Preliminaries / Introduction: Why you should read this article

One of the good aspects of packing everything is that you discover where you had hidden away things that have been archived for long enough that those hiding places had been forgotten.

So it is that I h\ave found a whole bunch of material from my old TORG campaign, which I intend to use through 2024 as the foundation of various articles.

I’m doing this for a number of reasons, which collectively spell out why it’s worth your time to read them (some more than others, I must admit).

1. I can (almost) cut an article off in mid-sentence if I have to – so these will be flexible in an uncertain publishing period.

2. The Aysle material constitutes an excellent demonstration of campaign creation and world-building.

3. Aysle is utterly unlike any D&D world that I know of, and my variant on that is even more so. File off a few serial numbers, change a few names, and you have a unique adventuring environment to either visit or reside in for the duration of a campaign.

4. The Orrorsh material is a lot scarier than the published, official, version – to such an extent that none of the PCs wanted to go there. They had one small taste of it (a freighter adrift at sea) and that was more than enough for them, thank you very much.
5. A lot of people found the spell construction system to be confusing. So did I, at first – but once I understood it, I thought it was brilliant. Of course, I tweaked it a little, and – hopefully – explained it a lot more clearly than West End Games did at the time. Again, as house rules go, this is an interesting and robust one for GMs to contemplate.
6. Finally, I’ve got a LOT of material that I can reconstitute or recycle, and if I don’t do this with it, it will never see the light of day. The campaign itself, though officially on hiatus, is unlikely to ever restart – not enough time, not enough interest, and I’ve lost touch with most of the old players. But it may be of benefit/interest to other GMs out there – whether they run TORG or not.

I know that I’ve mentioned the TORG campaign, and specifically Aysle, on a number of past occasions.

Part 3 of the Plunging Into Game Physics series, Tales from the Ether used it as an example, for example. And I described the Campaign as it turned out in play in Part 2 of my biographical double-post, Dice And Life: Bio of a gamemaster, which I posted to commemorate the 5th anniversary of Campaign Mastery.

This isn’t going to be like those occasions; instead of working from memory, I have my actual campaign construction notes for reference, including some forgotten goodies that the players never figured out / discovered.

But I thought I should point out why it is that some of this material might sound familiar to long-time readers.

The Campaign Concept

I’m not going to go into this in too much depth – there’s more than enough content in this category alone to be a post in it’s own right at some future point.

But there are some fundamentally important points to emerge from the process and those are worth highlighting, especially since they impact the main subject of today’s discussion – they explain why this was the starting point.

A Complex Reality

There’s a LOT of material for new TORG players to assimilate. Heck, there’s a lot for GMs to assimilate!
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This requires massive information dumps or homework assignments that would turn most players and GMs off. I know at least two players/GMs who bought the system and then packed it away as too much like hard work – I know, because I ended up buying stuff from them, second-hand. No, make that four – Graham, Adrian, Stephen,.and Ian. Two of them became players in the campaign when I ran it.

There are six or seven realities, the overarching Infiniverse, the basic rules, the reality-changing rules, the history, and so on. Each reality has its own unique character options and capabilities and rules structures, but characters from the other realities or Cosms can go there and interact with the locals..

From just about day one, I wanted to break all this up into manageable pieces.

The foundations of a plan

So I started working on a way to achieve this.

I picked Aysle as my starting point because the fantasy Cosm would be closest to something familiar to the players.

Phase 1

I deliberately intended to start the campaign prior to the Possibility Wars (which involve those reality-changing rules that I mentioned) so that players could get familiar with the basic game system. ONE reality, ONE set of rules.

They would have an epic adventure (multiple game sessions), from which they would return to discover that the bad guys were now in charge, that a bridge had been opened to a new Reality called Earth, and that a war of conquest was underway.

Since the only hope of freeing their homelands from the forces of Evil was the leader of the resistance (who had been lord high muckamuck when they left), and She was on Earth. So they would have to follow.

Phase 2

That introduces the more complex reality and the basics of the Reality Changing rules, but it keeps them in the Earth-contaminated adjunct to the Fantasy Realm while they get used to them.

A couple of short adventures and (I’m a little fuzzy on this point) they would be sent out to recruit allies in every Realm. The Bad Guys were basically an Oligarchy who had each other’s backs much of the time (even while they plotted and back-stabbed each other). Unless they all faced a crisis at the same time, they possessed overwhelming force.

Which would lead to:

Phases 3+

The PCs would make their way from one Reality to another using available means of transport. Each time they entered a new reality, one player was required to generate a character from that Reality and then choose to stick with what they had or ‘trade them in’ for the newcomer, retaining all earned XP. If a player wanted to volunteer, that was fine, if a new player wanted to join the campaign, that was also acceptable.

That was justified on the basis that each of the ‘new’ characters would have been having adventures of their own before being tapped to join the party. They each had to have their own motivations for doing so, ones that made sense under the “rules” of the Reality that they came from.

One Reality at a time, they would gain a basic understanding of how that Reality worked and the party would slowly metamorphose from a straight fantasy party into something more cosmopolitan.

The last Cosm to be visited was to be Orrorsh, the Horror realm, but the campaign ended before they got that far.

Phase X

I forget how many Realities there were to visit, but Orrorsh was to be the last of them, as I mentioned, and it was to provide the lead-in to the epic conclusion of the campaign, in which The Gaunt Man makes a power-play to seize control of ALL the Cosms and a darker, more sinister plan that had been underway throughout the Possibility Wars was revealed.

The PCs couldn’t save everyone, everywhere – they would have to pick and choose and have a strategy to overcome this threat. It would not happen cheaply, there would be a steep cost involved, but they could win – there were six or seven paths to victory, one for each of the Cosms, but they were mutually contradictory.

Each one required making alliances and having some of those allies not make it out the other side. (The Living Land was usually a casualty, for example).

Realities would change, whole populations would die or be saved, and it would take about half as long as the entirety of Phases 2-to-whatever.

That was the basic plan – a foundation and then add bricks one at a time until the house began to take shape.

Aysle: Fantasy Cosm

From word one, there were elements of Aysle that were hard to get your head around.

The basic world was a pie plate – actually, two very dented pie-plates, base- to-base, with a hole in the middle, through which the sun transited each day – rising at Dawn and setting at Dusk.

Right away, I had questions:

• How big a Hole?
• How big a sun?
• Which way was down?
• What stopped all the water from falling down the hole?
• How did you get from one side to the other?
• Mountains? Tectonic Activity?
• Conditions near the center?
• Conditions near the edge?
• Seasons? How
• Weather?
• Sailing ships – Trade Routes? Favorable Winds?

And all that was before I got to the more complicated questions of who lived where, and politics, and borders, and ecologies, and trade goods, and money, and so on (I’ll cover at least some of those in #2 in this series).

Having generated this long list of questions, I set about answering them, one by one.

The Hole In The Middle Of The World

There’s no scale on the maps of the Cosm provided in the sourcebook.

The sun is 93,000,000 miles from earth. If the hole is that big then the maps make no sense – the ‘planetary’ surface would extend out more than 14 AU, clear out to the orbit of Saturn and well beyond.

Okay, so no 93 million miles. That means that the sun has to be a lot smaller and weaker than our sun.

Using The Map

In the text, it describes the world as being about 9000 km radius. The map measures out as 17cm across, near enough. So, not quite 1 cm to the 1000 km, but not far off it – 9/8.5 = 18/17.

The hole has a diameter on the map of 1.2cm. Assuming it’s to scale, that’s a diameter of 18 / 17 × 1.2 = 21.617 thousand kilometers, or about 1250 km. Again, near enough.

The Size Of The Sun?

So, how big is the sun? Radius 9000, and the temperate regions are about 1/2 out, so distance 4500km. The sun goes up into the sky a certain height and then comes down again. (Why? Get to that later).

Advice:
Never be afraid to at least stick your nose down a rabbit hole, you never know when what you find will come in handy!

Angles. At the very edge of the hole, the sun would be virtually overhead. The further away from that center point, the greater the angle at the sun’s highest point.

Insert a stick in the ground, measure the angle at noon, and you would always know your longitude-equivalent.

So let’s look at some Trig.

Aysle Solar Trigonometry

I’ll work the problem using three different values for h and see what I get.

H = 4500 km:

tan (theta) = 1
Theta = 45°
tan (theta + omicron) = 2
Theta + Omicron = ~64°
Omicron = ~14°
d1 = 6364 km
d2 = 10062 km
100 x (d1/d2)^2 = 40%

h = 9000km

tan (theta) = 2
Theta = ~64°
tan (theta + omicron) = 4
Theta + Omicron = ~76°
Omicron = ~12°
d1 = 10062 km
d2 = 12728 km
100 x (d1/d2)^2 = 62.5%

h = 18 000km

tan (theta) = 4
Theta = ~76°
tan (theta + omicron) = 8
Theta + Omicron = ~82.8°
Omicron = ~8°
d1 = 18554 km
d2 = 20125 km
100 x (d1/d2)^2 = 96%

Those last numbers apply the inverse-square law to determine how much less light and heat the edge receives compared to the temperate zone.

So if I can determine how much less heat/light the earth gets at the arctic circle relative to the midpoint of the temperate zone, I can work backwards to get the actual height above the surface.

Terrestrial Solar Trig

First of all, the sun is so far away that we can forget the inverse-square law. The triangle at the bottom of the page makes that very clear – a one in 11772 squared difference is essentially no difference at all.

What matters on a globe is the angle of the sun to the normal of that point on the globe. The normal is always perpendicular to the tangent, so that’s the starting point. I’ll ignore axial tilt for a moment.

At the equator, the tangent is at 90° to the sun, and so the normal points straight at the sun – a perfect right angle and they get the maximum amount of sun that it’s possible to get.

At the poles, the tangent is on a plane that includes the sun (effectively), an angle of 0°. The normal is therefore at right angles to the sun.

So, ten degrees north of the equator , the tangent will have rotated 10°, and therefore so will the normal – from 90° to 80°.

The arctic circle is at latitude 66°34′ N – call it 66.5° for convenience – and the tropics start at latitude 23.5°N and extend to 23.5°S, so midway between them is latitude 45°.

When you look at the diagram below, that’s suddenly not as surprising.

But there is a lot going on here, so take your time and look it over carefully.

I’ve shown three tangents and their associated normals – which happen to align perfectly with the angle relative to the equator, which just happens to define latitudes. The three chosen are the equator, the Tropic Of Cancer, and the Arctic Circle.

The power of parallel lines makes it clear that the angles I’m interested in are the angles defined as the latitude. In fact, if I extend the tangents until they meet the equatorial normal, I get a right-angled triangle.

What we’re interested in is the length of the opposite side to the angle. I could have used tan or sin functions but tangent is more traditional.

Actually, what I really care about is the ratio of those lengths, because that (squared) gives the relative amount of sunlight and heat falling on a given area. I don’t actually care about X or Y, I care about the ratio of the two.

So, tropics: vs temperate: 23.5° & 45° respectively; tan(23.5)° = 0.4348; tan(45°)=1. The temperate zones get 43.48% as much heat and light as the tropics.

Arctic vs temperate: 63.5° & 45° respectively; tan(45) is still 1, tan(63.5°) = 2.0057, so the temperate regions get 2.0057 times as much heat and light as a spot on the Arctic circle.

(Actually I think those numbers should be squared – we’re talking area on the surface of a globe, it bends away in both directions, horizontally as well as vertically. So that’s 18.9% and 4.022 times, respectively.

The Earth’s Orbital Ellipse

There are an astonishing number of people who think that the reason we have seasons is because the Earth’s orbit is an ellipse, meaning at one end of it’s annual trip around the sun, it is closer to it.

The ratio between the long axis of an ellipse and the short axis gives the eccentricity of that ellipse (subtract the ratio from 1). The closer to 0, the closer to a circle the ellipse is.

The eccentricity of Earth’s orbit: 0.017. An ellipse twice as long as it is wide has an eccentricity of 0.5, which is to say it’s 29.4 times more extreme.

I’m not saying it would have no effect; just that it would be trivial.

The axial tilt

To anyone who knows anything of the Astronomical specifications of Earth, the number that has probably leapt out at you (if you didn’t know this already) is 23.5°.

This just happens to be the Axial Tilt of the earth’s rotation, and that has a big impact.

Let’s call the amount of sunlight received at the Spring and Autumn equinoxes, when both hemispheres receive the same, 1.

Then tan(23.5°) = 0.4348 – so, in winter, hemisphere 1 gets 43.48% as much heat and light; and in summer, they get 1/0.4348 = 2.3 times as much as our ‘standard’ unit. Or are those numbers squared, since we’re talking about areas and globes? I think so – giving 18.905% and 5.29 times, respectively.

Either way, that’s such a huge differential that it far more than swamps the pittance from orbital eccentricity.

Back To Aysle

But, at this point, I decided that I’d looked deeply enough down this rabbit hole; the h=9000 numbers weren’t perfect but they were close enough to the target that I didn’t want to spend any more time on the question.

It didn’t particularly matter what the actual numbers were, anyway; it was enough that there was a solution, one based on using the inverse-square law and a much smaller baseline instead of the angles of a globe. Time to move on.

Let’s Talk About Up and Down

Gravity, says the sourcebook, is always perpendicular to the plane of the world’s surface.

Okay, so we can assume that the sun is small enough that it has no significant gravitational effect.

Mass makes gravity. Aysle is about 1000km thick according to the sourcebook. That’s not enough to make a significant amount of gravity.

Let’s be generous: 9000km radius = an area of 254,469,005 square km. 1000 km thick = a volume of 254,469,005,000 cubic km. Volume of a sphere = 4 / 3 pi r^3, so this is the same volume as a sphere 3931.1121 km radius.

A cubic foot of rock weighs, on average,165.2 pounds. There are 3.531e+10 cubic feet in a cubic km, so our sphere would weigh 1,484,371,653,594,060,000,000,000 lb, which works out to 6.733e+20 tonnes.

Earth weighs 5.972e+21 tonnes, so this is 11.2743% of the earth’s mass.

Surface Gravity should therefore be 0.112743G.

To get anywhere close to 1G, something other than mass has to be making around 89% of the gravity.

Assuming it’s evenly distributed, that would be close enough to a vertical orientation – at worst, there might be a deviation of 7.24%, and that would be right at the outer rim. In the temperate zones, it would be half of that.

For that matter, it doesn’t actually need to be evenly distributed – it could be concentrated under the temperate areas, or where there are mountains.

What is it? Another question to get back to.

Why does the sun rise and fall?

Another gravity-related question, at first glance.

Except there isn’t enough gravity to make this happen quickly, i.e. on a daily basis. Unless, of course, whatever it is that’s supplementing gravity also acts on the sun, which – logically – it should.

But some seat-of-the-pants back-of-an-envelope calculations said that there were more problems. Either it all happened too quickly, by far, or the periods of “All Dark” would be excessively long..

On earth, the perception is that the sun tends to hang on for two-to-three hours at or near the zenith of it’s daily ascent into the heavens, having ascended at a more-or-less constant rate each hour and then falling in a similar fashion. In summer, both rates are slower but persist for longer – more sunlight hours are the result.

This is what I was aiming for:

It might not seem like much, but I was still concerned with the sun being so much smaller, and whether or not it would deliver enough energy to support a rich ecosphere. In a nutshell, I wanted lots of plant life which could feed lots of animal life which could make life interesting for the PCs.

Add that to the parameters of the “what makes Gravity” unresolved question, then. I need there to be progressively less Gravity as the day reaches its midpoint.

What stops all the water from falling down the hole?

Mountains, obviously – some sort of rim.

Not according to the sourcebook.

So, gravity can’t be uniformly perpendicular at all – strange things happen as you approach the hole, and gravity begins pulling you back toward the tropical regions. And the closer you get to the hole, the stronger this effect. In effect, even though the terrain is flat, the hole is always “uphill”.

This makes a lot more sense if the “Gravity-X” is from a layer in the middle rather than distributed throughout.

Under this arrangement, the oceans form a continuous band around the edges of the “hole”, perhaps a bit shallower because the gravity (both natural and from “substance X” is at it’s greatest at the exact mid-point of the disk.

What Makes Gravity if it isn’t mass? And, if it’s variable, with what does it vary?

So this stuff makes Gravity, i.e. adds extra mass, under some conditions yet to be identified, but that get triggered by the approach and passage of the sun. And it’s deep underground.

The sourcebook says that Dwarves and other races live underground, and that Dwarves are an inventive lot in this reality. Miners and Engineers and the like.

It would be inevitable that they would discover this material and its unique properties, and find some way to take advantage of it. And if that conferred some military advantage, they would impress upon their entire population the need to keep it a secret.

They would also name it. I settled on “Down”, a name that is entirely appropriate to something discovered in ancient times when words were simpler, and a name that would create a false impression if mention of it were ever to escape, since that is also the name for goose feathers and the like.

How does it work?

I felt I needed some explanation, even if it was entirely incorrect, that represented the best guess of the Dwarves as to how this stuff made additional mass.

The theory was that the mass is always there, but pointed in a direction that people don’t experience or perceive. Whatever causes the transition reorients the ‘spin’ of down-particles in the electron soup so that the sense of mass transitions into our world and not this other-world. Only when the Aether is properly polarized through the Down does the true mass (or part thereof) get felt.

This takes some of the basic ideas of quantum mechanics and mixes them up with early atomic models that were more-or-less appropriate for the technology of the era (blunderbusses and early black powder weapons) to assemble a Frankenstein’s Monster of semi-plausible theory.

(These days, I’m reminded of a couple of lines from one of Edding’s Books. One of the (supporting) characters has just offered up a rather specious theological argument, leading another to respond “You’re on very shaky ground” – or words to that effect – to which the reply is, “I know, that’s why you have to run so fast to get across it.”)

Even Distribution – Isn’t So Even

The surface of Aysle, like the surface of most worlds, isn’t smooth. It’s quite lumpy, in fact. Ordinarily, that variability is a tiny fraction of the horizontal distances involved, so the topology looks pretty flat when everything’s in scale, But Aysle is only 9000km in radius, and some of that is Hole.

What’s more, the notion that everything is Larger-Than-Life in a Heroic setting says that whatever Earth has, Aysle has more of, be it huge mountains or deep, deep ocean trenches. Those might just be enough to be visible even to scale.

Mount Everest rises to 8,848.86 m (29,031.7 ft) – that’s 8.85km. But that’s nothing. Olympus Mons on Mars is over 21.9 km (13.6 mi or 72,000 ft) high. And Mars is much smaller than Earth – 3,389.5 km vs 12713.82 km (7900 miles). Olympus Mons scaled to a globe the size of Earth would be 3.75 × 21.9 = 82.125 km. Now THAT’S a mountain to respect!

The Deepest part of the ocean is the Mariana Trench, which falls to a depth of 10,994m – call it 11km. Again, though, Mars has us beat hollow (once we scale it) – Melas Chasma is the deepest trench on the red planet, at 9km deep. Scaled to Earth Size, that’s 3.75 x 9 = 33.75 km.

Put the two together, and you get an altitude differential of 115.875 km (72.001 miles).

If the average thickness of Aysle is about 1000 km, as specified, that’s 11.6%. More than enough to show up at scale!

The Variability

There are only three things that would change with the approach of the sun. 1. More Heat; 2. More Light; 3. Tidal Stress. Which of these was going to be the factor that activated the increased gravity?

I was already using tidal stress to ‘rev up’ the sun, and I’d prefer not using that for two different things. Rule it out, at least temporarily.

I had problems seeing a 9,000 mile network of mineral veins of some kind carrying light, and it comes and goes so quickly – literally at the speed of light – that it seemed too abrupt a trigger. But I did lift the ‘veins of Crystal’ idea for lighting Dwarven communities – over much shorter distances.

That leaves heat, at least notionally. What clinched the deal was that I immediately saw how Dwarves would capitalize on Down to make themselves even more impressive – and recruitable (for a smallish fee, of course – not all Dwarves are Mercenary, some are merely Greedy. There are even a few altruistic black sheep!)

Mountains? Tectonic Activity?

Absolutely yes to both. “Down” needs to be a very efficient conductor of heat if it’s to serve it’s purpose of supplementing gravity all over the disk – perhaps slow to heat up in the first place but retaining it’s heat for some time. It would have to be better at channeling that heat along its veins than most metals – perhaps even a high-temperature superconductor (my players never figured that out, they could have made a fortune selling Down to the Cyberpapacy or Nippon Tech!)

The heat of the sun makes the oceans boil, close to the hole; that’s canon, from the sourcebook. That heats the land beneath the surface, which might also be molten as a result, which makes a LOT of gravity in the closest Down – which then dissipates that heat throughout the rest of the disk, like a giant heat-sink.

Many, many years ago, I visited an Aunt who had just had underfloor heating installed. This is the same idea, really.

Seasons? How

Right now, there’s nothing in place to generate seasons. Heck, there are only solar tides – and the effect of Down would tend to dampen those. Unless the sun also had a core of Down, perhaps.

I seriously considered whether or not to make Aysle a one-season-all-year-long environment, but decided against it for a couple of very good reasons.

Reasons To Have Seasons

First, seasonal variation is necessary to too many varieties of plant life. I wanted high biodiversity, and this seemed a retrograde step in the opposite direction of that.

Second, while the scale of the impact is debated in some circles, I was firmly convinced that the Day/Night – Lunar/Month – Seasons/Year cycles were absolutely essential to man’s intellectual development. Observing patterns and making rational deductions about the causes, and how to take advantage of the regularity of them, was one of the keys to development of civilization, in my view. With no moons, those cycles were already under stress in Aysle; take away the seasons and the plausibility became extremely doubtful.

Third, I was also still deeply concerned about the stability of the whole system. Any serous perturbation of the up-and-down solar orbit and eventually, the sun would hit the inside of the Hole. Something acting to create the seasons could be a stabilizing influence.

Fourth, a setting for Epic Fantasy Adventure demands an epic environment, and part of that is Winter on an Epic Scale. There’s too much fantasy iconography that demands a world covered in a mantle of white.

Fifth, the sourcebook talks about wobble. Okay, some sort of Wobble, if it’s regular enough, could cause seasons. But what causes the wobble, and why does it not destabilize the ‘orbital’ system?

And, finally, some sort of Wobble-and-season-inducing phenomenon could provide a supplemental addition to the list of places to Adventure.

Back to the previous question – How?

I eventually nutted out a solution in three parts, then added a fourth.

Uneven Distribution Of Down

Th first part lay in discarding an assumption that didn’t bear merit on closer examination – that Down was evenly distributed.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that on a tectonically-active world, it couldn’t be – some of it would have to melt (and promptly coalesce into a spherical blob of some kind. It would then be carried, along with the other volcanic matter, to the scene of an eventual eruption, where it would act to decrease lava flow, literally pulling it back into the mountain until sufficient pressure arose to overcome this additional resistance.

More Krakatoas, fewer Kalaueas (Hawaii); more Mt St Helens, less Grindavik (Iceland).
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The implication was that at the heart of every major mountain, there was probably a central mass of cold Down.

That’s important because it means Dwarves don’t have to deal with the hot, gravity-creating veins of Down, they can settle beneath the big mountains and mine away at it to their hearts content.

At the time, my initial thought was that this would attract one side to the sun’s passage more than the other, causing Aysle to tilt that side toward the sun.

But then I realized that the solar cycle was Daily but what was needed was slower and longer-term, and that the edges – where I was proposing this discontinuity of Down – were an awfully long way away on the Aysle scale of things..Perhaps too far to have any significant impact.

That led me to Solution Part 2.

The Dark Companion

I needed a planetary body of some sort that, twice a year, made a relatively close approach to the edges of the disk. On one of those passes, it would be closer to the Down Mass, and would drag at it, creating the ‘wobble; on the other pass, it would be on the far side of Aysle,

I tried calculating the orbit of one body circling another, the latter having variable gravity, but the math was beyond me. Intellectually, though, I could frame the general concept – less gravity means that the object’s path is not slowed as much as you expect, so it goes further out, and takes longer to return. More gravity means that it gets accelerated more as it approached and slows more as it departs.

The amount of wobble imparted would therefore vary on the time of day it made it’s closest approach to the Down-cluster, and so would the interval between passes. The seasons would have a natural variability in length, but over many decades or centuries, a pattern would start to emerge. In particular, the sun’s position relative to both would be critical.

Sometimes, the combination would lead to less wobble, even dampening down the wobble already present; that would lead to temperate and stable climatic conditions for the next year. On other occasions, it would increase the wobble, leading to more extreme seasonal variations.

There was no mention of such a body in the Aysle Sourcebook because the residents had no idea that it was present. That mandated that it be a dark, unreflective body. It would be most visible as it came toward another close approach, and most visible close to the edge with the Down cluster – but these are arctic conditions, and few if any live there to observe the phenomenon.

From time to time, it would occlude one of the few visible stars in the Aysle sky – 12 ringing the Horizon, rising and falling with Wobble, 5 more visible only from Upper Aysle, and four visible only from Lower Aysle – but that could be anything passing in front of the star, from a Dragon to a cloud.

Some years, Lower Aysle would receive more sunshine, other years it would be Upper Aysle; some years it would be both, and some, neither. There’s a regularity, an order in that list.

Meta-seasons In Aysle

Specifically, I thought the pattern would run:

1. Upper Aysle – good, Lower Aysle – bad
2. Upper Aysle – okay, Lower Aysle – better
3. Neither, but Upper Aysle better than Lower
4. One okay, the other bad OR one okay, the other good
5. One okay, the other better OR one so-so, the other good
6. Both – good
7. One okay, the other better OR one so-so, the other good (the opposite of 5)
8. One okay, the other bad OR one okay, the other good (the opposite of 4)
9. Neither
10. Upper Aysle – worsening, Lower Aysle okay
11. Upper Aysle – bad, Lower Aysle – worsening
12. Both Bad
13. Neither, but Upper Aysle worse than Lower
14. Upper Aysle – improving but still bad, Lower Aysle Bad

    …repeat.

Re-reading that list now, I’m not sure I still agree with it, or with the methodology behind it. It seems to be based on the combination of two cycles, one longer than the other, so that there are occasions when the two are both at low points (producing a ‘both bad’) and times when the two are both at high points (producing a both good).

Rating the weather from 1 to 4, one cycle would run:

4, 3.5, 3, 2, 1.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3 (10 entries)

…and the other would be

4, 3.5, 3, 2.5, 2, 1.5, 1, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5 (11 entries).

That would result in a 110-entry combined cycle – and there aren’t 110 entries on the earlier list!

In reality, of course, these would be the midpoints of a range, and the score would be out of 5, not 4. And that probably means that I can dismiss those “x.5” entries on the lists:

3-5, 2-4, 1-3, 1-3, 2-4, 3-5 (6 entries)

…and the other would be

3-5, 2-5, 1-3, 2-5, (4 entries).

