 Provisions; Water
      3.1.1.15 Replenishment: Foraging / Hunting / Buying
      3.1.1.16 Distance
      3.1.1.17 The humanoid bottom line

           3.1.1.17.1 Elves
           3.1.1.17.2 Dwarves
           3.1.1.17.3 Halflings
           3.1.1.17.4 Orcs
           3.1.1.17.5 Ogres
           3.1.1.17.6 Bugbears
           3.1.1.17.7 Trolls
           3.1.1.17.8 Hill Giants
           3.1.1.17.9 Stone Giants
           3.1.1.17.10 Other Giants
           3.1.1.17.11 Other Humanoids

    3.1.2 Horses as a beast of burden
    3.1.3 Burros as a beast of burden
    3.1.4 Carts as a ‘beast of burden’

      3.1.4.1 Strength of the Axles
           3.1.4.1.1 Cart & Wagon Stats: High-Score Option
           3.1.4.1.2 Cart & Wagon Stats: Low-Score Option
           3.1.4.1.3 Cart & Wagon Axle Reinforcement

      3.1.4.2 Strength of the Wheels
           3.1.4.2.1 Spoke Thickness
           3.1.4.2.2 Number Of Spokes
           3.1.4.2.3 Solid Wheels

      3.1.4.3 Strength of the Connection
      3.1.4.4 Strength of the Bed
      3.1.4.5 Rolling Resistance
           3.1.4.5.1 Slope (aka Grade, Gradient, Stepth, Incline, Mainfall, Pitch, and Rise)

      3.1.4.6 Gravity Vector

In today’s post:

      3.1.4.7 Pulling the Cart or Wagon
      3.1.4.8 Simplification
      3.1.4.9 Storytelling

    3.1.5 Choosing Your Unit
    3.1.6 Ramifications

      3.1.6.1 Freight Management
      3.1.6.2 Base Loading Time
      3.1.6.3 On The Road: Drivers, Guards, Cargo-masters, & Handlers
      3.1.6.4 Base Unloading Time
      3.1.6.5 Sales Prep
      3.1.6.6 Sales and Customers

3.2 Recruiter / Personnel Manager

    3.2.1 Assumption #1: The best available gets hired

      3.2.1.1 Any Relevant Skill
      3.2.1.2 INT + WIS
      3.2.1.3 Substituting CHAR
      3.2.1.4 Supplemental Magic

    3.2.2 Assumption #2: They Hire The Best
    3.2.3 The Principle Of Labor Unmanagement

3.3 The Labor Unit

    3.3.1 Eight man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.2 Twelve man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.3 Sixteen man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.4 Twenty-four man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.5 Choices and Expectations

3.4 The Labor Market
3.5 Basic Pay-scales

    3.5.1 Loyalty Index

Which will be followed by:

3.6 Productivity

    3.6.1 Premium Labor Units
    3.6.2 Reminder: Profit per Trade Unit, not costs or prices

3.7 Pay-scale Variations

    3.7.1 Overpaying workers / Elite Quality Workforce
    3.7.2 Underpaying workers / Lower Quality Workforce
    3.7.3 Slaves
    3.7.4 Minor Stakeholders
    3.7.5 Combinations & Complications

3.8 Technological Impact

    3.8.1 Major Breakthroughs
    3.8.2 Incremental Gains
    3.8.3 Trade Secrets & Industrial Spies

3.9 Key Personnel & The Labor Unit
3.10 The Personnel Bottom Line

In future parts after that:
  1. Mode Of Transport
  2. Land Transport
  3. Waterborne Transport
  4. Spoilage
  5. Key Personnel
  6. The Journey
  7. Arrival
  8. Journey’s End
  9. Adventures En Route

Recap:

In the last post, I showed how to determine an answer to the question “How much can one carry”, not only for humans but for all humanoids.

The solution offered takes into account every variable that could be thought of, from STR to Stamina to size and proportions (when it comes to non-humans).

It also presented a couple of key equations that will really come into relevance in today’s post:

    Work Effort = Bulk × Distance / Labor Unit Standard.

where,

    Bulk is as defined in Chapter Two: Volume × Weight, measured in Cargo Units;
    Distance is how far the chosen Trade Unit Standard Transport can move a Cargo Unit in a certain period of time; and
    “Labor Unit Standard” defines that period of time.

In other words,

    Work Effort = Bulk × Speed.

It was then determined that the average STR for a human who uses STR for a living should be 11 (D&D/Pathfinder scale) or 10 (Hero System scale). This was based on Lift values of 225.54 lb and 102.28 kg, respectively.

    There was also discussion of the fact that the normal STR maximums in both systems gave Lift values roughly triple the actual current world records). Nothing was done about that in terms of corrections to stat progression – it was left to individual GMs to determine what to do about the fact.

Carrying capacity is used differently depending on how the load is balanced and distributed, but the bottom line is that any given humanoid has a capacity which determines how much the loads that can be considered “cargo” can weigh.

    Load is the effective weight being carried by the character.

    Load Capacity is the character’s capacity to carry a Load.

    Loads can be Distributed, Supported, or Point.. Distributed loads are worn, supported loads are carried on the back and/or shoulders, and point loads are just carried.

    Unused Capacity is the Character’s adjusted Load Capacity (size, shape, racial adjustments) minus adjusted Distributed and Supported Load totals.

    Therefore, Unused Capacity can be used to carry Cargo. The weight that produces this amount of Load (maximum) can be determined by multiplying the Unused Capacity by various factors (Balance, character size, shape, and race) – in reality, the actual Cargo Weight is being multiplied by the inverse of these factors, but this is is the easiest way to get a maximum.

    There were also modifiers for teams of characters carrying a single load, and for the use of walking sticks and staffs.

Once a maximum has been determined, actual Cargo weights can be adjusted to determine the actual Load, and therefore the Encumbrance affecting the character, which limits the characters Speed of Movement (amongst other effects).

Unfortunately, there’s no clear and consistent way of doing so, it varies from one game system to another.

It must be emphasized that while the systems can be employed for individuals, the goal was actually to define a racial “average”.

Next, something I’ve described as “The Human Advantage” was defined:

  • 5 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for 2 hours.
  • -10 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for 4 hours or CON hours, whichever is lower.
  • -15 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for 8 hours or CON hours, whichever is lower.
  • -20 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for one hour per point of CON or for 1 day, whichever is lower.

Some races have an even greater serving of this ability, others less, and many don’t have it at all. When this is factored in, it becomes clear that while other humanoids can have advantages over humans in one way or another, overall, humans are the standard against which they should all be measured.

Still paving the ground around the Labor Unit, time and speed were then looked at, which in turn defined distance that could be traveled with a cargo. Approximate terrain values were provided in a prelude to Chapter 5 that will look into the subject in more detail. Anatomical differences between humanoids were again relevant.

That was followed by the human requirements for food, and how these impacted Cargo carrying capacity. Options including purchasing food, hunting, and foraging were canvassed – there are three ways to pay for sustenance: Time, Carrying Capacity, or Coin.

Water needs were a more difficult proposition, and led us into some simple logistics. In a nutshell, unless you are completely sure of being able to replenish your supplies with potable water, you have to carry it with you – and you should always have twice as much as you need to get from one potential replenishment point to the next, just in case. A means of calculating how much water needed to be carried, taking all these considerations into account, was then offered.

Horses were then examined, and a combination of shortcomings – high food requirements for example – showed them to be less efficient than humans at carrying cargo. The need to graze ate significantly into the time they could spend at speed, but the quality and quantity of the available feed was a significant factor.

Burros – Mules & Donkeys – proved to have significant advantages over horses.

Finally, a close examination of carts was begun. These can carry huge loads. A system of breaking down the limitations of such vehicles was detailed which breaks the overall STR of a cart or wagon- used to determine the carrying capacity – into four sub-items – the STR of the bed (which actually carries the load), the STR of the axles, the STR of the wheels (and how it is reflected in or dictated by the wheel structure), and the STR of the connection between wheels and axles. Each of these was detailed and the limitations they imposed were determined – in a lot more detail than was originally intended. Finally, two specific limitations – Rolling Resistance and the potential to overturn because of Gravity and mismanagement of loads – were defined and determined.

Horses and other pack animals were specified as being able to pull (in general) 4 × as much as they could carry, 6 × with exertion. Horses are 6 × and 8 x, respectively. Some pack animals like Oxen can haul 8 × and 10 x, respectively, but tend to be slow. Each additional animal adds 75% to the total (not 100%). in general terms, if there are no significant inclines, using the lower of these leaves capacity for overcoming rolling resistance, the reluctance of a load to start moving – provided that the driver is canny about where he stops for the night.

So that’s where we’re at.

      3.1.4.7 Pulling the Cart or Wagon

      Let’s work up some quick examples of Animal Teams as a prelude to this section:

      1 × Burro
           80 kg carry, 320 kg max load
           Haul 4 x80=320 kg (light load) – 6 x320=1920 kg (heavy load) each
           First animal: 100% capacity; no additional animals
           Recommendation: leave 20% capacity in reserve
           80% × 1920 (heavy load) = 1536 kg recommended max load
           Speed diminished at 480 kg load & 960 kg load (Encumbrance)

      2 × Burros
           80 kg carry, 320 kg max load
           Haul 4 x80=320 kg (light load) – 6 x320=1920 kg (heavy load) each
           First animal: 100% capacity
           Additional animal × 75% = additional 75%
           A team of 2 =1755% of a single animal
           175% × 320 (light load) = 560 kg
           175% × 1920 (heavy load) = 3360 kg
           Recommendation: keep 20% capacity one in reserve
           80% × 3360 (heavy load) = 2688 kg recommended max load
           Speed diminished at 840 kg load & 1680 kg load (Encumbrance)

      1 × Horse
           160 kg carry, 720 kg max load
           Haul 6 x160=320 kg (light load) – 8 × 720=1920 kg (heavy load) each
           First animal: 100% capacity
           Additional three animals × 75% = additional 225%
           A team of 4 =325% of a single animal
           325% × 320 (light load) = 1040 kg
           325% × 1920 (heavy load) = 6240 kg
           Recommendation: keep one in reserve
           250% × 1920 (heavy load) = 4800 kg recommended max load
           Speed diminished at 1200 kg load & 2400 kg load (Encumbrance)

      4 × Burros
           80 kg carry, 320 kg max load
           Haul 4 x80=320 kg (light load) – 6 x320=1920 kg (heavy load) each
           First animal: 100% capacity
           Additional three animals × 75% = additional 225%
           A team of 4 =325% of a single animal
           325% × 320 (light load) = 1040 kg
           325% × 1920 (heavy load) = 6240 kg
           Recommendation: keep one in reserve
           250% × 1920 (heavy load) = 4800 kg recommended max load
           Speed diminished at 1200 kg load & 2400 kg load (Encumbrance)

      6 × Burros
           80 kg carry, 320 kg max load
           Haul 4 x80=320 kg (light load) – 6 x320=1920 kg (heavy load) each
           First animal: 100% capacity
           Additional five animals × 75% = additional 375%
           A team of 6 =475% of a single animal
           475% × 320 (light load) = 1520 kg
           475% × 1920 (heavy load) = 9120 kg
           Recommendation: keep one in reserve
           300% × 1920 (heavy load) = 5760 kg recommended max load
           Speed diminished at 2280 kg load & 4560 kg load (Encumbrance)

      2 × Horses
           160 kg carry, 720 kg max load
           Haul 6 × 160=960 kg (light load) – 8 × 720=5760 kg (heavy load) each
           First animal: 100% capacity
           Additional animal × 75% = additional 75%
           A team of 2 =175% of a single animal
           175% × 960 (light load) = 1680 kg
           175% × 5760 (heavy load) = 10,080 kg
           Recommendation: keep 25% reserve
           75% × 10,080 (heavy load) = 7560 kg recommended max load
           Speed diminished at 2520 kg load & 5040 kg load (Encumbrance)

      8 × Burros
           80 kg carry, 320 kg max load
           Haul 4 x80=320 kg (light load) – 6 x320=1920 kg (heavy load) each
           First animal: 100% capacity
           Additional seven animals × 75% = additional 525%
           A team of 8 =625% of a single animal
           625% × 320 (light load) = 2000 kg
           625% × 1920 (heavy load) = 12,000 kg
           Recommendation: keep two in reserve
           475% × 1920 (heavy load) = 9120 kg recommended max load
           Speed diminished at 3000 kg load & 6000 kg load (Encumbrance)

      4 × Horses
           160 kg carry, 720 kg max load
           Haul 6 × 160=960 kg (light load) – 8 × 720=5760 kg (heavy load) each
           First animal: 100% capacity
           Additional animals 3 × 75% = additional 225%
           A team of 4 =325% of a single animal
           325% × 960 (light load) = 3120 kg
           325% × 5760 (heavy load) = 18,720 kg
           Recommendation: keep 1 in reserve, 75% load on others
           250% × 75% × 5760 (heavy load) = 10,800 kg recommended max load
           Speed diminished at 4580 kg load & 9360 kg load (Encumbrance)

      6 × Horses
           160 kg carry, 720 kg max load
           Haul 6 × 160=960 kg (light load) – 8 × 720=5760 kg (heavy load) each
           First animal: 100% capacity
           Additional animal 5 × 75% = additional 375%
           A team of 6 =475% of a single animal
           475% × 960 (light load) = 4560 kg
           475% × 5760 (heavy load) = 27,360 kg
           Recommendation: keep 2 in reserve, 80% load on the rest
           375% × 80% × 5760 (heavy load) = 17,280 kg recommended max load
           Speed diminished at 6,840 kg load & 13,680 kg load (Encumbrance)

      That’s probably enough to be getting on with. I have very carefully arranged these in sequence of increasing maximum load.

      Deducting from that load is the weight of the cart, of the driver, of any passengers, and of food and water for all concerned.

      Team of 6 horses:
           49 kg food & water / day each = 294 kg
           reserves 25% = approx 76 kg; subtotal 370kg.
           for a week? = 2590kg.
           recommended capacity 17,280 – 2590 = 14,690
           wagon weight? 1000 kg, maybe 2,000. remaining capacity = (conservatively) 12,690 kg.
           driver & guard & gear, maybe 210kg. Remaining capacity = 12,480 kg.
           food for 2 people for 7 days = 3 × 2 × 7 = 42kg.
           +25% reserve = approx 11 kg = 53 kg.
           water for 2 people for 7 days = 2.5 × 2 × 7 + 5 = 40 kg.
           +50% reserve = + 20kg = 60kg.
           Remaining capacity = 12480 – 53 – 60 = 12,367 kg.
           Let’s add 6 guards, walking / marching alongside the wagon. That increases the food and water needs x4.
           Remaining capacity = 12480 – 4 × (53+60) = 12480 – 452 = 12028.
           Lose another 28 kg for incidentals like tents, cooking gear, etc. And carry 200kg of firewood.
           Remaining capacity = 11,800 kg.

      That’s a viable proposition. Well protected, moving steadily, mounts well within capacity, with spares in case one comes up lame or needs to carry an injured guard.

      3.1.4.8 Simplification

      There is a simpler option to getting all detailed and specific about wagon components. Simply buy STR for the total at 3x the quoted price, and assume that all components (wheels, axles, etc) are specced up to match. If “something” comes up as broken in a random check by the GM, he or she simply rolls a d6 to decide what – if necessary:

           1-3 Wheel / Connection
           4-5 Axle
           6 Bed / Other

      If the roll indicates a wheel / connection failure, the GM should consider the load, terrain, & road conditions to see if one of the two can be ruled out. If not, a second roll (50-50) makes the choice. For each extra step above 3 spokes, add 5% to the chance that a spoke has broken.

      If the roll indicates a “cart-bed / other” failure, then either the cart body has failed / collapsed somehow (1 in 6), or the cart / wagon has tipped over (2 in 6) or there’s some problem with the health of an animal pulling the cart / wagon (3 in 6).

      3.1.4.9 Storytelling

      It should be remembered at all times while reading / referencing any of the above that the details and specifics are intended to be an aid to storytelling, and there is no story if a PC is not involved directly. If that’s not the case, hand-wave copious amounts of detail.

      EG: A PC is waiting on something that they have ordered from a specialist in another town to be carried to him by the fantasy equivalent of a postal service. It’s late, and every time he asks whether or not it’s arrived, the GM indicates a “no”, so he is starting to worry. Finally, the wagon turns up, traveling slowly because it’s using temporary jury-rigged spokes, and because the guards are a bloodied mess and close to death. The wagon driver, when asked, describes a trip in which just about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong: First,they broke a spoke, second the driver tried to make up time and overturned the wagon, and third, while setting it upright, they were attacked by Bandits led by a Bugbear wearing an eye-patch. The guards were no match for the band of thugs, outnumbered four t one. “Funny thing was, they only wanted one thing from the back – once they had it, they were off and running for the treeline.” adds the Driver. With a sinking feeling, the player has the PC check the inventory, and sure enough, his order is the one thing missing. Suddenly he’s deeply enmeshed in a plot he didn’t see coming – but note that there’s no details of how the spoke got broken, or how the wagon overturned (though the coincidence of timing is striking), or how the battle with the guards unfolded, or how strong various parts were, or what they were made of. All irrelevancies that would get in the way of the real plot – someone knew that his cargo was on-board and arranged for it to be stolen.

      If, on the other hand, a PC not only owned the wagon / freight company, but was driving the wagon, and another was the leader of the guards, all those details suddenly become very much relevant and none of the action should be hand-waved. It suddenly matters that an earth-slide created an unexpected bank to the road at the critical spot – which was either chosen by the bandits because of the earth-slide because it would force the wagon to slow, or it was created by the bandits to achieve that very end.

      And, in the latter case, remember that the PCs don’t know what information is relevant and what is not – so as little as possible of it should be glossed over.

    I can never look at a cloud (or a photo of clouds) without remembering two facts. (1) To be visible to human eyes, a cloud (no matter how small) is actually made up of at least 10,000 smaller clouds; and (2) they contain so much water vapor that the smallest cloud you can actually see from ground level weighs as much as a bull elephant or more. It’s the latter fact that makes this a relevant illustration for this article. The base image is by M Fahad Noor from Pixabay.

    3.1.5 Choosing Your Unit

    Your definition of a Labor Unit standard should be derived from the normal activities that you expect to comprise the bulk of the activity of the trade operation.

    If the core of the business is retail – loading and unloading, selling in a commercial space, etc – then an eight-hour working day and human(oid) capacity is the basis of your standard.

    If the core of the business is transport – buying, moving, and wholesaling – then the transportation of cargo is the dominant activity. In a (relatively) safe area, that means a 12-hour working day and the dominant means of transportation will form the other part of the equation. The extra time allows for hunting, foraging, and letting beasts graze.

    In a less-civilized area, the potential for profit can be greater, but so are the risks. To allow for those risks, you will need guards, and they will have to work 12-hour or 16-hour days, depending on the length of their watches. Shorter times mean more people are needed.

    In the wilds, or at sea, trouble is no less likely to arrive at any hour of the day than any other, and all hands will need to be ready to respond. If you are hiring cargo vessels, the crew are ‘on’ all the time (even when resting below decks) – and that usually means a 24-hour day, and since a vessel doesn’t care how much it’s carrying (so long as it isn’t overloaded), it’s loading and unloading at docks that’s the dominant activity. The actual transport all happens in the background, unless a PC happens to be on board.

    These principles are so straightforward that they are almost anticlimactic – but that’s the virtue of having paved all the surrounding ground. But closer examination reveals a lot of hidden nuance that can complicate things.

    What if your business is a mixed one? What if you have different humanoid types at each end of a basic model – Halfling “gardeners” at one end and humans unloading and wholesaling at the other?

    In such cases, look for the highest common denominator, or the one that yields the simplest fractions. If you have a race at one end that does 2/3 as much in an hour as the one at the other (smaller size, lower strengths, better unions?) then you have two obvious choices: the higher and the lower. If the higher, then the lower will be “2/3 of a labor unit” – that’s messy. If the lower, then the higher will be “1.5 labor units” – that’s a lot easier to work with. So that’s your choice.

    Similarly, if the labor they are employed for is of differing lengths of time, you have two choices: you can subdivide a standard time unit to get the shorter span, or look for a common multiple.

    Obvious choices for subdivision are 4 hours, 2 hours, and 1 hour. It’s no coincidence that the standard time intervals for Labor Units are all multiples of 4 hours. Whatever your standards, all activities have to get rounded up to the next highest multiple of that time – so the smaller the unit, the greater the accuracy but the more fiddling the details, the larger the unit, the more generalized and abstracted everything is – and as a general rule of thumb, that’s better.

    3.1.6 Ramifications

    These are not idle choices, there will be ramifications throughout the operation. As a general rule of thumb, even if you only employ people for three hours of the day, they won’t find any other paid work after they’ve finished – so if you insist on only paying for three hours work, you’ll save money for a couple of days, and then find that only the desperate and the dregs are willing to work for you. At best, and depending on how labor market customs have evolved in a given culture and location, you might be able to get away with employing people for a half-day. But more likely, you will have to pay for a full day’s labor from each Labor Unit – which means that if the main activity is only going to take three hours, then you may want some secondary activity to make them productive for the rest of their ‘shifts”.

    Of course, those are all relevant only in terms of an 8-hour basis. If your basis is 12 hours, then your local hires will only need to be employed for 2/3 of a “standard” to be fully employed, or maybe 1/3 for a half-day.

    Don’t expect to save money by changing the scale of a Labor Unit – basic wages will be specified per day and will mean 8 hours, so the price of a Labor Unit goes up with increasing length. And note that some activities may require a premium – two, three, four, or even five times basic pay. Guards in a dangerous environment, for example, may be paid 5 times normal, while Drivers in that environment (who are only ‘on’ 12 hours a day) may still need to get paid twice the normal rate.

    Any loot that guards etc liberate along the way – if legally acquired – gets shared 50-50 between themselves and the business owner. No ifs, buts, maybes, or exceptions. Anything else either encourages guards to be watching for opportunities more than dangers to the Cargo, or discourages guards from working for you.

    But these are just the beginning.

      3.1.6.1 Freight Management

      The obvious way to load a cargo – well there are three choices.

      The first is to load in sequential order – whatever is bought / delivered first gets loaded first. This has the big advantage of speed – but it risks Gravity Vector problems, and problems if the entire load is not destined for a single destination.

      The second is to load in reverse sequential order – whatever is to be delivered or unloaded first gets loaded last, so that it is most readily at hand when the time comes. If making a series of deliveries along the way, anything else can mean having to unload the whole cargo and then reloading it – to get to something that’s at the bottom of the stack. Once again, Gravity Vectors can be a serious problem.

      The third is to be inefficient at all stops, and to pack the wagon for maximum stability. In other words, Gravity Vector problems take priority, and if that makes for convenience or inconvenience along the way, that’s just the way it is.

      Nice and neat. Reality is more messy.

      Many cargoes will have limited lifespans. These are measured in days, unless some preservation method is preserved, changing the nature of the commodity. These can be measured in days – seafood, for example, has a lifespan of just 2 days.

      As a rule of thumb:

           1/2 life (round down) = fresh = × 2 base price
           1/2 × 1/2 life (round down) = good quality = × 1.25 base price
           1/2 × 1/2 × 1/2 (round down) life = fair quality = base price
           remaining life = poor quality = 1/2 base price
           1 to 1.5 × life = very poor quality (1/5th base price), 50% spoiled
           1.5 to 2 × life = abysmal quality (1/10th base price), 95% spoiled
           > 2 × life = unsalable, 100% spoiled (1/20th base price if suited for animal fodder)

      Preservation methods – mentioned earlier – extend the lifetime, so they don’t change this set of parameters.

      Let’s select something with a reasonably short lifespan, but not as catastrophically so as seafood: Fruit.

      There’s a fairly wide range within this category – apples can last months, peaches less so. For the sake of example, I’m going to select something with a 2-week lifespan. Who cares what it actually is, that’s not important. Let’s further specify 100 fruits to a barrel, at a base price (retail) of 1 copper each. Wholesale price will be 1/2 this, so 100 × 1/2 = 50 coppers per barrel = 5 SP per barrel. Twenty barrels = 100 SP = 10 GP (D&D monetary scale).

           1 week = ‘fresh’ = 20 GP
           3 days = good quality = 15 GP
           1 day = fair quality = 10 GP
           3 days = poor quality = 5 GP
           1 week = very poor quality = 2 GP, less 50% spoilage = 1 GP
           1 week = abysmal quality = 1 GP, less 95% spoilage = 5 CP.

      Shipping these takes 3 days from farm to market. Loading them takes 1/2 a day, as does unloading them. That leaves:

           3 days = ‘fresh’ = 20 GP
           3 days = good quality = 15 GP
           1 day = fair quality = 10 GP
           3 days = poor quality = 5 GP
           1 week = very poor quality = 2 GP, less 50% spoilage = 1 GP
           1 week = abysmal quality = 1 GP, less 95% spoilage = 5 CP.

      Lose a day to a wagon breakdown:

           2 days = ‘fresh’ = 20 GP
           otherwise as above

      Stop 2 days out to sell 1/2 of the load – gets you the best prices – but at the cost of another 1/2 day spend unloading:

           4 days = ‘fresh’ = 10 GP; remaining cargo base value 5 GP.

           1.5 days = ‘fresh’ = 10 GP
           3 days = good quality = 7 GP 5 SP
           1 day = fair quality = 5 GP
           3 days = poor quality = 2 GP 5 SP
           1 week = very poor quality = 1 GP, less 50% spoilage = 5 SP
           1 week = abysmal quality = 5 SP, less 95% spoilage = 2 CP.

      How many barrels of fruit can you sell in 1.5 days? Two or three pieces at a time? Retailers won’t pay the full price quoted, because they know that they will be selling some of the produce at lower quality. A compromise of 7-8 GP is more likely – and that’s in a large city with a substantial demand. In a smaller city, 5-6 GP is the likely compromise. In a large town, you’re unlikely to sell the entire half-load, and what you do sell is likely to have a price of 4-5 GP.

      So this approach earns about 17.5 GP. Let’s assume the farmer gets half the base price – that’s 2.5 GP – and the transportation costs another 5 GP. That means that the entire profit of the venture comes from that initial sale, with everything else just covering costs.

      There are things that can be done to boost profits. Best solution: stop in every town (however small) along the way and sell 1 single barrel, even if the size means getting less than full price for it.

           1/2 day: loading = 1/2 day.
           1/2 day: transport = 1 day.
           1/2 day: small town, 1 barrel ‘fresh’ = 1 GP. 19 remain. 1.5 days used.
           1 day: reach city #1. 2.5 days used.
           1/2 day unloading, sell 10 barrels = 10 GP. 9 remain. 3 days used.
           1/2 day: divert to small town, 1 barrel ‘fresh’, discounted 25% = 7.5 SP. 8 remain. 3.5 days used.
           1/2 day, small town, 1 barrel ‘fresh’, discounted 25% = 7.5 SP. 7 remain. 4 days used.
           1 day, reach city #2. 5 days used.
           1/2 day unloading, sell 2 barrels ‘fresh’ = 4 GP. leaves 5.
           5 barrels, discounted to 8 SP each = 4 GP. 5.5 days used.

           Total: 1+10+0.75+0.75+4+4 = 20.5 GP.
           1/2 extra day, so +0.5 GP expenses. = 8 GP.
           Profit: 12.5 GP instead of 10.

      Multiply that by 50 weeks in a year, and 6 wagons going to different places, and you get profits of 3,750 GP (up from 3,000). Do that for 20 years and you have a substantial net worth from this source alone of 75,000 GP.

      Of course, you’re likely to start smaller and grow, which will eat into that profit total. And there will be bad years along the way. The reality is that you might only have half of that 75 grand – or you could have substantially more, if you invested it. The bigger the risk, the bigger the payout – but risks have a habit of failing, now and then. But if you got lucky, you could increase that 37,500 a thousand-fold.

      37.5 million GP. That’s serious money.

      More likely, nine in 10 of those ventures won’t pay off. So that 1,000 fold becomes 100 fold. That’s still 3.75 million GP.

      How much of this should be left to the PCs to think about?

      None of it.

      How much of this should the GM worry about?

      Almost none of it.

      Work up one typical trip, the same way I have. Then scale that as necessary, and accumulate. One wagon, 50 trips a year – that’s an income of 12.5 GP per week after expenses. That won’t break anyone’s game system.

      Every 40 weeks, offer the PC a chance to add another cart and team, potentially doubling their income. Assume that maybe 1 in 5 of these additions doesn’t work out for whatever reason. Roll a die, adjust the PC’s income accordingly.

      Some might be more lucrative than others; for those that succeed, roll d10-5 and multiply by 10 to get the profitability. Every now and then, deal the business a setback (a one-off loss of income) or a windfall (a one-off extra of 2-3 week’s worth of extra income). And in the meantime, use the existence of the business as a way to lay adventure potential at the feet of the PC.

      That’s a big difference between Trade In Fantasy and Trade in a Fantasy RPG. Don’t forget it!

      3.1.6.2 Base Loading Time

      To be honest, 1/2 a day to load a cart is quite a long time. 20 barrels at 5 mins a barrel is just 100 minutes – less than 2 hours. Throw in a little extra time paying the farmers and checking the barrels (to make sure they are secure and full and of good quality cargo) and you should be underway in 2, maybe 2 1/2 hours.

      A lot depends on how many Labor Units you can dedicate to the task. Twice as many units = half the loading time – up to a point. And the sooner you get a load on the road, the sooner it gets sold, and the better the price, and the bigger the profits – up to a point.

      This is where the manpower availability determined earlier comes into play – you can’t hire people that aren’t there to be hired. Guards won’t do the work – aside from risking injury, it’s beneath them.

      If your business is using ships, the entire equation can change. You might be looking at several days to load, and 60+ workers. Your labor units should scale up appropriately – 6 workers for an 8-hour day might be a labor unit.

      Divide the cargo capacity by the STR per worker (average), by the number of workers in a Labor Unit, by the number of hours in a Labor Unit to get the number of days it takes to load or unload the vessel. Or simply define a labor unit as so much loading capacity (Ave STR × Hours × Workers × Factor).

      Factor? What’s that, and where did it come from?

      The cargo capacity per person is not how much they can load in an hour, it’s how much they can load at a time. They might be able to make 4-5 loading ‘trips’ in an hour – which would give a Factor of 4.5. Or it might be 3. Decide on an average and define a Labor Unit accordingly.

      3.1.6.3 On The Road: Drivers, Guards, Cargo-masters, & Handlers

      To transport cargo overland, or up / downriver, you may need some or all of these occupations. The driver can usually substitute for a cargo-master, or you can have somebody local do it as a side-gig. Handlers can (and usually are) hired locally. So drivers and guards are the main personnel needed.

      But you don’t care what their job is – all you want to know is how many labor units working for how long for payment of X. So, having defined the Labor Unit, determine how many Labor Units are required for each Cargo Unit of capacity, and you’re done.

      At first, you might need to break it down as I did in the previous section. It won’t be long before you’re able to say “It’s X days travel, the conditions are such-and-such, so that’s going to be X times Y people Labor Units plus loading and unloading × Z labor units, so the total per Cargo unit is about ##.” – with no need to actually count up individuals.

      And if you make a mistake in this guesstimation, what of it? Sometimes, you might be under, sometimes over – the more frequently you do this, the more mistakes will tend to average out.

      No GM or PC should ever know the names or races of these faceless entities – they are cogs in a machine, nothing more, unless and until the GM makes one more important for some specific plot reason, or a PC decides to ride along with one for whatever reason. Until then, they are not just sand-boxed, they are embargoed.

      And if you ever do need to flesh one out more fully, create only a Partial NPC – do nothing that you don’t need. Just make sure that for every decision that gets made, or that has been made in the past but is only now being narrated, that you have a good reason. “We need to hire extra guards in Foxton,” says the Driver. We don’t need them for Foxton to Mercy, but we do for Mercy to Shadytown – and the people we can hire in Mercy for the job aren’t reliable.”

      3.1.6.4 Base Unloading Time

      Once you’ve moved the Cargo from loading point to destination, it needs to be unloaded. The example earlier said that this was just as slow (or just as fast) as loading it, but we all know that’s not the case – in general, it takes 30 minutes to unload what it took 3 hours to load, in my experience – unless you also have to unpack and distribute the contents. Stacking crates and barrels, not so much.

      I’ve already indicated that the base loading time used in the example was inaccurate; this makes it clear that the unloading time used is also going to be way off. That’s fine, the example served its purpose.

      But, one simple tweak is all it takes to make it accurate again (or equally inaccurate both ways) – just specify that you have 6 labor units loading for every one unloading and you get equal time on both sides.

      To me, though, six seems an awful lot. I personally would mandate a ratio of three labor units to one and that unloading takes half the time of loading. But that’s up to you.

      There are many types of loading arm, mostly based around the Crane. The first such was devised in Mesopotamia in roughly 3000 BC, and the technology reached Ancient Egypt about 1000 years later. The Greeks realized that splitting the load amongst many load-bearing cables / ropes divided the strain amongst them, and also invented pulleys. So the basic principles should be well known in any fantasy society. Image by Michael Kauer (emkanicepic) from Pixabay

      It might seem like this would change when larger vessels are concerned. The larger the group, the more scope there is for people to get in each other’s way – but that only happens if they are a disorganized rabble. Any foreman or cargo-master worth his pay will quickly organize a system that leaves no scope for such incompetence. It would work something like this:

      A loading arm picks up a pallet of goods from the wharf (to load) or from the hold (to unload). If loading, he sets it down with a single team having carefully maneuvered it into position; they then lash it in place while he is getting the next one. If unloading, a crew descends on the pallet immediately; their job is to release the loading arm. Once that is done, as many Labor Units as necessary begin a procession – each one picks up one crate or barrel, then turns away and delivers it to wherever it’s supposed to go. That might be a wagon, it might be a warehouse. The number of Labor Units engaged in this activity should be just enough that the space can be cleared by the time the Cargo Arm has unloaded N more pallets. That means that there are only ever N pallets of goods on the wharf at any point.

      N might be 1, 2, 3, 4, or even 5. If you figure that it takes 5-10 minutes to move a pallet from ship to shore, all you need do is decide how big a pallet is (in Cargo units) and divide the number of cargo units carried by the vessel by that number to get the number of pallets; once you know that, decide the total allowable unloading time (12, 8, 6, 4, 2, or 1 hour) to get the number of pallets per hour to be managed. Once you know that, the standard definition of a labor unit that you have chosen does the rest, telling you how many of them you need to achieve that level of efficiency..

      3.1.6.5 Sales Prep

      One of the most common things to get work crews to do once unloading is complete would be to set up a sales display of some kind – be it a market stall for direct sales or a sample booth to woo prospective retailers.

      As a general rule, this is a completely different skillset that they are unlikely to possess, but so long as they are following the directions of someone who knows what they are doing, that should not normally be a problem.

      But it does raise the question of who in the organization actually has those specific skills? Who is the salesman?

      There are two options: either there is someone in place at the point of sale who handles this (and probably several other loads from other producers as well). This is how the produce Markets here at Flemington basically operate.

      This diagram combines five photos. For the producers / suppliers, we have Apples (I actually wanted corn or carrots but couldn’t resist this after my earlier example), image by Jill Wellington; for the Markets, we have potatos-carrots-vegetables-fruit, image by Yerson Retamal; for the general customer, we have Tomatos in a shopping cart, image by Erwin; for restaurants, I had limited choices but this kitchen fits the bill, image by StockSnap; and for the fruit & veg retailer (whose operation will vary from one nation / culture to another), we have a market with a greater variety of items in smaller quantities, image by Michal Jarmoluk, all sourced from Pixabay.

      The alternative is for one transporter to accumulate wares from all over in a warehouse, from which orders are then dispatched to local vendors. This system is only preferable if spoilage is not an issue – brass cannons, nails, horseshoes, even wheat and flour (which last a very long time if properly cared for and if vermin are kept away) – these are all better suited to the warehouse system.

      That does not mean that you don’t need a salesman, however. Someone has to convince all those retailers that you have what they need at a price they can afford!

      In a lot of campaign settings, the sales rep is called the Factor, which generally means that he’s entitled to make decisions and agreements on behalf of his employer. That’s an important point because it once again removes the day-to-day operation of a business from the horizons of PCs. They may be the investors and owners – but they aren’t professionals in Trade, and should they try to pretend otherwise, they should lose their shirts in the process. And they should be smart enough to figure this out pretty quickly.

      But what, you may ask, if they don’t trust the best choice of Factor – or any choice other than themselves, if it comes to that?

      Once again, a dilemma best solved by another GM-players compact.

      ★ The GM will refrain from doing permanent or long-term damage to the business interests of the PCs without providing a means for those interests to recover.

      ★ The players will trust that the GM will not damage their business interests maliciously, and that any harm that comes to them is either (1) temporary, (2) the result of social changes / forces that the PCs can choose to oppose or have failed to oppose; or (3), both.

      There are a couple of important bones in that pair of agreements. First, the GM is quite at liberty to change market conditions to the detriment of the PCs business so long as they will be given a chance to recover at some reasonable later time. But the GM can only do harm if the society changes, or is under pressure to change, or is a way to deliver a plot hook to the players. In particular, Realism is not a justification – unless the GM promises a way out.

      If the PCs own a business whose profit requires slave labor, using prisoners captured in a recent war, and the King repatriates those prisoners after a deal is struck with the former enemy, that’s a social change and the GM is not forced to make up for the sudden lack of profitability of the PCs business venture.

      But he might, anyway – by sending the PCs as official envoys to the other Kingdom to negotiate some sort of trade deal. That puts them in the ground seat to wind up their old (now unprofitable) business and replace it with something else that will directly connect them to the politics of both Kingdoms.

      3.1.6.6 Sales and Customers

      Unless its for something worth hundreds or thousands of GP, like a ship, neither the GM nor the players should ever get informed of, never mind getting involved in, individual sales. There may be rare exceptions, but that’s a pretty good rule of thumb. Business happens in the background.

      That’s not to say they won’t get recognized – they might. Or that some people develop strong feelings – pro- or anti- – toward the PCs because of their business. It’s not just an exercise in book-keeping; it’s part of the social and economic landscape, and that makes it part of the political and possibly religious landscapes as well.

      This can sometimes be a tricky balance to get right, at least until you have a little practice at it. Until then, err on the side of generality and abstraction.

      And, if an idea for a fun encounter comes along, like a disgruntled customer, run with it. And expect the PCs to treat such individuals the same way any other CEO / owner would – if it’s our fault, give us a chance to fix it, but if it’s your mistake, that’s tough.

3.2 Recruiter / Personnel Manager

There’s one individual who the GM should think about “fully” prepping, because he or she is the key to everything else: the Recruiter / Personnel Manager, the person who takes that burden off the shoulders of the PCs (and out of game play).

Can you seriously imagine a game session – or two, or three – in which PCs do nothing but interview prospective staff? Talk about boring! And all the GM creativity required to create these individuals knowing that they will never again exist as discrete in-game individuals? Talk about wasted efforts!!

The Recruiter’s competence and reliability are what will establish the baseline for competence and reliability amongst every faceless entity that toils in the business to make it happen. While there can be, and occasionally probably will be, aberrations and anomalies, they set the standards. Get a good one, and things will function as smoothly as they possibly can; get a bad one and nightmares lurk in the undergrowth.

The Personnel Manager’s competence solves most problems before a PC even has to be made aware of them. At most, there may need to be an allowance for temporary setbacks, teething problems, and the fact that life never runs entirely according to script.

But neither role can be successful if the PCs don’t trust the individual that is put forward to function in this capacity. That trust has to be earned in some fashion, and the best way to do that is with an in-game role as an NPC. Rather than creating someone who they hope to ‘sell’ to the PCs as the right fit for this role, the GM should aim to create someone they will choose to place in the role(s).

In large organizations, these functions are normally separate, but in any operation on the scale of what should be able to be created by a PC, the organization should be small enough (at least initially) for them to function under the one hat.

We also need a fallback position in case the PCs don’t’ take up the recruitment of the potential Recruiter / Personnel Manager. This fallback should permit the players to simply announce, “We are hiring someone to recruit and manage the workers for us.” Which brings me to Assumption #1.

    3.2.1 Assumption #1: The best available gets hired

    The GM has to make it clear to the players that he expects the PCs to be using their Intelligence and Wisdom and Judgment and anything else that they can bring to the table in order to hire the very best person in their judgment that they can find for the position, given any parameters that the players choose to define.

    Those parameters are usually financial and character in nature – “Hire the best we can get for under XX gold a day / week / month / year. And give them a slice of the business, a half-share, so that if it grows, so does their wealth. And prioritize honesty and reliability over competence.”

    Or, “We’ll hire the most competent person we can find, even if we don’t fully trust them, then do whatever deal we have to in order to buy their loyalty. We’ll make it clear that we’ll be keeping a close eye on things from the shadows. And we’ll hire an accountant from a different city to check the books every few months, at least at first.”

    Note that you can’t have it both ways – the players have to decide what they assess as most important. But, by presenting an NPC who the GM portrays as one or the other within an adventure, one of two things will happen: either the players will anoint him to the position, prioritizing whatever the GM portrayed as their hallmark, or the players will not, effectively selecting a default position of the other option.

    If the GM portrays the individual as honest and trustworthy, and the PCs reject him, they are effectively valuing competence over those qualities. If the GM portrays the individual as an expert recruiter, and the PCs reject him, they are valuing trustworthiness over competence. Again, you can’t have it both ways – and the GM should ensure that the players know it.

    This, of course, brings up an extremely important point: what exactly constitutes “the best available”? How should the GM design a character and assess their capabilities in this respect?