…yielding a 24-year cycle of seasons but with enough variability to keep it from being noticeable until statistics could be compiled.

But the broader pattern – good years followed by worsening years followed by bad years followed by improving years – that would be noticeable. It’s just that any given year could be better or worse than expected – and sometimes that would only be noticeable in summer, sometimes in winter, and sometimes most of the year around.

Sounds just like the real world, doesn’t it?

The Inverse-Quad Law

I didn’t want Ayslish Philosophers to be able to deduce the existence of Down from simple observations. That would eventually put them on a path toward science and not reinforce a self-sustaining Fantasy model.

To muddy the waters, I casually wondered if Down might not obey an inverse-cube law instead of inverse-square. In other words, part of the gravity was on one curve with distance and the other was on a different curve – but you couldn’t measure the two independently, only the total of both at the same time.

The more I thought about the repercussions, the more I liked the notion. I then took the concept one step further: Down attracting Down obeys the Inverse-Cube law; Down attracting non-Down obeys an Inverse-Quad law.

That meant that the atmosphere would thin faster as you ascended, but the holds on flying creatures would also be greatly reduced, permitting larger creatures to fly (actually, it would be a combination of flying and gliding). I wanted my Dragons!

The notion of having three different relationships, and sometimes only two of them being relevant, and all that you could measure was the compound effect? Good luck on figuring that out, which was the primary purpose.

Reinforcing The Premise: Origins of the Dark Companion

It was when I realized that the Dark Companion could have deposits of Down that were only active when tidal stress was at a maximum (i.e. close passage to Aysle) that I realized that this would both amplify the Wobble and act to keep the orbital patterns synchronized that this became the third piece in the puzzle of the seasons and where they came from.

The final nail in the assembly was realizing what the Dark Companion actually was: The material removed from the Hole to permit passage of the sun.

That meant that one one side of Aysle, there would have been mountains at the hole, but that they had broken down over the years. The oceans are boiling in that area, remember – who would have been around to witness their existence?

Part the fourth: The Bright Companion

It bothered me a lot that Aysle had no moons. Not only for the lessons in regularity that a moon provides, stirring the intellect of inhabitants from, but for the generation of tides, and for the sheer romance that it’s capable of bringing to society.

A bigger, brighter, planetary body ticked all of those boxes. No Down involved, so it could be made bigger to scale lunar and solar tides accordingly, and in a 30-day cycle that ‘just happened’ to mesh perfectly with the orbital ballet.

Dwarves are an inventive lot

If you were a Dwarf who had discovered Down and the basics of what it did, how would you harness it? I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons I fell in love with the idea was because a couple of ‘industrial’ applications came to mind almost immediately.

The Dwarvish Railroad Network

If you’re mining and constructing tunnels anyway, you’d put down some ore-cart tracks. If you then attach a lump of Down to a cradle at the front of the contraption and a clamp to hold a torch, the cart always runs downhill, even when climbing a slope.

Want to go faster? Throw some accelerant on the torch. Want to slow down or stop? Another piece of Down at the back (and the judicious application of a hand-held torch) – or a strong Dwarf with a pair of tongs picking up the Down and transferring it to a second cradle at the rear.

Expanding on that principle gave rise to the Dwarvish Underground Railroad (I love a good play on words!) These high-speed intercontinental (because the earth runs under the seas as well) transit systems would make it possible for a Dwarf – or a Dwarven Army – to be anywhere on Aysle in a couple of days.

Mobility at this level is a BIG military advantage. The secret could be preserved by telling surface dwellers that the army had run all day and all night for (several) days in a row to get there, but were all still as fresh as daisies after a nice afternoon kip. The myth of Dwarven Stamina is born – simultaneously marking these as Different from the Dwarves of other fantasy games and yet (superficially) bringing them closer to the Fantasy Cliche.

I couldn’t see the Dwarves being able to use this network for Cargo, not without risking the secret – but they would also use it to enable themselves to scrupulously adhere to delivery dates.

So overland haulage and vessel-based shipping were protected from the effects of this alternative, preserving some of the social flavor that the world should have. Done deal, right?

Dwarven Engines

Make a wheel out of metal and attach it to a hub via a metal axle. Spaced regularly around the edges are cages that hold pieces of Down. A strategically-placed torch heats one piece of Down at a time as the wheel turns. An additional piece of down is located at the base of the device with a source of heat, probably a liquid of some kind.

The Down on the wheel on the side that is getting heated attracts the down in the plate at the bottom much more strongly :

The Heated Down at the base of the platform attracts the heated Down on the right side of the engine MUCH more strongly than the cooling Down on the left and top. This forces the wheel to rotate, bringing another piece of Down into the heating range. It’s a basic variation on the water wheel. Put the whole thing in a box (with apertures for lighting/refueling the flames) and you have a Basic Dwarven Engine.

Attaching anything you like to the other side of the axle translates heat and gravity into mechanical work, enough to drive a borer, or a water-pump, or an air ventilation system – or a powered vehicle like a tank or horseless carriage (once you have the idea).

Dwarves never sell Dwarven Engines, but they will hire them out, with appropriately-skilled workforce, for whatever purpose someone will pay for. They are a “black box” to the rest of society, with the wheel turning as if by magic All work performed by Dwarven Engines is carried out under the strictest security – only Dwarves permitted on-site, armed guards, etc. They contract to do a job on an impossible schedule, then deliver on that promise – no questions asked means no lies told.

Occasionally they will be asked “how” anyway; the standard response is to flex their muscles and announce “Dwarven Engines”, implying manual labor at a frenetic pace that only a Dwarf could sustain.

Dwarves use them for everything from quarrying to stamping out “standard bricks”. Small ones drive rotisseries for the cooking of food on a spit.

Note that most of the Dwarven Population don’t know how they work, either. If anyone asks, they are told “Goose Magic!” with a laugh.

There’s one further refinement to the various “Goose” stories told by the Dwarves in more modern times – it’s become an in-joke to refer to the engines as “The Geese That Lay The Golden Eggs”.

Weather & Climatology

The oceans near the hole are usually boiling; late at night, they may be reduced to steaming. This pushes moist, wet air toward the tropical regions, where much of it falls as torrential rain. Local geography plays a key part in directing these air masses; some tall, narrow canyons can accelerate them to hurricane force.

The temperature in the tropical regions isn’t enough to make the oceans boil, but they still drive evaporation, which becomes rain and occasionally snow in the temperate regions, especially at Altitude. Weather just like Europe’s basically.

Not a lot of moisture makes to the Icy regions outward of the temperate zones, but what there is will typically fall as snow, sometimes even in summertime.

Past those regions lies the frigid outer rim. Sleet and snow are the best that can be hoped for in these regions, but the temperatures are such that what falls there tends to stay there, frozen, for quite a long time, building up into great icy mountains.

But there’s little Down in the Arctic regions, and a lot of tidal stresses from both the Bright Companion and its unsuspected dark brother. This occasionally causes whole mountainsides of ice to break off and drift inward, propelled by ocean currents deriving from the same source as the winds before being turned aside and forced back on themselves by the ice wall before them.

As these return currents approach warmer waters, they are forced under the surface layers, often losing cohesion in the process. Deep sea fishermen in the regions know, the current deep below can flow in any direction, and if you don’t like the one you’ve got, another lies just a few hundred meters away.

Stability concerns

I was still deeply concerned about the stability of the whole system; if you’re rotating, conservation of angular momentum helps keep you oriented and stable; without that, the slightest error could accumulate until it becomes overwhelming.

This bothered me for quite a long time, until I realized that when the sourcebook explained that Aysle was not rotating, and explained how the locals knew that, what they were saying didn’t happen was rotation relative to the stars. But if those stars were also rotating, along approximately the same axis, with virtually the same angular speed as Aysle, everything would match up.

Of course, assuming that the speed of light was still a traffic cop on reality, there would be a limit to the speed of that rotation. But it didn’t have to be a complete revolution in 24 hours; not if the stars were keeping pace.

How Big is The Universe?

So, 17 visible stars. Let’s assume that’s all there are, because that gives me something to work from.

Going to Wikipedia’s list of the 50 nearest stars, sort them by distance, and count down to the 17th that’s visible to the naked eye, it’s distance gives a preliminary scale to the universe. Everything else should flow from that.

Well, the star in question is 82 G Eridani (often simply referred to as 82 Eridani), assuming that Binaries and Trinaries count as just one visible object. It’s 19.7 light years away.

The absolute fastest that this star can be moving is the speed of light, according to the assumptions made so far.

19.7 light year radius gives circumference 2 × pi × r =
123.78 light years = 1.171049 e+18 meters.

t = dist / speed. Speed of light = 299 792 458 m/s.
1.171049 e+18 / 299 792 458 =
3906199001 seconds =
45210.636 days =
123.78 years.

There are 360° in a circle, so that’s 2.908386° per year.

So, that’s how far 82 Eridani gets around its hypothetical orbit in a year at most.

Now, to convert that into a value for Aysle, if it’s rotating to keep pace, i.e. to hold the most distant star in position:

r = 9000 km
Circumference = 56548.66765 km
Divide by 360 gives 157.08 km/°.

2.908386° in a year =
456.8482 km in a year =
1.2508 km in a day =
0.052116 km/h =
5.2116 meters per hour.

That…doesn’t sound anywhere near fast enough.

I could try scaling to “Aysle-size” – 9000 km / 12713.82 km (the radius of earth) = a x0.7079 factor. That doesn’t seem like it would make enough of a difference.

The problem here is that distance of 19.7 light years.

Perhaps if we scaled it to Aysle’s Sun?

How big is the sun?

Well, the hole is 21 617 km diameter, according to what we worked out earlier.

In the illustrations that I’ve shown, the sun has been about 1/3 of this, so that there’s a full solar radius margin to each side during passage.

That’s a diameter of 7 205.67 km, a radius of 3602.8 km.

But I’ve also got it stretching as much as 50% wider as it passes through the hole, so it’s true radius should be that divided by 150%: 2401.9 km.

Solar Scaling

Sol is 695,700 km in radius. My source didn’t say so, but I know that the Sun is somewhat flattened by its rotation, so I’m assuming that this is the longer radius, the one that aligns with the solar equator and the plane of the ecliptic.

695,700 km / 2401.9 km = 1 / 289.6457.

19.7 light years / 289.6457 = 0.06801 light years
= 4301.02565 AU.

Circumference = 27024 AU = 4.04273 e+12 km.

1000 × 4.04273 e+12 / 2997927458 m/s =
1,348,508 seconds =
374.6 hours =
15.608 days.

4.04273 e+12 km / 360° = 112298 km/degree.

360 / 15.608 days = 23.065° per day =
2990164 km per day.

Bringing that down to Aysle-scale:

Circumference = 56548.66765 km = 360°
1° = 157.08 km, as calculated earlier.
So 23.065° = 23.065 × 157.08 = 3623.0502 km in a day.
= 151 km/hr.

It still takes Aysle 15.608 days to do a full rotation., or longer. As with some of the earlier calculations, I don’t care about the actual numbers; I just want some sort of guideline to follow that shows there is a viable solution.

And 151 km/h? That’s a veritable crawl at Astronomical speeds. I’m not sure that’s even fast enough to create the orbital stability that I was looking for.

Earth has a radius of 12713.82 km. That’s a circumference of 79883.3 km. A point on the equator travels that far in 24 hours – a speed of 3328.47 km / h, not some paltry 151 km/h.

So, I either pluck a number of my hat, or I keep the speed of light as a fundamental limit in Aysle.

Aysle is slightly smaller than Earth – that’s that x0.7079 mentioned earlier. So, applying that to 3328.47 gives 2356.2 km/h as a reasonable equivalent. Call it 2500 km/h.

Gyroscopes spin tens of thousands of times a second or more. Even scaling one up from (say) 9 mm to 9000 km – a 1e+10 conversion – that gives 0.000002 revolutions a second, or 0.1728 revolutions in a day, or 5.8 days a revolution or more. And that’s at a mere 20,000 RPS Divide that number of days by 2.5 to get 50,000 RPS.

Tearing Us Apart, Again

The other question that I had – and I didn’t calculate it at the time – was whether or not the disk itself was strong enough to stand up to all this action. Orbiting at a reasonable speed is one thing, but this is a solid disk.

I suspect that this might be why the designers chose not to have the disk spin in the first place.

If I want to keep the stability of a spinning system, even if that motion is more or less transparent to the inhabitants* (* I’ll get back to this in a moment), then I’ll need a solution to this (assumed) problem.

A second assumed material

The obvious solution is to lace the ‘bones’ of the world with another super-strong material. Some equivalent to D&D’s Adamantine, or Marvel’s Adamantium. I wouldn’t necessarily need a lot of it – the exact quantity would depend on how fast the disk was actually rotating and how strong the material is.

At that point, a number of only marginally-related thoughts began colliding.

• We’ve got ‘veins’ of Down, surely this is ‘Sinew’.
• Muscle fibers are soft and weak until they suddenly aren’t, when they can become rigid and strong enough to break bone.
• Maybe this stuff gets its strength by shunting the strain into the same ‘other place’ that Down hides its extra mass?
• Where exactly is that, anyway?
• What’s the stuff called?

By the time I had sorted all these thoughts, I had a clear concept in mind that addressed all of these questions except the last. As a placeholder, I started calling it “Permiance”, and that name slowly stuck – even though I still don’t consider it perfect as a choice.

Permiance

Permiance runs throughout Aysle, long strands of sinew knotted and woven like spiderweb as thick as a Dwarven Torso. It has the property of binding itself to the rock and earth through which it passes, and in particular it has an affinity for Down. Together, the two constitute a glue that binds the disk of Aysle together despite the forces pulling it apart.

It seems to grow of its own accord; place an off-cut in an unprotected volume of rock or earth and it will double in length every 8-12 weeks.

Permanence is relatively soft and malleable, of similar strength to copper wires 5-15mm in diameter, at least until it is placed under stress or strain, when it becomes harder and stronger than the best steel.

The cobwebby properties continually raise speculation about a spider, or nest of spiders, somewhere that actually spin Permanence as a way of anchoring their nest to this reality. No such spider or nest has ever been found.

This, and all related theories, are commonly referred to as “Spiderealm Speculation”. In terms of workable theories, they account for the known properties of Permiance, but not one word of it has ever been proven.

Dwarves are a clever lot, II

Permanence can be removed, one strand at a time, and alloyed with other materials. It seems to imbue those materials with some of its durability, acting to remedy whatever is weakest about the partner material.

Alloyed with gold, silver, or platinum, it produces a variety of same that is brighter in color and as strong as steel. These are known as Gildenfoil, Moonshadow, and Britinum, respectively.

Alloyed with brass, it counters the notable brittleness of that material, restoring to it some of the ductility of the base copper – enough that it can be readily hammered and worked, transformed into thin sheets and panels. These seem to weigh about 3 times what they should, so they tend to be made surprisingly thin, and are frequently employed as a protective coating on armor, shields, and some weapons.

Alloyed with steel, it enhances the strength of the material to create the hardest metal known – but this comes at the price of mass; Ultradium weighs five times the sum of its constituent parts. Armor constructed purely from it has a bluish sheen and looks very impressive, but is usually too heavy to be worn; instead, it is used sparingly as a structural reinforcement. Because of its great strength, less is needed than might be expected, and these reinforcements can be comparatively small and subtle.

Craftsmen working on the latter frequently work with designers to make the reinforcements appear decorative vanities or finery for show rather than the essential component of the net protection offered that they seem to be.

Elves aren’t stupid, either

Elves, on the other hand, also have access (somehow – another state secret) to Permiance, which they name Lumiance. Their craftsmen alloy it with Mercury and precious metals to make various exotic materials.

In general, they focus on mobility, speed, resilience, and lightness rather than outright physical toughness. As a general rule, they do not give the results different names in the human tongue, simply referring to them as “Elven this” or “Elven that”.

Since they refuse to teach their native tongue to outsiders, what they name these things amongst themselves is unknown.

They have also been known to infuse it into the bodies of their domestic creatures, where it enhances power, strength, resilience, stamina, size, and intellect.

Speculation that they have also incorporated it into themselves is given short shrift.

Weather, again

Weather records would actually reveal the rotation. Clouds wouldn’t move straight out from the hole to the rim (if you ignore local wind direction changes), they would appear to follow a spiral pattern.

The reality is that they ARE moving more-or-less straight from hole to rim, but the ground is rotating underneath them.

But it would take a long time to actually realize this, because local winds would dominate the weather patterns; we don’t see much such action on Earth as clouds move from equator, north or south. Instead, local “curling” of the clouds produces self-contained Hurricane systems – and Aysle would therefore have those, too.

How did you get from one side to the other?

We’re slowly cutting through that long list of questions posed at the start of this article.

There are three ways to get from one side of Aysle to the other.

Through The Frozen Wastes

The first is to undertake the perilous journey through the frozen wastelands of the rim; some crevasses and fissures permit passage from one side to the other around the edge of the rim itself.

Because the Dwarves keep secret the existence of their underground subways, this is the only way in which bulk goods can transit.

Despite superficial permanence, the details of this landscape are perpetually changing, and there are no passages that are certain to be open. Every such expedition is a journey of exploration.

Through the boiling seas

How far can a sailing ship get in a few hours – against the wind? Aysle is about 1000 km thick, which means that traversing the boiling seas is a journey of 1570 km, plus the 2000 km or so of boiling seas not actually on the rim, just close to it.

3570 km is a LONG way by ship. There’s nowhere to stop and replenish supplies.

Conditions would be at their worst at the midpoint, at Noon. The diagram above depicts this situation and shows that the solar surface would be just 5404 km away.

After I had rough-sketched it, I got curious; just how much of the sky would be filled with the sun?

Well, assuming that it stayed as wide as usual – almost certainly a false assumption – then the sun is about 7000 km wide, and the near side of the ellipse is 5404 km away. However, as you can see from the diagram, aiming for that ‘widest point’ actually gives a slightly smaller value than would truly be the case – there’s a little solar bulge outside those lines. Never mind, assume that this cancels out the error from the earlier assumption.

The circumference of a circle 5404 km in radius, halved, defines the horizon. 2 ×nbsp;pinbsp;×nbsp;r = 33954 km; half of that is 16977 km. 7000 is 41.23% of 16977.

Now that’s a linear measure, not a percentage of the area. I suspect that the correct approach would have been to convert the 7000 km to a radius and get an area, and compare it to the hemispherical surface area, and that squaring the decimal form of 41.23 would be closer to the mark. That yields an estimate of 17% of the sky being sun.

Either way, that’s a lot. Simply being unprotected from the heat would be lethal, one suspects.

Going from ‘day side’ to ‘night side’, the winds would be constantly at your back. You might be able to make 25 or 26 knots* – but the sun’s chasing you a lot faster than that, and as soon as it is overhead, the situation reverses and you face a headwind.

(* speed estimated from memories of the faster speeds in Sid Meyer’s Pirates because all my references are packed away).

25 knots is about 46 km/h. 26 gets you up to 48 km/h. Let’s assume a top speed of 50 km/h. Starting at noon on the side you are departing, you’ll get maybe 8 hours travel before the sun next traverses the hole – 500 km.

That’s 1 / 7.14 of the total distance to cover, or about 14%.

Then you drop anchor and wait for the winds to again be at your back.

Actually, you could probably start a couple of hours before noon, and get an extra 100 km behind you. That’s enough to get you up to 16.8% of the journey in a day.

Six days of hell gets you through to the tropical regions on the far side. A journey not for the faint-hearted.

The Third Method

Option #3 is to contract for passage through the Dwarven Realm. You can expect to be blindfolded and hooded for most of the trip. And probably led on a circuitous route that keeps you well away from anything the Dwarves consider ‘sensitive’ – like Down and Permiance. In a sealed room, at the end of each “day’s” travel, you could unmask and partake of food and refreshment.

It would be a fairly unpleasant trip, probably taking more than 2 weeks, because walking blindfolded and hooded tends to be relatively slow, even with guides to assist.

Conclusion: there ARE no easy ways to get from one side to the other.

Sailing ships – Trade Routes? Favorable Winds?

This is the last of those big questions and brings to an end the conceptual phase of the world creation, a good place to end this article.

Trade winds are, by definition, strong, favorable winds that are reasonably reliable. As a general rule, they oppose the direction of motion of the planetary body because that means that the winds take advantage of that rotation to appear stronger (Clouds and winds never keep pace with the rotation of the planet).

If Upper Aysle rotates clockwise, then trade winds will be anticlockwise relative to the Hole. If it rotates the other way, then clockwise will be the meal-ticket.

Anything more specific than that gets very complicated very fast. Quite frankly, I’d use that truism and generate trade winds wherever I wanted them.

And I did.

Aysle – a realm re-imagined

While the end result bears a superficial resemblance to what’s in the sourcebook, and only contradicts it in places where it won’t show to the casual resident, it is worth appreciating the Sourcebook devotes all of 26 column inches to all of the above – a total of less than a page – plus 3½ pages of maps and diagrams.

This article is around 10K words, about 18 pages of text and 14 diagrams / illustrations, probably adding another 2-3 pages to the total. That much additional content amounts to a complete reinvention, I think.

Because it’s been designed for use prior to the shared-reality universe coming into existence, it functions as a stand-alone adventure location. At the very least, it should make an interesting place to visit!

I also want to emphasize that anything the Dwarves regarded as “Secret” was NOT told to the players in initial briefings; it got ‘discovered’ during play, as revealing the secret was considered less evil (By the Dwarves) than letting events continue to unfold unimpeded. As GMs, you get let in on the magic ‘behind the curtain’.

In the next part of this series, I’ll start on the politics and geography.

But next week, I might start transcribing my even-more-complete rewrite of Orrorsh, the Horror Realm, just for something completely different.

If I’m in a position to post anything at all, that is!

Christmas Day falls on a Monday this year – today, in fact! – and so I’m preparing this in advance, in effect doing on Sunday what I would normally do Monday, which means doing on Saturday what I would normally do Sunday, and so on. AND posting a day early as a Christmas Bonus to readers!

Let me start by wishing everyone reading this a safe and happy holiday period, all the very best to you all!

Okay, with that out of the way…. I was trying to think of a fairly quick and easy topic that would still be of interest while doing things for other campaigns (especially the adventurer’s club, where a backlog of work-to-be-done has built up).

If all that work were complete, My co-GM and I would have adventures ready to run throughout 2024 – except that we recently realized that next year is the Campaign’s 20th anniversary, and are trying to think of something special to mark the occasion.

One of the tasks involved taking some AI-generated art (no, I’m not going to show it here) and putting frames around them. And so a topic was born…

There’s enough connection between this subject and the valuation of artwork that I’m attaching this to the ongoing series dealing with the value of treasures – The Value Of Material Things (series)

…but it’s also fair to say that it connects with the various image editing articles that have been published here, most notably the (still incomplete) Image Compositing for RPGs series..

Baseline

Let’s start with an image – one that’s not AI-generated, for those sensitive to such things, and one free of usage restrictions.

Straight off the Pixabay front page (the current one, it’s generated dynamically and changes all the time, we have this:

A lovely view of a valley, some mountains, clouds, there’s a road – this might get used in all sorts of campaigns.

Variation #1

For example, I might change the vegetation color to a red and use this in a sci-fi campaign for a Barsoom-like world:

Variation #2

Or I could turn it into an oil painting:

But, to be really convincing an oil painting, it needs to be put into a frame.

So let’s talk about frames, and their usage.

Frames

On the internet, for use in web design, there are all sorts of things that are called frames or that are used as frames.

They are used to visually isolate images so that they stand out from the text.

Here’s a lovely example (I’ve added a black background so that contrast makes it really pop, follow the first link to download your own copy if you want to use it!):

Border Frame Usage 1

If I apply that over the top of our mountains, I get:

Notice how the mountain project above and beyond the frame? To fix that, I have a couple of options, and can use them either separately or in combination.

The first is to further reduce the size of the mountain image (or increase the size of the frame, creating ‘negative space’ around the image.

The second is to crop the offending parts of the mountain image.

The third is to go to a lot of trouble removing the horizontal and vertical bars, lengthening them appropriately, then putting everything back together.

Border Frame Usage 2

In this case, a combination of (1) and (2) seems appropriate, and this is the result:

Border Frame Usage 3

Here at campaign mastery, I don’t want anything covering important illustration content, so I use a simple black border as a frame around images, normally 2 pixels wide:

A serious frame

But, in any event, those aren’t the sort of frames I’m talking about. I meant something more like this:

But before I delve into the processes and some tricks and techniques, there are a couple of important questions to discuss.

Why use a frame?

The frame becomes part of the image, making it not just an illustration of something, but an illustration of an illustration of something.

Pictures don’t get frame by accident. Frames are usually cheap relative to the image they contain (especially if we’re talking about a painting), but they aren’t cheap. In the real world, they are meant to protect the object/image that has been framed.

Frames say that the picture/object is/was important to the person who framed it. So that means that the image tells you something, possibly many things, about that person, without the GM uttering a word.

Choice Of Frame

Even more importantly, the style of frame changes the overall perception of the image. Sometimes subtly, sometimes with great gusto and enthusiasm.

It creates a subtext around the image, an additional layer of information.

For example, if you were to put the mountain image into something that resembled a movie frame, you tell a completely different story to the one created by a wooden frame.

More exotic frames

Ragged edges that create gaps and cracks in an image also create a very different subtext, especially if you combine it with a bit of age.

There are a few other exotic-frame tricks as well.

Everyone knows that images are rectangular, for example, so putting an image into a round frame of some sort means that parts of the content have been thrown away.

Again, it’s all about focus and subtext.

Round Frame Example #1

If I use a round frame like the one below and drop our mountain into it, it creates an immediate impression, even if you weren’t paying attention to the frame at all. (I’ve also put some shading into the background).

A couple of points to observe before I move on:

1. Wow, a complete change of focus. The Valley has gone. The road has gone. It’s all about the mountain now.
2. If you look closely you’ll see a subtle little drop shadow over the mountain image on the top right side of the round frame. This helps connect the two.

Round Frame Example #2

If I were to use an entirely different frame, and put something else into the background around the frame, I get an entirely different context and result:

Observe the difference it makes if I use a different background:

Or simply change the color of the background:

The Real Problem with round frames

The real problem with round frames is that it’s a pain somewhere sensitive trying to change the thickness of the frame. It can sometimes be done – and it’s easier with a wooden frame than with something hinting at high tech – but it’s still a colossal pain to try and do.

The Visual Psychology Of Frames

Frames also delineate the perceived edge of an image, separating it from whatever else is there. You can, in this way, turn the image into a location in which the visual of the image is preserved, effectively moving it in time and space and linking the two locations together.

The thicker the frame, the stronger this barrier and the greater the separation between content and surroundings.

Frames help you isolate and concentrate on the image.

When Not To Frame

When an image is supposed to be in some NPCs possession and it’s the sort of thing (like a painting, a portrait, or a family photo) that should be framed, go for it.