      3.2.1.1 Any Relevant Skill

      The recruiter has to be ‘competent’ in an interpersonal skill of some kind. ANY interpersonal skill will do – whatever this skill is will define their usual modus operandi.

      Bribery, for example, means that they use money to persuade others to do what they want. Bargaining would describe them as a negotiator first and foremost. Blackmail uses threats and intimidation to keep staff in line. And so on down the list it goes (Bluff, Seduction, or Romance might make things tricky, though). Heck, even Animal Handling or Riding could be considered appropriate in this context, when you think about it.

      What does ‘competent’ mean? Take the highest skill (ranks) of each PC and average them. Round up, and add 1. That’s Competent.

      It means that low-level characters won’t be able to attract the same kind of high-voltage recruits that medium-to-high level characters can – but the business operations that such characters can mount would be similarly restricted.

      What’s more, every time the average party level goes up a point (or so), the GM should reassess this and let the NPC improve his abilities commensurately. This is, after all, a skill that they are using day in and day out, to solve all kinds of business problems. They will be as capable of making a mistake as a PC would be – but also as capable of correcting those mistakes.

      3.2.1.2 INT + WIS

      The primary stats that the NPC uses in the performance of his duties are going to be the SUM of INT and WIS (or their equivalents), minus 10, unless the game system has a dedicated relevant stat other than Charisma.

      If you stop and think about what these stats represent, you’ll see why. INT uses Intellect and book learning and theory to derive a solution to a problem. WIS uses real world experience either in place of, as a supplement to, or in conjunction with, that theory.

      In theory, characters should start off using INT and should, over time, transition to using WIS. But that’s too much work, and involves questions that require wasted effort to answer, like how quickly the transition takes place.

      So, instead, we total them – but then take off five from the sum (i.e. an average score) to get a value that is comparable to any other stat.

      Again, every time the PCs go up two or three levels, the NPCs stats should likewise rise. This probably happens slowly enough that it’s not a big deal.

      3.2.1.3 Substituting CHAR

      Of course, most interpersonal skills are normally Charisma-based. And it’s entirely acceptable for a character to substitute charisma either for the combined score derived above or for just the INT part of it.

      This essentially replaces theoretical understanding and logic with likability. It can mean that the solutions the character comes up with aren’t entirely sensible all of the time, but because they like him or her, the workers will do their best to make them work, anyway.

      There is, therefore, a good and obvious reason why this is not the default stat for this particular application of the skill in question – because it represents a fundamentally different approach to solving the business problems with which the NPC will be presented. It’s not necessarily a worse approach, or a better one, but it is different, and it’s often not the sort of thing that people hiring managers go looking for, perhaps because it’s hard to assess and relatively easy to fake.

      But there are consequences, that can be either good or bad – the use of Charisma also creates Loyalty, not to the job or the owners (not directly, anyway), but to the Manager. Should the PCs ever fire or otherwise lose him or her, or his or her services, a lot of their workers can follow them out the door. And if the workers are getting exploited, the manager is as likely to lead them out on strike as they are to represent ‘management’ in resolving the issue.

      Substituting Charisma puts the ethics of the Recruiter front and center in a way that doesn’t occur with a heartless, soulless, manager. That binds the PCs to live up to those ethical standards, whether the PCs realize that or not. For some groups, this won’t be a problem; for others, it may be an insurmountable hurdle.

      Any such conflicts should be obvious going in, or at least anticipated by the GM, and used to refine the definition of ‘competent’ employed.

      Murder Hobos thus either attract competent but equally-unscrupulous types to represent them, or someone who will (eventually) use the business as a weapon to try to reform them. How that plays out will be up to the GM and the players.

      3.2.1.4 Supplemental Magic

      Another consideration that should not be overlooked by anyone concerned is the use of Magic, especially permanent magic items, to enhance or buff the NPC. This can get out of hand very easily if the GM isn’t careful, but it can also be a two-edged sword in a similar way to Charisma.

      Without trawling through various game references looking for specific items, this is going to be up to the GM to resolve on a case-by-case basis.

      One way of looking at such is an attempt by the PCs to secure the loyalty of the Recruiter through bribery – the more unscrupulous the Recruiter, the more successful this is likely to be (at least temporarily). But some will be offended by the very suggestion because of their morality, or the implied insult that they need the help.

      This is another example of why this is an important NPC that the GM needs to have a pretty good handle on – how is he going to react?

      Even if the offer / gift is accepted, that may not actually buy the loyalty of the NPC. It simply enhances his ability to do his job, amplifying any capacity for dissension with the bosses and the impact that it will have.

      The relationship between the NPC and the PCs is the most important thing in assessing such situations. The GM needs to know exactly what that relationship is – an if the players are smart, they will want to be fairly certain of their footing before even considering this option.

      Under some circumstances, it can all work out to everyone’s satisfaction – instead of using their accrued wealth to buff themselves, the PCs are using it to enhance the security of their business operation, which the GM has already undertaken not to threaten capriciously, anyway. In effect, then, this is wealth that the PCs are giving away, because they get nothing for it that they don’t already have. Most GMs are fine with that, especially if the players are also happy with the arrangement.

      As a general policy, a GM should NEVER deliberately emplace a treasure to be used to Buff the NPC unless the PCs (i.e. the players) are feeling insecure about their choice – in which case, such a placement can be viewed as positive reinforcement by the GM. But if the PCs capture something and decide that this is a more useful thing to use it for, I’d be fine with that.

    3.2.2 Assumption #2: They Hire The Best

    So, one way or another, the NPC is going to be competent to do the job to a reasonable standard. Assuming that they have not been emplaced to deliberately sabotage the operation – which would be a violation of the tacit agreement between the GM and players unless it was somehow revealed before significant damage could take place.

    Which means that it is implied that they will use their abilities to the best of those abilities to deliver the outcome that presumably the PCs want, i.e. a profitable and reputable business operation (or something else if that’s what they have specified).

    Which means that they will use their full capabilities to hire the best people they can find – or, at least, the the best they can find who will work for an acceptable (normal) pay rate. Bear in mind that we’re not talking about the Recruiter themselves any more, we’re talking about their Work Product – which is a satisfied and satisfactory workforce, to the social standards that are applicable.

    This is the hidden backbone of the entire concept of a Labor Unit. It’s actually a foundational principle of Australian Society – “A fair days work for a fair day’s pay”. Sadly, the principle has been undermined through governments prioritizing business interests over workers – either on general principle or “doing favors for political friends” or outright corruption and vested interests, here just as everywhere else. But, unlike some other places I could name, it hasn’t been killed entirely and still gets revived from time to time.

    Here’s another way to phrase it that will work in just about any in-game situation: You get what you pay for.

    I’ll take a closer look at pay scales, how they can be manipulated, and the consequences of doing so, in section 3.5.

    But, before I move on, I should amplify the caveat offered, just a little: “a satisfied and satisfactory workforce, to the social standards that are applicable.”

    If the society is a Victorian Nightmare, don’t expect to be able to hire blindingly loyal workers that are distinctly better than those everyone else recruits. If the society is a reasonable one, but for whatever reason the recruiter is required to hire from the dirty end of the work pool, don’t expect sunshine and lollipops and perfect employees.

    And if the players want these things, they are going to have to work to create a society in which these become potential outcomes. That’s not going to be easy, and it’s going to put a lot of noses out of joint – in particular, anyone waxing fat off the existing system – and is sure to get the PCs involved in the game society right up to their necks. All of which should make for interesting plotlines.

    One particular practice that has to be singled out is Slave Labor and the Serf system. If this is the accepted normal, then the PCs have no choice but to follow it or their business will not be competitive. This can cause distress on the part of some players. It’s the age-old conflict of modern standards and ideals Vs historical accuracy.

    Every GM will have their own take on this question (even if it’s not to have noticed it, or to do their level best to avoid the question) – but as soon as the PCs begin operating a business of any kind, they become a part of that society and its economy, whether they – or the GM – likes it or not, and these issues become much harder to ignore.

    There are only two answers: either one side or the other has to compromise, or their needs to be a social revolution of some kind. Which goes back to my earlier point – if the players want a kinder, gentler, fairer society, they will need to make that happen. In the process, making enemies and risking the shirts off their backs.

    I think that’s enough said on that particular subject.

    3.2.3 The Principle Of Labor Unmanagement

    But it does bring me to the subject of another compact between Players and GM. Well, actually, it’s an implied extension of the one described earlier in this chapter:

    From 3.1.6.5 Sales Prep:

    ★ The GM will refrain from doing permanent or long-term damage to the business interests of the PCs without providing a means for those interests to recover.

    ★ The players will trust that the GM will not damage their business interests maliciously, and that any harm that comes to them is either (1) temporary, (2) the result of social changes / forces that the PCs can choose to oppose or have failed to oppose; or (3), both.

    The principle of Labor Unmanagement is that the Players will keep their hands off the day-to-day management of the business and its workers, and in return, the GM will assume that these workers are as diligent and honest as can be recruited and permit the business to function as well as any other in the game setting.

    This, after all, is the whole purpose behind hiring a competent “recruiter” – to keep mundanity out of the way of adventure and Fantasy, and not mire the game in trivialities and personnel problems and management issues. To keep everything big-picture, abstract, and at arm’s length, in other words, except where it enhances or delivers those adventures and Fantasy Elements to the game.

3.3 The Labor Unit

Ultimately, the labor unit is a standard measure of how much work gets done in a standard working shift by a standard crew for a standard wage. So it’s

★ Time × Labor × Crew

Time is a standard length, already chosen, based on the most common activity;
Labor is measured in kg carried, i.e. Strength used;
and Crew is the number of individuals in a standard group.

The objective is to have a labor unit defined in such a way that any task or phase of the business operation can be reduced to a small and manageable number that tells you how many shifts it will take to complete. Multiply that by the standard wage, and you have your base expense.

Because this permits the Labor Unit to be defined as ‘a cost of X’, all other expenses can be converted into a ‘Labor Unit equivalent’ and simply tacked on to the total.

This total is not going to change much from day to day, week to week, month to month, or year to year. So once it is determined by the GM, it’s a relatively fixed quantity. This simplifies the account-keeping required enormously, which is the whole point of the abstraction.

We’ve looked at Labor and at various peripheral issues – let’s break down Time in a more detailed fashion.

It’s really hard to find Fantasy Images that symbolize or show time. In the end, I had to make my own. In the background, the Posiedon image is by Enrique Meseguer (darksouls1). Dominating the foreground is a gravity-defying hourglass which is actually a combination of this image by gunter (moritz320) and an extract from this image by Alexander Lesnitsky (AlLes), with various color trickery to get the two to match up. The edges of the upper surface of the sand have been treated with a textural extract based on dry lake bed by Dimitrios Savva (Photography), https://polyhaven.com/all?a=Dimitrios%20Savva, https://web.archive.org/web/20230623201912/https://polyhaven.com/all?a=Dimitrios%20SavvaJarod Guest (Processing), https://polyhaven.com/all?a=Jarod%20Guest, https://web.archive.org/web/20230623201919/https://polyhaven.com/all?a=Jarod%20Guest, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons with some additional texture extracted from this dry lake bed
by Forest & Kim Starr, CC BY 3.0 US, also via Wikimedia Commons. “Floating” in the sand as though it were a liquid are two elephants, one extracted from elephants-1535881, image by Monika (MonikaP), and the other from elephant-5083580, Image by Mansour Obaidi (Msobaidi). Unless stated otherwise, all images were sourced from Pixabay.

    3.3.1 Eight man-hour Labor Units

    In an urban environment where people can go home at the end of their shift (or perhaps get recruited for another one-off job that afternoon or evening, even with the same employer), eight man-hour Labor Units are generally the way to go.

    The eight-hour day is generally something we’re all familiar with, but this is a little different – it’s an eight man-hour day. If the Crew Number is 2, then it represents 4 hours of working time; if the Crew Number is 4, then it’s just an hour’s work for an hour’s pay. Only if it’s one individual is the time full employment.

    The interesting thing is that this integrates a standard labor practice into the fundamental assumptions about the business and its operations – ‘Hire in pairs’ or ‘groups of 4’. Attack problems with enough man-power to resolve them quickly.

    As a general rule, with eight man-hour units, Crew numbers of 1, 2, 4, 5, or 8 are the only numbers that are convenient enough to make sense, and 4, 5, and 8 are various degrees of ‘marginal’.

    3.3.2 Twelve man-hour Labor Units

    Twelve man-hour Labor Units are sometimes more practical, because 12 can easily be factored by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 12. You can also do 9 but it’s a little bit messier.

    That gives you a lot of flexibility in return for the more frequent decimals / fractions that will result.

    Twelve man-hour days are typical in situations where an individual has to work for eight hours AND forage around or hunt for food / water at the end of that period. It’s best suited for life on the road.

    Twelve hours is also a convenient number when it comes to watches and rest – it means that everyone can serve one four-hour watch and still get 8 hours of rest. The normal practice would be to rotate these assignments so that no one’s sleep is broken night after night.

    But such considerations grow more complex if your standard Crew Number is anything but a 1. Two-person teams make a Labor Unit that is 6 hours in duration at this scale, indicating four of them in a 24-hour period and that doesn’t work as well for allowing an 8-hour rest period.

    For this reason, it can be more convenient to use a Crew Number of 3. That makes a ‘shift’ four hours in length; people can be employed for 8 hours as workers, four hours as hunter-gatherers, and work a four-hour watch, quite conveniently. The downside is that the Labor Cost for a shift goes up by 50% to cover the extra person.

    3.3.3 Sixteen man-hour Labor Units

    This does the same thing as a Crew of 3 working a 12 man-hour Labor Unit, but with greater flexibility because the Crew Number is now one or two.

    The ‘1’ is fairly self-explanatory, but the ‘2’ deserves a little thought. That gives a shift duration of 8 hours.

    3.3.4 Twenty-four man-hour Labor Units

    The most expensive kind of labor is the labor that has to be on-call at all hours of the night and day. Overland, it’s relatively easy to throw enough warm bodies at any given task that this is not necessary, and you can cover any ‘unusual’ situations with a bonus – for example, caravan guards get paid to stand watch, but if something hostile shows up when someone is off-watch, you still want them to be pitching in, aiding in the common defense of your profits.

    Out at sea, it’s often a different story. It takes a certain number of crew to run a ship efficiently, and inefficiency is corrosive to profit margins. Yes, in a pinch, you could get by with a fraction of the total – so long as you didn’t encounter anyone or anything hostile – but you only have to lose one ship every three or four years to be completely out of business – those things are expensive.

    Stinting on crew numbers is a false economy, therefore, and the optimum configuration of a Labor Unit is the one that affords the greatest flexibility.

    One of the reasons for this is that you will generally hire or own the ship – but the Captain will command it, and be in charge of hiring and firing of crew, and the setting of wages for those crew.

    Even if you have a dedicated and expert recruiter, this will be true. Captains will argue that they are hiring for specialist roles which require specific expertise, and that’s true – but mostly it’s because the Captains have traditionally had the authority and refuse to give it up.

    It’s actually often the case that the crew are completely independent of the ship’s current master – you hire the ship, the captain ensures that sufficient crew are provided to complete that task, and he takes their wages out of the hiring fee (and keeps the rest for himself).

    If the ship has an outside owner, that simply means that the captain has to deduct part of whatever he gets paid for the hiring of the ship and arranges for that to (eventually) get paid to said owner – but it’s generally far more common in a fantasy milieu for the Captain to own the ship (even if he stole it from a previous owner). Don’t look to hard or ask too many fool questions or you might share in his grisly fate — unfortunate accident.

    Labor Units that total 24 working hours suit crews of 12, 10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, or 1. Of those, the most common would be 4 or 6.

    Crew numbers of 4 divide 24 into 6-hour ‘shifts’, of which two would be worked each day (for a total of 12 hours). This can be convenient because there would be 4 such 6-hour shifts in a day, meaning that you can allocate one member of the crew-group of 4 to each shift for primary duty and have a second shift from each to be ‘general service’ (i.e. whatever needs doing most urgently). The other 12 hours, the crewmen are ‘off-duty’ and are expected to spend part of that time sleeping, part of it eating, and part of it doing whatever the hell they want – so long as they don’t disrupt the running of the ship. Again, any ship’s crew treat themselves as an elite workforce (whether they are or not) – and note that there can be different grades of ‘elite’ in this context.

    Crew numbers of 6 divide 24 man-hours into shifts that are 4 hours long. This is an even more flexible arrangement, because the normal sleeping allocation is eight hours long. So, work 3 shifts, sleep 2 shifts, and have 1 shift for private activities – if not called upon for extra duties. The downside is that this is a far stricter and more disciplined protocol that crews used to the 4-man division will tend to resent. So, while you might find it in formal navies, it’s uncommon outside of that context.

    3.3.5 Choices and Expectations

    On the surface, it may seem like a fairly innocuous – even trivial – decision to make, but GMs have to be warned at this point to take the choice of Labor Unit very seriously, because it will carry social expectations and implications far beyond anything that appears on the surface. Sooner or later, those ramifications will manifest, in the form of NPC expectations of what is ‘fair’ and what they are being paid to do.

    You can try to avoid this, but that will just leave the system open to abuse by PCs and their owning players, who – like bosses everywhere – want to get as much sweat out of their workers as they can for a given wage.

    You might be lucky, and have a reasonably ‘enlightened’ group of players in your game, and so think that you can get away with not putting a lot of thought into this. It only takes one new player who looks to exploit his workers for the whole thing to then collapse – there are no labor laws worth mentioning, remember, only customs, traditions, and a sense of what is ‘acceptable’ and ‘tolerable’.

    That’s what your extra effort is buying you – protection against the occasional bad apple. This system is set up in such a way that those who don’t need such treatment won’t even notice it – but when it becomes necessary, it’s generally too late to implement it. That gets seen by players in question as the GM ‘picking on them’ and the whole situation quickly degenerates.

    So take a bit of time, think about the society and culture within your game and what expectations on the part of hired workers would be reasonable, and use that – and the type of activity that is the focal point of the business operation – to set a standard that holds hidden meaning. Then put that hidden meaning in your back pocket until you need it.

3.4 The Labor Market

A labor market is defined as so many standard Labor Units available for hire. Obviously, if you hire all of them, any thoughts of quality go out the window – they will average bog-standard, perhaps worse. Labor markets replenish by the day, less any given multiple days’ employment previously.

If there are 5 labor units for hire, and the business recruits three of them for two days, then on the second day, there will only be two labor units available. GMs shouldn’t track hiring by other business concerns; simply shrink the size of the labor market, accordingly.

Labor markets can be classified into six grades:

    Grade 1: poor, small
    Grade 2: average, small
    Grade 3: good, small
    Grade 4: average, average
    Grade 5: average, large
    Grade 6: good, large

    Poor = 50% low quality
    Average = 25% low quality, 20% high quality, 5% elite quality
    Good = 25% low quality, 25% typical quality, 40% high quality, 10% elite quality

    Small = 3% Labor available
    Average = 5% Labor available
    Large = 8% Labor available

    Populations <2500: mostly Small, occasional Average
    Populations 2500 – 5000: mostly Average, occasional Small or Large
    Populations 5000 – 50,000: mostly Average, occasional Large
    Populations 50,000 – 250,000: evenly split Average and Large
    Population 250,000+ mostly Large, occasional Average

    1. Take the total population of the community (to the nearest 100 or 2 decimal places)
    2. Find the logarithm (to one decimal place)
    3. Square the result
    4. Multiply by 50
    5. Divide by the standard Labor Unit
    6. Multiply by the size indicated by the grade. Round to the nearest 1/4.

    The result is roughly the size of the Labor Market, measured in Labor Units.

Let’s work a number of examples.

EG1: Hamlet Pop 800, Small Labor Market, Grade 2, 8 man-hour Labor Units:

    1. Pop 800.
    2. Log(800) = 2.9.
    3. 2.9 × 2.9 = 8.41
    4. 50 × 8.41 = 420.5
    5. 420.5 / 8 = 52.5625
    6. Small = 3%; 3% × 52.5625 = 1.576
    Labor Market is 1.5 Labor Units.

EG2: Hamlet 1200, Small Labor Market, Grade 2, 12 man-hour Labor Units:

    1. Pop 1200
    2. Log (1200) = 3.1
    3. 3.1 × 3.1 = 9.61
    4. 50 × 9.61 = 480.5
    5. 480.5 / 12 = 40.0
    6. Small = 3%; 3% × 40 = 1.2
    Labor Market is 1.25 Labor Units.

EG3: Town of 2800, Small Labor Market, Grade 3, 8 man-hour Labor Units:

    1. Pop 2800
    2. Log 2800 = 3.4
    3. 3.4 × 3.4 = 11.56
    4. 50 × 11.56 = 578
    5. 578 / 8 = 72.25
    6. Small = 3%; 3% × 72.25 = 2.1675
    Labor Market is 2.25 Labor Units

EG4: Town of 3500, Average Labor Market, Grade 3, 12 man-hour Labor Units:

    1. Pop 3500
    2. Log (3500) = 3.5
    3. 3.5 × 3.5 = 12.25
    4. 50 × 12.25 = 612.5
    5. 612.5 / 12 = 51.0
    6. Average = 5%; 5% × 51 = 2.55
    Labor Market is 2.5 Labor Units

EG5: City of 50,000, Average Labor Market, Grade 4, 8 man-hour Labor Units

    1. Pop 50,000
    2. Log (50,000) = 4.7
    3. 4.7 × 4.7 = 22.1
    4. 50 × 22.1 = 1105
    5. 1105 / 8 = 138.125
    6. Average = 5%; 5% × 138.125 = 6.9
    Labor Market is 7 Labor Units

EG6: City of 200,000; Large Labor Market, Grade 5, 16 man-hour Labor Units

    1. Pop 200,000
    2. Log (200,000) = 5.3
    3. 5.3 × 5.3 = 28.1
    4. 50 × 28.1 = 1404.5
    5. 1404.5 / 16 = 87.78125
    6. Large = 8%; 8% × 87.78125 = 7.0225
    Labor Market is 7 Labor Units

EG7: City of 1,500,000; Average Labor Market, Grade 4, 8 man-hour Labor Units

    1. Pop 1,500,000
    2. Log (1,500,000) = 6.2
    3. 6.2 × 6.2 =. .38.4
    4. 50 × 38.4 = 1920
    5. 1920 / 8 = 240
    6. Average = 5%; 5% × 240 = 12
    Labor Market is 12 Labor Units

It should be immediately clear that the Labor Markets do not represent the sum total of available Labor, because that is scattered throughout the community.

If there is a centralized labor market of some sort (there sometimes was), then you can triple the percentages shown – small to 9%, average to 15%, and large to 24%.

These percentages are the percentage of the available workforce that can be hired through whatever labor market there is. A significant number will find work through friends and former colleagues, others will simply show up at places of work and offer themselves up for employment.

In addition, in any larger population base, there may be several labor markets, some specializing in particular industries; that was often the case when it came to mining, or shipbuilding, for example. Dock-hands and Farmhands are usually not quite interchangeable, and will frequently recruit from different locations to get different workers with specific skills.

I have very deliberately avoided making any allowance for the reputation of the employer. The GM is free to adjust these numbers on the basis of a reputation. Just remember that people have long memories.

3.5 Basic Pay-scales

Common laborers generally earn a base pay rate of 2 SP per 4-hour half-shift, adjusted as follows:

    × 1.5 hard labor
    × 2.5 very hard labor

    × 1.5 specific skills required
    × 2.5 unusual / rare skills required
    × 2.5 unusually high levels of a common skill required
    × 4 unusually high levels of an uncommon skill required

    × 0.5 low danger
    × 1 moderate danger
    × 2 expected to combat danger
    × 4 near-certain danger / extreme danger
    × 8 near-certain extreme danger

    × 0.75 medium-term commitment (at least 1 week’s employment)
    × 1.25 long-term commitment (at least 1 month’s employment)

But it’s normal to apply all of the above to the base rate and factor in Crew Number and Labor Unit duration to get a cost per Labor Unit. Once you have a few of these worked out, most GMs can directly estimate how much each Labor Unit will cost, with no need to actually work it out.

An example:

    2-person crews, 8 man-hour labor units, wagon drivers (specific skills), one week’s employment, moderate danger:

    2 SP × (8 man-hours / 4 hrs) × 2 crew = 2 × 2 × 2 = 8 SP / day.
    Expected to work 2 shifts/day = 8 × 2 = 16 SP / day.
    16 × 1.5 specific skills × 1 moderate danger = 18 SP / day.
    18 × 0.75 (medium-term commitment) = 13.5 SP / day.
    13.5 SP × 7 days = 94.5 SP, total.

But it’s more common to divide this price into units of Cargo so that the cost can be directly deducted from the profits.

If a Cargo Unit is defined as 5 GP, that’s 50 SP, and the 94.5 becomes 1.89 Cargo Units.

Let’s imagine a more valuable cargo (25 GP / unit), and a sea voyage of 6-8 weeks’ duration through hostile waters:

    1-person crews, 24 man-hour labor units, sailor (specific skills), several weeks employment, expected to fight off dangers:

    2 SP × (24 / 4) × 1 = 2 × 6 × 1 = 12 SP / day.
    Expected to work 1 shift / day: 12 SP / day.
    12 × 1.5 specific skills × 2 fight off dangers = 36 SP / day.
    36 × 1.25 Long-term commitment = 45 SP / day.
    45 × 7 = 315 SP / week = 31.5 GP / week.
    31.5 / 25 = 1.26 Cargo Units / Week
    × 6 – 8 weeks = 7.56 – 10.08 Cargo Units

A mistake that is commonly made is to use the purchase price of a cargo unit. The sale price, however, is what matters; while it’s not uncommon to pay 10% or so of an expected wage up front, the bulk of it gets paid on completion.

    3.5.1 Loyalty Index

    Below is a typical bell curve, based on 4d6, generated using Anydice, but modified extensively.

    You can also download a much larger hi-resolution version (3476 × 1532 pixels, 4 Mb) by clicking the image.

    There’s a lot going on in this image, which contains an entire employee loyalty game mechanic.

    Base Loyalty is +0, in the middle of the graph. The background color gives an indication of how good or bad things are – yellow and orange are warnings of increasing severity, red is bad, and green is good.

    Employees start at Base Loyalty, in the middle of the curve. They have no particular reason to defend the company, but have no particular reason to commit acts of disloyalty or malice, either. They can be swayed by bribes and blackmail, but on the whole, they are reasonably loyal until confronted with such ‘opportunities’ / demands.

    Every act of fairness or generosity toward employees personally experienced adds +2 to the loyalty index – those are the black numbers next to the curve. Every such act personally witnessed adds +1. Every such act that is merely heard about adds +1/2.

    Increased pay buys greater loyalty. The first +10% adds +1, +15% adds another +1 for a total of +2, then +30% = +3, +50% = +4, +80% = +5, +150% = +6, +250% = +7, +400% = +8, +700% = +9, and +1100% = +10 (so, if base pay is 5, paying 7.5 gets you +7 loyalty). This bonus lasts as long as the pay does, and then declines at -1 per week.

    Every act of unfairness or ‘slave-driving’ experienced is -3. Every such act witnessed is -2. Every such act only heard of or rumored is -1.

    Reduced pay erodes loyalty. If the pay is above 95% of what it should have been (in the employee’s opinion) that’s -1. 93-95% is -2, 88-93% is -3, 82-88% is -4, 75-82% is -5, 63-75% is -6, 54-63% is -7, 45-54% is -8, 35-45% is -9, and 28-35% is -10. At anything less than 28%, you lose employees immediately – as in, they drop whatever they are doing, wherever they happen to be, and go into business for themselves. If they were transporting cargo, they will sell it for whatever they can get at the next opportunity and keep it. If they were using a wagon, they might sell that too, or simply take possession of it.

    These losses are per week. They can be delayed by a week with sincere-sounding promises, and if you make up the deficit the following week then any loss is halved.

    One-off events can happen and the impact is only temporary – normal pay restores these losses at the rate of 1 a month. Apply the extra pay for the month to increase this monthly recovery.

    Each result on the loyalty index is matched to one of two % scores by a white line – some are off to the left (the bad ones), some to the right. These represent the likelihood that an individual will commit acts of vandalism against the company, steal from it, etc, of their own volition, or will oppose such acts if they witness them, potentially putting themselves at risk for the sake of the company.

    For example, a business may know of a hidden pass through a mountain range that enables them to get products to market two days before any competitor. As a result, their produce is always the freshest – and most expensive. Tick an employee off by enough, and they may be motivated to sell that information to a rival – or, worse yet, give it away out of sheer malice and ill-will.

    You will note that the scales don’t match – the white lines from the Loyalty Index don’t line up exactly with the boundaries of the percentages most of the time. The GM should interpret the position of the line relative to the % above and below it. For example, loyalty -2 is midway between 3% and 5% – so that is considered 4%. Loyalty -4 is between 12 and 20%, but considerably closer to the 20% – that would be around 18%. Similarly, -6 is about 65%.

    The bars on the extreme outside are a graphic representation of the % scores. They show that loyalty of up to -4 can probably be tolerated, at least in the short-term, and loyalty -1 or -2 is generally fine. It’s below those that things get sticky.

    Under this model, one incident is not likely to cause great drama; a pattern of abuse is required. But if such a pattern emerges, previously-earned goodwill goes south in a hurry, and if you don’t have any of that to fall back on, so does the business..

    Buying loyalty is an expensive game, but it’s a good way to make up for occasional lapses in judgment – usually by some other employee. However, it’s so expensive that you can easily run your entire business into the ground. In the long run, it’s cheaper to be fair and honest with your workers, and build up goodwill to protect your business against the occasional slave-driver / greedy bastard / arrogant S. O. B.

    On the other hand, a relatively small amount of generosity can go a long way; the system is also designed so that each point of loyalty is progressively harder to buy without earning it. Setting your base pay scale at 7.5 instead of 5 – the example offered earlier – will eat into your profit margin a little, but the resulting goodwill is disproportionately high.

That’s it for this post. One more should bring this epic chapter to a close.

When I finally start to edit all this into a single reference, I think I’ll break most of this chapter out into a separate one entitled “The Labor Unit” – and that I’ll position it after the chapters dealing with specific types of transportation, because I’ve stolen a lot of their thunder.

In other words, I intend to re-sequence the chapters to make for a smoother, more useful process.

As I write this, it’s only two days until Christmas. There may not be a post next week because of the Holidays. My intent is to use (some) of the time available to get a head-start on finishing this chapter, but the next post to be published will be a Time Out, i.e. something short and stand-alone.

Until I write to you all again, then, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Comments (1)

The Bounds Of Invention Let Loose


It’s my contention that with every encounter, the canny GM will expand on the lore surrounding the creatures encountered.

I’ve been plugging away steadily at the next part of the Trade In Fantasy series, in which a lot of the elements discussed start to come together into a coherent picture of the processes, but it’s not quite ready for prime-time yet. Since it was 50-50 whether or not I would get there before deadline, I’ve chosen instead to put together this relatively short piece to buy more time.

About the title: I was trying for a play on words based on “The Hounds Of Hell Let Loose” – but I don’t think it quite comes across until that gets pointed out (I hate it when that happens).

Lately, I’ve been reading “Dr Who: The Key To Time”, which is a 21st-anniversary behind-the-scenes of Dr Who (which, of course, has now been around a lot longer than 21 years), and one of the comments made by a new producer struck me: “I hope to be able to show something new about them” – who the ‘them’ were that was being referred to doesn’t matter.

I suddenly realized that there was an iron-clad meta-law in my Dr Who campaign that I had put in place subconsciously without ever making a deliberate decision:

    No established creature / race shall appear without their canon being expanded.

Some Examples

The current adventure, for example, has included:

  • More information on the Dalek Replication problem and Dalek Xaol’s attempts to solve it.
  • Information the Dalek concept of Racial Purity which explains their behavior in a later appearance.
  • How it can be manipulated by them to create variations and specialist Dalek types.
  • That, when on their own with (they think) only their own kind around them, Dalek foot-soldiers bitch, moan, and gossip just like any other soldiers.
  • The Skaro Degradations – mentioned by name but not described. And how it ends up in the Black Archive.
  • The Secret Origin of Ogrons.
  • The Secret Theology of the Dalek Asylum, where surviving Daleks bested by the Doctor and unable to cope with their failure go to scream out their insanities.
  • The fact that the Daleks even have a Theology.

All this while advancing the main plotline, which explains why the Doctor chose to become The War Doctor – taking the character’s psychological state from the playful state of Paul McGann in the telemovie to the point of being willing to end everything if he had to to stop the Dalek Time War against Gallifrey.

Don’t worry if you lack the context to extract full meaning from the examples, enough of it is obvious from what I’ve written.

The body language and expression on the face of this monster suggests that there’s more to it than just another slimy horror. It almost feels like it has a story to tell. Image by Jim Cooper (jcoop12) from Pixabay

Applying the principle more widely

Just what is the Monster Manual, anyway? Is it a collection of hard facts that have been rigorously translated into game mechanics, ready for use? Is it religious writ, not to be altered, changed, or amended in any way?

That last one is easy to dispose of – absolutely not. GMs are encouraged to treat individual representatives of a given species as unique individuals. That means that at best, the ‘official’ content is a generalized overview.

This gives the GM great latitude for creativity, and they usually respond by tweaking the individual in terms of the game mechanics, so as to make an encounter more challenging, more distinct, and/or more appropriate to the environmental setting.

Every GM that I know assumes that players have read the Monster Manual cover to cover, and know the contents at least as well as they do.

What if the Monster Manual is a generalized summation of what is commonly known or believed by the PC Races (and appropriate experts) about the creatures described therein? Half of it is myth (but with some resemblance to reality), half of what’s left is outright wrong or taken out of context.

Under this interpretation, the GM not only has the right to customize every creature that appears, but the obligation to do so.

How accurate would it be?

Creatures that are frequently encountered would at least have the basics right. The more exotic the creature, the further from the mark it potentially is.

So Orcs remain Orcs, and Goblins, Goblins – more or less. Bugbears? Trolls? The entries are probably no more than half the story, and half of what’s there is a fictionalized invention by the Society in-game to explain the rest – within the limited boundaries of their own culture, knowledge, prejudices, and beliefs.

On top of that, there would be inherent cultural distortions. If the only source of information on a creature that you have is Dwarven, that information will have a Dwarven perspective – right or wrong. This is certain to introduce gaps and errors.

This sort of thing goes on in the real world all the time – the source of information has to be taken into account when assessing the reliability of intelligence.

I couldn’t decide which composite featuring Troll-6878233 (Image by Dina Dee (DeeDee51) from Pixabay) that I liked best – so I’m offering three of them as variations. The first uses village-7258991 as a background – Image by Christel (ChiemSeherin), also from Pixabay.

Look beyond the mechanics

The greatest impact of this change of perceptions is that it opens the creatures up to inspection and variation in ways other than game mechanics. Social and cultural differences become more important, and those can challenge players in ways that replacing fire-breathing for a thunderbolt never can.

But more importantly, it makes the creatures encountered inherently more interesting and more plausible. And it drives plotlines beyond the simple dungeon-bash.

A process

The process of implementing all this is extraordinarily simple. Every time a creature appears – whether it be by plotline or random table – the GM needs to answer four questions:

  1. How reliable are the primary sources?
     
  2. What can I add to what is known about these creatures?
     
  3. How can I enable the PCs to discover this information?
     
  4. How does this impact the encounter?

This should only take seconds, but as usual, the more that is done in advance, the more depth you can create.

How reliable are the primary sources?

You might think I’ve covered this already, because I have, but it’s an important point to be specific about.

The more reliable the information provided, the closer the GM should adhere to it, and the more the emphasis should be on social / cultural surprises.

What can I add to what is known about these creatures?

Once you know the scope available for rearranging things, the constraints, it’s time to get creative within the limits of those restrictions.

  • “Some Gargoyles breathe fire.”
      – Okay.
  • “Some Orcs paint to relax.”
      – Not Bad.
  • “Ogres always look for any excuse to go to war with Bugbears.”
      – Interesting.
  • “There’s a variety of Troll who lives in and around Volcanoes and only regenerate when exposed to heat/flame.”
      – A traditional but still fun variation that turns a weakness into an asset. Make sure the PCs know there’s a Troll around in advance.

The second of three composites featuring Troll-6878233 (Image by Dina Dee (DeeDee51) from Pixabay) uses street-7116489 as a background – Image by icecube11 (icecube11) from Pixabay.

How can I enable the PCs to discover this information?

Sometimes, the answer is going to be self-evident – the Gargoyle and Troll examples are of this type.

Other times, you will need the PCs to see or overhear something before the actual encounter begins. These cases open the door to a non-combat resolution, and can even be footsteps along a path to alliance – or, at least, peace.

    You hear muttering and vile deprecations about the light coming from somewhere up ahead. The voice is guttural and promises mayhem if the owner could only get his hands on whoever’s responsible. The language is Common, and the accent sounds almost Orcish. A different voice replies, “Shut up, Grumsh. The light is the same for all of us.”

Two voices = at least two present. “…all of us” implies more. Caution is warranted.

    You cautiously move a branch out of the way and behold something you would never have expected to see – an Orcish landscape painting class, being taken by the largest, ugliest, most brutish, most unkempt, most homicidal Orcs that you’ve ever seen.

The GM is warning the players, these guys will be tougher than regular Orcs while offering a tantalizing glimpse of Civilized Orcish behavior.

    Most of the paintings are crude, but there is one that takes your breath away. It captures the very essence of the valley and the mountains and how big they are, and how humbling it is to be so small in comparison, and evokes an air of the beauty and wonder of nature. One of the other Orcs also complains about the light, he can’t quite get the colors of his paint to match it. The second voice replies, “That’s all right Brajj. If you can’t capture the image of what you see, try to capture the feeling, and let it relax you. You’re all here because Chief Duargg is tired of your hot tempers sparking trouble within the tribe. The process is what matters, not the result.”

Orcs, practicing Anger Management?! By Landscape Painting? The boundaries of Orcish Culture have just enlarged, enormously. Suddenly, these are a people, not a statistic.

There are broader implications. Attack these Orcs and the whole principle of non-violent resolution of issues amongst their population might die with them. That principle lays the groundwork for cultural exchanges and the possibility of finding common ground, leading to peaceful relations. That presents the PCs with a choice, and a profound one. But, just in case the point is lost:

    From the far side of the clearing comes an angry shout, and four humans ride into the clearing, firing short-bows at the Orcs before dropping the bows and drawing swords. You can take sides, or leave the Orcs to be potentially wiped out. What are you doing?

Regardless of how it pans out, this encounter is a darned sight more interesting than a simple “You find a band of Orcs in a clearing – bigger and meaner-looking than usual.”

How does this impact the encounter?

Sometimes, it won’t. But sometimes, the impact will be profound.

But even when there is no immediate impact on the encounter, there is a larger, more subtle, impact. What the GM is telling the players is “There is more to life in this world than what’s written in the Monster Manual. It’s richer and more complicated and more interesting than you may have thought.”

And that’s a shift in mind-set that will impact the PCs in every encounter. It immediately raises expectations and enriches story-telling. It engages more than the PCs testosterone. And that’s a very good thing.

The last of the three composites featuring Troll-6878233 (Image by Dina Dee (DeeDee51) from Pixabay). This sets the troll in a greener space: village-7802717 by Nanne Tiggelman (ArtSpark) from Pixabay as the background. I applied some color tweaks because the setting is clearly a sunrise or sunset.

Long-term Implications

Most of these revelations will carry long-term implications.

Take that Orcish encounter. If the PCs intervene against the Humans (who are attacking just because the targets are ‘filthy Orcs’), that could be a second step toward peace. If the PCs then buy the fabulous painting for what it’s actually worth, that could be a third step. But there will be those who oppose peace with the Orcs, quite vehemently – if it becomes known that the PCs are involved, they will be the targets of secondary prejudice.

If the PCs let their own prejudices speak, not only will the chance for peace be squandered, the Tribe might swear a blood feud against them (blaming them for the whole encounter), or may raise war banners and send 1,000 Orcs to raze the village to the ground in revenge. Everywhere that the PCs go, they find the consequences of Orcish attacks – men and women slaughtered, children orphaned, simply because they might offer aid to the PCs.

Either way, the PCs are now a part of the game world – and in it, up to their necks. This might be just one of many pivotal moments in this campaign – but it’s certain to be a memorable one.

Comments (5)

Trade In Fantasy Ch. 3: Routine Personnel Pt 2


This entry is part 6 in the series Trade In Fantasy

The 2nd of likely four posts looking at everyday personnel in Trade. In this part, Beasts of Burden, Provisions, Carts, and Wagons.

For anyone wondering at the cause of the delay, just look at the number of tables that I’ve ended up using in this post – then remember that each of them has to be hand-coded as well as having the data generated and checked.

Add to that the custom diagrams – six of them, art last count – which can take hours to generate, and it should be clear that I have not been idle!

I thought about splitting the post, but the logical division point comes relatively early; it would not have been a post up to Campaign Mastery’s normal standards. Furthermore, each time I do that, I have to source a new chapter title graphic – sometimes easy to do, sometimes hard and taking more hours.

Sometimes, it just takes longer. All you can do is hope that it was worth the wait!

This composite starts with the ruins background, by Dorothe (Darkmoon_Art), to which I did a quick-and-dirty extension off to the right. The “dragon” image in the sky midground consists of the wings from an eagle (photo uncredited), which I attached to the body of a Seahorse extracted from Hippocampus_coronatus_1.jpg by Leo D’lion from Flikr via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License. Finally, in the foreground (minus a bush and some indications of ground) is an image of a heavily-laden Hiker by Clker-Free-Vector-Images, with some 3D toning and shadows added by me. Unless otherwise noted, images were sourced from Pixabay.