When it’s something you’re just showing the players – a landscape, a building, or whatever, or simply showing them who they are talking to, absolutely not.

I’d even go further – even when these points make it clear that it’s possible that an image will be framed, your display only has a limited screen size; inevitably, whacking a frame around an image reduces the amount of screen real estate that can be devoted to actually showing the image.

If there is useful or important information that can be conveyed by the frame, then that price may be justified. Only then would I contemplate actually adding a frame.

There’s one exception to that rule – where I have an image of a location and, for plot or character purposes, I need to insert a picture into the location (a picture on a wall), then if that picture would logically be framed, a frame is justified.

It’s not something that you do all the time. Nuh-uh, no way.

Blindly adding in frames means blindly adding in subtext that might not match up. You can destroy the credibility of an image with that sort of contradiction – in which case, why bother showing the image in the first place?

Be very selective – about when to use a frame and what frame to use.

Beyond The Image You See

Because a frame has to hold a painting or print securely, the canvas normally extends beyond the part that is visible. It has margins, and there can be all sorts of interesting stuff in those margins (if you’re into art history, at least). Shopping lists, phone numbers, remnants of an earlier version of the painting, color experiments, you name it. Frames can conceal a multitude of sins.

To demonstrate this, I’ve taken our mountains image, generated a slightly different oil-paint version of it, and “extended the canvas” to show what might be hidden beneath the frame (and addded a little canvas ‘texture’ as well). The part of the image that’s normally visible is indicated by a dashed white line.

• On the left hand side, at the top, we have some paint being mixed – blue and gray and red and white – but the resulting colors were never used, either being painted over or simply rejected.
• Below that there are a number of color experiments with browns which didn’t work out, either, though some of the green has a significant brown content, so it might exist as an undercoat.
• Along the bottom of the frame, there’s a hint that the painter was thinking about a slightly taller work – there’s more of the valley, and the beginnings of a forest approaching the road. Some of these trees might well have been close enough to the foreground to show individual trunks and branches, which may go some way to explaining the brown experiments, and may also explain why this part was abandoned.
• To the right of that, the painting actually does extend a bit beyond the visible image, but there’s also some bare canvas showing
• The landscape also extends to the right, and some of this is more detailed.
• Unfortunately, it’s marred by a scrawled reminder to himself by the artist – “Call DON”, with “Don” underlined.
• Above this there’s a little more bare canvas showing and then we discover that the brighter blue path of sky in the top-right corner actually conceals a coffee-stain, the remnants of which are still visible!
• Across the top, and going from right-to-left so that we end up where we started, there’s more plain canvas and then a suggestion of a much darker sky. The color evidently wasn’t quite right, but with a bit more blue added, you get the color of the more distant mountains.
• Finally, across some mostly bare canvas, we have a note, “127.65”. Is it a measurement? A bill to be paid? An amount owing? We may never know.

Anatomy Of A Frame

It can be helpful to understand just what’s IN a frame. They are more complicated (and interesting) than they look!

I threw this diagram together fairly quickly, so it’s not perfect, but it will do the job.

(a) is our picture, with the bits that you normally don’t get to see.

The canvas is stretched over a simple frame, (b) and usually held in place by glue and tacks or staples. This frame, and the back of the canvas, are other places to look for hidden secrets.

Together, (a) and (b) are considered ‘the painting’.

(c) is the first part of the frame itself; a frame cut to size such that the frame over which the canvas has been stretched will just fit inside it. Nails or screws are used to secure the two together.

(d) is another frame that goes outside (c). Notice that it’s somewhat thicker wood. The front of it gets cut away to create a ‘shelf” on which a pane of glass (also labeled ‘d’) rests. The thickness can be anything from a couple of mm to a quarter-of-an-inch.

Older paintings tend toward the middle of the range or the larger end of the scale, at least at the lower end of the value scale. More valuable works tend to have thinner glass – not because they need less protection so much as because high-quality glass was thinner and a lot more expensive. In some cases, there have even been multiple panes of glass used, sometimes glued together at the edges (where the frame will hide the evidence).

It’s not desirable to have the glass actually touch the painting at any point.

(e) is the part of the frame that we all get to see. It is attached to the glass-bearing frame (d) by more nails/screws.

And, finally, (f) is a back-board that conceals all this internal work and makes the frame and picture appear to be one solid whole.

It also provides a flat surface onto which various pieces of paperwork can be glued.

Provenience

At it’s simplest, Provenience (often spelt “Provenance’ in English but always pronounced in the French manner) is proof of artist identity. If the Provenience doesn’t stack up, the painting could be real or it could be a forgery.

Frames, and those pieces of paperwork that I mentioned, connect the painting to a paper-trail that can conclusively establish Provenience, can contribute vital clues towards establishing Provenience, or that can offer no more than tantalizing hints.

Ideally, you want to be able to trace the line of ownership from the artist’s hand all the way to the current owners, showing everyone who has had possession of the painting in between. That can include museums, auction houses, public displays, private owners, art dealers, and so on.

In theory, each and every one of those connections is represented in some way by one of those pieces of paper, but it’s often – even usually – not the case.

Instead, you’ll find part of the paper-trail here and part there, and part somewhere else. Sometimes, a code written in pencil is the critical link to an auction catalog, which lists the person putting the piece up for sale and the buyer, which connects to another document or photograph showing the painting in their possession, and where they got it from, which connects to another piece of paper on the frame, and so on.

Being able to show that the purchaser and the piece purchased were in the same place at the same time as the alleged transfer of ownership is always a solid piece of evidence of very little at all – but not being able to prove that can cast doubts as to the authenticity over much stronger evidence.

There’s a lot more to the whole fascinating subject, but that covers the connection between a frame and Provenience, so let’s move on.

Other Differences between older and newer frames

Older frames tend to be bigger and, well “chunkier”. They were sometimes more ornate, richly decorated, and valuable in their own right if they incorporated gems or complex inlays of woods or precious metals.

More modern frames tend a lot more towards elegance and simplicity, and a number of them aim to display as much of a painting as possible, i.e. covering up as little as possible..

The style of a frame can connect an image to the time or place it was framed, which can be another vital clue in Provenience.

Cut-downs

When a painting is re-framed, especially in a more modern or smaller frame, it sometimes happens that the canvas is removed from its frame, trimmed, and then attached to a new and smaller frame.

Frames don’t last forever, and the cause of such re-framing can be wear-and-tear on the frame, but it was usually to remove some flaw in the painting – a tear or a hole or water damage or a burn mark.

Modern paint restoration can work wonders that were not possible in the past; as a result, this practice has largely become unfashionable, but it was more common in times past.

This can greatly complicate Provenience, as you can imagine.

Because paintings can be re-framed at any time, part of the history can be lost, though the best at this specialized craft will usually do their best to salvage what they can, even to the point of attaching parts of the old backing board (still intact) to the new.

Back to the square frame

If I simply drop the mountain in behind the square frame, I get a familiar problem:

But this time I can use a different solution and rotate the frame 90 degrees so that it matches the orientation of the mountains image:

This is better, but still not perfect.

To really get the image to fit the frame without cropping the image,, I need to edit the frame.

Problem 1: Frame is too large

This is a practical example of the first in a series of potential problems.

The solution (given the nominated caveat, keeping the picture intact) are fussy but simple. I’ve captured every single step in the process (as it’s done with my image editor, the free Krita software) in tedious detail. It means that a job that should have taken 2-3 minutes has taken over an hour!

Step 1

Using my rectangular selection tool, I select the top of the frame plus a bit of the sides.



Step 2

Making sure that I have chosen the layer with the frame, I cut (usually CTRL-X) it away.



Step 3

…and then past it into a new layer.



Because the result is indistinguishable from what I had back in step 1, here’s a version where I’ve resized the canvas and moved the pasted section up the screen to show you.

Step 4

If you zoom right in, you’ll find that there’s a shadow element just inside the picture frame that’s varying degrees of transparent.



Since I know from past experience that this is going to be a problem, but is a definite asset to the overall composition – I have to put one in myself if there isn’t one provided – preparing to deal with this is the next step.

Again using the rectangular selection tool, I very carefully select just the “shadow” part of the top section of the frame, cut it, and paste it into a layer just below the layer with the top part of the frame.

Once again, here’s an “exploded” view because otherwise it would be visually indistinguishable:



Step 5

The lower right corner of the screen is where my layers controls and also brush selection live, in this software.

I very carefully select the mountain image layer:

…then go to the extreme top left and move the layer perfectly into place in the top of the frame.



Step 6

When I was capturing the screenshot, above, I noticed an oddness to the shape of the frame – it wasn’t a perfectly straight line, and it should have been. At some point, I must have nudged the top-of-frame layer one pixel to the left.

To confirm that, I went to the other side of the frame (right side) and checked. Sure enough:



When you notice something like this, you have to fix it immediately – you have only so many ‘undo’ steps to use as a last resort, and doing anything else will not only eat into that resource, but will be all the more work that you then have to re-do if you’ve had to use the ‘undo’ option.

‘b’ and ‘c’ show the problem most clearly, but if you observe ‘a’, you can see that the same problem also afflicts the shadow layer created in step 4 (it probably happened, in this case, when I was creating the ‘exploded views’, but it can happen anytime).

Fixing the problem was simply a matter of choosing those layers and moving them – very carefully – one pixel to the right. It might not sound like much, but the results are dramatic:



With that now fixed, I can go back to what I was about to do.

Step 7

I zoom in to the lower right corner. Here everything you can see aside from the workspace (the checkerboard) and the mountain image is still part of the frame because down in this end of the world, I didn’t separate the shadow from the frame.



Making sure that I have the layer containing the lower frame chosen, I carefully move it up until it fits the bottom of the mountains image perfectly.

Hint, may not work with other software: “Shift” constrains the brushes and tools. If I’ve already started moving the mouse upwards with the button depressed, causing the tool to move the layer contents, hitting the “shift” button with my other hand means that only vertical movement is possible.



Step 8

So far, so good! But now we come to the part where the shadow reveals it’s problem to us.



‘d’ shows the issue. Because the shadow is semi-transparent, they compound (and get darker) where they overlap.

‘e’ shows a second problem which doesn’t always happen, but has in this case – the exact opposite, really – the join is showing. So two fixes needed.

‘d’ first. Rectangular selection tool, very carefully choose just the affected area (in this case, vertically- the left-and side doesn’t matter.



Then choose the shadow layer that we made (because it makes this step easy) and just hit the delete key. Overlap removed.



Note that if I had not separated out the shadow layer and the top frame, I would have had two dimensions to worry about. Since this frame is nice and digitally-square, that wasn’t an issue, but it can be a total nightmare – any sort of angle to the selection line and you can end up with pixels that are half shadow and half frame.

Step 9

Which brings me back to ‘e’.

Step 9a: using the ‘straight line’ selection tool, I roughly draw out the shape of the part of the frame that I need to edit, plus a bit above and a bit below. You may notice a subtle marbling effect running at an angle below the affected are – I liked the look of that and wanted to preserve it, so I kept my selection well above it.



Next, I need to head to my brush selection tab and locate and click on the Soft Smudge tool (not to be confused with the very similar icons for textured smudge and water smudge!)



Note that I’ve zoomed in a bit to make this a little clearer for readers.

The label may read “smudge soft” but what it does is plenty hard enough for my tastes. At the top of the screen (but the bottom of the illustration) is where I can select the brush size and opacity.

In this case, I don’t want the defaults, I want a lot more control over the process than that. Change the brush size until it’s about 1/4 – 1/3 the size of the area you want to edit – in this case, that was 13-point-something pixels, then adjust the opacity to about 85-90%.

NB: The opacity tool has different (but generally related) effects depending on which brush you have selected. In this case, it shortens the smear length caused by the smudge tool and leaves the original partially untouched, as though smudging on a different layer in the image.

On the frame layer (very important, regularly check that you’re editing the right layer!), and keeping my mouse-strokes downwards controlled and as parallel to the sides as possible, I blend the bottom edge of the top part of the frame with the lower.



Note that since these layers are still separate from each other, if I stroke upwards it won’t pick up on what’s in the lower layer, it will smear the ‘non-image” creating a void. (Oh, and, for the record, the ‘e’ and yellow box are separate layers above the screen capture).

Step 10

If there’s a problem with the join on one side, there can be a problem on the other, too – or vice-versa. Step 10 is checking and, if necessary, repeating step 9 over on the left.



In this instance, I see no signs of trouble whatsoever, so I flatten the image (merging the layers together) and save the edited file.

More complex textural issues

Of course, it’s not always this easy. In particular, frames where there is a dark-to-light transition down the frame, or across, can require a lot more fussing over, but the general principles remain the same.

And, if worst comes to worst, you can always simply pick another frame.

Here’s the result:

Problem 2: Frame is too small

I was originally going to fully demonstrate all the problems and their step-by-step solutions, but a lot of it would be redundant.

Below is an example – with ‘cure’ in progress – of a frame that is too short (simulated by simply chopping chunks out of the same frame as used above). Just to be different, I’ve used the “oil painting” version.

As you can see,. instead of 2 parts, the solution requires ‘breaking’ the frame into 4 parts, one for each corner. Note that the choice of where to break is always closer to one corner than the other so that you end up with long segments and short ones.

Two of these are in place, two have still to be moved in this image.

In the next, that has been completed, as you can see.

To plug those gaps, there are two basic choices: copy-and-paste a section of frame using the rectangular selector, or mark out a section using that same tool and then stretch the image until it meets it’s opposite corners.

This shows both. I used copy-and-paste on the bottom rail and stretch on the right-hand-side.

Both methods have their advantages and drawbacks. Which one will work best for you – or if something even more complicated is needed – is up to you.

Oh, and it has to be said – don’t work on multiple selections at the same time unless you know very clearly what you’re doing! The above is a visual shorthand, not a recommendation!

You will usually run into one or both of the problems dealt with in the worked example – overlapping transparent areas, and visually-incongruous joins. The solutions are the same, though.

As a general rule of thumb, you are better off working with the longer sides.

Pretty much everything else you need to know was covered in problem 1.

Problem 3: Frame is not thick enough

This is actually the hardest problem of the lot in many respects. Start with the four-cornered solution to the ‘too short problem” but make your selection breakup more carefully., and with shorter arms than you usually would.

It may even be necessary to deliberately make a frame that’s something close to the right size into one that’s too short. To make this visually distinct, I’ve used the “martianized” version of the mountains image.

Once you have your four corners, move them all to the center of the work area. Note that you would normally have them overlapping, but I’ve kept them apart in the screenshot below.

Next you need to choose all four layers at once (or you can do it one at a time). Click on the top one and Shift-click on the bottom one, or ctrl-click on each in succession, or whatever – there are multiple ways to get this done.

CTRL-G creates a quick group containing all four selected layers.

Once that’s done, if you click on the group layer, you can do some things to all the layers within the group.

Like making them bigger.

NB: Unless you detached it into a separate layer previously, you are also going to enlarge any shadows.

Once that’s done, you can either CTRL-ALT-G to Un-group the group, or select individual layers and work with them.

NB2: While in a group, not all Blending Mode changes will work properly, and you can confuse yourself by making a blending mode change to the group no matter what the individual layers are supposed to be doing. ALWAYS ungroup before flattening to the final image, just in case!!

Move the pieces to the corners where they are supposed to be and see where you’re at: You may want to temporarily increase the size of your canvas, too, just to give yourself a bigger work area.

In this case, the resized parts were long enough to link up and overlap on the shorter sides but not on the longer sides.

Expect to face all the usual problems – overlapping transparent areas, obvious incongruities where two parts that weren’t supposed to touch, do, misalignments, etc.

You may be wondering: Why not simply make the image smaller and the frame will be bigger relative to it as a result?

Even if you are saving in a lossless format like PNG, every time you make an image smaller, you lose detail, effectively throwing it away.

I thought I’d close out this post with a closeup demonstration of this.

At the top we have a cropped version of the Martianized landscape, with a box – technically, two boxes, a black one and a white one, slightly offset. Note the detail of the area just above the box.

Below that, to the left, we have a box the same size in front of an image that’s been reduced in size to 40% of what it was, both vertically and horizontally (so 16% of its original size). Compare the amount of detail shown between the two.

Those details that have been lost are gone forever, as the third image demonstrates. It reduced the image to 40% of 40% of 40% in both directions (0.4096% of the original), then expanded it back up to fit in the box. What’s left is a blurry vague mess, barely recognizable as a terrain feature. It could be a tire rut in the mud that has dried out and you would never know it.

Resizing images is a tricky business at the best of times. It can hide mistakes – but only by making them so blurry that you were better off with the mistakes present.

Lossy formats don’t help, either, but there you go.

And one final tip from just about every expert I’ve encountered: always work on a copy, never on the original!

Over the next few weeks, posting will become uncertain, as the deadline for me to move approaches. I still haven’t got a destination.

Those posts that do get published will be a bit different to the usual – shorter than usual, possibly hastily written, maybe not spell-checked or formatted perfectly – you get the drift.

I’ll do my best, but we’re in uncertain waters…

News From the Rear-view Mirror:

I’m usually pretty good at noticing anniversaries and milestones, but I have to admit to missing one. Back in August, officially, I posted CM’s 1250th article or part-article, Holistic NPCs: Creating Special Characters, which gave a process for finding consequences and ramifications of character elements that would feed back into other areas of a character’s life.
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Now, some of those posts were announcements like “No Post Today”, so I try to avoid counting those, so in my book, the “Real” 1250th post was How Long Is A Generation? in mid-September, which tried to bring some order to a particular patch of chaos – the number of possible durations covered by the term “a generation”. I wasn’t entirely sure that I had succeeded, so I changed the subject to work around the question to a practical solution based on family history.

Anyway, acknowledgment of the milestone is overdue and this note is intended to remedy that oversight.

News from a new Tomorrow

I haven’t had time to do a lot of looking back over the last couple of months. I’ve been given notice to vacate my existing accommodations, and have been packing and searching for a new home – one that I can afford, which in Australia at the moment, is a very big deal.

I inspected one place over the weekend, and if it had worked out, I would hope to have been migrating by the end of next week – but it didn’t. I have until the 9th of January (if I can’t get an extension) – but there’s a Christmas and New Year in the middle of that time-frame.

I’ve been trying hard not to let it stress me (and succeeding – I think that I’m the calmest and most confident of my family). In fact, the perfect place was on offer a week ago – but by the time I was able to contact the agents, it had already gone.

So the quest continues. 2BR, no yard maintenance, Ground Floor preferred unless there’s a lift, car-park would be nice but I don’t need one, A$395 a week or less, own laundry space, no more than 125m from a bus stop or railway station, preferably in the Canterbury-Bankstown area of Sydney – just in case someone knows of a place!

I expect Campaign Mastery to be disrupted, in terms of new posts, probably with little or no notice. But I’m going to try to post anyway.

So, on with today’s post. Today, I want to talk about valuing an Ebony Statue of Anubis, and then have a whack at principles for valuing a Tapestry. If there’s time, I’ll also talk about paintings, and maybe more, but if not, they can wait for another day.

Valuing An Ebony Statue

Ebony is a rare type of wood. That makes it a renewable resource. Right away, that’s different from just about everything else that this series has talked about.

Or is it? Talking about gems or gold, we may be talking about a finite resource that has to be dug out of the ground, but the bottom line remains, in both cases, that there is just so much of it extracted in a year, and that (plus any leftovers) is all that’s available.

The Value Of Ebony

According to Google, it’s price can exceed $100 per board foot or $10000 per kilogram, and can even go as high as $13000 per cubic meter.

Hearne Hardwooder has more detailed pricing:

[Ebony is] “a very dense wood with specific gravity of 1.2, it is usually only available in widths less than 6″ and lengths less than 48”.

• Avg. Weight Per BF: 5.33 lb/ bf
• Rarity: Moderately Rare
• Typical Avg. Width: 3″ to 4″
• typical Avg. Length: 3′ to 5′ “

— Hearne Hardwoods

Their price list (slightly abbreviated) is:

• Thickness 4/4 Grade Premium Width Range 4″-12″ Length Range 48″-144″ Price per bf $150
• Thickness 4/4 Grade Select & Better Width Range 1″-6″ Length Range 12″-72″ Price per bf $125
• Thickness 4/4 Grade Unselected Width Range 1″-6″ Length Range 12″-72″ Price per bf $100
• Thickness 8/4 Grade Premium Width Range 4″-12″ Length Range 48″-144″ Price per bf $150
• Thickness 8/4 Grade Select & Better Width Range 1″-6″ Length Range 12″-72″ Price per bf $125
• Thickness 8/4 Grade Unselected Width Range 1″-6″ Length Range 12″-72″ Price per bf $100

Specific gravity

1.2 means that it weighs 1.2 times as much as the equivalent volume of water. A cubic meter of water is 1000 kg, so ebony is…

1200 kg / cubic meter
= 1.2 g / cubic cm
= 33.98 kg / cubic ft = 74.913 lb per cubic foot
= 19.6645 g / cubic inch = 0.6936 oz per cubic inch.

Width & Length

Some of that, I understood right away, like the Width Range and Length Range.

Prices

The prices, I assumed to be in US$ and checking their ‘about us’ page, I see the company is based in Pennsylvania, which would seem to confirm that.

Quality

The grading – and differences between grades – I’m not so sure about, but I can make some logical inferences, taking the descriptions at face value – Selected = they hand-pick the very very best, Select & Better = they pick the best but don’t separate out the very very best, Unselected = they just cut it to length and width, no grading at all. So you might get some good stuff but most of it will be of ‘normal quality’.

I don’t know the relative scarcity of the different grades, but the prices give an indication – 100/125 = 80%, 125/150 = 83.33%. So grade 1 is 100% of all ebony, grade 2 is 80% of that (leaving 20% of ‘typical’ quality), and Grade 3 is 83.3% of that 80%, or 66.666% – so 2/3 is top quality, leaving 13 1/3% in the middle.

This range is so small that I suspect we’re talking about imperfections, and not actually a difference in quality of the ebony itself. 20% has noticeable flaws or inclusions, 13 1/3 % – let’s call it 15% for convenience – has minor flaws or inclusions, and the remaining 65% is as good as it gets.

Thickness

There’s the “thickness”. A quick google search confirmed my suspicion – these are the number of quarter inches of thickness, so 4/4 is one inch thick, 8/4 is two inches thick.

Board feet

Which leaves only one real question of board-feet. Specifically, if a board is 12″ long and 2″ thick, is that two board-feet or one?

A quick google search brings the answer: ” A board foot is defined as a piece one inch thick (nominal) by one foot wide (nominal) by one foot long (actual) or its equivalent. For instance a 2 × 6 also equals one board foot for each foot of length.”

So, thickness in inches × width in inches / 12 × length in feet (or in inches / 12) = the number of board feet.

What about that cubic meter price?

In other words, how many board-feet in a cubic meter?

1 m^3 = 39.37 inches × 39.37 inches × 39.37 inches, or 61023.38 cubic inches.

1 board foot = 1″ × 12″/12 × 1 = 1″ × 1 sqr ft = 1″ × 12^2 sqr inches = 144 in^3.

61023.38 / 144 = 423.7735 board feet in a cubic meter.

$13,000 / 423.7735 = $30.6767 per board foot. Hmm, that doesn’t seem very impressive.

But I’ve double-checked the maths, and it’s rock solid so far as I can see.

The $150 per board foot for premium ebony, × 423.7735? That’s $63,566 per cubic meter (and another 2 1/2 cents, but who’s counting?) For just any old ebony at $100 per board foot, $42377.33.

Implications

Ebony is a middle part of the trunk of a particular tree. It is surrounded by what appears to be ordinary wood. What that quoted $13,000 tells me is that there’s no way you’re ever going to find a cubic meter of the stuff. You might find smaller amounts in greater lengths that add up to a cubic meter, but that’s not the same thing.

In fact, if I assume that length in one direction is not a factor and can be 1m, that means that the ratio of the two prices defines the maximum likely cross sectional area of ebony within the tree, in square meters:

13000 / 42377.33 = 0.3067678 square meters = 3067.678 square cm.

area of a circle = pi × r ^2, so this is 31.2486 cm radius, or a diameter of 62.5 cm, or just over 24.6 inches.

To get anything larger than that, you need to actually cut and put multiple pieces of ebony together, then carve them smooth.

But 24.6 inches is a respectable measure. It’s enough for a human-sized figure – if they aren’t overweight and don’t have their arms outstretched like they did in Leonardo’s “Vitruvian Man”. If you want to render that in ebony, you would need to do the arms and maybe the legs as separate pieces and join them to the rest.

So where does that leave us?

Quality is a factor but not a major one. Using only the very best will add 50% to the value of an object. The base value is $100 per board foot, which equates to:

$1200 per cubic foot
$0.69444 per cubic inch
$0.04237733 per cubic cm
$35.31444 per kg
$16.0184 per lb

The Volume of a statue

There are lots of ways to determine the volume of a statue. The simplest one is the Archimedes method: fill a vessel with enough water to fully submerge the object, mark a line, drop the object into the water and make a second mark. Remove the object and see how much water it takes to get from the first mark (you may need to top up) to the second.

Easy! That is – if you happen to have the actual object in front of you.

Take that option away though, so that you are working from an image, and you have to think a little harder.

There’s a “very” precise way, and there’s a very rough-and-ready way.

Precision first, I think.

Precision Volume Estimation

To demonstrate this, I’ve chosen a lovely Anubis statue from Amazon (if you like it, they were on sale the last time I checked, for $30.64 AUD, about US $19.50 (plus shipping) – but they are currently 24% off, so normal would be closer to $25-26 USD, plus shipping. Just click on this link (I will get a small commission).

The image shows the technique: break the ‘statue’ down into basic shapes and then work out the volume of each, filling in any parts that you can’t see.

To the right of the statue, I’ve done such a breakdown, into 14 parts including the base – but some of them have sub-parts. (NB: you might want to open the image in a new window an put it and the article side-by-side to follow along.)

• The ears are a three-sided pyramid that’s been curved, and had one side slightly hollowed out. You can do it as three three-sided solids or simply make allowances. If the entire statue is, say, 20″ high, that’s about 13.6cm as displayed on my laptop*, so each mm of height in the image is 0.147 inches (if you’re in the US, you might need to work in tenths of an inch; I’ll leave working out the scale for you to do). HINT: I have a small sewing tape measure of soft plastic that won’t harm or scratch my screen. Get one.

  I measure the ears as 10mm tall, or 1.47″ in the statue. Allowing for the curvature, that’s probably closer to 1.6″. The base looks to be about 1/4 of this, or 0.4″ for both sides of the ear – one we can see, and one on the far side.

  The volume of a three-sided pyramid is 1/3 base area times height.

  The base area of a pyramid with two sides of 0.4″ is 1/2 the base × the height – and we don’t know either of those. We can’t assume it’s right-angled triangle, either, or that the base is also 0.4″. But we can be confident that if we draw a line through the peak at right angles to the base, that will give a right-angled triangle. The closest I can get to an answer without such speculation is “0.64 = b^2 + 4h^2”.

  

  Again looking at the image, then, I decide yes, the base is going to be about 0.4″, too.

  So 0.64 = 0.16 + 4h^2, and 0.48 = 4h^2, and 0.12 = h^2, and h is 0.346″. Which gives a base area of 1/2 × 0.346 × 0.4 = 0.0692 square inches, and that gives a volume of 1/3 × 0.0692 × 1.6 = 0.369 cubic inches. And there are two of them, for a subtotal of 0.738 cubic inches. But now we have to hollow that out a bit on one side – call it maybe 0.7 cubic inches.

* in reality, if i were to use this method, I would use a much larger image – about 5 times this size, or about 3400 pixels height. Here’s what the head looks like at that scale, cropped to fit the columns here at Campaign Mastery:

• The head is basically a box in this statue. We can’t see all of it but it looks to be about 5 × 5 × 7 mm. Adjusting for our scale of ×0.147, that becomes 0.735 × 0.735 × 1.029 inches, which is a volume of 0.556 cubic inches.
• The muzzle is a wedge shape with the front cut off. But if we assume that its two sides are reasonably parallel, we can work out the side area and multiply that by the width. We can even tweak that to allow for the sides to point inward a bit.

  Side shape is a trapezoid 4 × 1 × 4 × 2mm. So we average the two sides that are basically parallel – the 1 and the 2 – to get 1.5.

  Next we need the height, or the separation between them – we’ve already specified this as 4mm. So the area is 1.5 × 4 mm – which we need to scale: 0.2205 × 0.588 inches, giving a side area of 0.13 square inches.

  Now, if it were the full width of the head, we’d use the width of the head of 0.735 inches. To allow for a bit of narrowing, we just cut that down a little – maybe 0.72 inches. Which gives a volume of 0.0936 cubic inches.

• And so on – I won’t show the detailed working fpr the rest. The hair is two more muzzle-wedge shapes (just a bit larger) plus the bit at the back that we can’t see, which is a box.
• The neck is a cylinder that appears to be narrower at one end than the other – but average the area of the two circles and multiply by the height. Note that this only works with a cylinder of perfectly straight sides – if it curves, this trick doesn’t work. You may have to make allowances for that, usually by increasing the length of the fictional ‘sides’.
• The chest area is either a fairly complicated box shape in which no two sides are parallel, though the rear of the shoulders and the flat of the ribs seem close. Bur you can get further with two half cylinders – again, averaging the area of the round cross-sections gives you what you need.

  Actually, technically, they should be two ovals, not perfectly round – the front to back is about 1/d of the diameter side-to-side – but I’ll use a circle anyway, and just take 1/3 off the areas.

• The lower torso can also be considered two distorted cylinders. Same method.
• The legs (and don’t forget there are two) can be done as three distorted cylinders – top of the thighs, just above the knees, thickest part of the lower leg, and ankle
• The toes are a box (actually they are more of two wedges with the ends cut of, but not in this statue).The rest of the foot is basically a wedge. A second wedge contains the heel. I’ve drawn the toe-box and first wedge on the right foot (on the left in the image) and the heel wedge on the other. Again, don’t forget there are two of them. But, since that’s not totally clear from words alone, here’s a diagram:

  

  The lower part of the diagram offers more ‘realistic’ approximations of the shape of the toes. Note the large gaps between, especially between big and 2nd toe. This exclusion zone has been arbitrarily declared to be the same as the extra that gets added because the toes (and feet) have large round pads – see side view. The box is a compromise that is close enough for our purposes and a heck of a lot simpler.

  And, for anyone who’s thinking “those don’t look very much like feet”:

  

  I should also probably add that these images are being produced extremely quickly, with little of the care and attention they would normally get from me.

• The arms can be as complicated as you want to make them. I don’t want complicated, so I’ve shown a single cylinder, which assumes that for every loss at the front of the elbow, there is a gain of elbow protruding at the back. Not necessarily true in real anatomy but close enough. Similarly, by measuring the circular part of the cylinder at the armpit, it will be a bit over for the shoulder and the bicep and a but under for everything down to the wrist – which I have assumed more or less evens out.
• I’ve done the wrists as two cylinders. Again, the real things would be ellipses and not circles, but they are so small it doesn’t matter much.
• The hands and ankh in the right hand are the next problem. I use a sphere the diameter of the width of the hand for the clenched fist and some sort of wedge shape for a flattened hand. Here, the sphere plus an allowance of the ankh are close enough.
• And the base – a rectangular block.
• Next, you need to total all that up and then subtract something for the gold if it’s a real gold inlay (which it won’t be on this statue example, of course).
• The end result – a very accurate total volume. After a lot of fiddly little work.

Quick-and-dirty Estimation

There’s a much fast, simpler, solution.

1. First, scale the image up to a reasonable human height in your mind. Make a note of the height of the statue and your ‘human estimate’ in inches or cm.
2. Second, considering the build of the figure, estimate how much a person of that height and shape would weigh.
3. Third, get that weight in grams; the result is roughly the volume in cubic centimeters of that person.
4. Now we scale the volume back down – multiply the result by the statue height divided by human height, both in the same units of measurement.

So, in this case, allowing a bit for the ears, let’s

1. say he’s about 5’5″ ‘in real life’ (65″) and 20″ in statue height.

2. He’s a bit thin. In fact, the body shape is almost effeminate. So let’s use a 5’5″ female. 107 lb or less is considered unhealthy, while a healthy range is 108-145 lb. I’ll pick 115 lb.

3. 115 lb is 52163.1 grams. So the volume at “full scale” is roughly 52163 cubic cm.

4. Scale that back down: (20/65) = 0.3077; multiply by 52163 = 16050.5551 cubic cm. Round it for convenience to 16000.

How much ebony?

So we have a volume in cubic cm of 16000.

Ebony is worth $0.04237733 per cubic cm, so multiply that by 16000 = $678.03728. Call it $680.

As a bonus, we can state that the statue (without any gold) weighs about 814 g. About 1.8 lbs. I’d estimate that as about the weight of a moderately-large hard-cover book, 350-400 pages – so I’d pick out a representative few and lob them onto the scales until I found one that matched. If the pages are bigger, like they are in most game books, maybe cut that page count to 250-300 pages.

The Value Of A Tapestry

Oh my, where to begin?

Well, what’s a tapestry? To me, it’s a woven depiction of an image or scene. That means that there are three main elements to the valuation – the storytelling element, the Artistry element, and the Woven element.

Under those headings, I identified a total of 15 criteria, and as a working assumption, decided that they were about equal in importance. This completely ignores things like antiquity and celebrity; the assumption (for at least the time being) is that these tapestries are ‘new’.

The value of a score

The actual change in value that each of these variables represent is incredibly important.
Let’s say that each earns a rating out of 10, and that each point in a rating adds 4% to the valuation contribution. That means that each of the 15 (except size) would multiply the base value by something between 1.05 and 1.4.

1.05^14 = ×1.9799.
1.4^14 = ×111.12.

That’s the multiple of the base value of any tapestry according to its size.

refinement

Let’s make it (rating-1), so that a minimum rating is worth the base value, and increase the value of the rating to 8% per point. That gives a maximum from any rating of ×1.72.

1.72^14 = ×1983.345.

I realized at the last minute that I may have gone too fast for some readers. +8% × (10-1) = +72% = ×1.72 – all clear?

Hmm. Nearly a 2000-fold increase.

We need some sort of a baseline, a ratio to aim towards, from which I can work backwards.

Baseline

So, I turned to Google. I’d have done so eventually, anyway, just to be sure I hadn’t overlooked anything. The first link that it pulled up told me::

“Antique tapestry is collectible and highly valuable. However, not all tapestry created before the 1920s is valuable. The most significant determinant of value in the tapestry is whether or not it tells a unique story of a historical event.”

— Canonbury Antiques, 5 Ways to Identify and Calculate the Value of Antique Tapestries

They offer up the following as criteria:

1. Uneven Stitching – thread back whenever was inconsistent in thickness and would cause the tapestry to have uneven stitching. Furthermore, an uneven hem indicates production by hand. Apparently, there are fakes out there – who would have guessed?

2. Range of colors – there were only about 20 dyes available before the 1920s for use in tapestries. So there would be fewer colors in a genuine tapestry, and the colors were manually applied, so they would also be uneven.

3. Type Of Thread Used – Linen, Cotton, and Woolen threads are genuine; Polyester and Nylon are not. But I intended to go further, to encompass some of the Asian pieces, adding Silk to the equation.

4. The Signature – artists from the 15th century on usually incorporate their signature into a design. That’s something I hadn’t thought of. It’s usually woven into the bottom corner or the hem.

5. The story behind the design – those are the storytelling elements that I mentioned. They offer some examples: palace tapestries feature royalty involved in decisive battles or other important events. Also, church tapestry had saintly or biblical figures.

But no actual valuations. Back to the search results, then.

Further clues

Value my stuff dot com offers,

“Tapestries & Textiles can range from Flemish tapestries and Far Eastern silks to English Medieval church embroidery and European table covers. Tapestries and textiles were originally a decorative way to keep cold droughts out of large homes or for large homeowners to decorate tall walls and demonstrate their wealth.”

— Value My Stuff, How Are Tapestries Valued

Okay, that acts as confirmation that I was right to expand the scope of materials.

The page then lists the same five criteria given above, in more or less the same order.

Famous Tapestries

The same page then provides a list of famous tapestries and indicate their values, and this I thought significant enough to quote::

• “The Lady and the Unicorn”, from the late 15th century. One tapestry from the series sold for around $40 million in 2013.
• “The Hunt of the Unicorn”, from the late 15th century. Worth several million dollars per tapestry. The exact prices vary depending on the condition.
• “The Apocalypse Tapestry”, from the late 16th century. The entire set is valued at around $25 million. [but no indication as to how many are in the set].
• “The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries”, from the late 16th century. Worth several million dollars for the set. The exact prices vary depending on the condition.
• “The Raphael Cartoons”, from the 16th century. Notably, the original tapestries are lost; hence the value lies in the designs themselves, which are estimated to be worth millions of dollars.
• “The Barberini Tapestries”, from the 17th century. Worth several hundred thousand to several million dollars per tapestry. The exact prices vary depending on the condition.

Okay, so that adds a new item, but one that naturally goes with antiquity – condition. Again, that’s not something to factor in; we’re still looking for “good as new” condition values.

But this does tell us that a top-of-the-line tapestry, with antiquity and condition taken into account will be worth millions. Those two caveats make the value notes only indirectly relevant, though – for now.

The Antiquity Factor

The one quote I was able to find was a 150-year old tapestry valued at $2200-$2500. I am expecting tapestries to be highly perishable, hence those mentions of “condition” above. That probably means that they will appreciate very quickly for a while, but when that period of quick growth comes to an end, condition worsening more-or-less keeps pace with growth in value, so they would only appreciate very slowly thereafter.

The ‘famous examples – we had some from the 17th century (400-500 years old), some from the 16th century (500-600 years old), and some from the 15th century (600-700 years old). There was nothing from the 14th century, so I’m guessing that 650 years is the ‘break point’ where rapid appreciation ends.

Furthermore, high perishability means that there would be fewer and fewer surviving in good condition, so that would be a primary factor in causing the rapid appreciation in the first place.

Arbitrarily assuming similarity in size and condition across multiple examples, that gives us a ratio over a number of different time scales.

“The Lady and the Unicorn” – late 15th century, so now about 550 years old. To go from $2500 to $40 million in about 400 years gives an appreciation rate of ×1.01888 per year.

“The Hunt of the Unicorn” – same time period, worth “several million per tapestry”. Let’s call it 4 million, to be on the generous side. Appreciation rate of ×1.0130356.

“The Barberini Tapestries”, from the 17th century, worth several hundred thousand to several million each, mostly depending on condition. So let’s take the best, and note that poor condition can cut the value by a factor of 10 or more: “Several” – so let’s use 3 million this time, 17th century so call it 350 years. Appreciation rate to go from 22500 to 3 million in 350 years is ×1.025 per year.

So that gives us three numbers – ×1.013056, ×1.01888, and ×1.025 per year.

Taking size and condition out of the equation

The size of the $22500 tapestry is 3′ 5″ × 4′ 8″, or 41″ × 56″, or 2296 square inches. I’ll use 2300 for convenience. Looking up the others named on Wikipedia and looking for sizes, I get:

“The Lady and the Unicorn” is actually a series of six. Sizes are given for three:

Hearing, 12.1 ft × 9.5 ft = 145.2 × 114 inches = 16552.8 sqr inches;

Sight, 10.2 ft × 10.8 ft = 122.4 × 129.6 inches = 15863.04 sqr inches; and

A Mon Seul Desir, 12.5 ft × 15.2 ft = 150 × 182.4 inches = 27360 sqr inches.

I have no idea which one sold for the $40 million price tag. It might be none of them.

Not only is that a significant variation across the group, it’s a MASSIVE variation from our base. Furthermore, in getting the size of the base, it was established that there was moderate fading of the tapestry – and we’ve already noted that condition can cut the value by a factor of 10 or more. So those early estimates of the appreciation rate are pretty worthless.

I already know that The Hunt of the Unicorn is a set. Wikipedia refers to them as “The Unicorn Tapestries” and states that there are 7 in the set, one only surviving in two separate fragments. No sizes are given for any of them.

And I could find no reference to “The Barberini Tapestries at all.

Condition

“Slight fading” is going to be at the lower end of the impact on the value, I suspect. So let’s increase the value of the 150-year-old tapestry by a factor of 5 to compensate for that – $22500 -> $112500.

Size

If I don’t know which one to use, I’ll average all three of the nominated ones. That gives me 19925.28 sqr inches – call it 20,000 for convenience. Next, let’s assume that size is a linear function – that is, value doesn’t increase faster with bigger size (though it probably does in reality).

20,000 / 2300 = 8.69565 times the size. So we increase the 112500 by that ratio:

$112500 × 8.69565 = $978260.625. Again, let’s round to an easy-to-use $980,000.

Recalculating

So, to go from $980,000 to $40 million in 400 years is an appreciation rate of ×1.009316 per year. Up 0.9316% a year.

(You can see from this why I work with appreciation ‘chunks of time’ larger than a year. Over a 10-year period, that compounds to ×1.097, or +9.7%. Over 20 years, it compounds to ×1.20377) or +20.377%. Over 25 years, it’s ×1.261. These are far more manageable numbers.)

My own work lists the following appreciation rates for a 400-year time-span:

Slow: ×1.0926 – ×1.14429 every 25 years;
Typical: ×1.09385 – ×1.2091 every 25 years;
High: ×1.176245 – ×1.61617 every 25 years. There is also a higher but unstable rate, but that need not bother us.

Comparing 1.261 to these puts the growth securely in the ‘high’ range, as forecast. So, for whatever it’s worth, this is a minor crumb of verification.

In fact, it’s 19.266% of the way through the ‘High’ range, so if it eventually drops to somewhere in the slow range, I would use a value 19.266% of the way through that range – ×1.10256 every 25 years thereafter.

Final appreciation results

We’re talking about ×1.261 every 25 years, declining to a more modest value of ×1.10256 after 550 years of age.

Rewinding the clock

With these results in hand, we can turn back the clock on our “$22500” tapestry (using the adjusted valuation of $980,000) to get a 0-year value per square inch.

$980,000 = b × 1.261 ^ (150/25) = 4.0206 b; b = 980,000 / 4.0206 = 243,745;

divided by the size of the comparison tapestry, to which we adjusted the value to get that $980,000 = $243,746 / 20,000 = $12.1872 per sqr inch, base value – for a tapestry now considered an antique.

How much of a factor are the factors?

But that’s assuming that all the other factors are equal between our slightly-faded $22500 tapestry and “the Lady and the Unicorn” – something I doubt like the dickens.

With nothing else to go on, we’re comparing a fairly anonymous work that has more-or-less survived to one of the very best, ever.

Note that our baseline of $12.1872 per square inch already takes into account an ‘as new’ condition.

Getting a yardstick

My first thought would be to use a basis of 5.5 (i.e. strictly average) for the lesser tapestry, and 9.5’s for the more famous one. But I think that’s being too generous to the lesser work. I’m going to assume an average of 3.5 across all 14 categories.

14 factors, and a difference of 9.5-3.5 = 6 across each, is a total of 84 points extra for the great work over the lesser one..

So we’re back at the question of how much of a difference those 84 points should make.

It might be helpful to rewind the clock and get the value of the famous work after just 150 years. That’ simply a matter of dividing the $40 million value by our appreciation over 400 years (1.261 ^ (400 / 25) = ×40.87356) to get the comparable value to our 112.500. 978,630 is the answer.

Next, we need to take the size out of that comparison – dividing by 8.69565 gives 112,542.5.

Oh dear.

The problem is that the appreciation rate I’m using is based on the assumption of equal ratings. We’re now talking about changing it to take into account a difference in ratings (making it smaller) – but how much smaller?

We need a yardstick (now where have I heard that, before?)

84 points out of 100. Perhaps the better way of looking at it is the ratio of the total scores after all – that’s going to be the same as the ratio between individual scores because we aren’t yet differentiating. 9.5 / 3.5 = 2.714.

Is a ratings gap that large really only worth less than triple the value?

It doesn’t seem big enough. Squaring the value would be a ×7.367 factor – that seems more like it, but maybe still not enough. Cubing it gives ×19.997 – that’s a more respectable value. But actual testing (redacted from the article) shows it to be way too high. I’ll go with the 2.714, because the difference will increase with every 25-year appreciation period.

Out of all this: a methodology

So, each factor gets rated. Some of these ratings are going to be worth more than others, we don’t care about that yet, because we will lower the value of others to compensate. So long as the total is out of 140, everything’s fine.

Add up the scores. Divide by 100. Multiply by the base value per square inch (which needs to be revisited, but worry about that later). Multiply by the number of square inches in the tapestry, and you have the “as new” value. You can then appreciate it for age and slash the value for condition as you see fit to get the “as it stands” value.

Getting the re-visitations out of the way

There are two numbers that need to be corrected to allow for the difference in ratings. The first is our appreciation rate, and the second, our base value per square inch.

Appreciation rate revisited

Appreciation Rate (old) = 1.261 / 25 years.
Basis: $980,000 to $40 million in 400 years.

Ratings adjustment: 3.5 × 14 = 49 / 140 for the ‘$980,000’ tapestry.
Divide by 100 = 0.49.
Divide the value by 0.49 to get 2,000,000.

Ratings adjustment: 9.5 × 14 = 133 / 140 for the $40 million tapestry.
Divide by 100 = 1.33.
Divide the value by 1.33 to get 30,075,188.

Appreciation rate to get from 2 million to 30.075188 million in 400 years = ×1.0068 per year, or +7.01% every 10 years, or +14.514% every 20 years, or ×1.1846 every 25 years. That’s our adjusted and corrected appreciation rate.

I note that this is higher than the maximum “high” rate, putting it into the “dangerous rate of increase” category, and into the second of those, in which there is a small chance of a price correction and a certainty of a rate change. Since we’ve already decided that there will be a rate change into the slow growth rate, that doesn’t seem all that surprising.

Base Value per square inch, revisited

Base Value (old) = $12.1872
Basis: Adjusted value, 150-year tapestry, rewind to year 0 value, divide by the size of the comparison tapestry (20,000 sqr inches) to get the base value.

2,000,000 = b × 1.1846 ^ (150 / 25); b = 723768.4. Divide by 20,000 = $36.19 per sqr inch.

NB: the recalculations show that low ratings will reduce this base value, while high values will increase it.

The Storytelling elements

Let’s start by defining them and then thinking about what adjustments to make to the base “score out of 10”.

Subject

Is the subject matter something that interests people now, not when the tapestry was created? Note that even the fact that “people believed in such, back then” is enough to convey SOME interest in the subject matter – a curiosity value.

Your subject matter might be religious, it might be political, it might be bucolic or pastoral, it might be social (i.e. depicting everyday life at the time), it might be fantastic (including images of dragons, unicorns, etc, in a world in which they are not real). They could depict an adventure story or an epic landscape or an exotic beast.

Appeal

Is the subject matter handled in a way that appeals to the general public? Would you be caught dead with it hanging on your wall? This isn’t about the artistic merit or how pretty the picture is, it’s about the story content of the image, of the scene depicted.

Perhaps the most famous tapestry of all is the Bayeux Tapestry, which

“…is an embroidered cloth nearly 70 meters (230 feet) long and 50 centimeters (20 inches) tall that depicts the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.”

— Wikipedia, Bayeux Tapestry

In a way, that’s a shame, because it sells short the whole reality of Tapestries. Okay, the size is impressive, and the subject gets historians excited because it’s full of depictions of everyday life amongst the lower classes of society, about whom little or nothing was written at the time, but visually, it’s not all that exciting to the common man. Not like “The Hunt For The Unicorn” or “The Lady and the Unicorn”.

If your subject was religious, the Crucifixion or the Last Supper are bold and dramatic events. So is Moses and the Ten Commandments, or the parting of the Red Sea. There are other subjects that would have immediate and broad appeal. Whereas Methuselah was probably not very photogenic at 1,000 years of age. The life of even a well-known patron Saint probably doesn’t get too many people excited, either.

Are the characters who are supposed to be recognizable, going to be identifiable from their actions or surroundings,- or are they generic?

Some images tell a great story within the chosen subject, even if the context is a little threadbare.

Perspective

Perspective is the subtext, intentional or otherwise. If the perspective on a particular royal court is “The King is Good and Noble” and you happen to be an enemy of said King, the perspective is all wrong – unless you are the minority. If the King is a petty tyrant, then making him look Good and Noble is a snow-job, a PR stunt, and one that is likely to have fallen rather flat. Having court jesters in the scene mocking the King transforms it utterly.

With some perspectives, it’s hard to go wrong – “This is a place of beauty” or “tranquility” tend to be fairly universal in their appeal.

Some images are bereft of perspective, an intentional effort to offend no-one. The results can be fairly banal (earning it a low score) or can simply indicate the removal of irrelevancies to focus on the imagery itself (earning it a moderate-to-good score).

Depiction

This is where the artistic merit of a design enters into the description. If the image naturally leads the eye from one part of the story to another, or focuses the view on the critical elements of the scene, it’s a success. In “Hunting The Unicorn”, it’s hard to miss the Unicorn!

One of the problems with the Bayeux Tapestry is that it’s far too big to take in with a single glance. It’s an entire textbook on the times, and if you look at the whole thing at once, the details become so tiny that they get lost.

It falls short in the design elements of the Depiction. The style is also rather crude compared to other tapestries, which fails to endear it to ordinary viewers, who can’t quite see what all the fuss is about; it’s a work that you need to be educated into appreciating, and even then, it’s only intellectual appreciation.

Finally, there’s the Narrative itself. Does the story have a resolution? Is that resolution satisfactory to the viewer, or does it leave them wanting more? The latter is fine if this is one of a series of Tapestries, but not so great if it’s the climax of the series.

Value Scores – Storytelling Elements

That’s 5 of the 14 values, and if you believe what was quoted earlier, the most important five by some margin.

If I were to double the value from 1 per rating out of 10 to 2, that’s 100 of the 140 points total that the system is built on, done. That leaves just 40 to come from the remaining 9. I could, perhaps, spin one of those out from the ratings system, leaving 8 worth 5 apiece, but that seems a little too extreme for me.

But I have the feeling that’s exactly what those extracts were telling me to do.

When you aren’t sure of what you’re doing, examine some alternatives. You may find one that’s exactly right, or that shows that your first thought was correct, after all. I have a sequence of 5 to contemplate – ×1 3/4, ×1 2/3, ×1 1/2, ×1 1/3, ×1 1/4. Each of these reduces the emphasis on Storytelling a bit (but all retain emphasis in that area over the others to at least some degree).

Alternative #1: ×1.75
5 × 10 × 1.75 = 87.5.
140 – 87.5 = 52.5.
52.5 / 9 = 5.83333; 52.5 / 8 = 6.5625.

Nope, that’s not it.

Alternative #2: ×1.6667
5 × 10 × 1.6667 = 83.335.
140 – 83.335 = 56.665.
56.665 / 9 = 6.296111; 56.665 / 8 = 7.083125.

That’s getting closer.

Alternative #3: ×1.5
5 × 10 × 1.5 = 75.
140 – 75 = 65.
65 / 9 = 7.222. 65 / 8 = 8.125.

I have the feeling that this may have gone past the sweet spot.

Alternative #4: ×1.3333
5 × 10 × 1.3333 = 66.65.
140 – 66.65 = 73.35.
73.35 / 9 = 8.15. 73.35 / 8 = 9.16875.

13 vs 9 – definitely past it.

Alternative #5: ×1.25
Not even going to calculate this.

The sweet spot seems to be around 80 points in the storytelling department, leaving 60 for the rest.

I can either make it uniform – 80/5 = 16, so times 1.6 – or I can tweak individual settings.

I never turn down a chance to tweak.

Tweak: Subject.

There are so many great subjects out there, it’s really hard to pick a bad one. Maybe dogs playing poker? Some would disagree with even this being on the list (and I happen to like some of these, myself).

I’m going to cut the top score in subject to 4, but award ×2 points for each rating for a total of 8. That leaves 72.

Tweak: Appeal

I’m going to make this a score out of 5, but apply ×4 points for each rating, for a total of 20. That leaves 52.

Tweak: Perspective

As much as this goes over some people’s heads, for those who get it, it becomes vital to their appreciation of whatever they are looking at. It’s like a sitcom where something comedic is happening in the background without the characters in focus even noticing. Rating out of 5, ×4 points, total of 20, leaving 32.

Tweak: Depiction

For all that I would love to rank this more highly, if there’s one that that the Bayeux Tapestry demonstrates amply, it’s that Depiction is not a deal-breaker the way some of the other elements in this category are. Maximum score of 7, no multiplier, leaving 25..

Tweak: Narrative

And so we come to the bottom line. Rating out of 5, and ×5 points, making this the single most important component within the storytelling element.

Storytelling elements are all about Composition. What do you include and what do you leave out, what do you have those components left in actually doing, and how does it all add together to make a story? Kind of like writing an RPG adventure, isn’t it?

Artistry Elements

So you have a shopping list of things to include, and even some notion of how they are going to tie together. The next stage is to design the way these elements will actually look, bearing in mind the compromises that will need to be made for the medium. Everything to this point has been purely intellectual, but now it’s time to show off your artistic chops, if you are the designer/creator of a tapestry.

Let’s hit those sketch pads! This stage of the process is one of design.