Credit where it’s due:

The series title graphic combines three images: The Clipper Ship Image is by Brigitte Werner (ArtTower); Dragon #1 is by Parker_West; and Dragon #2 is by JL G. All three images were sourced from Pixabay.

Table Of Contents: In part 1 of Chapter 3: Routine Personnel (last time)

3.1 A Choice Of Four Trade Unit Standards (actually, 8)

    3.1.0 Principles of Comparative Modes Of Transport
    3.1.1 Humans as a beast of burden

      3.1.1.1 Lift from STR
      3.1.1.2 Average isn’t Average
      3.1.1.3 4d6 keep 3 vs 3d6
      3.1.1.4 Career Paths & STR

           3.1.1.4.1 Linear vs Non-Linear

      3.1.1.5 Lift, at last
      3.1.1.6 Encumbrance

           Sidebar: Behind The Curtain

      3.1.1.7 Load & Load Capacity
      3.1.1.8 Load Balance

           3.1.1.8.1 Adding a Staff to the equation
           3.1.1.8.2 Relating Load to Encumbrance (D&D)
           3.1.1.8.3 Relating Load to Encumbrance (Hero / Superhero)
           3.1.1.8.4 Relating Load to Encumbrance (Hero / Adventurer’s Club)

      3.1.1.9 Load Distribution
      3.1.1.10 Humanoids

           3.1.1.10.1 The Size Factor
           3.1.1.10.2 The Proportions Factor
           3.1.1.10.3 The Racial Factor
           3.1.1.10.4 The Human Advantage
           3.1.1.10.5 The Iconic Reference
           3.1.1.10.6 Elves
           3.1.1.10.7 Dwarves
           3.1.1.10.8 Halflings
           3.1.1.10.9 Orcs
           3.1.1.10.10 Ogres
           3.1.1.10.11 Bugbears
           3.1.1.10.12 Trolls
           3.1.1.10.13 Hill Giants
           3.1.1.10.14 Stone Giants
           3.1.1.10.15 Other Giants
           3.1.1.10.16 Others

In This post:

    3.1.1 Humans as a beast of burden (cont)

      3.1.1.11 Time: 8, 12, 16, 24
      3.1.1.12 Speed
           3.1.1.12.1 Non-D&D Scales

      3.1.1.13 Provisions: Food
      3.1.1.14 Provisions; Water
      3.1.1.15 Replenishment: Foraging / Hunting / Buying
      3.1.1.16 Distance
      3.1.1.17 The humanoid bottom line

           3.1.1.17.1 Elves
           3.1.1.17.2 Dwarves
           3.1.1.17.3 Halflings
           3.1.1.17.4 Orcs
           3.1.1.17.5 Ogres
           3.1.1.17.6 Bugbears
           3.1.1.17.7 Trolls
           3.1.1.17.8 Hill Giants
           3.1.1.17.9 Stone Giants
           3.1.1.17.10 Other Giants
           3.1.1.17.11 Other Humanoids

    3.1.2 Horses as a beast of burden
    3.1.3 Burros as a beast of burden
    3.1.4 Carts as a ‘beast of burden’

      3.1.4.1 Strength of the Axles
           3.1.4.1.1 Cart & Wagon Stats: High-Score Option
           3.1.4.1.2 Cart & Wagon Stats: Low-Score Option
           3.1.4.1.3 Cart & Wagon Axle Reinforcement

      3.1.4.2 Strength of the Wheels
           3.1.4.2.1 Spoke Thickness
           3.1.4.2.2 Number Of Spokes
           3.1.4.2.3 Solid Wheels

      3.1.4.3 Strength of the Connection
      3.1.4.4 Strength of the Bed
      3.1.4.5 Rolling Resistance
           3.1.4.5.1 Slope (aka Grade, Gradient, Stepth, Incline, Mainfall, Pitch, and Rise)

      3.1.4.6 Gravity Vector

And, Further down the track (1-2 more posts):

    3.1.5 Choosing Your Unit
    3.1.6 Ramifications

      3.1.6.1 Freight Management
      3.1.6.2 Base Loading Time
      3.1.6.3 On The Road: Drivers, Guards, Cargo-masters, & Handlers
      3.1.6.4 Base Unloading Time
      3.1.6.5 Sales Prep
      3.1.6.6 Sales and Customers

3.2 Recruiter / Personnel Manager

    3.2.1 Assumption #1: The best available gets hired

      3.2.1.1 Any Relevant Skill
      3.2.1.2 INT + WIS
      3.2.1.3 Substituting CHAR

    3.2.2 Assumption #2: They Hire The Best
    3.2.3 The Principle Of Labor Unmanagement

3.3 The Labor Unit

    3.3.1 Eight man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.2 Twelve man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.3 Sixteen man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.4 Twenty-four man-hour Labor Units
    3.3.5 Choices and Expectations

3.4 The Labor Market
3.5 Basic Pay-scales

    3.5.1 Pick An Index

Which will be followed by:

3.6 Productivity

    3.6.1 Premium Labor Units
    3.6.2 Reminder: Profit per Trade Unit, not costs or prices

3.7 Pay-scale Variations

    3.7.1 Overpaying workers / Elite Quality Workforce
    3.7.2 Underpaying workers / Lower Quality Workforce
    3.7.3 Slaves
    3.7.4 Minor Stakeholders
    3.7.5 Combinations & Complications

3.8 Technological Impact

    3.8.1 Major Breakthroughs
    3.8.2 Incremental Gains
    3.8.3 Trade Secrets & Industrial Spies

3.9 Key Personnel & The Labor Unit
3.10 The Personnel Bottom Line

In future parts after that:
  1. Mode Of Transport
  2. Land Transport
  3. Waterborne Transport
  4. Spoilage
  5. Key Personnel
  6. The Journey
  7. Arrival
  8. Journey’s End
  9. Adventures En Route

Recap:

In the last post, I showed how to determine an answer to the question “How much can one carry”, not only for humans but for all humanoids.

The solution offered takes into account every variable that could be thought of, from STR to Stamina to size and proportions (when it comes to non-humans).

It also presented a couple of key equations that will really come into relevance in today’s post:

    Work Effort = Bulk × Distance / Labor Unit Standard.

where,

    Bulk is as defined in Chapter Two: Volume × Weight, measured in Cargo Units;
    Distance is how far the chosen Trade Unit Standard Transport can move a Cargo Unit in a certain period of time; and
    “Labor Unit Standard” defines that period of time.

In other words,

    Work Effort = Bulk × Speed.

It was then determined that the average STR for a human who uses STR for a living should be 11 (D&D/Pathfinder scale) or 10 (Hero System scale). This was based on Lift values of 225.54 lb and 102.28 kg, respectively.

    There was also discussion of the fact that the normal STR maximums in both systems gave Lift values roughly triple the actual current world records). Nothing was done about that in terms of corrections to stat progression – it was left to individual GMs to determine what to do about the fact.

This would be considered a balanced load. Image by Juda M from Pixabay.

Carrying capacity is used differently depending on how the load is balanced and distributed, but the bottom line is that any given humanoid has a capacity which determines how much the loads that can be considered “cargo” can weigh.

    Load is the effective weight being carried by the character.

    Load Capacity is the character’s capacity to carry a Load.

    Loads can be Distributed, Supported, or Point.. Distributed loads are worn, supported loads are carried on the back and/or shoulders, and point loads are just carried.

    Unused Capacity is the Character’s adjusted Load Capacity (size, shape, racial adjustments) minus adjusted Distributed and Supported Load totals.

    Therefore, Unused Capacity can be used to carry Cargo. The weight that produces this amount of Load (maximum) can be determined by multiplying the Unused Capacity by various factors (Balance, character size, shape, and race) – in reality, the actual Cargo Weight is being multiplied by the inverse of these factors, but this is is the easiest way to get a maximum.

    There were also modifiers for teams of characters carrying a single load, and for the use of walking sticks and staffs.

You want a heavy load? I got your heavy load, right here! The maximum size of a cannonball is as much weight as one person can lift to the cannon’s bore. How much do you reckon this lot weighs, then? Image by Hans from Pixabay

Once a maximum has been determined, actual Cargo weights can be adjusted to determine the actual Load, and therefore the Encumbrance affecting the character, which limits the characters Speed of Movement (amongst other effects).

Unfortunately, there’s no clear and consistent way of doing so, it varies from one game system to another.

It must be emphasized that while the systems can be employed for individuals, the goal was actually to define a racial “average”.

Finally, something I’ve described as “The Human Advantage” was defined:

  • 5 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for 2 hours.
  • -10 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for 4 hours or CON hours, whichever is lower.
  • -15 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for 8 hours or CON hours, whichever is lower.
  • -20 movement rate (“), after adjusting for Load Encumbrance, can be sustained for one hour per point of CON or for 1 day, whichever is lower.

Some races have an even greater serving of this ability, others less, and many don’t have it at all. But those other races, generally, don’t have it in as broadly applicable form as Humans – it might advantage them with loads carried a certain way, or only when balanced, or are otherwise compromised.

Al caught up? Good, then let’s dive right in…

      3.1.1.11 Time: 8, 12, 16, 24

      For reasons that I’ll get into in section 3.3, time in this system is measured in lumps of 8, 12, 16, or 24 hours, depending on circumstances. The time element of a labor unit therefore has to operate with all these intervals. We also want it to be as large as possible to keep the number of Labor Units involved down to a manageable number, and reasonably small to minimize pesky decimal places.

      With those requirements, defining the labor unit in terms of 4 man-hours per person is the obvious best choice.

      We are closing in on an answer to the question, “How far can the typical human porter carry a load in a single Labor Unit’s worth of time?”

      3.1.1.12 Speed

      Speed × Time = Distance, that should be obvious. The base human speed – D&D Scale – is 30 feet in a round. How long is a round?

      In Combat, it’s 6 seconds – so 10 of them in a minute, 600 of them in an hour, and 2400 of them in four hours.

      So the base movement – D&D scale – is 2400 × 30 = 72,000 feet, or 13.64 miles (21.95 km).

      The immediate question is, what does this have to do with the price of barley in outer woop-woop?

      A long time ago, I did some basic research on movement rates:

           ★ Normal Walking Pace = 2.5 to 4* mph, usually 3 mph.
           ★ Fast Walking Pace = 3.5 to 5* mph.
           ★ March = 100 yards / minute = 3.4 mph
           ★ Fast March = 160 / 116 × above = 4.7 mph
           ★ Forced March: 4.16 – 4.785 mph
           ★ Jog = 4 to 6* mph
           ★ Distance Running, Male: 80% of Run = 8-9.6 mph
           ★ Distance Running, Female: 80% of Run = 6.4-8 mph
           ★ Normal Run, Male: 10-12 mph
           ★ Normal Run, Female: 8-10 mph
           ★ Fast Run, Male: 12-15 mph
           ★ Fast Run, Female: 10-13 mph

      Records:
           ★ Fastest non-professional individual 200km run**: 29 hs 42 min = 6.73 mph
           ★ Marathon Record Pace = 42.2 km / 2 h = 21.1 km/h = 13.111 mph
           ★ Fastest 200m run, Male: 19.19 sec = 37.52 kph = 23.3 mph
           ★ Fastest 200m run, Female: 19.3 sec = 37.3 kph = 23.18 mph
           ★ Fastest 100m run, Male: 9.58 sec = 37.56 kph = 23.34 mph
           ★ Fastest 100m run, Female: 10.49 sec = 34.3 kph = 21.31 mph

           * Top speed is only possible to humans in very good health & fitness
           ** Athletes can run 200-270 km in 24 hrs = 8.33 – 11.25 mph

      Age Effect:
           ★ Child <9: × 0.525, Encumbrance × 2
           ★ Male Adult: × 0.958, Encumbrance × 1
           ★ Female Adult: x0.967, Encumbrance × 0.905
           ★ Male Senior Fit: x0.967, Encumbrance × 1.16
           ★ Female Senior, Fit: x0.817, Encumbrance × 1.10
           ★ Over 70***: x0.725, Encumbrance × 2.5

           *** if possible at all

      To that, we need to allow for terrain, but that gets complicated. As rules of thumb:

           ★ Good Road, Level: x1
           ★ Bad Road, Level: x0.8
           ★ Broken Ground, Level: x0.6

             (Working Average: x0.75)

           ★ Undergrowth, thick: As above, x0.8
           ★ Undergrowth, very thick, As above × 0.5
           ★ Swamp / Marsh / Mud: As above × 0.3

           ★ Downhill: As above, × 1.2
           ★ Downhill, Steep: As above, × 1.05
           ★ Rolling hills: As Above, × 0.8
           ★ Steep Hills: As Above × 0.6
           ★ Mountain Pass: As Above, × 0.3
           ★ Mountains Otherwise: As above, × 0.1

             Working Average: = 0.75 × 0.9 = × 0.675

      I have to emphasize that these are approximate values; Chapter 5 will go into a lot more detail on the subject. For that reason, don’t be afraid to round off more savagely than I’ve done; for the purposes of this chapter, 2 significant digits is almost certainly accurate enough. I generally use 2-4 decimal places out of force of habit, but it really is overkill – but not worth going back through what I’ve already written (both above and below) to correct..

      Stride length is proportionate to leg length, which – for human anatomical purposes – is proportional to overall height. More or less.

           ★ So, for non-humans / unusual humans: × Ht(‘) / 5’ or × Leg Length(‘) / 2.4’
           ★ Multiply everything × the basic pace, multiply by the Encumbered movement rate / 30′, and multiply × 4.
           ★ Then, all you have to factor in any rest requirements, as described earlier.

      3.1.1.12.1 Non-D&D Scales

      The Hero System is a bit more complicated, but it’s all simply a matter of making the adjustments necessary, one at a time.

      Base Movement rate is 2″ = 4m per round. A round is 12 segments divided by the character’s Speed, which is usually 1, 2, or 3 – nothing faster qualifies as ‘normal human’. 2 is the normal human standard, so that’s 12/2=6 rounds in a 12-segment turn, or 6x6x60 = 2160 in an hour.

      There are 2160 segments in an hour, so that’s 8.64 km an hour, or 5.37 mph. But that’s for a normal walk – even if we assume the default character falls into the ‘high fitness’ category (which we shouldn’t do), that’s just a little faster than it should be.

      Never mind, take the character’s movement rate and multiply by 0.9311 to correct for this. Hours, minutes, and seconds remain the same in both systems, so all we need from there is to be able to convert the movement rate is to go from mph to km/h and back:

           ★ 1 mph = 1.61 km/h
           ★ 1 km/h = 0.621 mph
           ★ 1 mile = 1.61 km
           ★ 1 km = 0.621 miles

      3.1.1.13 Provisions: Food

      Humans need between 1 and 2 kg (2.2 – 4.4 lb) of food each day, on average. All sorts of factors can influence this value – the weight of the individual being one of them, and the volume occupied by the individual being another. These come to matter a great deal when considering non-humans with different body shapes.

      Exercise or heavy work increases the need as well, by up to 50%.

      Another major factor is the nutrition factor of the food – the above is based on modern nutrition, which means that you could potentially slice 25% out simply by consuming a more balanced diet; some of it is empty calories. Back in medieval times, they had far less knowledge, and since that’s the time period most fantasy is based on, the same will be true of most Fantasy Games, and that means a slight increase in the size of the recommended dietary intake – up maybe 20%.

      The preservation methods that they used were not the best at preserving nutritional value. That’s maybe another 25% on top.

      Taking everything into account, then, we get × 1.5 × 1.2 × 1.25 = × 2.25.

      That’s 2.25 – 4.5 kg of food per day (5 – 10lb).

      There are three ways to get that food: either you gather it / hunt for it yourself as you go, trading time for it; or you buy it as you go, trading money for it; or you carry it with you, sacrificing cargo capacity for it. There is no fourth option.

      Humans can go several weeks without food if they have to – but they will become weak in 30-50 days and die in 43-70 days. But if you expect your employees to do without for long periods, you won’t have employees for very long.

      3.1.1.14 Provisions; Water

      Humans need 2 to 3 liters of water (4.227 – 6.34 pints) every day. This also goes up with exertion – to the upper value stated. And one liter of water is roughly 1 kg, or 2.2 pounds.

      Humans can only go 2-5 days without water, with 3 being the usual guideline. As usual, many factors come into this estimate; exertion shortens it, as do high external temperatures. Altitude is thought by some to have a similar effect to rising temperature, based on equating heart rates to the level of exertion.

      Having too much water is usually a self-correcting problem. A bigger question, always, is how much of it you need to carry? The answer is not straightforward.

      As an abstract thought experiment, let’s define the probability of finding potable water in a given terrain type as the “Terrain Factor”.

           ★ 1. 100 / Terrain Factor gives Miles to 100% chance of replenishment.
           ★ 2. Divide by Speed, allowing for rest breaks, to get hours to probable replenishment.
           ★ 3. Divide by the number of working hours in the day to get the number of replenishments per day.
           ★ 4. Multiply by Daily requirements, allowing for workload to get the amount needed to reach the next replenishment point..
           ★ 5. Finally, allow a safety margin – some think this should be +50%, some think it should be +100%. Personally, I set the safety margin based on the confidence in the initial terrain factor – if it’s nearly certain to be accurate, you can get away with a smaller margin. If it’s nearly certain to be inaccurate, you need more margin.

      Let’s run one or two quick examples:
           Terrain Factor = 5% per mile
           100 / 5 = 20 miles to 100%.
           20 miles / 4 mph = 5 hours.
           5 / 8 = 0.625.
           3 liters × 0.625 = 1.875 liters.
           +75% safety margin (fairly high uncertainty) = 3.75 liters.
           That’s a little more than your daily needs. Even with high uncertainty, the high Terrain Factor compensates.

           Terrain Factor = 8% per mile (Mountains).
           100 / 8 = 12.5 miles to 100%.
           12.5 miles / 1.5 mph (slow) = 8.333 hrs.
           8.333 / 8 = 1..0417
           3 liters × 1.0417 = 3.1251 liters.
           +100% safety margin (very high uncertainty) = 6.25 liters.
           That’s 6.25 kg of water, or more than 2 days supply.
           The increase in terrain factor might not seem much, but it’s plenty to compensate for the slow speed..

           Terrain Factor = 0.05% per mile (arid).
           100 / 0.05 = 2000 miles to 100%.
           2000 / 2 mph = 1000 hours.
           1000 / 12 = 83.33 days.
           5 liters × 83.33 days = 416.65 liters.
           +100% safety margin (more than needed, but given the needs and environment, it’s justified) = 833.3 liters.
           That’s 833.3 kg. Only the strongest will have any sort of Cargo capacity remaining.

      The last result is VERY sensitive to the speed value. Even an additional 0.5 mph makes a significant difference:

           2000 / 2.5 mph = 800 hours.
           800 / 12 = 66.7 days.
           5 liters × 66.7 days = 333.3 liters.
           +100% safety margin (more than needed, but given the needs and environment, it’s justified) = 666.7 liters.
           That’s 166.67 kg less water that has to be carried.

      On top of that, water has to be contained in something, and that something has to be strong enough to hold it – when there’s a lot of it, that’s a lot of extra weight. Let’s call 1 barrel as equal to a 44-gallon drum (simply because most people will know how big the latter is) – 666.7 liters is Four of them (plus 2 cups, i.e. a small wine-skin). Per person. And the only compensation for evaporation is the safety margin.

      An empty barrel of 50-gallon size weighs in at 50lb, empty. So that’s roughly another 200 lb on top of the weight of the water.

      I always measure water requirements in liters, because 1 liter of water is almost exactly 1 kg, and that’s incredibly convenient. But for the non-metric game systems, you will then need some conversions.

           ★ 1 liter = 2.1135 pints.
           ★ 1 pint = 0.473 liters.

           ★ 1 kg = 2.2 lb
           ★ 1 lb = 0.454 kg.

      There is also a truism that anyone who fails to completely replenish their water supply every time they have the opportunity deserves to be without. I think that’s a little harsh but contains more truth than fiction. Remember, too much water is a self-correcting problem.

      3.1.1.15 Replenishment: Foraging / Hunting / Buying

      These requirements add up quite quickly. If you have to cover 100 miles to reach your destination, at 3 mph, and traveling only 8 hours a day, that’s 4.17 days of food and water.

      Sure, you can take it all with you – call it 3.5 × 4.167 = 14.6 kg (32 lb) of food, plus 3 × 4.167 = 12.5 kg (27.5 lb) of water, plus 5 lb or so in containers, or 29.32 kg (64.5 lb) in total, and that’s a journey under fairly favorable conditions.

      And that’s for a human – the requirements increase with volume and weight. A creature 4 × human height would need between 16 and 32 times the food and water of a human. Call it 25x for convenience.

      The Rocky Mountains are between 70 and 300 miles wide. At 1.5 mph, it would take 46.7 – 200 hours to cross them. At 8 working hours a day, that’s 5.8375 – 25 days. The lower number isn’t that much worse than the favorable conditions example discussed above – 41 kg (90.3 lb) will see you through. The same can’t be said of the other extreme – 175.6 kg (386.3 lb) is a significant total.