Depiction Artistry

Hands up anyone here who’s been a comic-book artist. Only me? Okay. Getting characters to look consistent from one panel to the next is one of the harder things to master. Ditto getting things to look consistent and recognizable.

I once started a comic which told the story of a “stealth shuttle” stealing enemy satellites. Aside from pilots and control panels (which I needed to use to tell the story), and background star-fields, every image was a photocopy of the real deal – perhaps tweaked a little (turn up the toner for a “stealth shuttle”). The shapes from the photographs were sufficiently different that when a friend read the strip in progress, he thought they were two different shuttles, and had trouble putting the plot together.



I’ve carefully hand colored a patch of this cloth image (actually, I wasn’t very careful at all). And then I’ve hand-colored a different patch on the same picture of cloth in the second image. The only difference is which threads the patch starts on – both are 8 threads wide. But as you move more to the left, the some of the uncolored threads cut off your view of part of the colored patch, making the patch seem smaller in the first panel than in the second.
 
In the third and fourth rows, I’ve used perspective to make all this more obvious, but the same rules applied – 8 threads wide.
 
Image by RoboxInvasion from Pixabay

You see, you’re constantly compromised by the black-and-white nature of comic art. Less so now, perhaps, due to the advent of digital painting and color separation, but until late in the last century, this was a big deal. Anyone can draw a poster – drawing story and continuity and choice of perspective, that’s tough. In fact, it usually took two people collaborating to get it done, a penciller and an inker, and neither could have done it without the other (except by doing his job as well as yours).

The artistic constraints on painting are more flexible, but no less forgiving. But Tapestries really hit the jackpot in the difficulty sweepstakes. The surface texture is three-dimensional to an extent unlike anything else, and changes apparent shape depending on the angle from which you are viewing it.

The very best artisans would use the weave of the cloth to their advantage the way – arguably – Will Eisner (some art samples) and Wally Wood (art sample here and more here, including the image below) – used the limitations of the comics medium to their advantage.

That’s what this criterion is all about – the execution of the art and using the medium to the artist’s advantage.



This image is in the Public Domain in the US because it was published between 1928 and 1963, and any copyright was not renewed.
 
It may still be restricted in usage in some jurisdictions. Wikipedia tells me that this is likely to be the case in Canada, Mainland China, Germany, Mexico, Switzerland, and possibly elsewhere. It is being published here as part of editorial review of the artist’s contribution to the comics medium.
 
 


Recognition

This is very similar to the item already listed under Storytelling Elements but it’s more about visual recognition, not just of the individuals portrayed (if they are meant to be recognizable) but recognition of the story being told,. and of the particular spin that the artist is putting on it.

I have a very vague memory of an animated short film depicting the construction of a big building, maybe even the Empire State Building, but the story was told by the way the angles on the surrounding buildings changed as level after level was assembled and installed.

The changing skyline (and I am NOT sure it was New York City) was one of the two central characters of the narrative, and we never saw the other; instead, we only saw through his eyes. But that snippet of memory has stayed with me since the mid- or late-60s, so it clearly made an impact.

That’s what recognition is all about. It’s recognizing a comic impersonating someone famous for comedic effect, recognizing throwaway cultural references, recognizing famous ‘guest characters’ wandering through the scene (sometimes uncredited), recognizing who is being satirized in a political cartoon and why.

Approval

Now, this is a hard one. If you show 50 people the same image, some of them will love it and some will hate it; getting any great degree of conformity of opinion usually means that there’s been some sort of pre-selection of respondents. There are exceptions – funny cat pictures can get 100% approval, for example.

The more controversial the statement being made by the work, the polarizing it will be. So low approval will not necessarily be a bar to a high value, but it will restrict the market somewhat – those who do like / approve of it are generally willing to pay more because of the controversial nature of the work, which compensates for any loss of value through reduction in potential buyers.

Dynamism

Static images are a lot harder to create than dynamic ones expressing motion – no, wait, that’s not right. I was once told that by someone who was very good at executing poster-type static images but awful at motion. He also excelled at imitating other artists’ styles by eye, a skill that I never acquired.

I have very few memories of him these days, it was a long time ago, but can remember discussing “Bohemian Rhapsody” with him, and Ol’55’s “On The Prowl”, and “Hurricane” and one or two others. Like Will-O-The-Whisps, these characters float into our lives for brief moments, make an unforgettable impression, and then vanish, stage left. One can only hope that the memories you have left behind in your life are positive ones.

This is another attribute that comic books and Tapestries have in common – they both stubbornly resist the strictures of the still image. But the tapestries of yesterday did not have the same repertoire of conventions and tricks that have evolved within the comic book industry as code for certain activities. Their only referents were real life and painters, and the latter had yet to discover the dynamism of the Impressionist movement, so they generally celebrated stillness, too – the only movement was the motion of the eye as it tracked the path created for it by the artist.

But, like a story told in sequential panels on a page, sometimes that can be enough. Making an image or scene as dynamic as the medium and tools of the time permit is Dynamism.

Value Scores – Artistry Elements

With 80 of the total of 140 points already allocated, the first question has to be how many of the remaining 60 will be dedicated to Artistry elements, and how many reserved for Woven Elements, the actual assembly of the Tapestry?

There are only four elements in this category, while there are 4, 5, or 6 in the next, depending on how you count them. That says that only 20 or 30 points should be devoted here, or maybe some intermediate value like 24.

Let’s just work through them and see where we end up.

Value: Depiction Artistry

I think this is arguably the most important Artistry Element. Rating out of 5, and ×2 points, leaving 50.

Value: Recognition.

The Storytelling element equivalent got a 7-point rating and a ×1. I’m going to retroactively change that to a 5, ×1, and give this category exactly the same rating. So 50+2-5 = 47 remaining.

Value: Approval

I’m going to give this a rating out 5, and a ×0. I don’t think it makes one bit of difference to the ultimate value of a tapestry, just on the size of the market and how eagerly a minority will make up the difference.

Value: Dynamism

This is really hard to achieve with a Tapestry, so demanding it is holding Tapestries to a false standard, in a way. And, it has to be said, you either have it or you don’t, there’s no in-between. Anyone breaking new ground in this regard will also score high in other areas. So: a rating from 0 to 1, and a ×7 multiplier – because if you do have it, your work will be ‘arresting” and ‘attention-getting’. That leaves 40 for the final category.

Woven Elements

The final stage of creation, after all the design and preliminaries are complete, is the execution. How well made is the Tapestry? If it’s going to fall apart as soon as you look at it, it won’t retain any value for very long…

Anything relating to the physical construction of the Tapestry belongs somewhere in this category, but not everything warrants a score – with some of these elements, a direct adjustment of either the base or final price might be more appropriate. Which means no points for those items on the list, and all the more for what remains.

Size

Yes, I know I’ve already handled this, by defining a base price per square inch. I thought it important to mention it, anyway – you’ll see why in a moment or two.

Materials

“Linen, Cotton, and Woolen threads are genuine. Polyester and Nylon are…” and at this point I’m going to substitute “Modern” for the more pejorative adjective. Each of these three will have their own set of characteristics – the size of threads, the resilience of the material, how well it takes and holds colors (and that can vary from one combination of material and dye to another), how resistant is is to other staining, changes with age – there are a whole host of important details hanging from this one thread.

But the whole package of traits is so complicated that I’m going to shortcut the whole lot and say that it all works out evenly in terms of value in the end, that what you lose on the swings you regain on the roundabouts.

So, “Is it made of material? Yes? Move on.”.

Silk is best handled by multiplying the price of a length of silk by the cost of the same length of one of the others.

Exotic Materials

Now, matters become more interesting. Besides the weaving of gold, silver, platinum, and copper alloys in metallic thread form into tapestries, other exotic materials might sometimes be used. What of velvet, or leather? What of beads and precious stones?

So, I’m going to simplify all this down to a single question – to what extent does the inclusion of exotic materials, in whole or in part, increase the value of everything except those exotic materials?

That’s a curly one, isn’t it? I can’t for the life of me seeing it have no impact; almost by definition, these are harder to work with and so increase the craftsmanship on display.

I’m going to solve it by cheating outrageously. Exotic materials can have a rating of 0, 1, 2, or 3:

0 = none used; 0 points.
1 = crudely used: -2 points, add 90% of the value of exotic materials to the final total.
2 = expertly used: +4 points, add 100% of the value of exotic materials to the final total.
3 = transcends/transcended the state of the art, adding to both the value of the exotic materials and the value of the Tapestry in which they have been used. +10 points, and add 120% of the value of the exotic materials to the final total.

So, where’s the cheating? I’m not going to count any of the above against the ‘budget cap” of 140 all told. In effect, I’m saying that the default is not to use such materials (because it is), but that rules are made to be broken, and if you break this one well enough, you increase the valuation limit of the Tapestry.

So we still have 40 points to allocate within this suite of elements.

Thread-count

Look, no-one using a hand-loom and not using Silk is going to get anywhere near the modern thread-counts. Egyptian Cotton with a 3,000 thread-count? Not a chance.

A thread count is determined by adding together the number of lengthwise (warp) threads in an inch and the number of width-wise (weft) threads; the total is the thread count of an item. Interestingly, a 400 to 1,000 thread-count is considered the best for linen; it’s softer than lower counts and lighter than higher ones.

Bedlinen Direct advise,

“Basic quality” bedding of linen has a thread count of 132 to 144, “good quality” bedding has a thread count of 180 to 220, “great quality” fabric has a thread count beyond 300, and “excellent quality” linen has a thread count beyond 400″

— Bedlinen Direct, Is thread count 144 good?

But that’s by modern standards, with modern equipment and expectations. More relevant is this information from Ihaworld:

“…jumpsuit, kurtas, dresses and tops in handwoven handspun muslin cotton in single ply of 150 thread count. One of the finest varieties of handspun….”

— Inaworld, Single Ply of 150 thread count Edit (don’t blame me, I didn’t name their page!)

Sewport adds,

“Plain canvas has a thread count between 50 and 100. It consists of rough, wide fibers with a relatively loose weave.”

— Sewport, What is Canvas Fabric: Properties, How its Made and Where

Sealy, one of the most famous manufacturers of mattresses and bedding here in Australia, offers the following table of ideal thread counts on their “Sleep & wellness hub“:

Cotton: 200-400
Egyptian cotton: 300-800
Percale weave: 200-400
Sateen weave: 300-600
Bamboo: 300-500
Linen: 50-140 *
Silk: 17-22 momme
Microfibre: 90-120 GSM
Flannel: 160-190 GSM

Notice the asterisk? They add, “In the case of linen, you may wish to avoid considerations of thread count altogether. As the fibers are heavier, lower thread counts are often preferable as they are likely to be softer and more breathable.”

Wool is a lot more complicated, because it comes in so many thickness. They don’t use Thread count at all in the wool industry, they use “yarn count”, which takes such things into account – but is purely a product of modern technology, which makes consistent production of wool of a particular thickness and grade possible.

So, time to reach for the bottom line to this issue: The higher the thread-count in a Tapestry, the better-woven the material is, and the higher the quality of the Tapestry will be – though size can be used to compensate for a limited thread count.

Don’t expect modern standards. A thread count of 30-100 is maybe the best you will get.

50-60 is a reasonable standard. 75-85 is good, and 85+ is excellent.

Ignore the whole question if you’re dealing with wool or silk.

So:

<40, score 0, multiply the size of the tapestry by thread-count / 50 to get the “comparable” size.
40-50, score 1, multiply the size of the tapestry by thread-count / 50 as above.
50-60 score 1, ×4.
61-75 score 2, ×4.
75-85 score 3, ×5.
85+ score 4, ×5, and use the ‘silk option’ under ‘Materials’ – in other words, treat this as an exotic material.

That’s up to 20 points; of the 40 to be allocated.

You may be wondering why so many? It’s something that I’ve learned as a digital artist: you get a much better image result if your generation process includes the following steps:

1. Use a canvas that’s exactly 2, 3, 4, (or, occasionally, 5) times the final display size in pixels.
2. Use the same factor on the size of any brushes – so to get a 3-pixel-width line, on a 4x scale, you need a 12-pixel brush. I generally aim for lines to be 2 – 2½ pixels in the finished image, 3-4 in a “heavy” line.
3. When the image is finished, flatten all layers into a single image (errors can sometime creep in otherwise).
4. resample down to the intended image size.
5. duplicate the image layer.
6. sharpen the duplicate. Make sure that it’s above the main layer.
7. Reduce the opacity of the duplicate until the image “looks right” at 100% of scale. NB: it may be necessary to ‘break up’ the duplicate and apply different opacity levels to different parts of the image, especially if there’s strong contrast in some parts of it.
8. Flatten and save the image.

It sounds like a lot of work, but it usually only takes seconds.

Tapestry-makers are using viewing distance to achieve much the same result. The tighter the weave, the less they need to do so, and the more richly detailed the image that the Tapestry can hold.

Dye

Dye is a subject that could double the length of this article, as hinted at earlier. Let’s avoid all that, if we can.

First, in a fantasy campaign, I have to assume that there are some exotic dyes that don’t exist in the real world. I don’t care if “Kingfisher Cream” is a color or not for the Tapestry-maker; instead, here’s a couple of quick questions to guide you:

Is the color rich and vibrant? Yes, +3 or +6; No, +0; higher for multiple colors, lower for one.

Is the dye used appropriate to the fabric? Yes, +2, No -2, Maybe +0.

Are any of the dyes unusual or exotic? Yes, +2, No, +0.

Total is up to 10 points, leaving 10 more for the final question.

Durability

Tapestries need to be kept at a fixed tension, or the threads can separate. Too high a tension, though, and they will stretch over time. Tapestry makers sometimes sewed weights in the bottom of their work to match their own rules-of-thumb.

Tapestries under glass are better protected from insects – but in medieval times, this might be expensive/impossible. Magic might come to the rescue, though.

Tapestries in a frame are better than Tapestries that aren’t, unless the maker has used the “hidden weights” approach. The very best artisans might incorporate the frame into the design by having it carved to their specifications.

Tapestries need careful cleaning. Sometimes the dyes aren’t all that permanent.

Tapestries that removed from direct sunlight are less likely to fade over time, and will do so more slowly if they do fade.

Rate the protection and durability of the Tapestry out of 5, and apply a ×2 factor.

Out of points, out of categories – all good here!

Wrap-up

In one of David Eddings books, there’s an exchange that goes something along the lines of,

“I didn’t realize you knew so much about tapestries.”
“I know nothing about Tapestries – but neither did that pompous ass. As soon as I mentioned the word, his eyes glazed over, and I knew I could say anything on the subject that came into my head without him challenging it.”

(I’d find the exact quote but the books are packed and buried several boxes deep).

I can only hope that this article hasn’t had the same effect on readers.

Until next time, have fun and look after yourselves (and each other) over the Holiday Season!

So, here we are, back again for another serving of 2 more dangerous creatures based on sound. In fact, these are potentially even deadlier than last time’s offerings, the Humming Bee and Hissing Wyrm.

First up, there’s the Whisper Willow, the perfect place to catch a quiet nap between adventures. Or not.

And then there’s the outright mean Tunnel Shrieker, from which other species should run, shrieking!

The Whisper Willow

The Whisper Willow is visually indistinguishable from a normal weeping willow. That’s because it’s an animal that invades a real willow via the roots, and consumes the tree internally while replacing it’s key anatomical details with its own.

They are, therefore, obviously found on leafy riverbanks and the like.

The relationship is not quite as one-sided as it sounds; during the transition period, which can take decades depending on the size of the tree, the Whisper Willow releases additional nutrients into the tree system to ensure that it has an excellent leafy canopy and scope for luxurious growth. It skirts a fine line between parasitic and symbiotic roles for the host tree, but eventually the takeover will be complete, and the Whisper Willow fully mature..

Other trees and plants around the willow will eventually begin to wither and die, as those additional nutrients have to come from somewhere.

As a result, the Whisper Willow is the leafiest protection from the heat of the day going around, the perfect place to drop anchor and catch some Z’s. Which is just what it wants.

The Intrusion

As a passing creature of animal or better sentience sleeps beneath it’s shady canopy, the Whisper Willow releases a small part of itself, a tendril that detaches from the host and crawls onto the victim.

When it encounters an entrance that leads to the brain – usually the nose or ears, occasionally the mouth or eyes – it invades the body of the sleeper, and makes itself at home.

A few days later, and the Tendril becomes somewhat symbiotic, as the Whisper Willow pulls a very similar trick on the animal host. The changes are subtle, but profound.

The benefits of a Whisper Tendril – to the host

For every character level the animal host has (or equivalent), they gain an extra HP of natural healing per week, distributed as evenly throughout the week as possible.

For every character level the animal host has (or equivalent), once a week, one hour’s sleep is so restful that it counts as two, again distributed as evenly through the week as possible.

EG: if a creature had 7HD or 7 levels, one hour every night would count as an extra hour’s sleep – and GOOD sleep, no tossing and turning – and each day, they would naturally heal an extra HP.

If a creature had 4 HD or 4 levels, it would be every 2nd night, plus one other occasion during the week.

If a creature had 14 levels or HD, it gets two extra points of healing a day (effectively, low-level regeneration) and 2 hours of sleep count as four – every night.

The secondary benefits are that the animal host feels better rested, more energetic, healthier and more able. Minor scratches and ailments heal more quickly, and this confers a glow of health that is worth +1 CHAR for every 5 levels that the character has earned since occupancy began.

Many also report that their dreams seem both more pleasant and more vivid on such occasions.

The whispering begins

The idle thoughts of the host soon begin to wend in unpleasant directions, however, as though a voice were whispering thoughts of paranoia, jealousy, and envy within their mind.

Initial Consequences

Behavioral changes will be small, at first. The host has to gain as many levels as it already possessed at the time of Tendril ‘acquisition’ before they will do more than aggravate existing envy, brooding, and other dark moods.

Deepening disturbance

When that threshold is reached, once a week, the GM can force a particular train of thought or choice of actions upon the character. if caught, the character will be unable to explain himself save in the simplest terms – “I wanted it”, “I thought [X] was going to steal it,”, etc. Most occurrences will be trivial – consuming someone else’s serving of food as well as your own, for example. But the whispers are only just beginning to take root.

Each additional level or HD gained by the animal host thereafter adds one to the number of occasions per week that ‘something’ gets into the head of the character.

Holding onto sanity, one day at a time

Furthermore, the character can make a WILL save to ignore these temptations and desires – the DC is 1 plus 1 for each level gained since ‘acquisition’ took place, so it’s not a difficult check.

But each time you succeed, you make the next check 1 DC harder.

Cures and Heals

It must be emphasized that there is nothing wrong with the victim – their condition is a perfectly natural, normal, and healthy result of the benefits they continue to receive (plus the whispering of idle thoughts directly into their mind). It’s taken so long for anything to happen because those thoughts needed to take root within the mind being occupied. Hence Cure and Healing spells, potions, etc will have no impact on the presence or consequences of the Tendril (other than those specifically noted elsewhere).

The tattered remnants

By the time these events are occurring weekly, the character is prone to believing in all sorts of superstitions and paranoid fantasies. They are easily convinced of conspiracy theories by the slimmest of evidence and most specious arguments, and their WILL save DC adds to the DC of anyone trying to talk ‘sense’ to them.

Indeed, should any ‘old companions’ make the attempt, they are more likely to be seen as part of whatever paranoid delusion the character suffers from. “I see it now, you’re a part of it! You’re all a part of it, plotting against me at every turn. How long has it been since your loyalties were bought and paid for by [insert random ‘enemy’ here]? Stay back, I don’t want to use violence —”

At this point the character either becomes an NPC or the player can be brought ‘into the loop’ – they might have fun playing a total paranoid for a while!

The benefits of a Whisper Tendril – to the Whisper Willow

The Whisper Willow – not just the tendril, but the source life-form – feeds on the paranoid and dark thoughts of the animal host, and enjoys vicariously the benefits of their growth.

Every time the animal host gains a HD or character level, so does the Whisper Willow. Every time a magical healing of some sort is used upon the animal host, the Whisper Willow is also healed. Should the Whisper Willow be directly attacked, it can draw upon the HP of the host, who suffers an apparent heart attack or stroke, but that’s rare.

How many animal hosts?

This depends on two things: the height of the Tree-host, and the percentage takeover by the Whisper Willow.

Remember how the Whisper Willow was helping the tree-host grow tall, strong, and luxurious? Now the truth of the matter is revealed!

Multiply the height (in meters, or in yards) of the host tree by the percentage takeover by the Whisper Willow – 10%, 20%, and so on, +10% per HD gained – to get the effective height of the Whisper Willow within the tree.

• At 1m or less, 0+1=1 animal host is possible.
• At 1-2m, 1+2=3 animal hosts are possible.
• At 2-3m, 3+3=6 animal hosts are possible.
• At 3-4m, 6+4=10 animal hosts are possible.
• At 4-5m – as tall as the biggest Weeping Willows normally get – 10+5=15 animal hosts.
• But the extra nutrients from the Whisper Willow pushes these limits. At 5-6m, 15+6=21 animal hosts.
• And, at 6-7m, 21+7=28 animal hosts. That’s about the absolute maximum – so far as anyone knows.

With 28 animal hosts, gaining 1-2 HD per week doesn’t seem all that extraordinary. In a good week, perhaps as many as 4 HD. Plus recoveries and magical healing cast on one or more of the animal hosts in the course of the week – Whisper Willows are extremely tough and resilient!

Even if a Willow never infests anyone with more than 4HD at the time, they can gain as many as 8-12HD from that host over time. Multiply that by 28 and you get 224-336HD!

Of course, such trees are exceptionally rare.

Reactions To Whisper Willows

Most Druids consider Whisper Willows to be amongst the most vile and disgusting things ever to see the light of day. The way the encourage the growth of their hosts, both vegetable and animal, purely for their own benefit, is viewed as Perverse. A few still regard them as a part of nature, to be protected and nurtured, regardless of the fact that this makes them pariahs to their peers..

It’s common for Elves to share in these opinions and attitudes, with certain exceptions.

Notably, Rangers tend to look upon the creatures as mostly beneficial, with some drawbacks – no better nor worse than having any other animal in existence, really.

Warlords are often seduced by the benefits; a few have even deliberately exposed elite troops to Whisper Willows (possibly cultivated for the purpose). This tends to make their armies superior to those of equal number without the ‘benefits’ of Whisper Willows, fueling success in conquest and battle. It tends to work fine until the ruler becomes convinced that the army are plotting to overthrow him (because some of them are) – and until the elite forces grow paranoid over the leadership of their ruler (at much the same time). Entire Kingdoms can collapse into ruin and dysfunction overnight when this occurs.

Other groups tend to have no consensus opinions.

Rumored Origins

There are some who believe that these outcomes point to origins somewhere in the Demon realms, creatures of Chaos which have either escaped or been set loose upon the Earth.

Others find plenty of scope for Chaos in nature itself, and dismiss such claims as paranoia (now there’s irony for you!)

It has been suggested that some mad Wizard somewhere tried to create an amalgam of animal and plant, possessing the benefits of both. But Mad Wizards make such convenient scapegoats that others are inclined to dismiss any such suggestions.

One minor religious sect holds that they were intended as a way of unifying all life in spiritual perfection who were corrupted when mortals were expelled from Paradise, but no-one takes them very seriously.

Animal Host Protectiveness

Even when at their most befuddled, animal hosts remember that they experienced the most perfect rest of their lives beneath the eaves of the magnificent willow, way back when, though they often find it difficult to recall exactly where it was located. “Somewhere on the banks of the Danube, near one of those little countries they have out that way” is not very helpful, and anyone not infested has even less reason to consider the location at all memorable.

When the constant looking over their shoulders becomes wearying, many will seek out that comfort once again, and commit to spending their days beneath the heavenly branches in the company of like-minded others.

These provide an additional line of defense for the Whisper Willow – anyone seeking to attack the ‘Tree’ must get through it’s ‘guardians’. This, of course, plays completely into the induced paranoia of those guardians; no sort of deal will be acceptable, no compromise is possible – leave this place or die!!

Of course, this only occurs when the Willow has had long enough to fully mature, and to have maxed out its catalog of animal hosts. It’s possible that this is a natural way for the Willow to rid itself of hosts that no longer benefit it, creating a vacancy for other victims in the catalog.

Tracing The Link

There are those who suggest that, in order for the Willow to benefit from the growth and experiences of the animal host, there must be some connection between said host and the originating ‘Tree’.

Many such people then go out and look for such a connection, and frequently find it – a silvery thread through the Astral Plane that presumably links one to another.

Following such link-lines is extremely difficult and dangerous.

• For one thing, the connection is so small and ephemeral that it is hard to even see.
• For Another, it is entwined amongst thousands of other threads, many of a more robust and visible nature, so it’s easy to lose the trail.
• A third consideration is that following such threads is like heading upwind in a dangerous part of the world – there are creatures out there who can and will stalk and hunt you without your even being aware of their presence (until it’s too late).
• And, fourthly, the line itself retraces the physical passage of the animal host, through every dangerous place and deadly environment to which they have been, since. Should any of those places have repopulated with beings who can sense Astral Travelers and take action against them… say no more.

But it is possible and will lead you (eventually) to the exact Whisper Willow in question.

Severing The Link

It may be possible to sever the link without following it. No-one has ever documented a successful technique. What has been documented has been the impact on animal hosts when the link is severed: for every level gained since ‘acquisition’, they lose a point of INT, a point in CON, a point of WIS, and 1/2 a Hit Die (permanent losses all). They may lose their paranoia, but it is replaced with a state of confused befuddlement. The reason no technique is recorded is because the consequences are so horrific for the individual.

Attacking A Whisper Willow

This is never easy. It can’t be done from an Astral Plane, it needs to be done in material form. First, you need to get through any ring of Guardians (who will fight to the death to protect their ‘sanctuary’. Then you need to get through the wooden husk of the Willow – which can be several inches of aged and toughened wood, as tough as plate. Finally, you need to inflict enough harm on the creature within to either kill it or force it to withdraw. Given the number of HD one can possess, this is far from an easy task.

And the Willow itself is not without it’s own ability to respond. For every animal host it has the potential to attach itself (whether it has done so or not), it can control one of the willow’s vine-like branches as though it were a whip. It can attack one foe per meter (yard) of height at a time with these natural weapons. With the full combat bonuses associated with a creature of anything up to 336HD (but probably less)!

Part of its’ nature is still that of a Tree, however. It is somewhat vulnerable to fire.

Once about 25% damage has been inflicted by fire or electrical attacks, the timber begins to dry out, and thereafter fire attacks will do double damage. It’s not much, but it’s something.

On a critical success, you can even set the shell of the tree on fire, forcing some or all of the whip-like limbs to turn their attention to extinguishing the blazes, usually by trailing their tips through the river and then using the wet leaves to beat out the flames.

Should those limbs have been shortened by deliberate attack, this can lead to the blaze becoming uncontrollable, continuing to inflict X dice of damage per round, direct to the creature within – no saves.