      The mountains nearest to me are Australia’s Great Dividing Range, and they are between 100 and 190 miles wide. Not as extreme as the Rockies but a much more consistent width.

      The Andes vary from 124 to 435 miles wide. The Alps are a very consistent 200-210 miles wide. The Pyrenees has an average width of 120 miles, but at one end they are only 6 miles wide and in the middle, 80 miles wide. The Himalayas are 125-250 miles wide, and extremely variable in width throughout their length. What’s more, they are so steep that the 1.5 mph average used above would be much lower – 0.15 mph in places! – so they are the equivalent of 100 times their width in terms of crossing them.

      If you’re lucky enough, there may be villages and inns along the way where you can replenish supplies – this not only reduces the amount that you need to carry, but reduces the uncertainty massively.

      But it’s nearly certain that in areas with unfavorable conditions, there will be no such convenience available – and that means foraging and hunting for resources as you go, simply to reduce the amount that you have to carry.

      If you aren’t fussy, there’s almost certainly plenty of food out there – Orcs have a huge advantage in that respect – but almost every other species has less tolerance. Hunting or Foraging reduces travel speed 25%, doing both drops it to 56%.

      One alternative is to dedicate 1/4 or more of the working day to these pursuits instead of using them to travel. 1/3 is a convenient number because the typical day can then be broken down as follows:

           ★ 1 hr eat, break camp
           ★ 8 hours travel
           ★ 4 hours hunting / foraging
           ★ 1 hr eat, set up camp
           ★ total = 14 hours

      Why is that convenient? Except at or near the equator, you can count on roughly 14 hours of sunlight in summer. Today, for example, is going to be 14 hrs 16 minutes long, here in Sydney. In New York City, it’s currently Winter, so there will be only 9 hrs 25 minutes of daylight – and hunting / foraging would arguably take longer because of the season, maybe as much as 5-6 hours. So the time available for travel goes down 14-9.5=4.5 hrs for daylight and 1-2 hrs for slower hunting to just 1.5-2.5 hrs. You could possibly cut the top-and-tail of the day to 30 minutes or so, restoring another hour of travel – but even before any environmental impacts on progress, it has been slowed by more than half. Instead of average 3-4 mph, 2.5 would seem more likely – and for less than half the time, so that’s under 1.25 mph over the entire working day. The only good news is that snow becomes water fairly easily, all you need is a fire and something to put the water in until it melts.

      For comparison:

           Stockholm: 6 hrs 37 min of daylight
           Berlin: 8 hrs of daylight
           Madrid: 9 hrs 31 minutes of daylight
           London: 9 hrs 34 minutes of daylight
           Orlando Florida: About 10.5 hrs of sunshine
           Cairo: 11 hrs 21 min of daylight
           Johannesburg, South Africa: 13h 40m daylight
           Auckland, New Zealand: 14 hrs 30 min daylight
           Hobart, Tasmania (Australia): 15 hrs 15 min daylight.

      3.1.1.16 Distance

      At long last, we’ve pruned the time down to what’s really available, and adjusted the speed to what’s possible. As stated, Speed × Time gives distance, and that defines time.

      More precisely, the distance from A to B defines how many working days it takes to cross that distance, and that determines spoilage and expenses and therefore profits.

      Outside of using it to translate one of those into the other, Speed is actually irrelevant.

      3.1.1.17 The humanoid bottom line

      Let’s start with the human bottom line, and work outwards. The human advantage means that if Cargo Weight doesn’t incur an Encumbrance penalty, they can be the most efficient form of delivery service (with exceptions that I’ll cover in subsequent sections).

      As soon as a human needs to spend time hunting / foraging, especially for water, their efficiency declines massively. In summer months, extended daylight hours can compensate for this to some extent.

      Significant armor of any sort compromises Cargo Carrying Capacity, however. If there are significant dangers on the road (and it wouldn’t be a real Fantasy campaign if there were not, at least in some parts), that rules humans out as an efficient mechanism for freight transport.

      In fact, if anything compromises the ideal situation, some other solution is almost certain to be more efficient. But, under the most perfect of circumstances, they can be hard to beat.

      3.1.1.17.1 Elves

      Elves are just a little less efficient under most circumstances than humans. Working in their advantage is their nimbleness of foot, which can more than compensate under certain circumstances – sandy deserts and deep snow being the most obvious, because these conditions greatly compromise human movement. An ideal situation might seem to be using humans in Warmer months and Elves in Colder months, but to retain each workforce with any certainty, they would have to be employed year-round – and that is even more compromising than either race’s shortcomings as beasts of burden.

      With a lot of finesse and planning, that can perhaps be overcome. It would mean stationing the humans in designated locations to assist in loading and unloading, sales, etc, during the winter months, and replacing them with the Elves in the warmer months. But doubling any workforce when you don’t double your income is not a recipe for business security, so even this might be problematic.

      On top of all that, there’s the personality factor: unless forced to it, I can’t imagine many elves who would be happy carrying Cargo from one place to another. Again, there might be rare exceptions for certain Cargoes, but overall – no.

      3.1.1.17.2 Dwarves

      Dwarves have advantages even over humans – but they are limited by their habit of wearing heavy armor, especially anytime they have to leave the relative security of their tunnels. In that environment, where their smaller size provides an added advantage, they can’t be beat; which generally means that trading with Dwarves tends to take place at the entrances to their domains.

      On top of that, Dwarves tend to be as stiff-necked about menial labor as Elves. Note that they don’t consider mining and related activities to be “Menial”.

      3.1.1.17.3 Halflings

      Halflings are compromised by size and speed. But they can be workhorses if used in the right way – and they are willing. One big advantage is that they need less food and water than a human – but good luck ever getting one to admit that.

      3.1.1.17.4 Orcs

      Larger Orcs are genuine rivals to humans. Their size counts against them (greater food requirement for little gain in STR), but their capacities are higher, and they are generally more willing to undertake “menial” tasks – for the right rewards. As noted above, though, their biggest asset is their tolerance for tainted / rotten meat; food that would be intolerable to a human is perfectly acceptable to an Orc.

      The combination tends to mean that Orcs are naturally valuable as slaves, and if this is not to be a feature of a campaign, the GM needs to explicitly consider why it is not the case. My go-to explanation has always been that Orcs will swear blood feuds against those who enslave their kind – eternal enmity, even if the captives are liberated / freed. Just another brick to be emplaced in the world-building wall…

      3.1.1.17.5 Ogres

      Ogres have a large Cargo Capacity and relatively high STR for their size. Compromising this is their food requirements, which will be about eight times human – by the time that is taken into account, they are actually less efficient than Humans. On top of that they do NOT get the Human Advantage, even in watered-down form.

      3.1.1.17.6 Bugbears

      Bugbears can make great Forklifts – if they are civilized enough, or can be forced into it. Especially if you use my modification (STR 15-23) instead of the standard STR 15. They are close enough to human size that their food requirements are relatively easily met (about × 3.5 human), and their musculature particularly favors point loads. Comparing with a STR 11 human:- 115 lb base Carrying Capacity, × 3.5 = 403 lb, / 1.25 = 322 lb, /2/1.5 (Size, Proportions) = 107lb, gives STR 13. so a Bugbear of STR 13 is as efficient as a human – if the Human Advantage isn’t taken into account. STR 15+, and the point-load advantage, more than compensates for that advantage in the eyes of some.

      Acting to restore the balance is willfulness and laziness. So they can be more effective than humans – but won’t be.

      3.1.1.17.7 Trolls

      Size counts heavily against them, but they tend to be very strong. With a balanced load, they can more than hold their own – at least until that is taken into account. Tipping the balance one way is their natural regenerative abilities, tipping it the other way is the Human Advantage (which trolls don’t share). If large game is plentiful, Trolls may make effective beasts of burden – but they won’t be much better in the long run than a human.

      3.1.1.17.8 Hill Giants

      Size is an even worse factor here – a small Hill Giant probably consumes 5-6 × a normal human diet, a large one 75-85 × a normal human. Both varieties have large Capacity adjustments in their favor but in the case of the larger Hill Giants, that’s not enough to compensate for these needs.
      .
      3.1.1.17.9 Stone Giants

      Stronger than a Large Hill Giant but with the load capacity adjustment of a small one, these are not as Efficient (when all is said and done) as a Hill Giant. Throw in some significant armor (are you going to take it off him?) and there’s no real contest.

      3.1.1.17.10 Other Giants

      Size goes up faster than STR. And food requirements go up geometrically with size. Sure, they can carry a lot – but not enough, except in very specific circumstances. The ability to pick up a heavy load and wade across a bay or shallow sea would make them competitive with humans loading and then unloading a ship, for example. But there might need to be several such loads a day to justify employing one for the purpose.

      3.1.1.17.11 Other Humanoids

      The same is generally true of most other humanoids. They are either small-size-and-STR compromised, or they are large-size, incurring a disproportionate dietary burden as a result. While there may be specific circumstances in which they can compete with a human, overall, ordinary humans remain the standard to measure against.

    3.1.2 Horses as a beast of burden

    The following has been excerpted from Adventurer’s Club #32, “The Hidden City”:

    ★ Horse bodyweight = 1800lb
    ★ Carry 360 lb = 160 kg safely, carry 360 × 2= 720kg max load
    ★ 7.5 gallons per day fresh water= 28.4 kg + containers = 35 kg/day
    ★ The average 1000 pound horse must eat approximately 10 to 20 pounds of hay or forage every day, or about 1-2% of their body weight. The usual recommended amount is 1.7%.
    ★ 1.7% of 1000 pounds = 17 lb = 7.72kg.
    ★ They will naturally supplement this with forage. They have a greater tolerance for lush greenery than mules but can develop cholic if they overindulge.
    ★ Horses can go only 2 days without water but can go almost a month without food. This only saves 14kg a day, but every 2½ days without food adds 1 day’s water (28+7=35) to their capacity. Safety suggests no more than 2 weeks on this regimen. This can be extended if suitable forage is available.
    ★ Assume 2 kg dead weight
    ★ Consumables total 49 kg / day

    ★ (2 × horses carry 1440 kg, but will need additional supplies for the second animal).

    Horses are superbly optimized for what they do well – which does not include carrying a rider, believe it or not. The weight of the rider is located at the middle of their back, and while Horses have strong spines, there are limits, which a ride bouncing up and down when the horse is at speed can sometimes exceed.

    In fact, part of the purpose of a saddle is t o spread the rider’s weight over a larger area on the horse’s back.

    In some ways, horses are very intelligent, and in others, they are as dumb as posts. Quite often, for example they learn to defer to the judgment of their rider, even if the horse considers a situation risky. As a general rule, they are reluctant to exceed the speed they consider safe, given the terrain – but they never look ahead or anticipate by very much; they live entirely in the ‘now’. They will keep going in their direction of travel until the good ground gives out, even if they could clearly see that the ground a short distance ahead is unstable. “I’ll worry about that when I get there, it may have changed by then,” seems to be the thought in their heads. For the same reason, they will approach a jump with total confidence – only to lose their nerve at the last second.

    They can (and do) learn human voice commands – the tone of voice is very important, as is familiarity with the rider. Put the two together, and the rider isn’t just instructing the horse what to do, they are telling the horse, “I’m in charge, you can trust me.”

    I was watching the Olympics Show-jumping or Dressage or some such (not something I usually do, but it was the most interesting thing available), while at the same time working on something else. The commentary started to discuss how each gait had a different leg movement pattern, and how most horses couldn’t go from one to another without taking at least one step in an intermediate gait, and the intelligence of horses, and how the secret to getting a horse to perform a difficult jump was to convince it that it could succeed – a psychological question. A horse and rider who were in sync on the day could outperform another pair who may have been the strongest – on paper – for that reason.

    If confronted with a danger, a horse’s first reaction is to run away from it. Finally, horses do not naturally back up – they are more likely to rear up and twist during the descent to start to turn away, or simply turn to one side. Some clever work with block and tackle is therefore needed when using them to belay a load down a steep incline.

    Horses can move very quickly at full gallop, but can’t carry very much weight when doing so. Their speed declines faster than their carrying capacity increases – especially if they are also carrying a rider. If led, they can carry a fair amount, because they are not required to deliver speed – but for the amount of food and water they require, this is not a very efficient approach.

    Horses that graze in pastures typically eat in 30 to 180-minute bouts, and may eat for 10 to 12 hours a day. They may eat 112.5 grams per hour on poor grazing, 225 grams per hour on average grazing, 337.5 grams per hour on good grazing, and 450 grams per hour on excellent grazing.

    Let’s put those numbers in terms of hours needed to reach the 7.72 kg for a day’s hard work: Poor grazing: 68.6 hours/day. Average grazing: 34.3 hours/day. Good grazing: 22.9 hours/day. Excellent grazing: 17.16 hours / day.

    But those are misleading. The 7.72 kg is based on the horse doing something profoundly against its’ nature – working hard all day. Simply resting requires far less energy. Unfortunately, I was never able to find specific numbers.

    Nevertheless, let’s see how far logic can get us.

    If there are 8 working hours in a day, then 7.72 kg gets us 8 hours of work, so 1 hour of work requires 7.72 / 8 kg of fodder = 0.965 kg. There are 60 minutes in an hour, so that 0.965 kg gets us 60 minutes of work; which means that 1 minute of work requires 0.016083 kg of fodder. There are 1000 grams in a kg, so that’s 16.083 grams per minute of work – or, in other words, 0.06218 minutes of work per gram of fodder.

    Now, that’s a useful number. If we multiply by the amount grazed in an hour, we get the number of minutes of work that can be sustained after that hour.

    • Poor Grazing: 112.5 g × 0.06218 = 6.99525 = 7 minutes work.
    • Average Grazing: 225 g × 0.06218 = 13.9905 = 14 minutes work.
    • Good Grazing: 337.5 g × 0.06218 = 20.98575 = 21 minutes work.
    • Excellent Grazing: 450 g × 0.06218 = 27.981 = 28 minutes work.

    We can also reformulate these results to get the amount of work permitted every hour by that level of grazing.

    • Poor Grazing: 60 + 7 = 67 minutes so
      60 × 60 / 67 of an hour lets the horse work for the rest of the hour = 53.7 minutes.
      Call it 54 minutes grazing for 6 minutes work.

    • Average Grazing: 60 + 14 minutes = 74;
      60 / 74 × 60 = 48.65 minutes.
      48.65 minutes grazing for 11.35 minutes work.

    • Good Grazing: 60 + 21 minutes = 81;
      60 / 81 × 60 = 44.44 minutes.
      44.44 minutes grazing for 15.56 minutes work.

    • Excellent Grazing: 60 + 28 minutes = 88;
      60 / 88 × 60 = 40.91 minutes.
      40.91 minutes grazing for 19.09 minutes work.

    Puts things into an entirely new perspective, doesn’t it?

    And that smoothly segues into the primary freight operation at which they are undoubtedly the most efficient conventional solution: One rider rides a horse, hell for leather, until it can go no further – then swaps it out for a fresh mount. Changing mounts every 2-4 hours gets whatever is being carried – usually documents or information – where it’s going in the absolutely fastest time possible.

    Unfortunately, there are creatures that can steal the horse’s thunder in this respect, if they are minded to. Anything with a flying speed of 30 ft or more will usually leave the pony express in the shade. The Eagles from the Hobbit come to mind, for example. And that’s before wizards start apporting things!

    The bottom line for Horses is, then, that there are other creatures who are even better at their best claim to being a transport solution – but those creatures are far harder to come by and likely to charge a stiff fee for their services. Which puts horses back in the frame.

    3.1.3 Burros as a beast of burden

    Excerpted from the same adventure:

    ★ Mule bodyweight = 370-460 kg = 400 kg ave
    ★ Carry 80 kg safely, carry 80 × 4 = 320 kg max load
    ★ 4.5% bodyweight per day fresh water = 18kg / day + containers = 24kg / day
    ★ 1.5% bodyweight per day fodder (eating food that is too lush makes them sick (laminitis)) = 6 kg / day
    ★ mules have a greater tolerance for low feed levels than horses, and can work for up to 2 weeks on virtually no feed. Their digestive processes actually grow more efficient under such conditions to better utilize the available feed.
    ★ Assume 1 kg dead weight.
    ★ Consumables total 30 kg / day

    ★ 2x mules carry 640 kg, will need additional supplies for the second animal).

    Donkeys and Mules are very different from Horses. Far more stubborn, and intelligent in ways that horses never are, they are adept at finding the safest course through difficult terrain if there is one. That said, they value their own skins far more highly than they value anything they happen to be carrying. I have heard stories (possibly apocryphal) of Burros refusing to cross particular terrain they they distrust on steep mountain passes, throwing off their rider, staring at him as he hangs off the edge of a cliff by the reins as if to say, “I told you it wasn’t safe,” and then biting through the reins to send said rider plummeting ground-ward.

    If presented with uncertain footing, and not forced onto it, Donkeys and Mules will search around for an alternative route in a systematic way, skirting the edge of the unsafe terrain until they find a way forwards.

    If confronted with a danger, the Mule / Donkey’s first instinct is to kick at it or stomp on it. An entire team will eagerly attempt to do this to whatever the threat is. Only if they don’t think this is going to be enough will they flee – usually turning to deliver a parting kick along the way, just to buy themselves time.

    In other ways, Mules and Donkeys are less intelligent than horses – they show no regard for voice commands from any source and seem to have a limited capacity to recognize others. Or maybe they just don’t care.

    Burros of all types have two absolutely huge advantages when it comes to freight: the eat things that horses won’t, and they require far less food per kg of cargo carried. They are stubborn and pig-headed and that can be turned to the advantage of a trader who is breaking new trails.

    Their big drawback is that they are small and have comparatively low capacities as a result.

    You can get truly astonishing loads on a wagon or cart – provided the roads are relatively level and even. Image by Peter Vogler (cloudbird) from Pixabay

    3.1.4 Carts as a ‘beast of burden’

    There are many creatures that can pull a cart or wagon. Buffalo, Elephants, Burros, Horses, Camels – and that’s before we get exotic.

    Most of these suffer from the problem of being slow. Horses and Camels (which can be thought of as Desert Horses in this context) storm back into significance in this context.

    That’s because their pulling power is not impacted the way their Carrying capabilities are. So how much weight can a Cart carry?

    Well, aside from the physical limitation of how much will fit, there are six major restrictions, any one of which can be the limiting factor.

      3.1.4.1 Strength of the Axles
      Most cart axles are made of wood – steel is too heavy and too brittle, to be honest – at least in most fantasy campaigns. The thicker the axle, the stronger it will be – but the more rolling resistance it will offer. So there is a constant desire to slim the axle down to the absolute minimum.

      On smooth roads, you can get away with this – but as soon as the going gets rough, the axle risks collapse.

      Consider a pothole, of depth h. It takes the wheels time t to descend to the bottom of the pothole. Inertia makes the load reluctant for an instant to fall – but gravity will not be denied. So, an instant after the wheels get to the bottom of the pothole, the full load comes crashing down on the cart-bed. And this sudden distress – many times the static load being carried by the wagon – can break things.

      It doesn’t have to be a pothole, either – any roughness to the surface has the same effect. A stone that lifts the wheels only for them to come crashing back down, for example.

      There’s a very technical way of calculating how much the force is going to be, i.e. the effective weight of the Cargo in that instant. But it’s too complicated, too much palaver to be practical.

      Instead, I use a standard measure for the roughness of the road, which defines a range of heights that will be encountered at some point along that road.

      In theory, the roughness also dictates the frequency that the checks have to be made. Nah, too much die rolling. Instead, the roughness imposes a second modifier to reflect the increased chance of failing just one of the checks. By a convenient coincidence, this modifier just happens to be exactly the same as the first.

           ★ Grade 1: <1mm roughness: Modifier = 20 × Load Wt / Capacity
           ★ Grade 2: 1-2mm roughness: Modifier = 28 × Load Wt / Capacity
           ★ Grade 3: 2-4mm roughness: Modifier = 40 × Load Wt / Capacity
           ★ Grade 4: 4-8mm roughness: Modifier = 56 × Load Wt / Capacity
           ★ Grade 5: 8-16mm roughness: Modifier = 80 × Load Wt / Capacity
           ★ Grade 6: 16-32mm roughness: Modifier = 112 × Load Wt / Capacity
           ★ Grade 7: 32-64mm roughness: Modifier = 160 × Load Wt / Capacity

           ★ Grade 1: < 1/12 " roughness      ★ Grade 2: 1/12" - 1/6" roughness      ★ Grade 3: 1/6" - 1/3" roughness      ★ Grade 4: 1/3" - 2/3" roughness      ★ Grade 5: 2/3" - 1 1/3" roughness      ★ Grade 6: 4/3" - 2 2/3" roughness      ★ Grade 7: 8/3" - 5 1/3" roughness      Modifiers as above The roughness measures high point to low point within a horizontal distance of an inch or so. Which means that has drops of half an inch would be Grade 4, while the example below - carefully scaled to 100% - has drops of an inch, and is Grade 5.