Killing The Willow

With luck, persistence, and a great deal of effort, a Whispering Willow can be killed. This immediately causes all whispering and other benefits of hosting a Tendril to stop, and prevents any worsening of the side-effects of such hosting.

Recovery is another matter. While the suggestibility may ease after suitable reeducation and appropriate eye-opening experiences, full rehabilitation is beyond the abilities of most creatures and cultures.

It is possible that an advanced culture with inherent psionic abilities could perform such a restoration – the Illithid being one such possibility – but securing their cooperation and being confident that your trust in them will not be violated is another matter.

A full ‘Wish” can undo any one aspect of the consequences, but not all of them at once. You could banish the paranoia, for example, but not the penetration of envy and personal desire. You could restore those with a second, but still leave untouched the damage to the critical thinking faculties of the individual. A third spell can restore those, leaving the affection for the condition and its source untouched – remembering that, to the sufferers, their delusions and paranoia seem to be ‘clarity of thought’ and ‘personal insight’.

Killing the tree is only the beginning of the rehabilitation process, and much of it will face determined opposition from the tree’s victim. Ultimately, they liked, to at least some degree, what was happening to them, and you took it away in an act of cruelty – meant well, but still harmful in the short term (from the sufferer’s point of view). Even getting cooperation sufficient to prevent an immediate on-sight attack is an achievement.

If all you’ve done is kill the tree, then you have restored hope and prevented further manipulation into deterioration. It’s not nothing, but it’s only the beginning.

Whisper Willow Reproduction

One thing that can make these tasks a little easier is the asexual reproduction method of the Whisper Willows – they literally have to give up a HD which then attaches itself to an independent root that burrows away in search of a new Willow to inhabit.

Most of these HP are fruitlessly lost. A new host must be located a reasonable distance from the parent tree so as not to ‘steal’ it’s nutrients, and the ‘root’ has only the most primitive of senses to serve it – it can sense water, and land, and stay within a certain distance from the first, and it ‘knows’ when it has found a suitable location – but it might have to wander a long time to find one.

And it doesn’t have all that long to do so. Many other underground and burrowing creatures can be encountered, and most of them will look upon the root as being a delicacy.

The act of spreading more of its kind around is a constant drain on the HD of the parent. At best, one in eight such attempts will yield success, and it can easily be substantially less – a primary factor being the number of Weeping Willows in the vicinity. Is this a confined pocket of the plants, or are they plentiful along this river bank?

Once again, it’s not much – but when it comes to Whispering Willows, you take everything you can get.

The Tunnel Shrieker

This might seem to jump around a little at first, but it will all come together in the end.

Tunnel Shriekers are one of the more naturally-resilient species out there. No-one’s quite sure if they are plant, animal, or something else altogether, but given their preferred habitats, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.

If the air is tainted or naturally noxious, and the temperature is insanely hot, Tunnel Shriekers feel right at home.

Geothermal Gradient

Have you ever heard of the Geothermal Gradient? As you go deeper into the earth, the temperature rises. As a rough rule of thumb, it’s +25-30°C for every km of depth underground (+72-87°F per mile), but there are any number of exceptions, both on the higher end and the lower end.

(The effects of weather, the Sun, and season only reach a depth of roughly 10–20 m (33–66 ft). So this is caused by internal heat sources).

While the temperatures a mile or two down may be on the cold side for Tunnel Shriekers, there are a few who seem to like the cold (just as some people like the snow while others don’t), and it’s from these radical examples that the creatures(?) get their name..

In reality, though, they prefer their habitats to be a lot nastier. They are at home in Lava Tubes, around Geothermal Vents, near the lava pools of active Volcanoes, and in certain locations on the elemental plane of Fire (if your game universe has such).

Ultrasonic Machining

Let’s try another one. Have you ever heard of Ultrasonic Machining, or an Ultrasonic Cutter? These use sound – defined in this case as high-frequency low-amplitude vibrations – to precision-cut materials. They are widely used in the textiles industry as well as having surgical applications and can be used to cut steel and other harder materials as well – generally, of course, each application will use slightly different designs!

You can even buy Ultrasonic Cutters direct from Amazon.

So this is not a radical new invention, it’s been around for a while.

But Wait – Kinetic Motion Of Particles?

Unless I am misremembering my high school chemistry, though, the kinetic energy of particles of a substance is also known as its temperature.

This Wikipedia page will tell you everything you need to know about the subject, and more.

Okay, it’s generally applicable only to gasses, but the general principle of a direct relationship should hold, regardless of the physical state of the material in question.

And, sure enough, one of the applications for sonic cutting is welding, which would seem to back up this line of thinking, at least enough for game purposes.

Resonant Frequency

So far as I can tell, none of this bears any relation to the concept of material objects having a “resonant frequency” or “natural frequency”, defined as the frequency at which a system oscillates in the absence of any driving force.

If a force of some kind induces an oscillation at that frequency, it’s amplitude compounds. This can have impacts on structures – the most famous example being the Tacoma Narrows Bridge – though, when Mythbusters set out to test the concept that an army marching in unison could induce such a calamity, the results were initially inconclusive. A revisit of the myth later in the season established that the principle was sound but improbable.

Here’s a GIF of the bridge’s oscillation in slow motion:

And here’s one that shows what it was like on the bridge itself

Unsurprisingly, the bridge was not designed to stand up to this kind of punishment and eventually collapsed – though it lasted a lot longer than I would have expected! I’m sure most of you will have seen this iconic footage before.

Later, Mythbusters expanded the subject to look at an “earthquake machine” designed by Nikola Tesla that used the same principles of harmonic motion. The results were negative – although they produced a vibration that was enough to make the hosts nervous, and that could be noticed “hundreds of feet away”, actually getting to the exact right frequency was too delicate a job, or so it seemed. Something similar was observed when the team were attempting to break crystal glasses with just the human voice – it wasn’t good enough to be 99.99% of the resonant frequency, it had to be a precise match.

See:

• Natural Frequency
• Resonance
• Tacoma Narrows Bridge
• Mythbusters Season #4, episode 14 “Myths Revisited”
• Mythbusters Season #6, episode 60 “Miniature Earthquake Machine”
• Mythbusters Season #3, episode 31 “Breaking Glass”

Anyway, to get back on point: As I said, it doesn’t appear to be related to Ultrasonic Cutting at all, but why let that stop me from conflating the ideas?

Back to the Tunnel Shriekers

Tunnel Shriekers are naturally attuned to projecting Ultrasonic sound waves that can create spectacular effects in metals and other crystalline structures.

They have two primary attack weapons:

Precision Scalpel

This peels off a section of armor – literally cutting it off, without harming the flesh and bone beneath. Of course, removing a section of metal also makes it likely that anything attached to the rest of the mail by that section will also come away.

The Precision Scalpel is (comparatively) slow. It can be used to remove 0.707 square inches of plate or other solid armor per HD of Shrieker in a turn. (In practice, it’s easier to say 1 square inch per 2 turns).

Avoiding The Math



Okay, let’s be honest: there are two ways of working this – an easy way and a hard way.

The hard way is to estimate the radius of the affected piece of armor – I’ve picked a forearm part as my example – ignoring the fact that it might not be perfectly round, and calculate an “exact” number.

The easy way is to count roughly how many inches around the affected part there are just going “1, 2, 3, 4,” and so on, add something for the fact that your arms are probably not as big and burly as the typical armor-wearing PC, add one for the fact that the armor won’t be skin-tight, add another for margin of error, and call it a number.

So: I count 5″, (maybe 5 1/2,) around the thickest part of my forearm. I’m no longshoreman so let’s double that to 11, add one (the 1/2 inch is already the margin of error) and call it 12 square inches, and move on. If I halve the length of the cylindrical section, I can cut that down to 6 square inches. So a 6HD Shrieker could do that in 2 rounds, a 12HD Shrieker could do it in a single round.

Easy.

If the material is not solid plate, this rate is halved (because the material has a little more give) – that includes cloth and bone armor as well as chain and leather, by the way.

The number of inches in two rounds that the Shrieker can cut through is, conveniently enough, also the range of this attack.

The Liquefication Attack

To use this attack, the Shrieker has to successfully “Hit” the target (well, duh!)

Every point by which the succeed is counted and if the total is equal to, or greater than, the armor bonus (including magic) then a whole section of the armor simply drips off the body of the wearer, liquefied, and doing 1/2d6 per point of armor bonus..

If the Shrieker doesn’t get enough points to get through the armor, it inflicts a single point of damage per point of success, plus 1d6 heat damage (the armor gets hot).

The attack works by finding the ‘resonant frequency” of that piece of armor, so each successive round that the Shrieker attempts this, it gets a +1 bonus to ‘tune in’ to the correct pitch of shriek. Eventually, it will get through.

This attack has a range of 1″ for every 2 HD of Shrieker.

Still, this doesn’t sound so terrible, right?

On a critical hit, something nastier happens – the Shrieker happens to land on the correct frequency for one of the bones (or equivalent) that keeps a limb functional. This immediately liquefies, doing 2d6 damage, and becomes useless until Healed. And no half-measures on that healing – this is beyond a “Cure Moderate Wounds”.

Technically, bones can’t melt. Bone consists of cells and proteins that bind other materials together; those binding agents fall apart at ‘relatively’ low temperatures. What’s left is called ‘bone ash’ (technical name: mostly Hydroyapatite) and yes, it can melt under high pressures at 1381°C. Without those high pressures, it starts to break down at a temperature of about 1200°C. So the bones don’t technically melt under a Shrieker’s critical hit; they disintegrate, leaving the limb (arm, shoulder, hand, foot, knee, thigh) a floppy bag of flesh.

This does triple the normal damage, and obviously makes the limb useless – it can’t support weight or pick something up or hold something..

But the fun doesn’t stop there…

Primary Defense

Aside from being fairly tough (they have to be to survive in this sort of environment), a Shrieker’s primary defense is a sort of cut-rate anti-magic field. Attackers don’t get their magic bonuses to hit, and their armor doesn’t get any magical bonus with which to protect the wearer (it still helps the armor keep itself intact however, which is why it’s described as a cut-rate version).

Any rings of free movement or other forms of environmental protection stop working.

The victim is suddenly breathing red-hot noxious gas, without protection, and/or standing in molten lava, without protection, or worse yet, swimming in the stuff.

I’m preparing to move, and so have already packed away the game supplement that I would normally refer to at this point to determine the consequences (“Sandstorm”) but they can’t be very good for the victim.

But note that this cut-rate anti-magic field is fully utilized blocking the bonuses and effects of armor and weapons; such rings and cloaks and boots and whatever, if beneath the mail, are not affected UNTIL the Shrieker succeeds with a Liquefication attack, or cuts away the armor protecting that particular piece of the body.

As primary defenses go, it’s good but far from perfect.

Of course, if you are using the Tunnel Shriekers in a sci-fi campaign, they don’t have magical rings of protection, making the primary attack of the Tunnel Shrieker all the more dangerous!

Secondary Defenses

There are other creatures who like these sort of environments, and they like Shriekers – very much, because the Shriekers give them a huge advantage over intruders. It’s not unheard of for Salamanders, etc, to cultivate Shriekers; there may be as many as 12 of them emplaced around the entrance to one of their strongholds.

Such creatures form an extremely adequate secondary line of defense for the Shrieker.

Primary Vulnerability

As should be surprising to absolutely no-one, Cold is the greatest weakness of a Shrieker. The environment gives them a certain resilience even in the face of such attacks – until the attack does more dice of damage than the Shrieker has HD, they take 1/2 damage – but the moment that threshold is crossed, they take double damage.

What’s more, the cold damage persists – if your primary attack does 8d6, then the following round, the Shrieker will take 4d6, then 2d6, and finally 1d6 – all from that initial attack. (Round in the Shrieker’s favor; if the primary attack did 7d6, the next round it would be 3d6, then 1d6).

Intelligence?

Um, no. Shriekers are completely non-sentient, relying on natural instincts. Those instincts are not triggered by creatures who fit the environment, but will trigger upon encountering those who are merely protected from the environment.

Analogous Life-forms and appearance

Tunnel Shriekers aren’t common in Dungeons and underground lairs, but there’s so much more activity in such spaces that an adventurer is far more likely to encounter one in such places than elsewhere, where they are truly dangerous.

The closest analogues would be traditional Shriekers (listed under “Fungus” in the 3.5 Monster Manual, and not listed at all in the Pathfinder equivalent books so far as I could tell). Does that mean that the Tunnel Shrieker is some sort of Dire Shrieker, and also a fungus? That’s up to the GM!

What can be said is that they are a very dark gray (with a deep purplish tinge) in color, appear to have a slightly slimy texture but actually feel like rock to the touch (complete with craters and chips and other imperfections), but have a lighter, cream-colored underside. So they certainly resemble some variety of mushroom, especially those kinds with a sort of arrowhead cross-section.

When agitated, some of those “craters” open up to reveal themselves as mouths (1/2 d6 bite each if you’re silly enough to lay hands on one, and up to 1d6 mouths able to nibble at you at the same time), from which the Tunnel Shrieker emits its sonic attacks. The rocky ‘skin’, at the same time, is revealed to be more fibrous in nature, reshaping itself into a cone shape to direct the attacks of the mouths.

Here’s the key take-away – they are larger slightly darker, slightly grayer versions of the traditional Shrieker, with a slightly different head-shape. When they exist in places no ordinary Shrieker could survive, it’s fairly clear what you’re dealing with; when you encounter a Tunnel Shrieker outside its normal habitat – say, in a dungeon corridor – it’s easy to mistake one for the other.

Reproduction

This is largely conjecture; the environment and life-form make investigation difficult and dangerous. So it may or may not be confirmed at some future point. But, the general belief at the moment is that the craters that don not shriek actually expel spores into the environment when the Shrieker is ready to reproduce. There are both male and female Shriekers, and it takes a spore from both to combine at a suitable foundation point for a new Shrieker to begin. They do not have ‘families’ as most creatures would understand the term; once spores are released, the ‘parent’ completely ignores them.

The likelihood of two spores meeting at a suitable position is uncertain but seems relatively low; the normal solution in nature is for large numbers of potential young to be released, most of which whither and die before ever becoming a whole entity.

Size

And so, to the critical question: How big can Tunnel Shriekers get?

Newly-colonized locations can have 6-12 Shriekers no larger than a human hand, too small to shriek; these can be cut at the base and relocated without harm to either party.

1-3 of these (usually centrally located within the colony) will grow a little larger than the rest and begin to absorb them into itself, prompting further growth. 6-12 “mini-shriekers” become up to three 1HD Tunnel Shriekers, which can grow to 4HD in size.

At that point, these Tunnel Shriekers begin to merge into a single individual Shrieker of 4-12 HD. They can grow wild up to about 18HD in size, maximum, but there have been reports that careful cultivation and exposure to certain rare compounds and minerals can add another 6HD to that total.

At that size, they are leaving human-size behind and circing on the smaller end of the Giant scale.

Only about 1 in 50 Shriekers will grow to 18HD.

One in 100 Shriekers of 10HD or more will exhibit a genetic abnormality, growing a second stalk and “head”. This reduces the size of each by 2HD but doubles the number of fully-independent attacks that can be mounted by each at a time. Should both happen to combine their attacks in kind and against a single target, treat them as one organism with an extra 4HD of ability.

The absolute maximum is therefore a two-headed Shrieker, each head of 22HD, possible only through careful cultivation. But you could be faced with eight or ten of these at the same time.

Where There’s Three Four…

….there are sure to be more (for example, I didn’t offer up any creatures inspired by echoes, or by the Doppler effect, both auditory phenomena of note).

Hopefully, this quintet goes some way to elevating the sonic foe in variety and representation, but it should only be a beginning. There are lots of noises in the world, and most of them could be turned into the focal point of a monster.

As GMs, we spend a lot of time thinking about visuals. Maybe it’s time we spent some time listening for our inspiration, for a change.

It’s been quite a while since I sat down at the keyboard to write one of these articles without a clear idea in mind of what the subject matter would be – usually from weeks in advance of publication date.

When a deadline is looming, that experience can be extremely stressful and unwelcome, but when you have time to let your imagination run riot and see what you can dredge up from your subconscious, it can be a lot of fun.

So I was rather looking forward to it. But then I had a thought, and that led me to an opinion, and that led to an idea – actually, to three ideas. And hey presto – one article.
 
 
 
 
 

Actually, make that two articles. As some people know (but most don’t), I’m required to relocate in early January; lately, packing has taken up a significant chunk of my time, and it will only get worse in the next few weeks.

When I do (and I don’t yet know where I will be moving to), heaven only knows if posting to Campaign Mastery will be even possible; certainly, I would expect some disruption even under the best of circumstances.

So posts are going to get smaller and more distributed over the next few weeks, as I try to build up some cushion to pre-schedule before the curtain comes down.

The thought

It’s been a while since I did anything purely aimed at the D&D / Pathfinder crowd, and they are probably due.

The notion

I was musing about that when I suddenly realized that sonic-based creatures are badly under-represented in both. Sure, you’ve got Shriekers, and Banshees have their wail, and most monsters make a noise of some sort (and are all the scarier when they don’t) – but there’s not a whole lot that’s focusedThe ideas
In about two seconds after that train of thought entered my cortex, I had one idea. And then I sort of groped around mentally for a bit and found a second. And then I thought of a really nasty one. And, just now as I write, a fourth one has come to mind.

Most of these creatures are absolutely old-school in nature, when Dwarves were hairy-chested and Orcs were morally-challenged at the best of times. But that doesn’t make them unsuitable for a more modern campaign; the context changes, that’s all.

And so, the purpose of today’s post is to introduce you to the Humming Bee, Hissing Wyrm, Whisper Willow, and last – but not least – the Tunnel Shrieker.

An afterthought

And, just as I was preparing to get typing, an afterthought, as I realized that with a little tweaking (and some pseudo-science to explain their abilities), most of these could be adapted to serve in many sci-fi and superhero campaigns, to boot! So those folks shouldn’t feel left out…

What’s not included

These are offered as purely conceptual creations for the most part. How many HD they are, and other stats of that nature, are left to the individual GM who has to integrate any they choose to use into their personal campaigns. Most will have no game mechanics offered at all. These are ideas, nothing more.

The Humming Bee

These look like red-tailed Honeybees. At best, they are maybe half-an-inch in length. They travel in swarms, like honeybees – small ones, a dozen or so members in each at most, and usually half this number.

Like some suspect the honeybee has, they are possessed of a fairly basic gestalt mind, but they aren’t better than animal intelligence even on on a good day.

It’s rare but not impossible to encounter Humming Bees underground. They prefer forests and fields where there are flowering plants, however, because that is their principle food supply.

A heavenly chorus

They use this group mind to keep in tune with each other. Each Humming Bee makes a humming sound, as you might expect from the name; each is capable of producing several different musical notes.

They naturally and organically play in music chords. What these chords are doesn’t matter, especially. What matters is that a chord is a collection of notes that combine to form a new, richer sound when played at the same time. Details can add color to this – a bard will especially note the composition of the chord, for example, but those details hold no special significance.

Soporific Enchantment

But each chord is, in fact, very special, because when a swarm of Humming Bees surrounds an individual (and it takes at least three to do this), their melody is enchanting, it has a soporific effect.

And as they play their beautiful music, one a time, they will settle upon the skin of their entranced victim, and lay 4d6 eggs each, before rising again to rejoin the chorus, freeing another to do the same thing.

each time, the chord will change, signifying that the membership of the swarm playing has changed.

The hidden truth

Insects derive from arachnids, having turned one pair of their legs (sometimes two) into wings. The Humming Bees have followed the same path, but still retaining some nasty habits from their predecessor species.

Afterwards

When the last Humming Bee has laid its eggs, the swarm will elevate their song to a crescendo and then fly off, falling silent. They will return to their hive and feed, and grow a new set of eggs.

Their victim will feel a slight euphoria, as though nature had singled them out, by chance, for a very special encounter.

Six hours or so later, a slight rash will develop on the sites where the eggs were laid. This will not be itchy or tender and will quickly fade if any sort of healing salve is applied. Because of the soporific effect of the Bee’s song, there is very little likelihood that the victim will associate the two events; it’s just one of those things that happens from time to time.

24 hours later, there will be a slight swelling at the site and it will begin to feel a little tender to the touch. A day after that, the swelling will be pronounced and the site will be extremely tender. About 18 hours later, each egg will hatch, burrowing its way out the flesh of the victim, doing 1 point of damage in the process – no saves, no nothing.

A Quick Damage Assessment

A swarm of 3:
Multiplied by 4-24 eggs each = 12-72 damage, average 42..

A swarm of 4:
Multiplied by 4-24 eggs each = 16-96 damage, average 56..

A swarm of 5:
Multiplied by 4-24 eggs each = 20-120 damage, average 70.

A swarm of 10:
Multiplied by 4-24 eggs each = 40-240 damage, average 140.

A Swarm of 12:
Multiplied by 4-24 eggs each = 48-288 damage, average 168.

An extra-large Swarm of 18:
Multiplied by 4-24 eggs each = 62-432 damage, average 247.

Low-level characters are easily killed by even a small swarm. Mid-level characters can be taken out by a typical swarm. High-level characters will probably survive even an unusually large swarm, but it could be touch-and-go if they aren’t in peak condition. And that’s if they have a full d10-sized HD.

Treatment

Healing potions and spells have no effect, the swarm are healed at the same time. A full Heal will remove an infestation.

More mundane Treatments are easy at first but get harder as the larvae mature.

Before the rash develops:

Wash the site with a mild, diluted acid like vinegar. This will kill 75% of the larvae without harming the victim.

When a rash is visible:

A stronger caustic agent is needed, one that does at least 1d6 damage. This will kill 50% of the larvae while causing minimal harm to the victim.

When the swelling begins

Lance the swelling (does 1/2 d6 damage) and then apply an acid that does at least 4d6 damage. Repeat the treatment every hour for at least 3 hours. This will kill 25% of the larvae. The more harmful the acid, the higher that percentage will rise, up to 50%.

Once the swelling is severe

It’s almost too late. Lance the swelling with a red-hot poker (doing 3d6 damage), then apply acid as above, but the acid must be literally boiling hot (and so does at least 6d6 damage per treatment).

Time to find and bargain with a Black Dragon?

This will kill 25-50% of the larvae. But the cure is almost as bad as the sickness.

Bear in mind that once these treatments commence, the victim can receive no healing magic of any kind until it is completed, or half the larvae that would otherwise have died will also recover, maybe more.

It is entirely possible to reduce the damage caused by the hatching to a minimum but at such debilitating cost that the victim succumbs to some other threat encountered in the meantime.

After the new swarm have hatched, a character who survives can be healed by any normal techniques.

A small ray of sunshine

Something in the larvae’s gestation has an inhibitory effect on other diseases and infections. It’s even been suggested that Humming Bees might be able to cure things like Lycanthropy.

Recidivism

One might be tempted to expect that the victim, assuming they survive the experience, will be more cautious when next they encounter Humming Bees, but no – if anything, they seem even more susceptible to the soporific euphoria of their song. And from time to time, they may find themselves humming a strange tune that seems hauntingly familiar without being able to place just when and where they heard it.

Making matters worse

Certain conditions have been suggested as making victims even more susceptible. Drunkenness, for example. The suggestion is that when encountering a victim in a mentally-compromised condition, nearby swarms will also be attracted, resulting in 2-3 times the normal number of larvae being implanted.

But this might just be moralizing fiction. Do you want to find out the hard way? Even the suggestion is enough to curb excesses in many cases.

Mike’s Assessment:

Humming Bees are so friendly and innocuous. They play with you, make you feel good, and then let their young rip you to shreds. Of course, even if you undertake treatment, the universe being what it is, that’s when you’re sure to encounter something nasty.

Things become more problematic when a Swarm encounter a group of people, like an adventuring party. If they lack enough numbers to dedicate a sub-swarm to each potential victim, they will simply move on in search of easier prey. There’s safety in numbers.

As a GM, though, I like the fact that their danger can be scaled to threaten and challenge all but the very strongest PCs.

The Hissing Wyrm

Did you ever wonder what it would be like if a creature made a sound and no-one heard t? Wonder no more, because the Hissing Wyrm is the answer.

Habitat

Hissing Wyrms also don’t venture underground very far, though they like to dig burrows into the sides of hills and mountains, especially slopes steeper than thirty degrees or so, in which to build their nests – and there’s always the chance that such a burrow will connect with something of greater substance.

They are normally encountered as solitary creatures (50%), mated pairs (40%) or family groups of 3-4 (1-2 adults) (9%). Very very rarely (that last 1%), several family units will converge for the exchange of female young; no-one is sure how frequently this takes place.

Females so exchanged will eventually form a new mated pair with one of the males of their new family group, and depart to set up their own nests.

Description

Hissing Wyrms resemble basilisks quite closely, but with longer front legs and a much longer neck that is capable of bending and twisting like a snake. Their upper chests are also larger than most other lizards.

Mobility

Their forward claws and strong forelegs give them something of the mobility of a mountain goat, though their progress seems more ungainly and labor-intensive, more pulling themselves up than pushing up from below.

Frequently a mottled brown or green in color, they are unmistakable when encountered because their jaws distend and give every appearance of shrieking at the top of their not insubstantial lungs.

This is all the more comical to behold because their hissing shriek is completely silent to human ears, as though they had pushed the ‘play’ button and nothing happened.

Air bladder and autonomous lung control

The upper chest cavity of the Hissing Wyrm houses an air bladder into which the creature exhales when it is ‘Hissing’. It has independent (instinctive) control over each lung separately, so while one is inhaling, the other can be exhaling, permitting the hissing to be maintained continuously for hours at a time, if necessary.

Personality

Hissing Wyrms tend to be extremely shy and nervous in disposition, doing their best to stay hidden from view, and mounting a sonic attack as soon as they feel threatened in any way even as they conceal themselves. They will frequently fold their hind legs beneath their torso as they hunker down, and will cover themselves with a loose mantle of soil, leaves, and loose branches if there are any handy. Concealment beneath shrubs and bushes is also a frequent tactic; if there are none handy, they will usually try and conceal themselves behind a tree trunk.

These efforts at concealment are at least partially undone by the length of their neck and the distinctive jawline when shrieking, which can make them look like an anaconda rising out of the covering/shrubbery, jaws wide, ready to strike.

Hiss Range

The sound of a Hissing Wyrm at full volume can be ‘heard’ when they are five minutes travel distant. Multiply this range by the square root of the number of adults present (young count as 0.25 to 0.5 individuals for this purpose, depending on their ages)

Mountainous terrain like canyons that produce strong echoes can also count as 1-3 additional individuals for this purpose.

This multiplier is referred to as the “effective population” and will be referred to a number of times subsequently, so I thought it would be wise to include a table for quick reference.

NB: in anything of this size, when everything has to be hand-calculated and hard-coded, there’s always the possibility of errors – I know, I caught a few myself! You may also note that I’m rounding to the absolute limits of precision and a little beyond.

Family Groups	Adults	Small Young	Older Young	“Total Adults” (without echo effect)	Effective Population
					M0	M1 = +1	M2 = +2	M3 = +3
1	1	0	0	1	1	1.4	1.7	2
1	1	0	1	1.5	1.2	1.6	1.9	2.1
1	1	0	2	2	1.4	1.7	2	2.25
1	1	1	0	1.25	1.1	1.5	1.8	2.1
1	1	1	1	1.75	1.3	1.7	1.9	2.2
1	1	1	2	2.25	1.5	1.8	2.1	2.3
1	1	2	0	1.5	1.2	1.6	1.9	2.1
1	1	2	1	2	1.4	1.7	2	2.25
1	2	0	0	2	1.4	1.7	2	2.25
1	2	1	0	2.25	1.5	1.8	2.1	2.3
1	2	2	0	2.5	1.6	1.9	2.1	2.3
1	2	0	1	2.5	1.6	1.9	2.1	2.3
1	2	0	2	3	1.7	2	2.25	2.5
1	2	1	1	2.75	1.7	1.9	2.2	2.4
1	2	2	1	3	1.7	2	2.25	2.5
1	2	1	2	3.25	1.8	2.1	2.3	2.5
2	3	0	2	4	2	2.25	2.5	2.6
2	3	0	3	4.5	2.1	2.3	2.5	2.75
2	3	0	4	5	2.25	2.5	2.6	2.8
2	3	0	5	5.5	2.3	2.5	2.75	2.9
2	3	0	6	6	2.5	2.6	2.8	3
2	3	1	3	4.75	2.2	2.4	2.6	2.8
2	3	1	4	5.25	2.3	2.5	2.7	2.9
2	3	1	5	5.75	2.4	2.6	2.8	3
2	3	2	4	5.5	2.3	2.5	2.75	2.9
2	3	3	3	5.75	2.4	2.6	2.8	3
2	3	4	2	5	2.25	2.5	2.6	2.8
2	4	0	0	4	2	2.25	2.5	2.6
2	4	0	2	5	2.25	2.5	2.6	2.8
2	4	0	3	5.5	2.3	2.5	2.75	2.9
2	4	0	4	6	2.5	2.6	2.8	3
2	4	0	5	6.5	2.5	2.75	2.9	3.1
2	4	0	6	7	2.6	2.8	3	3.2
2	4	1	3	5.75	2.4	2.6	2.8	3
2	4	1	4	6.25	2.5	2.7	2.9	3
2	4	1	5	6.75	2.6	2.8	3	3.1
2	4	2	4	6.5	2.5	2.75	2.9	3.1
2	4	3	3	6.25	2.5	2.7	2.9	3
2	4	4	2	6	2.5	2.6	2.8	3
3	6	0	3	7.5	2.75	2.9	3.1	3.25
3	6	0	4	8	2.8	3	3.2	3.3
3	6	0	5	8.5	2.9	3.1	3.25	3.4
3	6	0	6	9	3	3.2	3.3	3.5
3	6	1	3	7.75	2.8	3	3.1	3.25
3	6	1	4	8.25	2.9	3	3.2	3.4
3	6	1	5	8.75	3	3.1	3.25	3.4
3	6	1	6	9.25	3	3.2	3.4	3.5
3	6	2	3	8	2.8	3	3.2	3.3
3	6	2	4	8.5	2.9	3.1	3.25	3.4
3	6	2	5	9	3	3.2	3.3	3.5
3	6	2	6	9.5	3.1	3.25	3.4	3.5
3	6	3	3	8.25	2.9	3	3.2	3.4
3	6	3	4	8.75	3	3.1	3.25	3.4
3	6	3	5	9.25	3	3.2	3.4	3.5
3	6	3	6	9.75	3.1	3.25	3.4	3.6
3	6	4	3	8.5	2.9	3.1	3.25	3.4
3	6	4	4	9	3	3.2	3.3	3.5
3	6	4	5	9.5	3.1	3.25	3.4	3.5
3	6	5	3	8.75	3	3.1	3.25	3.4
3	6	5	4	9.25	3	3.2	3.4	3.5
3	6	6	3	9	3	3.2	3.3	3.5
4	8	0	4	10	3.2	3.3	3.5	3.6
4	8	0	5	10.5	3.25	3.4	3.5	3.7
4	8	0	6	11	3.3	3.5	3.6	3.75
4	8	0	7	11.5	3.4	3.5	3.7	3.8
4	8	0	8	12	3.5	3.6	3.75	3.9
4	8	1	4	10.25	3.2	3.4	3.5	3.6
4	8	1	5	10.75	3.25	3.4	3.6	3.7
4	8	1	6	11.25	3.4	3.5	3.6	3.8
4	8	1	7	11.75	3.4	3.6	3.7	3.8
4	8	1	8	12.25	3.5	3.6	3.8	3.9
4	8	2	4	10.5	3.25	3.4	3.5	3.7
4	8	2	5	11	3.3	3.5	3.6	3.75
4	8	2	6	11.5	3.4	3.5	3.7	3.8
4	8	2	7	12	3.5	3.6	3.75	3.9
4	8	2	8	12.5	3.5	3.7	3.8	3.9
4	8	3	4	10.75	3.25	3.4	3.5	3.6
4	8	3	5	11.25	3.4	3.5	3.6	3.8
4	8	3	6	11.75	3.4	3.6	3.7	3.8
4	8	3	7	12.25	3.5	3.6	3.8	3.9
4	8	3	8	12.75	3.6	3.7	3.8	4
4	8	4	4	11	3.3	3.5	3.6	3.75
4	8	4	5	11.5	3.4	3.5	3.7	3.8
4	8	4	6	12	3.5	3.6	3.75	3.9
4	8	4	7	12.5	3.5	3.7	3.8	3.9
4	8	4	8	13	3.6	3.75	3.9	4
4	8	5	4	11.25	3.4	3.5	3.6	3.8
4	8	5	5	11.75	3.4	3.6	3.7	3.8
4	8	5	6	12.25	3.5	3.6	3.8	3.9
4	8	5	7	12.75	3.6	3.7	3.8	4
4	8	6	4	11.5	3.4	3.5	3.7	3.8
4	8	6	5	12	3.5	3.6	3.75	3.9
4	8	6	6	12.5	3.5	3.7	3.8	3.9
4	8	7	4	11.75	3.4	3.6	3.7	3.8
4	8	7	5	12.25	3.5	3.6	3.8	3.9
4	8	8	4	12	3.5	3.6	3.75	3.9

Whew! After several hours dealing with the html for the table above, I needed a break.

Since I always intended to offer the table as a PDF for readers to download, I decided to throw together a custom zip-file icon. Then I discovered that the compressed zip only saved about 9K anyway – not worth the hassle to readers.

So the download is a straight PDF – but I’m going to use the icon, anyway, using the justification that the texture of the cube is designed to resemble the scaly skin of a Hissing Wyrm!

As I said, multiply the effective population count by 5 minutes to determine how far (in direct travel time) the hissing begins to have a noticeable effect.

Hiss Effects on Animals

Animals that have superior hearing range to that of humans – notably felines (including things like mountain lions) and canines (including wolves) react very strongly to the hiss, endeavoring to be somewhere else as quickly as possible.

This confers protection against the most common predators that they are likely to encounter.

Hiss Effects on Humans and humanoids

Five minutes after they enter the effective range, humans get to start making CON checks, with a penalty of the effective population number. Every five minutes of game time that they remain in range, they have to save again.

First Failure

If they fail, they develop a splitting migraine headache, even if they are not normally susceptible to such. So intense is the pain that the ability to concentrate is diminished (temporary -“effective population level” loss of INT and penalty to all INT-based saves and skill checks, recover 30-60 minutes after leaving the range).

Furthermore, it also impacts on your timing in combat (same penalty on To Hit and Damage rolls) and coordinate your actions (penalty to DEX/AGIL and saves and skill checks).

Second Failure

Failing another check while already suffering only intensifies the pain, doubling down on the penalties, and requiring a CON check every minute to avoid throwing up.

Third Failure

Some people are too stubborn for their own good. Failing a third check not only doubles the penalties a second time, it makes the recipient so sensitive to bright light (mid-afternoon sun or stronger, including torchlight at night) that they can only cover their eyes, no other actions are possible until the source of pain (light and/or headache) are removed, and so sensitive to loud noises (anything above a whisper) that it causes (effective population level) damage instantly. The affected character will stagger when they move like a drunkard, twitches .uncontrollably (causing them to drop things they would rather not lose) and sometimes making them see spots.

Fourth Failure

Just can’t take the hint, can they? It must be remembered that to the affected character(s), there is nothing there, they can’t hear anything, and might still be a mile or more from the creatures causing all this. The only direction certain to produce eventual relief is back the way they came.

Failing a fourth time means the character no longer has to make checks to avoid losing their last meal, they are doing so regardless of their CON. This adds temporary CON and HP loss to their other penalties, while doubling those other penalties for a third time (so that’s “population level” x 8 INT, DEX etc loss). It also extends the recovery period ten-fold. They may start bleeding from the ears and eyes, cannot draw weapons (or stow them) or do anything more than crawl – pausing to retch, frequently.

People suffering such pain in the real world have been known to drive nails into the heads in an attempt to stop the pain. Obviously, this can have ongoing health impacts. They want nothing more than for the Pain – To – Stop! – but I’ll assume that PCs are made of hardier stuff.

Prevention attempts

Some people attempt to overcome the problems by wrapping cloth around their ears/heads, held in place with a pin or a helm. This doesn’t work. Being Deaf does not prevent the impact of the sound, either – it acts directly on the nervous system of the sufferer.

Mitigation attempts / Treatments

Taking a Cure Wounds potion or being Healed by clerical magic or whatever returns the character to the state they were in, one minute before their last failed CON check. The character will automatically fail their next CON check, however. Successive such treatments can repeat this benefit.

To gauge the effectiveness of such treatments, the GM should keep a running total of all the penalties being experienced; that is the “damage” that the magic has to overcome.

If, for example, the character is experiencing -6 INT loss, and -6 DEX loss (failing twice to save), that’s a total of 12 penalties, so the healing spell has to do 12 points or more to overcome it and take the character back to having only failed once. But one minute later, the symptoms will return if they are still within range.

True story: a friend of mine (Stephen Tunnicliff) bought one of those ultrasonic mosquito repellents to protect us while we gamed in his room out the back of his house. The timing and symptomology described are exactly what it induced in both myself and another player. I was more resistant than he was, but eventually succumbed. Steven was completely unaffected, and thought we were making excuses – at first. About three nights after the second such incident, he woke up with just such a migraine – something he wasn’t normally prone to. He tried moving the device to another power point, it happened again. That was the last time he plugged it in. Instant result: no more migraines, for any of us. So if you were wondering where the idea came from, now you know!

Alleged Origins

Popular legend states that at some point a Deity was so badly abused by somebody that she poured out all her grief and anger into a passing lizard and transformed it thereby into a Hissing Wyrm. These legends suggest that the pain and misery they inflict are what she would have liked to have done to whoever maltreated her; other variations suggest that certain sub-sectors of the population are more susceptible, and that the suffering is in fact directed directly at those she holds responsible. Still other variations have these general targets as proxy victims, claiming that the being who humbled her did so on behalf of, or in protection of, such mortals.

The identify of the Deity allegedly responsible varies from one version of the myth to another. To date, none of them have admitted responsibility. The alleged targets of her wrath also vary – humans, elves, males, mages, storm giants – you name it. The variation that alleges the targets to be Left-handed Alsatian-riding Gnomes with Red Hair can probably be discounted, however.

A later refinement suggests that when so abused, women generally want to be left alone to stew in seclusion, rather than compounding the situation by having others witness the humiliation, and that this attitude also rubbed off on the Hissing Wyrm.

Offensive Armament

The hindquarters and back legs of the Hissing Wyrm are those of a Basilisk, effectively. Their front legs have longer and sharper claws and greater strength, and can use greater momentum, so they are 1d6 more effective (or equivalent).

Their bite is relatively inconsequential, and their weight is not enough to crush any but the smallest of foes. So, while not helpless, their physical prowess is definitely secondary to their voices.

They have a sting in the tail, quite literally – 1d6 weaker than that of a Wyvern.

Their skin is roughly as protective as that of a Basilisk, as well.

Material Value

Unfortunately for the Hissing Wyrm, they possess two traits that make them a target for the avaricious.

First, their skin – although tough – when treated properly in the leather-working process – becomes quite soft and supple, without reducing it’s protective qualities. This makes it a popular covering material for Spellbooks and Religious works, as well as rogues (magical leather) Because it can be made quite thin, it is also often desired as bindings and straps for heavier plate and concealable armor otherwise.

That would be bad enough on its own, but town guards are often accompanied by tracking dogs; those who would prefer not to have their property inspected when they aren’t around have learned that the Wyrms will not Hiss if they are in an enclosed and suitably-padded steel box – if they can’t see a threat, they don’t react as though there was a threat. They are thus in heavy demand as protective agents, locked up during the day.

A secondary application is also made possible – those committing a crime that is likely to result in pursuit by those watchmen and their dogs can carry a Hissing Wyrm in a box and let it loose somewhere along their escape route. They then vacate the area with all speed, so as not to be affected by the Wyrm they have released; by the time any hunt has found a route around the Wyrm’s location, the criminals are long-gone.

Mike’s Assessment

Hissing Wyrms are not deadly in and of themselves, but they are somewhere between debilitating and crippling, making those who are perceived as a threat relatively helpless, something other threats are often quick to take advantage of. The persistence of those effects makes them extremely dangerous.

And the best thing, from a GM’s perspective? The PCs will never see (or hear) one coming…

A wrap – for now

Two sound-based creatures – one whose sounds are so pleasant they make a victim helpless, and another whose sounds can’t be heard at all. I think both make worthy additions to any campaign. And two more to come – at least one of which is as dangerous as both of these put together.

Next week: the Whisper Willow and Tunnel Screecher!

0. Introduction

Even if the main subject matter doesn’t interest you, or doesn’t fit the genre of your campaign, there’s still content of value for you within the article – look for the sidebars, they contain useful tools, techniques, and fascinating side-issues, and apply to D&D / Pathfinder / Cthulhu / Pirate / Western games (you name it) as much they do to Sci-Fi.

The setting itself is strongly Sci-Fi, but the content would also would in a Superhero campaign as an alien world, and could also be used in a high-level Fantasy campaign, probably located in another Plane.

1. Welcome to Azuria

This is the third, last, and longest, of the planned string of “strange places” created for my personal campaigns. You can find the others at Three Strange Places Pt 1: Cemetery Gates and Three Strange Places Pt 2: Mydas. I may come back at some point with another trilogy of strange places, though, as these have proven quite popular!

Those who have been reading my articles for a while will have already encountered Azuria and its’ inhabitants in some form, as it was certainly at least mentioned in Vortex Of War: A Dr Who campaign construction diary. Very little of the detail was worked out at the time, however; most of what follows was generated for the adventure (currently underway) which took the protagonist there for a visit. As usual in this type of campaign, however, something came up while he was there…

This article is NOT about that something. It’s about the place where the something occurs.

I’ll excerpt the adventure – heck most of the article is excerpted from the narrative and dialogue within – when it becomes illustrative of some point or another.

Azuria was once described as ‘what it would be like in a strange corner of heaven, had the Devil taken it with him when he was cast down.’ Even taken metaphorically, it is a not entirely inaccurate summation, and almost poetic in its own way.

Azuria is both beautiful and nightmarish, all at the same time. It is also one of the most remarkable places any visitor has ever seen

2. Azurian Traits & Capabilities

While each Azurian is different, they have a number of common traits and capabilities due to their fundamental nature. These include:

2.1 No physical bodies

Azurians have very little of what most species would consider a physical body. They are mostly electrical phenomena.

The circuits that form a television set or radio receiver don’t generally do anything in and of themselves (unless they are control elements, of course); they exist purely to direct, regulate, and manipulate the carefully-designed flows of energy within the device. It’s those energy flows that are the “true” television receiver, the circuits are just the trappings.

The same can be said of the electrical current within the brain – the physical structure is only important in that it provides the foundation for the complex electrical activity that is sentient thought. If one had some other means of regulating and manipulating those energy flows, the ‘hardware’ becomes more or less irrelevant.

In this way, Azurians can be said to be ‘intelligence without a biological brain’.

Physical structures tend to be lot more compact, however, and for this reason, it has been estimated that as much as 80% of an Azurial exists only to think.

2.1.1 Near 2-dimensional

Azurians are almost (but not quite) two-dimensional. They are about 1/4 of an inch thick, generally, but this shape can be wrapped around itself like onion layers to create an impression of a three-dimensional space. Some notable examples take advantage of this to “bulk themselves out” and look impressive – Meta-Lar for example (who you will ‘meet’ later in the article).

They can (temporarily) push themselves out to form a more three-dimensional shape, but this requires concentration.

2.2 Resistant to physical attack

Physical attacks will generally pass straight through, doing minimal damage What’s more, Azurians can all but vanish as a target simply by turning to one side. Being struck by a physical weapon or a fist is likely to do more harm to the attacker than to an Azurian.

2.3 Vulnerable to energy attacks in certain forms

Being something akin to plasma, however, intense magnetic fields, energy weapons that distribute electrical charge, electrical attacks of any sort – these weapons do disproportionate damage to an Azurian.

In particular, electrical attacks will follow the ionized trail of their internal electrical currents, which will lead the energy of the attack directly to their most vulnerable locations.

Furthermore, many of these attacks are, or can be, area-based and not single-target. Azurians are far from invulnerable – of you prepare for them specifically, or your weaponry already runs in that direction. That’s usually not the case, though.

2.4 Interface directly with high technology

Azurians can’t grip controls – they can’t turn knobs or flip switches or push buttons. Well, they can, and I’ll get to that, but it’s a lot more difficult for them. But they have an ability most beings don’t – they can electrically interface directly with the wires and circuits behind those controls and operate the ‘controls’ directly.

Some are much better at this than others. It requires an understanding of how electronics work without ever having seen the circuits in question, operating purely on general principles and on their capacity to sense when something isn’t having the desired effect.
.
Electronic locks, in particular, tend to open as soon as an Azurian looks at them sideways.

This ability can also interfere with electronically-triggered weapons, play havoc with clocks and timers, and be useful in all sorts of other ways.

For those skilled in it, they are often capable of greater precision and sophistication of operation than the “clunky old interfaces’ would have been, through the equivalent of biofeedback.

2.5 Psychic Abilities

Azurians, like all life on the planet, communicate telepathically because no other form of communications is possible there. From this beginning, they have evolved a number of Psychic Abilities (which are a lot less impressive than they sound).

They don’t have Psychometry – they aren’t solid enough to actually hold something in their hands for very long. They don’t have any sort of telepresence or astral projection capabilities or any such nonsense, either. They have zero precognitive abilities (but they tend to be fairly astute observers and logic can make sensible predictions that sound almost precognitive).

They have telekinesis – enough to life them into something that mimics flight (see below). Depending on how hard they concentrate and “push”, they might be able to exert anywhere from a few hundred grams of force to maybe 5-10kg of lifting capacity – very briefly, a time measured in a single handful of seconds, or less.

So they probably can turn “A” knob, flick “A” switch, push “A” button – with extremely limited control.

Get a reasonably heavy book and hold it in front of you – both hands – for as long as you can. With no more than thirty seconds to recover, add a second volume of similar weight and repeat the exercise.

The second time around, your arms were already tired, probably shaking with exertion, and you probably lasted for less than 1/4 the first time.

Within thirty seconds, add a third volume and repeat – and as soon as you can’t hold the books up any more, try to type a coherent sentence on a keyboard. Your arms will be shaking so much that you will find it almost impossible; you need time to recover.

That’s what it’s like for an Azurian to do things “the hard way”.

2.6 Inspiration by Douglas Adams

At this point, I need to tip a hat at the memory of Douglas Adams, the British sci-fi comedy writer. It was in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” that he mentioned the Hooloovoo, a “highly intelligent shade of the colour blue” (note the British spelling!)

In the Doctor Who episode “The Rings of Akhaten”, in a throwaway reference to the above, the Doctor points out a Hooloovoo in the alien marketplace to new traveling Companion, Clara Oswald.

So such creatures (supposedly) exist in the Dr Who universe. The Azurians are my attempt to take that basic concept and embed enough “science” to make it sound almost plausible – enough for a space-opera type campaign, anyway.

2.7 The Color Blue

Azurites tend to be various shades of the color blue. Some oversimplified descriptions actually refer to them as “Sentient Shades of the color Blue”, but however poetic, this description is at least as inaccurate as it is accurate.

The blue coloration is due to the electrical discharges passing through our bodies at a greater speed than the speed of light within those bodies, what the humans call Cherenkov radiation, but in this case it illuminates the plasmatic biological material which has a natural blue tint – like seeing light through stained glass.

2.8 A Metagame Perspective

An awful lot of what the Azurians, and specifically, what Quasima, the NPC representative of the race, can and can’t do in-campaign revolves around the character’s role as a Companion to the titular character. Specifically, I didn’t want him to steak too much of the thunder from the one and only PC in the game, while still being useful enough to get involved in various ways.

The race was derived from that foundation.

This behind-the-scenes factoid may help the reader understand why some things in the world are the way that they are. It was, in essence, whatever was necessary to make the race viable in a fictional sense, plus a lot of ramifications and consequences of the decisions taken.

2.9 It’s not quite flying, but…

In particular, if they don’t have feet, I needed a way for the Azurians to get from place to place. They were already all but weightless, so telekinetic movement seemed the obvious answer. Similarly – no mouth, so how does he communicate? Again, Psionics was the obvious solution.

I was also amused by the general assumption that the inhabitants of a ‘heavy world’ would be short, stocky, possibly four-legged creatures, and how the Azurians, as pictured, were pretty much the complete opposite.

Excerpt in conditions approaching zero-G, like deep space, Azurians can’t fly per se. But they are so light that they can move around.

Some in-game background: The Origins of a species

It’s not strictly relevant because it may well be different in your game world, and this is very strongly integrated into the Dr Who campaign, but here – in a nutshell – is a very brief set of bullet-points describing the in-game origin of the species as the PC has discovered it to be:

• timestream shattered into shards
• each shard evolved as a parallel universe from that point on
• the doctor and the master combined forces to reintegrate them under extraordinary circumstances, making a few changes along the way
• each reintegration merged species worlds etc from that divergent timeline into the new mainstream reality, propagating backwards through time to create the logical precursors that would lead to the existence of the creatures inhabiting the shard at the moment of reintegration
• another Time Lord, the Rani, observed a strange species in the future of one of the shards and noted that something was causing them to evolve at a staggering rate (the Ood)
• she decided to see what would happen if she took their development to the logical extreme
• she created an artificial environment (Azuria) in which her ‘creations’ could live and function, seeding it long in the past
• these creations were eventually transfigured into beings of pure energy, the Azurians.

In essence, this is the in-game explanation for why there are so many things that the Doctor should have mentioned in old episodes, or that should have been involved, but weren’t. Answer: history got rebooted. The Doctor had to be involved because it’s a campaign about him, but he couldn’t be fully in charge, creating room for new discoveries and events and things that can surprise the character.

3. Azurians away from home

Azurites instinctively take on something of the appearance of those they are most frequently around, when away from home, because many humanoids overreact to their true appearance. This is something close to an instinctive defense to them.

If an Azurite spends a lot of time amongst humans, they will tend to present themselves as smooth-skinned and with most of the internal workings concealed. If they were to spend time amongst a feline race, they will develop a more fur-like surface texture, and the internals will once again be hidden from view, and so on.

There are limits to this camouflage capacity when it comes to size. With an ongoing effort, and Azurite can reduce himself to half his normal height, or increase his height by about 50%. With normal height being anywhere from 4 feet to 12 feet (depending on the individual), that’s a range of 2-18′ – but not all of it will be accessible by all members of the population.

4. Azurians at home

At home, they feel comfortable enough to drop this pretense, revealing a complex structure of chemical reactions and energy transfers, some of which manifest as a constant ‘halo’ of electrical discharges like those of a Jacob’s Ladder. Most of these are contained within the ‘epidermis’ but a few ground out harmlessly.

These reactions also cause light to shine from within when an Azurite opens its mouth to ‘speak’. Note that in many cases, these mouths are completely invisible when the Azurite is in ‘camouflage’ mode.

5. Individual Morphology

As is probably to be expected of a life form consisting of an impure form of energy bound together telekinetically, Azurites come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. In adult life, this is partially deliberate and partially instinctive, while in younger examples, the child is still learning how to do this, and so has a greatly simplified form.

Also to be expected is the fact of an intermediate stage.

Even in those simplified forms – rather fat disk-shapes – each individual is visibly somewhat different to all the others.

Azurian physical forms are created by the thoughts of the individual and the internal structures that comprise their awareness of self. Because each individual sees his own existence through the unique lens of his experiences, each Azurian has his own unique body shape in adulthood.

5.1 Gender

Azurials in general do not have what humans would consider gender. They may or may not mimic external physical structures that are suggestive of one gender or another, but even these can be more often misleading than instructive.

6. Complex Internal Structures

Much of the differentiation in these early forms derives from the development within the individual of complex mental and physical structures. Each Azurite is different, mentally, and their internal structures are – to some extent – a reflection of that individuality.

Not all individuals will have need of the same internal biological processes, though there will be an overlap of commonality. Most individuals will mimic the internal processes of their parents or educators, but some are more wide-ranging, in keeping with the potentials designed into them by their ‘parents’. During the youngest stages of life, these distinctive differences are more generally on display.

In broad terms, there is a uniformity of external shape with differences expressed as unique patterns and – to a lesser extent – variations in hue and color.

During the interim stage, much of this individuality becomes hidden behind a facade of broad uniformity. Many of the internal processes are hidden from view as the individual constructs new layers around themselves to mimic a more functional form for tool use. For example, many will learn to extrude and maintain something approximating arms as they begin interacting more with their external environment and less with their internal processes.

When full adulthood is achieved, individual expression through morphologic variations becomes extremely pronounced; one could view two different Azurites and not even be sure they were of the same species. Some are wispy and almost immaterial; others more like storm clouds wrapped around an approximately humanoid form. Short, tall, big, small, spiky or smooth, thin or seemingly-solid, translucent or opaque – each of these is individualized to suit the needs and personality of the person contained within.

7. Azurian Life-cycle

The Azurian Life-cycle is equally complex. Only general approximations are possible, though social norms creates a measure of uniformity which gives those approximations some credibility. Individuals can vary from the broad general picture quite considerably.