      So, if a cart weighs 350 lb, and the Cargo weighs 250 lb: Grade 1 = 5000 lb; Grade 2 = 7000 lb; Grade 3 = 10,000 lb; Grade 4 = 14,000 lb; Grade 5 = 20,000 lb; Grade 6 = 28,000 lb; Grade 7 = 40,000 lb. If the Cart has a capacity of 800 lb, those are modifiers of: -6, -9, -12, -18, -24, -36, -and 48 respectively.

      The wagon driver gets to roll a skill check against DC 0 (or system equivalent), i,e, add his skill, INT modifier, and a d20 roll, to the cart’s CON Modifier. This represents the driver being aware of the danger and trying to smooth the passage / steer the cart around the worst of it. Let’s say that these are 4, 4, 12, and 10, respectively, for a total of 30. Grade 1: needs 24 or less. Grade 2: needs 21 or less (on that d20 roll). Grade 3: needs 18 /-, so for the first time there is a chance of something breaking. Grade 4: needs 12 /- so approaching 50-50. Grade 5: needs 6/-, so about 75% chance of something breaking. Grade 6: cannot succeed (on this d20 roll), something breaks. Grade 7: cannot succeed (on this d20 roll), something breaks.

      That something might be the axle, or a wheel, or something else – it’s up to the GM to decide where the weak point is. Depending on how it was repaired the last time something broke, it may be the same thing, or it may absolutely not be the same thing.

      3.1.4.1.1 Cart & Wagon Stats: High-Score Option

      A cart starts with a STR of 23, enough to carry three people of 200 lb weight, drawn by a single animal of appropriate type (usually a horse or a burro), and a CON of 16.

      Every +1 STR increases the capacity and also increases the CON by +1. At STR 28, 2 horses or 4 burros are needed, and the Cart has become a 4-wheeled wagon; at STR 31, this doubles again.

      Each +1 STR adds 1 GP to the base price of 15 GP (D&D / Pathfinder).

      Here’s the catch: Axles, Wheels, Connections, and the Carrying capacity of the cart or wagon, all have to be bought up separately. Or, to put it another way, the basic small Wagon, at 25 GP, has +10 STR and CON to distribute amongst the various attributes.

      3.1.4.1.2 Cart & Wagon Stats: Low-Score Option

      It’s usually more useful to do as is done for humanoids, and divide the load by the number of wheels. A Cart of 600 lb capacity (the minimum) therefore has a base of STR 18.

      The smallest wagon (4 wheels) has a base capacity of 1200 lb / 4 wheels = 300 lbs, resetting the STR to 18, at a cost of 25 GP.

      A Large wagon has a base capacity of 1800 lb / 4 wheels = 450 lbs, a STR of 21. So that’s +3 STR, costing 1+2+3=6 GP more; to get to the “Book Price” of 35 GP, there are 4 points of STR left over, distributed amongst the Axle)s, Wheels, and Connection. (In theory, it should be 36 GP, by these rules, but we’ll give the buyer a 1GP discount).

      There are all sorts of things that can be done to increase STR. These either contribute to the carrying capacity or to the ability of the Wagon to withstand rough terrain – i.e. one of the three other Wagon STR stats.

      Some of these add significantly to the weight of the wagon. I’ll deal with those individually as I come to them.

      3.1.4.1.3 Cart & Wagon Axle Reinforcement

      Every increase of 2″ diameter of the axles adds 1 STR, cumulative. The base width is 1.5″ radius, i.e. 3″ diameter. So adding 8″ to this gives a diameter of 11″, a radius of 5.5″, a cross-sectional area of 95 square inches or 13.4 times as much as the base, and a STR increase of 1+2+3+4=+10.

      However, this increases weight proportionate to the increase in area (5.5^2 / 1.5^2), which shows up as +13 rolling resistance. In essence, there’s more friction and inertia to overcome.

      Another option is to go with iron axles. These are a lot more expensive, about twice the weight for a given STR, but a lot smaller – 1/6 the size. So the base thickness of an iron axle is 0.25″ radius, or 0.5″ diameter, and every 1/3 of an inch diameter increase adds +1 STR.

      The big advantage is that the area is a lot smaller, and so is the rolling resistance, therefore – even if the increased weight undoes some of that gain:

      1.5^2 – 0.25^2 = -2.19 – so the base adjustment is -2 rolling resistance, and the 0.19 is considered lost to the added weight.

      3.1.4.1.4 Extended STR table (D&D)

      While the rules specify the effect of STR higher than the entries shown, some people don’t know how to interpret them.

      Let’s say you need the Encumbrance levels for STR 34. Subtract 10 until you get to an entry on the existing table, then multiply the Encumbrance values shown by 4 for each subtraction of 10.

      STR 24: 233 lb, 466lb, 700lb.

      Therefore, STR 34: 233 × 4=932lb; 466 × 4=1864 lb; and 700 × 4=2800lb.

      STR 44: 932 × 4=3728 lb; 1864 × 4=7456lb; and 2800 × 4=11200 lb.

      For convenience, though, here’s an extended STR table (which picks up where the official one ends):

      STR

      Light Load

      Medium Load

      Heavy Load

      30

      532 lb or less

      533 – 1064 lb

      1065 – 1600 lb

      31

      612 lb or less

      613 – 1224 lb

      1225 – 1840 lb

      32

      692 lb or less

      693 – 1384 lb

      1385 – 2080 lb

      33

      800 lb or less

      801 – 1600 lb

      1601 – 2400 lb

      34

      932 lb or less

      933 – 1864 lb

      1865 – 2800 lb

      35

      1064 lb or less

      1065 – 2132 lb

      2133 – 3200 lb

      36

      1224 lb or less

      1225 – 2452 lb

      2453 – 3680 lb

      37

      1384 lb or less

      1385 – 2772 lb

      2773 – 4160 lb

      38

      1600 lb or less

      1601 – 3200 lb

      3201 – 4800 lb

      39

      1864 lb or less

      1865 – 3732 lb

      3733 – 5600 lb

      40

      2128 lb or less

      2129 – 42564 lb

      4257 – 6400 lb

      41

      2496 lb or less
      (I’d use 2500 for convenience)

      2497 – 4896 lb
      (I’d use 2501-4900 for convenience)

      4897 – 7360 lb

      42

      2768 lb or less

      2769 – 5536 lb

      5537 – 8320 lb

      43

      3200 lb or less

      3201 – 6400 lb

      6401 – 9600 lb

      44

      3728 lb or less

      3729 – 7456 lb

      7457 – 11200 lb

      45

      4256 lb or less

      4257 – 8528 lb

      8529 – 12800 lb

      46

      4896 lb or less
      (I’d use 4900 for convenience)

      4897 – 8208 lb

      8209 – 14720 lb

      47

      5536 lb or less

      5537 – 11088 lb
      (I’d consider 11100 for convenience)

      11089 – 16640 lb

      48

      6400 lb or less

      6401 – 12800 lb

      12801 – 19200 lb

      49

      7456 lb or less

      7457 – 14928 lb

      14929 – 22400 lb

      +10

      x4

      x4

      x40

      3.1.4.2 Strength of the Wheels

      Most of what you need to know about wheels is covered in the preceding sections.

      Wheels come in two types of three types, with multiple subtypes.

      ★ Spoked, Wood
      ★ Spoked, Metal
      ★ Solid, Wood
      ★ Solid, Metal

      3.1.4.2.1 Spoke Thickness

      Spoked wheels start with 3 spokes. You can get +1 STR by thickening those spokes:

      ★ T = (t+X)^2 / t^2
      +1 STR per X

      Wooden spokes:
      ★ base t = 1 inch thickness
      ★ X = +0.5 inches

      Remember, these are spoke diameters, but arranging things this way also accommodates spokes of different shapes.

      You can double one axis by halving another – so instead of spokes 2″ radius, you could have spokes 1″ thick and 4″ wide. Spokes have an upper limit of 4.5″ – 5″ wide, so there are limits. Also, any spoke less than 0.25″ thick is likely to break heavy loads with fairly routine shock. In fact, that’s a risk with anything less than an inch thick; you can get away with it in the case of vehicles designed to carry minimal weight, like a chariot (no cargo capacity to put the spokes under extreme stress).

      Metal spokes:
      ★ base t = 0.5″
      ★ X = 0.2″

      Metal spokes are less likely to break, but are prone to bend. This introduces a weakness into the metal even if the problem is repaired; it will eventually fail again under heavy load. Cast Iron is usually the exception; it fractures instead.

      Bronze spokes are +4 STR relative to wood. (Cast) Iron spokes are +4 STR relative to Bronze. Steel spokes are +4 STR relative to Iron. Adamantine spokes or other exotic alloys may be +4 STR relative to Steel, that’s up to the GM.

      Spokes start at 1/2 GP each (wood) and each material improvement costs more than the equivalent STR in the previous material. They increase in price as they get better, of course, and the rate of increase also accelerates.

      Let’s put all that in a set of tables:

      #X

      Wooden Wheels

      Size
      (round)
      (” radius)

      Alternative
      Sizes

      STR

      Price
      (ea)
      (GP)

      0

      0.5

      1″ × 0.25″

      10

      0.5

      1

      0.75

      1.5″ × 0.38″
      1.25″ × 0.45″
      1.13″ × 0.5″
      1″ × 0.57″

      11

      1

      2

      1

      4″ × 0.25″
      3″ × 0.333″
      2″ × 0.5″

      12

      1.5

      3

      1.25

      1.57″ × 1″
      1.5″ × 1.05″

      13

      2

      4

      1.5

      4.5″ × 0.5″
      3″ × 0.75″
      2.25″ × 1″

      14

      2.5

      5

      1.75

      4.1″ × 0.75″
      3.1″ × 1″
      2.45″ × 1.25″
      2.05″ × 1.5″

      15

      3.5

      6

      2

      4″ × 1″
      3.2″ × 1.25″
      2.7″ × 1.5″
      2.3″ × 1.75″

      16

      4.5

      7

      2.25

      4.5″ × 1.13″
      3.38″ × 1.5″

      17

      6

      8

      2.5

      4.5″ × 1.4″
      3″ × 2.1″

      18

      7.5

      9

      2.75

      4.5″ × 1.7″
      3″ × 2.54″

      19

      9.5

      10

      3

      4.5″ × 2″
      3.6″ × 2.5″

      20

      12

       

      #X

      Bronze Wheels

      Size
      (round)
      (” radius)

      Alternative
      Sizes

      STR

      Price
      (ea)
      (GP)

      0

      0.25

      0.5″ × 0.125″
      0.42″ × 0.15″
      0.32″ × 0.2″

      14

      7.5

      1

      0.45

      0.81″ × 0.25″
      0.68″ × 0.3″
      0.41″ × 0.5″

      15

      9.5

      2

      0.65

      1.69″ × 0.25″
      1.41″ × 0.3″
      1.06″ × 0.4″
      0.85″ × 0.5″

      16

      11.5

      3

      0.85

      1.7″ × 0.43″
      1.81″ × 0.4″
      1.45″ × 0.5″
      1″ × 0.75″

      17

      13.5

      4

      1.05

      2.8″ × 0.4″
      2.21″ × 0.5″
      1.84″ × 0.6″
      1.47″ × 0.75″
      1.4″ × 0.8″

      18

      15.5

      5

      1.25

      1.57″ × 1″
      1.5″ × 1.05″

      19

      18

      6

      1.45

      4.21″ × 0.5″
      3.51″ × 0.6″
      3″ x 0.71″
      2.81″ × 0.75″
      2.11 × 1″
      1.7″ z 1.25″

      20

      20.5

      7

      1.65

      5.45″ × 0.5″
      4.54″ × 0.6″
      3.9″ × 0.7″
      3″ × 0.91″
      2.75″ × 1″
      2.5″ × 1.09″
      2.18″ × 1.25″
      1.5″ × 1.82″

      21

      23.5

      8

      1.85

      4.9″ × 0.7″
      4.3″ × 0.8″
      3.81″ × 0.9″
      3.5″ × 1″
      3″ × 1.15″
      2.75″ × 1.25″
      2.5″ × 1.37″
      2.3″ × 1.5″
      2″ × 1.75″

      22

      26.5

      9

      2.05

      4.21″ × 1″
      4″ × 1.1″
      3.4″ × 1.25″
      3″ × 1.41″
      2.81″ × 1.5″
      2.5″ × 1.7″
      2.11″ × 2″

      23

      30

      10

      2.25

      4.5″ × 1.13″
      3.4″ × 1.5″

      24

      34

       

      #X

      Cast Iron Wheels

      Size
      (round)
      (” radius)

      Alternative
      Sizes

      STR

      Price
      (ea)
      (GP)

      0

      0.25

      As Bronze

      18

      46.5

      1

      0.45

      As Bronze

      19

      49.5

      2

      0.65

      As Bronze

      20

      53

      3

      0.85

      As Bronze

      21

      56

      4

      1.05

      As Bronze

      22

      60

      5

      1.25

      As Bronze

      23

      64

      6

      1.45

      As Bronze

      24

      68

      7

      1.65

      As Bronze

      25

      73

      8

      1.85

      As Bronze

      26

      78

      9

      2.05

      As Bronze

      27

      84

      10

      2.25

      As Bronze

      28

      90

       

      #X

      Steel Wheels

      Size
      (round)
      (” radius)

      Alternative
      Sizes

      STR

      Price
      (ea)
      (GP)

      0

      0.25

      As Bronze

      22

      180

      1

      0.45

      As Bronze

      23

      184

      2

      0.65

      As Bronze

      24

      188

      3

      0.85

      As Bronze

      25

      192

      4

      1.05

      As Bronze

      26

      197

      5

      1.25

      As Bronze

      27

      202

      6

      1.45

      As Bronze

      28

      208

      7

      1.65

      As Bronze

      29

      214

      8

      1.85

      As Bronze

      30

      220

      9

      2.05

      As Bronze

      31

      227

      10

      2.25

      As Bronze

      32

      234

       

      #X

      Adamantine / Exotic Alloy Wheels

      Size
      (round)
      (” radius)

      Alternative
      Sizes

      STR

      Price
      (ea)
      (GP)

      0

      0.25

      As Bronze

      26

      1085

      1

      0.45

      As Bronze

      27

      1091

      2

      0.65

      As Bronze

      28

      1097

      3

      0.85

      As Bronze

      29

      1103

      4

      1.05

      As Bronze

      30

      1110

      5

      1.25

      As Bronze

      31

      1117

      6

      1.45

      As Bronze

      32

      1125

      7

      1.65

      As Bronze

      33

      1135

      8

      1.85

      As Bronze

      34

      1145

      9

      2.05

      As Bronze

      35

      1165

      10

      2.25

      As Bronze

      36

      1200

      You may be wondering why anyone would bother not going up to the more expensive materials. The top wooden spokes confer a STR of 20 and cost 12 GP each. The same STR in Bronze spokes costs 20.5gp. In Cast Iron, just 53 GP each. So the cost is part of the reason.

      Another part is that they are heavier, increasing the rolling resistance by the increase in Strength, and part of the answer is that replacements become progressively harder to obtain and repairs more expensive the further down the list of materials you go. It’s relatively easy to get a broken wooden spoke replaced; it’s rare to find anyone competent to make a steel one. The tools available in a pre-industrialized society simply don’t have the accuracy needed, and the people (in general) don’t have the necessary skill, and there are always more profitable things to do with the resources (like armor).

      3.1.4.2.2 Additional Spokes

      Increasing the size of the spokes is not the only way to increase the strength of a wheel. You can also increase the number of spokes – if there’s room on the hub.

      ★ Hub Radius = Axle Radius = Spoke Width × N / (2 π)

      I had designed another table to show the effect on STR and Cost respectively but it became unwieldy because of the number of entries that were going to be required. So, instead, I’ve distilled it down to a cheat-sheet table.

      ★ 1. Write the Price of the spokes you’re using on a line.
      ★ 2. Underneath, write the number of spokes in square brackets like this [6].
      ★ 3. Draw a horizontal line under the square brackets the width of the first number.
      ★ 4. For each digit, look up the corresponding number on the table and write the result underneath the digit.
      ★ 5. Draw another horizontal line.
      ★ 6. Add up the digits in between the horizontal lines.
      ★ 7. This is the price per spoke, so multiply by the number of spokes to get the total for the whole wheel.

      ★ STR = +2 per step across the Number Of Spokes table, below.
      ★ Rolling Resistance penalty = -1 per step across the Number Of Spokes table, below.

      Base

      Number of Spokes

      4

      5

      6

      7

      8

      9

      10

      12

      16

      1

      1.33

      1.67

      2

      2.33

      2.67

      3

      3.33

      4

      5.33

      2

      2.67

      3.33

      4

      4.67

      5.33

      6

      6.67

      8

      10.67

      3

      4

      5

      6

      7

      8

      9

      10

      12

      16

      4

      5.33

      6.67

      8

      9.33

      10.67

      12

      13.33

      16

      21.33

      5

      6.67

      8.33

      10

      11.67

      13.33

      15

      16.67

      20

      26.67

      6

      8

      10

      12

      14.33

      16

      18

      20

      24

      32

      7

      9.33

      11.16

      14

      16.33

      18.67

      21

      23.33

      28

      37.33

      8

      10.67

      13.33

      16

      18.67

      21.33

      24

      26.67

      32

      42.67

      9

      12

      15

      18

      21

      24

      27

      30

      36

      48

      Let’s do a quick example:

           STR 24 Iron Spokes, 1.45″ radius, cost / spoke 68. Replacing the base 3-spoke design with a 6-spoke arrangement.

           Hub Radius = Axle Radius = Spoke Width × N / 2 π) = 1.45 × 6 / (2 × 3.1415927) = 1.38465″ or greater. Call it 1.4″ radius.

           3 additional spokes = +6 STR, -6 Rolling Resistance.

           1. Write the price: 68
           2. Write the number of spokes in square brackets: [6]
           3. Draw a line: —————————-
           4a. Look up “8” and “6 spokes” on the table.
           4b. Write the result, “16”, on a line with the “6” under the “8”.
           4c. The next digit is a 6. Look up “6” and “6 spokes”.
           4d. Write the result, “12”, with the 2 under the 6..
           5. Draw another line.
           6. Add up the columns of numbers. I get 136 GP per spoke.

      NB: Keep the decimal point position under where it was in the original price.

           That’s 816 GP per wheel.

      Achieving that +6 STR could be done by going to slightly thicker spokes made of steel – at a cost of 220 GP per spoke, or 660 GP per wheel.

      Of course, the biggest advantage of multiple spokes is that even if one breaks and the wheel deforms, bends, or breaks, it’s more likely to still be usable – at least for a while.

      ★ 3 spokes, -1, is trouble and going nowhere.
      ★ 4 spokes, -1 isn’t a whole lot better – crippling at best.

      ★ 5 spokes, -1, would not be a comfortable ride, but you might manage – for a while.
      ★ 5 spokes, -2 adjacent, would be going nowhere.

      ★ 6 spokes, -1, would be similar to 5-1.
      ★ 6 spokes, -2 adjacent, is the same as 4-1.
       

      ★ 7 spokes, -1, would also not be dissimilar to 5-1.
      ★ 7 spokes, -2 adjacent, would be similar to 5-1 or 6-1.
      ★ 7 spokes, -3 adjacent, would be as disastrous as 3-1.

      ★ 8 spokes, -1, would produce a little side-to-side rocking.
      ★ 8 spokes, -2 adjacent, would also not be dissimilar to 5-1.
      ★ 8 spokes, -3 adjacent, is the same as 4-1.

      ★ 9 spokes, -1, would be barely noticeable.
      ★ 9 spokes, -2, would be similar to 7-1 if the missing spokes were adjacent.
      ★ 9 spokes, -3 adjacent, would also not be dissimilar to 5-1.
      ★ 9 spokes, -4 adjacent, would be as crippling as 4-1.
      ★ 9 spokes, -5 adjacent, would be as disastrous as 3-1.

      ★ 10 spokes, -1, would be barely noticeable.
      ★ 10 spokes, -2, would be similar to 9-1 if the missing spokes were adjacent.
      ★ 10 spokes, -3, is the same as 4-1 if the missing spokes were adjacent.
      ★ 10 spokes, -4 adjacent, would be as bad as 3-1.

      ★ 12 spokes, -1, would be barely noticeable.
      ★ 12 spokes, -2 adjacent, would be the same as 6-1.
      ★ 12 spokes, -3 adjacent, would be the same as 4-1.
      ★ 12 spokes, -4 adjacent, would be as bad as 3-1.

      ★ 16 spokes (not shown), -1, would not be noticeable.
      ★ 16 spokes (not shown), -2 adjacent, would be about the same as 12-1.
      ★ 16 spokes (not shown), -3 adjacent, would be the same as 9-1 or 10-1.
      ★ 16 spokes (not shown), -4 adjacent, would be the same as 8-1.
      ★ 16 spokes (not shown), -5 adjacent, would be about the same as 5-1.
      ★ 16 spokes (not shown), -6 adjacent, would be as bad as 4-1.
      ★ 16 spokes (not shown), -7 adjacent is what it takes to cripple this most expensive design.

      3.1.4.2.3 Solid Wheels

      Solid wheels are easier to make than spoked wheels. But they weigh a lot more.

      It’s possible to work out how much more – the formula is T × (r-a) / (N × spoke width) to get a multiplier which can applied to the weight of a spoked wheel – but who cares about that?

           (r-a) / (N × spoke width)
           where
                T = the thickness of the wheel (NOT the rims);
                r = radius of the wheel;
                a = radius of the axle / hub;
                N is the number of spokes; and
                spoke width should be obvious.

      What we actually care about is the impact on Rolling Resistance – and for that, we can take a shortcut.

      Assuming Base T = 1/2 spoke width, subtract 2 from the STR of the spoked wheel per spoke after the first, and add 50% to the result to get the rolling resistance effect. If the thickness is less than this (and it will almost certainly be so), multiply the result by the actual thickness and divide by the base thickness. Round down.

      Example: Let’s use the 6-spoked wheel we just worked out: Spokes = radius 1.45″, so base T = 0.725″; STR 24+6=30. Rolling resistance 30-(2 × 5)=20; 20 × 1.5 = 30 – at 0.725″ thickness. Actual thickness – let’s say 2/5th of an inch (0.4″). 30 × 0.4 / 0.725 = 16.55. So a solid wheel of this thickness, instead of rolling resistance -6, would have -16.

      Note that 2/5 of an inch is a solid plate of steel. It’s not likely to bend, and should have no problem supporting the wagon. Even 1/5th would be enough unless badly-treated by rough roads – but those are conditions it might very well be exposed to.

      3.1.4.3 Strength of the Connection

      This is often the weak point of the whole thing – whatever joins the wheel to the axle, usually some kind of hub secured to the wheel with bolts or pegs.

      Three things put these connections under greater strain than usual – roads and paths that are angled from one side to the other, turning corners, and the shearing force caused by bumps in the surface being traversed.

      Combinations of two or more of these are worse still, and the triple-whammy of all three creates the most likely failure of these connections. The wheel comes off, and the cart or wagon suddenly assumes a very steep angle with reference to the horizontal; cargo will often spill out, and (depending on what it is) can be damaged or lost.

      Slippery, muddy conditions and overloads make all of the above worse. Essentially, any sideways movement has to be completely contained by the connection, or one or both wheels will sheer off.

      Consider the diagram below:

      The top image shows the basic components of a wheel assembly. Specifics may vary – for example, the bolts might be on the inside with the thread protruding out. I’ve deliberately exaggerated the thickness so that the components are more easily seen and understood.

      The second image shows what happens on a slope; the force of gravity pulls the wagon and load to one side. The same thing happens in the opposite direction to a fast turn, but wagon drivers know that and (generally) slow to reduce the effect – unless being pursued!

      The third diagram shows the effect on the wheels, which try to twist on their hubs. The only thing holding the wheels to the wagon at this point is the strength of the thread in the connecting bolts.

      Typically, this will be STR 10, at a cost of 1gp per bolt. This can be increased at a cost per bolt of 0.2 GP per bolt to a maximum of STR 25. Divide by 1.5 for Cast Iron, Divide by 3 for Bronze, divide by 5 for wooden pegs. (This applies to both STR and cost per bolt).

      A wheel will normally be secured by at least three and up to ten of them – usually, one per spoke, but you can double or triple that. Each additional bolt on a wheel adds 1 to the STR of the connection.

      .

      This shows the force that the STR of the bolts has to be equal to or greater than. Obviously, without knowing the weight of both cart / wagon and load, I can’t make it much simpler.

      But I can work it in the other direction: Twisting Force by angle, giving the total STR that your connections can (usually) handle for a given sideways slope.

      Slope
      (°)

      STR

      1

      2

      3

      4

      5

      6

      7

      8

      1

      58

      115

      172

      230

      287

      344

      402

      459

      1.5

      39

      77

      115

      153

      192

      230

      268

      306

      2

      29

      58

      86

      115

      144

      172

      201

      230

      2.5

      23

      46

      69

      92

      115

      138

      161

      184

      3

      20

      39

      58

      77

      96

      115

      134

      153

      3.5

      17

      33

      50

      66

      82

      99

      115

      132

      4

      15

      29

      44

      58

      72

      87

      101

      115

      4.5

      13

      26

      39

      51

      64

      77

      90

      102

      5

      12

      23

      35

      46

      58

      69

      81

      92

      6

      10

      20

      29

      39

      48

      58

      67

      77

      7

      9

      17

      25

      33

      42

      50

      58

      66

      8

      8

      15

      22

      29

      36

      44

      51

      58

      9

      7

      13

      20

      26

      32

      39

      45

      52

      10

      6

      12

      18

      24

      29

      35

      41

      47

      11

      6

      11

      16

      21

      27

      32

      37

      42

      12

      5

      10

      15

      20

      25

      29

      34

      39

      13

      5

      9

      14

      18

      23

      27

      32

      36

      14

      5

      9

      13

      17

      21

      25

      29

      34

      15

      4

      8

      12

      16

      20

      24

      28

      31

      16

      4

      8

      11

      15

      19

      22

      26

      30

      18

      4

      7

      10

      13

      17

      20

      23

      26

      20

      3

      6

      9

      12

      15

      18

      21

      24

      22

      3

      6

      9

      11

      14

      17

      19

      22

      24

      3

      5

      8

      10

      13

      15

      18

      20

      26

      3

      5

      7

      10

      12

      14

      16

      19

      28

      3

      5

      7

      9

      11

      13

      15

      18

      30

      2

      4

      6

      8

      10

      12

      14

      16

       

      Slope
      (°)

      STR

      9

      10

      11

      12

      13

      14

      15

      16

      1

      516

      573

      631

      688

      745

      803

      860

      917

      1.5

      344

      383

      421

      459

      497

      535

      574

      612

      2

      258

      287

      316

      344

      373

      402

      430

      459

      2.5

      207

      230

      253

      276

      299

      321

      344

      367

      3

      172

      192

      211

      230

      249

      268

      287

      306

      3.5

      148

      164

      181

      197

      213

      230

      246

      263

      4

      130

      144

      158

      173

      187

      201

      216

      230

      4.5

      115

      128

      141

      153

      166

      179

      192

      204

      5

      104

      115

      127

      138

      150

      161

      173

      184

      6

      87

      96

      106

      115

      125

      134

      144

      154

      7

      74

      83

      91

      99

      107

      115

      124

      132

      8

      65

      72

      80

      87

      94

      101

      108

      115

      9

      58

      64

      71

      77

      84

      90

      96

      103

      10

      52

      58

      64

      70

      75

      81

      87

      93

      11

      48

      53

      58

      63

      69

      74

      79

      84

      12

      44

      49

      53

      58

      63

      68

      73

      77

      13

      41

      45

      49

      54

      58

      63

      67

      72

      14

      38

      42

      46

      50

      54

      58

      63

      67

      15

      35

      39

      43

      47

      51

      55

      58

      62

      16

      33

      37

      40

      44

      48

      51

      55

      59

      18

      30

      33

      36

      39

      43

      46

      49

      52

      20

      27

      30

      33

      36

      39

      41

      44

      47

      22

      25

      27

      30

      33

      35

      38

      41

      43

      24

      23

      25

      28

      30

      32

      35

      37

      40

      26

      21

      23

      26

      28

      30

      32

      35

      37

      28

      20

      22

      24

      26

      28

      30

      32

      35

      30

      18

      20

      22

      24

      26

      28

      30

      32

       

      Slope
      (°)

      STR

      17

      18

      19

      20

      21

      22

      23

      24

      1

      975

      1032

      1089

      1146

      1204

      1261

      1318

      1376

      1.5

      650

      688

      726

      765

      803

      841

      879

      917

      2

      488

      516

      545

      574

      602

      631

      660

      688

      2.5

      390

      413

      436

      459

      482

      505

      528

      551

      3

      325

      344

      364

      383

      402

      421

      440

      459

      3.5

      279

      295

      312

      328

      344

      361

      377

      394

      4

      244

      259

      273

      287

      302

      316

      330

      345

      4.5

      217

      230

      243

      255

      268

      281

      294

      306

      5

      196

      207

      218

      230

      241

      253

      264

      276

      6

      163

      173

      182

      192

      201

      211

      221

      230

      7

      140

      148

      156

      165

      173

      181

      189

      197

      8

      123

      130

      137

      144

      151

      159

      166

      173

      9

      109

      116

      122

      128

      135

      141

      148

      154

      10

      98

      104

      110

      116

      121

      127

      133

      139

      11

      90

      95

      100

      105

      111

      116

      121

      126

      12

      82

      87

      92

      97

      102

      106

      111

      116

      13

      76

      81

      85

      89

      94

      98

      103

      107

      14

      71

      75

      79

      83

      87

      91

      96

      100

      15

      66

      70

      74

      78

      82

      86

      89

      93

      16

      62

      66

      69

      73

      77

      80

      84

      88

      18

      56

      59

      62

      65

      68

      72

      75

      78

      20

      50

      53

      56

      59

      62

      65

      68

      71

      22

      46

      49

      51

      54

      57

      59

      62

      65

      24

      42

      45

      47

      50

      52

      55

      57

      60

      26

      39

      42

      44

      46

      48

      51

      53

      55

      28

      37

      39

      41

      43

      45

      47

      49

      52

      30

      34

      36

      38

      40

      42

      44

      46

      48

       

      Slope
      (°)

      STR

      Slope Comparison

      25

      Drop 1″ every…

      Inches Drop every 5′

      1

      1433

      4′ 9.5″

      1.05″

      1.5

      956

      3′ 2.5″

      1.57″

      2

      717

      2′ 5″

      2.1″

      2.5

      574

      1′ 11″

      2.62″

      3

      478

      1′ 7.5″

      3.14″

      3.5

      410

      1′ 4.5″

      3.67″

      4

      359

      1′ 2.5″

      4.2″

      4.5

      319

      1′ 0.75″

      4.72″

      5

      287

      11.43″

      5.25″

      6

      240

      9.51″

      6.31″

      7

      206

      8.14″

      7.37″

      8

      180

      7.12″

      8.43″

      9

      160

      6.31″

      9.5″

      10

      144

      5.67″

      10.58″

      11

      132

      5.14″

      11.66″

      12

      121

      4.7″

      12.75″

      13

      112

      4.33″

      13.85″

      14

      104

      4.01″

      14.96″

      15

      97

      3.73″

      16.08″

      16

      91

      3.49″

      17.2″

      18

      81

      3.08″

      19.5″

      20

      74

      2.75″

      21.84″

      22

      67

      2.48″

      24.24″

      24

      62

      2.25″

      26.71″

      26

      58

      2.05″

      29.26″

      28

      54

      1.88″

      31.9″

      30

      50

      1.73″

      34.64″

      3.1.4.4 Strength of the Bed

      Since the cart-bed is what actually holds the Cargo up, this is what we initially looked at – how much the cart can “carry”.

      Most carts and wagons will have four sides as well as a platform for the driver to sit on. In fancy examples, one might curve so that it forms two or more of these surfaces. The other attribute that the “bed” might have is a roof, but this tends to be fairly unusual, because it can’t be lifted to accommodate taller loads.

      Another refinement would be to provide a semi-enclosed cabin for the driver, at least keeping sun and some rain off him or her.

      These are all components of what people generally think of when they think “wagon” – and any of them can fail. This may or may not constitute a threat to the cargo.

      3.1.4.5 Rolling Resistance

      Rolling resistance is the reluctance of a wagon or cart to start moving from a state of rest.

      A significant portion of the rolling resistance comes from inertia, which is the reluctance of a mass to accelerate, ie to acquire speed; but that’s far from the only consideration.

      The wheels have to turn. The more massive they are, the more they will be reluctant to do so. Hence, there is a contribution to rolling resistance from the wheels.

      That said, the larger the radius of the wheels, the more readily they will roll, so that’s also a consideration – one that potentially outweighs the weight contribution.

      Still, every little bit helps, so solid wheels are often thinner than expected and structurally reinforced by ‘ribs’ that look for all the world like spokes. These are usually only found on one side of the wheel, though.

      For a wheel to turn, it needs some friction with the ground. Marshy, muddy, and ice terrains can be especially challenging in this respect (in the latter case, before ‘parking’ the cart, the driver may scatter a little bit of salt and some sand or gravel on the ice; it will melt a little and then refreeze, with a texture that makes getting underway again a little easier.

      The weight of the wagon can also cause the wheels to sink into a depression if the surface is soft. This effectively adds a slope to even level ground.

      For that matter, when the wagon came to a stop the previous night, there must have come a point at which the friction of the surface could not be overcome by the wagon’s remaining momentum, so there will always always be a small contributing up-slope to contend with, anyway.

      The axles have to be turned by the wheels. That means overcoming the friction they have with the cart body (grease helps – even animal fat).. The thicker the axle, the greater this resistance; so there’s a contribution to rolling resistance from this source, too.

      I did this graphic well in advance of writing the section on solid wheels and spokes, so the top panel is a little bit redundant, but is still correct.

      The main panels are concerned with slopes. In very rare circumstances, a slope can be very helpful in overcoming rolling resistance. In fact, you can even think of Rolling Resistance as a temporary steepening of the slope in the forwards direction (that’s also important!)

      Panel 3 shows a simplified view of rolling resistance as a pair of additional slopes on “virtual” ground. There’s an initial phase, when the virtual incline is steepest, and then a second phase, about twice as long, in which the resistance has been partially overcome and the vehicle is gaining momentum.

      I then look at four different “real” slopes (exaggerated for the visual distinction – in reality, the “slight downslope” would generally be thought of as a steep downslope if it was at the angle shown.

      First, a slight downhill – the downhill slope moderates the rolling resistance at first and then leaves the second phase effectively flat. Once full motion is achieved, it’s downhill all the way, though rolling resistance will lessen the effective gradient somewhat. With caution, no special action needs to be taken.

      Second, a steeper downhill – the initial phase of the motion is effectively on flat ground, and the second phase (1/2 resistance) is slightly downhill. Once up to speed, it’s dangerously steep; wagons and carts being drawn along by animal power effectively have no brakes.

      This often requires splitting an animal team up, looping a rope around a tree, and using the bulk of the team to resist the descent while only 25% of the total animal team pull the vehicle forwards. The very quick-and-dirty illustration to the left displays this procedure. Of course, the main driver is controlling the three animals – but he’s probably standing a little close to that rope. If it snaps it will whip around and could cause serious injury.

      Third, I turned my attention to inclines, starting with an extremely uphill. As you can see, ‘steeply uphill’. becomes ‘extremely steeply uphill’ at first, and then moderates to different flavors of ‘Steeply Uphill’ as you get underway.

      Finally, there is the more probable slightly uphill. The initial phase is effectively steeply uphill but once you get moving the steepness moderates.

      This is the force that your animals have to overcome. In general, they can pull 4 × as much as they can carry, 6 × with exertion. Horses are better at it than most options, they manage 6 × quite easily. Oxen and other heavy creatures can go 8-10 times, but they tend to be slow. Each extra animal pulling adds 75% to the total (not 100%). Teams of more than 8 tend to be impractical to manage and control, and even numbers are generally preferred.

      3.1.4.5.1 Slope (aka Grade, Gradient, Stepth, Incline, Mainfall, Pitch, and Rise)

      All inclines are measured (technically) as the difference in altitudes divided by the horizontal distance, called the ‘run’. But you can’t see the run, what you see is the distance up or down the slope; fortunately, the difference is small enough to be negligible unless the slope is catastrophically severe.

      Railways can employ slopes of up to 60° – that’s catastrophically severe, in my book.

      In Australia, 16.9° or more is extremely steep; 11.3°-16.8° is a steep road; 5.71°-11.2° is an uphill slope; 3°-5.7° or less is a moderate slope. In the US, 3% is considered the maximum for a high-speed highway, 6% the maximum for a main arterial road, and 7%-8% is tolerated in the mountains.

      Cyclists have to use their own muscle power to deal with slopes, so their categories tend to be a bit more nuanced – but also probably more applicable in terms of how a team of animals pulling a cart or wagon will respond.

      ★ 0% (0°) is a flat road.
      ★ 1-3% (0.573°-1.718°) is slightly up or downhill.
      ★ 4-6% (2.29°-3.434°) is manageable but will cause added fatigue
      ★ 7-9% (4°-5.143°) is uncomfortable even for an experienced climber, and challenging for new rides.
      ★ 10-15% (5.71°-8.531°) is painful, even for strong, experienced, riders.
      ★ 16%+ (9.09°+) is very challenging even for the strongest riders.

      Uphill grades of 6% increase the risk of an accident by a factor of 2.6.
      Downhill grades of 6% increase the risk of an accident by a factor of 5.6!

      The risks are exponential relative to the slope.

      ★ R = B ^ (1+S%/6)

      ★ where,
           S is the slope (%);
           B is either 2.6 or 5.6; and
           R is the risk factor.

      So the risk uphill doubles to 5.2 at 10.35%, and doubles again to 10.4 at 14.7%.

      A 4-5% gradient is the maximum considered safe in Australia for anything but private roads, which aren’t regulated to government specifications.

      The steepest road in the world is officially Baldwin St in Dunedin, New Zealand, at 34.8% (19.19°), but a number of streets elsewhere have steeper grades (they may be shorter, though).

      To calculate Degrees from % gradient, use D = Arctan(% slope / 100)..
      To calculate Degrees from a “1 in n” rise / fall, use D = Arctan (1/n).

      Or consult the graph below:

      Source: Wikipedia Commons, where it is available in far higher resolution. Image by BW95, CC BY-SA 3.0. I’ve added the more detailed enlargement at the bottom.

      Use these facts as and when they seem appropriate!

      Sources:

      1. A PDF Webinar by Austroads.com.au

      2. The Climbing Cyclist dot com

      3. Grade (Slope) | Wikipedia

      4. Steepness | NSW Government

      5. Civil Engineering dot com

      3.1.4.6 Gravity Vector
      Tall loads and other stacks of things have a tendency to want to, well, tip over. Especially on slopes or going around corners. It’s as though there were part of the force of gravity trying to pull the top of the load sideways – and you saw what effect that had on the wagon / cart wheels earlier.

      Instead of a lot of calculations, I’ve found a graphical way of not only illustrating this, but of determining the degree of danger of the vehicle overturning.

           1. Drawing a line from the top of the load to the ground, gives a distance to the base of the wagon or cart.
           2. Double it because of potential swaying from side to side.
           3. And then increase that to triple the original to allow for a margin of safety.
           4. If the results are clearly less than 1/2 the total width of the cart, all is well (green).
           5. If the results are about 1/2 the width, it’s a dangerous situation but slow down and you should be OK (yellow-orange).
           6. If the results are clearly more than 1/2, then there is a danger of overturning (red).
           7. If the results are more than the width of the cart / wagon, you WILL overturn at the slightest provocation (dark red).
           8. If the swaying allowance is more than the width of the cart, any speed other than dead slow will overturn the vehicle (also dark red).
           9. If the original is more than width of the vehicle, it HAS overturned. No question. Refer to the rightmost 15° image for an example.

      This assumes more or less uniform density of the load. But everyone knows (or should know) that you put the lightest stuff on top, if you are sensible.

      The last two panels show the impact of doing so and how to take this into account, and of doing it all wrong and how to handle that.

           1. Divide the load into three.
           2. The bottom part is always 1. The other two have their weights compared to that bottom part.
           3. Do the ‘gravity arrow’ not all the way to the ground, but to the line of the next part down.
           4. Multiply the length by the relative weight.
           5. Add up the shortened (or lengthened) gravity vectors.
           6. (If necessary) extend the line of the side of the cart/load vertically.
           7. position your gravity arrow where it is the length determined above.
           8. Measure the vector to the base of the cart as usual.
           9. Go to Step 2 of the previous procedure and continue from there.

      It sounds a lot more complicated than it is. In fact, it takes only seconds – plus the time it takes to draw a line representing the slope and a box representing the cart and load.

      Compare these to the rightmost images for their respective angles with uniform loads – the lightening in the left has clearly helped, but not quite gone far enough, while the mismanagement of the load in the right has definitely made things much worse.

And that’s where I’m calling a halt to this very lengthy post! Next time: putting all of the above together, and using it all to assign a base unit for productivity, the Labor Unit. And then, I can get back to what this chapter was supposed to be all about – the faceless workers that keep a business operating!

Comments (4)

No Post Today 3 dec 2024


I almost got there, but the next part of Trade In Fantasy is 25-40 paragraphs short of completion. Lots of “might have beens” lie behind that failure, and any two of them would have definitely yielded a different outcome (one might not quite been enough). If I can finish it in time, I’ll post it in the Thursday “B-” slot; otherwise, look for it next week.

Comments (4)

Trade In Fantasy Ch. 3: Routine Personnel Pt 1