The youngest stage of life is a “proto-Azurial”, the equivalent of an infant. It is incapable of maintaining its own existence and is literally held together by the will of it’s parents, who will often still be refining what potentials they want the eventual Azurian to posses.

When that constant act of psionic will is no longer needed, and the young can (given the proper care and environment) survive unassisted, it becomes an Azurial, the equivalent of a child. Curious and capable of exploring its environment, it spends a lot of time playing games that humans (and humanoids in general) would find instantly recognizable – tag, hide-and-go-seek, and hurdling each other (except that the Azurites being hurdled are all in flight). There is a constant stream of telepathic giggling and laughter as they play, and every now and then (should the opportunity occur), they will swarm some random adult and ask a seemingly never-ending series of simple questions. The social pecking order (see 9.2, below) is strictly observed under the authority of an older or more responsible Azurial.

Azurials can remain in this mental and physical stage of development for years or decades.

Eventually, all going well, the Azurial will begin considering important questions about their future lives and assuming responsibility for the choices that lie before him. He transitions into the equivalent of teenager, an actual “Azurian”. This stage of life can also persist; it usually takes a decade or so to complete the maturation process, but some precocious examples do so in a handful of years, while others (equally rare and extreme) may take half a century or more.

Characteristic of the stage is a form of indecisiveness, an unwillingness to give firm commitments or make permanent decisions in full awareness of the consequences of those decisions. As maturation continues, this slowly gives way to a certitude about what the Azurian wishes to do and be, and how that can fit into the broader tapestry of Azuria’s society.

When emotionally mature enough to make important decisions, and physically mature enough to have full control over his bodily form, the Azurian undergoes “Ascendance” and becomes an Adult “Azurite”. In this form they can exist for multiple decades or even centuries.

All three stages of development have the potential to fail, and eventually, even an Azurite” will enter the final stages of life as they undergo “The Wasting”, gradually losing control of their physical functions and mental faculties. This is frequently characterized by an abandonment of responsibilities that lie external to the family group and increasing introspection. In some cases, extreme moodiness or intemperance can occur, notable because in all other stages of life, an Azurian is unfailingly polite – the legacy of being reared in a telepathic society.

There are some key details to note within the Azurian Life-cycle.

7.1 Intentional Design of Potential

Emotional and mental traits and the mental processes that generate them are categorized by Azurials as though they were written on index cards. Each participating parent gets to add their own selections to the ‘mix’ (in consultation with the others, of course).

This does not guarantee that a given trait will manifest or dominate the personality; it merely creates the potential for it to do so. Some traits will remain untriggered for the entire lifetime of the resultant Azurian. Others may manifest at an early age and have a direct influence over the developmental path of the youngster.

As with any act of parenting, you never know exactly what the outcome is going to be – you just do your best and hope that it’s enough.

Azurians have one advantage over other species, however – their telepathic nature makes them instantly aware of any maladjustment or inappropriate thought processes, and – if necessary – corrective mental surgery can take place immediately. As a result, all Azurians are remarkably “well-adjusted” in human terms. This includes respect for others and an unfailing politeness.

Some species find these traits to be bland, even artificial. Others find the natural consequences to be endlessly amusing.

An example of the latter: An Azurite might (with deepest regret over the necessity) cause the weapon of a hostile party to explode within their grasp, inflicting terrible injuries. The same Azurite might then, with absolute sincerity, tell the once=hostile party, “I apologize for the inconvenience and hope that you enjoy the rest of your day.”

7.2 Strange Interactions of Components

Often, a combination of these potentials will interact in some unexpected way, manifesting in a surprising character trait, subject of fascination, or sequence of personal choices. Azurials are never afraid of following such choices to their logical conclusions. The personality is a gestalted compounding of potentials that have been actualized by opportunity of expression.

Parents can create the potential for something – say, a love of Jazz; can deliberately create opportunities for the potential to manifest – taking the individual to music classes and Jazz recitals – but none of that means that they will become a professional musician. Instead, a love of pattern within structured chaos may lead them into higher mathematics as a career, a different manifestation of the potentials that were built into their foundations.

7.3 Creation of a new Life

For the sake of description, let us assume that two or more Azurites decide to create a child. They combine their thoughts to form a cloud of structured matter that is held together by the mental force of those parent-Azurites. Two are the minimum necessary, but more are not uncommon, permitting the workload to be shared; until the child is self-contained and self-sustaining.

As [electrical and material] currents flow through the Proto-Azurial, the pathways and structures that shape and direct those currents are assembled by the Azurite currently monitoring the process, usually modeled upon their own, because the parent knows how they work.

In this way, each of the parents contributes to the mentality and potential of the offspring. The process is analogous to, but not even remotely the same as, the DNA of humanoids being recombined and passed on to descendants. For one thing, the choice of model upon which to base a particular thought-function is always a deliberate one, save only when a new mental contribution is required as a result of some sort of emergency.

7.4 Specialist Participation

Organisms are inherently complicated; designing a new one for each member of a race is a task beyond almost any parent. Much of the process is instinctive, as automatic as the musculature motions and adaptions needed to complete the task when a human decides to pick an object up for examination.

Sometimes, two ‘pathways’ within the Proto-Azurial are incompatible, contradictory, incomplete, or simply erroneous, and a Pseudologist is needed to graft an emergency correction into the mental structure of the child. And, tragically, sometimes that process cannot be completed sufficiently, or in time, and the nascent proto-Azurial dissipates, taking with it all the efforts and hopes of those who had contributed to its becoming.

The medical and psychological specialists who provide such support are known as Pseudologists. They specialize in knowing what processes are essential to continued existence and in identifying conflicts within the processes present that threaten the internal harmony that permits that existence. They can determine when a process can be safely removed, when an alternative that does not share the incompatibility can be introduced, and what the resulting consequences will be.

It is rare, but not unheard of, for such specialists to be consulted when the infant is being ‘planned’ by its parents.

7.5 Stages of Development



This image is almost entirely my own work because I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted. There are numerous elements (more than 200) combined in various ways – everything from bacteria under an electron microscope to dust motes, and all sorts of things in between. Three of the images are not by me, but have been extensively modified in various ways – they are all on the Azurite row (the bottom). There’s the thin lightning-figure in the middle, there’s the cloud-like figure second from the right, and there’s the rightmost storm-cloud figure. I wish I could give proper credit, but didn’t keep the notes. I do remember doing a lot of searches for “Lightning Elemental” and such. This one I think I can show you full sized (click on the image), particularly since the text is barely legible at this smaller scale – (click on the image).

Prior to it becoming self-sustaining, the responsibilities of the parents are to the survival and well-being of the nascent young. When it becomes capable of independent existence, those responsibilities change, as the new life enters a series of stages of self-development..

7.5.1 Independent Existence

Parents of an Azurial are required to guide and protect the new life, to ensure its education and preparation for potential maturity. As it develops, the child will develop potentials of its own choosing, often ones that were not obvious to the parents, resulting in richer and more complex internal structures and an ever-greater self-control over its form.

Some of the paths and potentials created by the Parents are superseded or simply abandoned along the way. Maturity, and a mature personality, is as much about what you let go of as it is what you acquire. But those dead and dormant pathways remain engraved in the internal structures of the maturing Azurial.

7.5.2 The Wasting I

Eventually, the Azurial reaches a crisis point in which it has developed sufficient personality to take full control of its development, becoming an Azurian.

But it doesn’t have an unlimited time to reach that point; the dead and corrupt pathways left behind accumulate, and if the Azurial takes too long to develop, can do so to the point where it no longer has the evolutionary capacity to make the next step; its growth is poisoned by it’s own mental wastes.

The Azurial then remains as an eternal child, gradually sickening and failing as the light inside becomes obscured and dimmed, a process referred to as “the Wasting” – in this case, “The Wasting Of Potential”.

7.5.3 Azurian Stage

For a while, the new Azurian will seem to collapse into itself, becoming smaller and more condensed – but that is only because more of its currents are directed inwards, building new and more complex internal structures faster than it can grow. But eventually, it will begin constructing variegated external structures and learning how to develop a humanoid form.

The details are frequently modeled on non-Azurites with which it has associated. These may be ‘skin deep’, designed to do nothing more than lubricate social interaction with those surrounding it; because they share a physical environment, there may be some measure of practicality involved as well.

In some cases, a particular representative will be singled out as a role model, and the emulation will run deeper – see 7.7 The Mentor, below.

One defining trait of this stage of life is that the individual is considered mature enough to care for siblings and impaired older relatives, and generally take great pleasure in doing so. This creates a social and familial continuity that might otherwise be lost.

7.5.4 Approaching Maturity

Eventually, an Azurian reaches the point of maturity, where it can begin designing its exterior and interior to suit its needs, and shaping its capabilities to render it suitable to undertake a career – which are never pre-defined, they are always subjectively defined by the Azurian themselves.

Azurians take this approach because there are so many combinations of specialty that it is impossible to adequately define them all.

In fact, it is often the case that the Azurian themselves cannot adequately define or describe the scope of their professional life, and spends their entire mature life in the pursuit of that definition; they know only that there is such a definition that is possible.

7.5.5 Second Wasting

Once again, however, this is a race against time. The decaying and decrepit processes that are abandoned and ignored act as pollutants within the body, and if maturity is not achieved in time, they will prohibit it. In time, the accumulated decay products will leave the Azurian unable to maintain even its semi-humanoid form and it will collapse into an end-of-life Azurial. Mentally, too, it will revert into a second childhood, a form of senility.

For much of its life, those who endure the Second Wasting remain capable of functioning as an Azurian, caring for the young and infirm, for example, and they often take great delight in doing this. It is reasonably analogous to a grandparent taking children (or senior citizens) to a park or other activity.

In time, they become incapable of even this, and become an Ante-Azurial, indistinguishable from those who suffered from the First Wasting. This progression can be slowed, even reversed in the short-term through the development of new interests and personal associations; as with humans, mental activity is necessary to prevent sufferers from simply wasting away.

Because the sufferer was closer to adulthood, and it’s potential offerings to society at large better defined, the term “wasting” in this case is meant to imply “Wasting Of Opportunity”.

7.5.6 Azurites

Only those who have achieved maturity are considered Azurites. No two Azurites are alike. Every Azurite can be considered a professional of some sort, though some observers note that the society permits, even encourages, the study of ‘fringe subjects’. Frequently of little social or scholastic value, this is considered the price that needs to be paid for the occasional “from out of left field” discovery.

Earlier notes might also suggest that Azurites do not disagree with each other, or that such disagreements are without passion; neither suggestion would be correct. What is lacking in such discussions is disrespect. “You have been an able contributor to society in the past, but I find your current choices ethically questionable and morally exhausted. Give me your reasons for this behavior, and they had better be convincing, or I will seek to have you removed from office, forthwith,” might be typical of a confrontation. “Whatever possessed you to do such a thing, given the past history of failed attempts and the terrible cost of those failures?” is couched in even stronger terms – but the presumption is always there that the individual being raked over the coals knew what they were doing, and their motives were good (even if their reasoning is flawed).

Azurites continue to enhance themselves, adding intellectual and physical capacities as needed or as they capture the interest of the individual. Equally, dead and disused capabilities build up as the individual focused more and more precisely on their chosen careers, and eventually, the same problem manifests – these begin to get in the way of further growth, and the individual begins to first stagnate and then wither.

7.5.7 Post-Azurites

There are two primary manifestations of the Third Wasting – mental faculties may deteriorate, or physical skill and precising may deteriorate. The first is ten times more common than the second. It is normal for Azurites to begin planning for a retirement, voluntary or involuntary, in later life, usually after the last of their intended children have achieved adulthood. They begin focusing their efforts on completing tasks already undertaken as a priority over new tasks, which they will set in abeyance or hand off to up-and-comers within their profession (or something close enough to their profession).

This social behavior is frequently the first hint that an Azurite feels his time beginning to draw to a close. More tragic is when accident. injury, or distraction causes the symptoms of age to go unnoticed until the day come when they can no longer be ignored. It is usually not to late to implement a prepared succession plan, but will often require the aid of an Assistant or other ‘guardrail” to keep the failing Azurite focused and on-track if the problems are mental, or to actually complete activities on the Azurite’s behalf if physical.

There are obvious parallels to the three great Human failings, Alzheimer’s / Dementia and Parkinson’s Diseases, respectively, but there are also parallels with incurable (but usually slow-acting) cancers. GMs can often get a better handle on the personality impacts of the conditions by translating the human experience.

Inevitably, the point is reached where the Azurite is no longer fit to continue professionally. They may still be consulted on various matters (though their advice is weighed more cautiously), but – in general – they have only social activities and family with which to occupy themselves. A due course – months, or years, perhaps even a few decades in rare cases – some function critical to ongoing life becomes critically compromised and the individual dies.

7.6 Critical Moments

As the descriptions above make clear, there are a number of physical and mental milestones that an adult individual experiences in the course of their life. These are cause for celebration and social/family gatherings when they are reached. Often, the only person capable of determining that a milestone has been achieved, or is imminent, is the individual themselves; is is them who gets to set the terms and criteria of their achievements. (As noted, however, there is a terrible penalty for waiting too long).

In particular, there are four milestones that rank above all others (and there are many others – Azurials are a social species); three independances, and one retirement..

7.6.1 First Independence

First independence comes when an infant no longer needs parental mental support simply to exists; it marks the transition to a child. Not all Azurials achieve this, but 98% of the population do so. The responsibilities of parents change as a result.

7.6.2 Second Independence

Second independence comes when a child begins making personal decisions of a significant nature and convincing others of sound reasons for the choices being made. These decisions are often not permanent commitments, and are certainly not binding. The responsibilities of parents change again, but this transition is often a more gradual affair. At some point along the way, the parents will decide that the changes need public acknowledgment so that society in general can also begin to treat the Azurian with greater consideration and confidence.

7.6.3 Ascension – Third Independence

The third independence is the biggest one of the lot, the equivalent of coming of age. It is a declaration by the Azurial that they are willing and able to make their own life choices and abide by the consequences that manifest from those choices. It usually also involves a declaration of intent in terms of chosen career. From that point forward, the new Azurite is subject to no authority in personal matters save those dictated by Azurian law. They can choose to respect or ignore customs, they can choose to become parents in their own right, they can wear a silly hat (held telekinetically, of course) and call themselves a cowboy, should they wish.

7.6.4 Retirement

There are lots of reasons to retire. One may have completed what one considered their life’s work, satisfying the motivation that kept them professionally engaged; one may be forced into it by age; and so on. While no career path is considered more important any other, there may be pressure to choose a related occupation that is more socially-productive (retirement may be avoided in such cases through a part-time commitment, deemed a necessary act to obtain the resources needed to continue what is seen as the ‘primary’ occupation by the Azurite practicing it).

Retirements can be happy, or mournful. They are often reflective, even nostalgic, and it is normal for friends and family who may not have been around for many decades to reappear. Very little happens on Azuria by accident; while one of the retiree’s family will frequently be dominant in the planning and execution of a “retirement party” (to use the human vernacular), the retiree is also a highly-engaged participant.

In many respects, it’s like a reverse wedding – one or more of the family making arrangements for a key event in the life of a parent, instead of the parent helping the child plan the event.

7.6.5 Death

When death occurs, the mental force binding the individual together dissipates, and they simply vanish as though they had evaporated..There are no significant remains to bury, and hence the Azurians have no burial ritual skin to a human funeral (a common saying amongst Azurites is that “where there are remains, there can still be animation”; it took a long time for them to realize why this had such a triggering effect on many other species, but especially humans).

One human practice that has begun to catch on is The Wake. A more informal gathering of remembrance of the individual than a Retirement Ceremony, in which his personal and social achievements are lauded as loudly as his professional ones.

7.7 The ‘Mentor’

Azurians are not considered mature enough in my culture to be fully responsible for my own decisions. I am expected and required to attach myself to someone of greater maturity, as it were, and to approach them for guidance when necessary, and use them as a role model the rest of the time. These are known as ‘Mentors’.

Those selected to be a Mentor by an Azurian need not be consulted and are often not informed of this status. This is not a voluntary relationship on their part, it is the deliberate choice to utilize the Mentor as a role model in at least some respects of their development by the Azurian.

An individual can have a succession of such individuals in the course of their development; sometimes, a Mentor is accorded that status for the development of a specific trait or capability. It is possible, though rare, for a single Azurian to have multiple mentors at the same time; it doesn’t happen more often because of the potential for conflict between the lessons being absorbed from each Mentor. Better to master what one has to offer and integrate it fully into the personality and then move on – but opportunities should not be wasted, either.

Most Mentors are Azurites; it is uncommon (but not unknown) for an off-worlder to be accorded the status, and some Azurians who travel off-world so so specifically to find, and develop a relationship with, a suitable non-Azurian.

As an Azurian approaches Ascension, it becomes more common for the Mentor-Student relationship to be acknowledged. Although rare, it is even possible for a non-Azurian Mentor to be invited to participate in the Ascension ceremony. The rarity is a consequence of the environment of Azuria. This generally exposes them to the Parents of the Azurite-in-waiting; like parents anywhere under such circumstances, the Mentor can be expected to be probed for their fitness as a role model and any fault, however slight, can be amplified to cataclysmic proportions.

They do this out of care for their child, and not as insult to the Mentor – the first is all-important to them, and the second trivial, no matter how offensive their interrogation might appear.

Scene In A Park

Below is an excerpt from the Dr Who adventure, “The Coming Of Ageless”, from which most of the material in this article has been excerpted and compiled. It’s worth including here because of the way it illustrates much of the content of this section.

I did a specific image for the scene, but it didn’t quite come out as clearly as I wanted, so instead I have chosen to include (at the bottom of the excerpt) another composite of Quasima’s entire family group – with names.


Newly aware of the nuances of the Azurite definitions, you recognize that approaching you are one Azurite, one youngish Azurian, and a late-stage but still youthful Azurial. “Quasi-ma, welcome home. It is good that your journeys have completed your growth. Neo-Na awaits. Para-qua insisted on greeting his favorite sibling, and so I have brought Poly-Tra to watch over him should he wander off.”

The Azurial, with kittenish shyness, looks out at you from behind the shoulder of the Azurite. Presumably, this is ‘Para-qua’, one of Quasima’s most junior siblings, and it must be your presence that is inhibiting the enthusiasm that the Azurite’s welcome implies.

Confirming this impression, the Azurian, Poly-Tra, tells the younger specimen, “it’s all right to be curious, Para-Qua. This is Quasi-Ma’s chosen mentor, a humanoid – one brave enough to come here and celebrate your brother’s new maturity with us.”

“Is it really okay, Papa?” says the young ball of lightning, and at a nod, he erupts from his hiding place and begins swarming around Quasima and peppering him with questions. You get the sense that if the Azurites recognized genders, the young ball would be feminine, but they don’t. You realize that this is exactly the sort of gender-equivalence assumption that Quasima was warning you against.

The Azurite now addresses you directly. “I have no doubt that Quasi-ma would have intended to introduce us, but he will be busy for some considerable time with the enthusiasm of his sibling, who wasn’t really old enough to ask coherent questions when Quasi-ma left for the stars. I am Meta-Alto, one of two who cultured his initial patterns, and I must recognize from the outset that you do him much respect by attending his maturation ceremony.”
(reply)

“Neo-Na and I sought to cultivate a sense of curiosity allied with an analytic mind in Quasi-ma, but for a long time he turned his thoughts inward, as you might suspect from his chosen name. It was something of a relief when he finally chose to seek a mentor beyond this world. He did not find it stressful, mind; he seemed completely confident in his assessment that he had to adequately prepare himself to match any mentor who he would consider worthy before such a mentor would accept him. We often wondered what qualities he would seek in such a mentor. You must have come to know him well, by now – can you enlighten me?”

This question was capable of several nuanced interpretations. Meta-Alto might have been asking About Quasima, but what he really wanted to know is why Quasima might have chosen YOU as his mentor – what qualities do YOU have have that entitle you to have an Azurite apprentice (or whatever they call the relationship).

The scene continued from there, but that’s where we will leave it, and move on.



Unfortunately, this is also almost illegible. Rather than offering the larger image as a separate file, however, I’ve decided to transform it into a triptych (I think I have the spelling right)! – three panels, with a little overlap to show that they are parts of a whole.







7.8 Choice Of Careers

Azurians spend much of their phase of development in search of an answer to the question posed to virtually every teenager, ever – “What do you want to do with your life?” – and then preparing both themselves and the society around them for the assumption of this role.

All careers are subjectively and personally defined, but many are subject to broad general classification.

If there is no demand for a particular function, part of the career of the individual can be defined as creating such a demand so that they can then satisfy it.

Provided that society, and it’s stewards (the politicians) are satisfied that the individual is making a contribution to society in general, they will not judge the validity of the choice, but will support it by ensuring adequate professional workspace, minimal life needs – accommodation, food, etc – and then do their best to get out of the way. They do not consider themselves wise enough (in general) to make value judgments over people’s life choices.

7.8.1 A shortage of plumbers?

This system is not as unstable as it might, at first, appear. It could be argued that it would break down because not enough individuals want to choose a particular profession at some given moment, for example.

Australia is suffering at this very moment from a dearth of skilled tradespeople, but it is doing so because past governments de-emphasized giving trainees in such trades the support, income, and opportunities needed, perhaps because there seemed to be enough people doing the job already, perhaps because they were undervalued.

Well, there weren’t enough trainees to keep up with demand, a problem exacerbated by the Pandemic, which prompted many in an aging population to take an early retirement.

The consequences and ramifications are still playing out – there’s a new restaurant / takeaway across the corner from me that has now missed FOUR opening dates because there simply aren’t enough tradesmen to complete the fit-out of the shop, for example. Remedial action is being taken, but will take 5 years or more to make a significant difference.

What was expected to be a crisis ten years from now, if not promptly addressed, is here early.

There are attempts to bridge the gap with an immigrant workforce of tradesmen. But this is creating it’s own problems – having knock-on effects within the housing market, for example, and not having enough people working within the civil service to process all the applications. Government priorities are being shifted as a result – and the cascade of ramifications continues to grow.

So this is potentially a serious problem, at least in the short-term. The solution within this society is that a shortage is in itself a trigger for career desire when one career is not falsely valued over another.

So far as Azuria is concerned, a happy and productive citizen is part of a complex and interlocking web of responsibilities that collectively create the society.

Another part of the solution is the presumption of secondary responsibilities. If you are an archaeologist, for example, part of the job description is the education of other like-minded individuals – succession planning, in other words. This is a generally unspoken, but very real, part of the social compact of the culture.

7.8.2 Changing Occupations

Inherent within the complexity of people is the potential for someone to fall out of love with a career path, or grow overly frustrated at a lack of progress, or simply to begin finding that the career is not as personally rewarding as the individual expected.

When that happens, people always have the option to retrain themselves and enter a new, possibly related profession – or simply to change job titles if no retraining is necessary. Before they are permitted to do this in Azuria, however, they first have to satisfy the government that there is insufficient demand for their ‘former’ occupation, or that if there is a demand, that the supply of individual workers is adequate to that demand. If neither of those is true, then before the old career can conclude, the individual needs to implement a more direct and targeted succession plan.

This usually involves a deferment of the change for a few years, nothing more. And it has sometimes been the case that the search for potential replacements and their training and education, gives the individual a chance to further appraise their contributions to society and rediscover their love of the original career path.

8. The Azurian Environment

In some respects, the Galactic Core is analogous to a solar system. You have:
 

• A central mass, which emits huge amounts of radiation, the accumulation of every bright object that crosses the event horizon and appears therefore to linger, forever;
• Orbiting inner “worlds” (entire star systems) which are drawn toward the central mass, and may or may not collide with it eventually (noting that the mass is always increasing due to other objects being absorbed, so no orbit can be considered entirely stable);
• A belt surrounding the central mass like a halo in which the radiation emitted is insufficient to directly threaten life most of the time;
• A region outside of that in which orbits are comparatively stable save when acted upon by one of the millions of other masses surrounding the central mass (not so stable, then);
• An outer area where objects in long cometary orbits reach perihelion, and begin to plunge anew back into the chaos, eventually to become part of the central mass; and
• Clouds of dust and debris created when objects pass too close to the central mass and are torn apart, but not so close that they are completely absorbed.

The turbulence in the latter makes the core one of the prime locations in the galaxy for stellar and planetary formation, but such objects are frequently extremely short-lived.

8.1 Galactic Region

Just outside of this region of gaseous turbulence is a relatively safe zone, though passing stellar masses continue to create chaos on an astronomical timescale. That chaos can be considered an ongoing series of perturbations in the otherwise stable orbits of the star systems concerned. Each one that passes either adds or subtracts from the orbital velocity through gravitation, but over a longer time frame, the evenness of distribution means that such perturbations even out, statistically.

There is always a tipping point, however, beyond which the consequences of the orbit being perturbed become unrecoverable. Living on planets in this region of space is a constant risk.

Although rare, collisions between stars do occur, and there are so many candidates swarming in and around the area that they are a regular event.

8.2 Star

The star around which Azuria orbits is fairly typical. Azuria itself was not originally a part of its solar system; it’s an outsider that it happened to scoop up during it’s own travels around the galactic core. It’s stellar type is largely irrelevant – it can be anything from a Type A to a Type K sun, or anything in between (it’s unlikely that a dwarf star of any sort would work, however). In general, a bright star, perhaps even a giant like Rigel, would work.

These details are up to the individual referee. So unimportant is the star (in general terms) that I haven’t even specified it’s type in-game, and the player has had no need to ask for the information.

8.3 Planet

The Planet called Azuria is more complex. It’s a variation on a Hot Neptune, with some characteristics of a Cold Neptune. If those terms mean nothing to you, it simply means that you’re not keeping up with the discoveries of exoplanets and the revisions to stellar categories that are being necessitated to classify them.

The mass of the planet is fairly high – it is a gas giant, with an ultra-dense Neutronium core, formed around the remnants of a high-speed collision between two Neutron Stars. The bulk of the stellar matter from the collision condensed into a larger neutron star (perhaps even a black hole), but some of the ‘splash’ would have escaped the collision. It then passed through one of the many gas clouds surrounding the core, one with relatively little hydrogen and helium – plenty of carbon, oxygen, water, ammonia, and nitrogen, though – scooping up enough of this material to form a planet.

Azurials do not live on the planetary surface; they live amongst the clouds, at sufficient altitude that the gravity is earth-like, i.e. 1G. If you want to specify exactly what the mass of Azuria is in Earths, you can calculate this in earth radii – the Azurials live at an altitude above the core approximately equal to the square root of mass (in Earths) (all the other variables cancel each other out).

I didn’t think it was worth the trouble to calculate it.

8.3.1 Cosmic Origins

The two neutron stars must once have collided at high speeds almost head-on; while the bulk of the combined masses would have been combined and departed (causing another gravitational perturbation in their wake), there would have been remnants. Most of these would have been too small to sustain the internal pressures and immediately exploded. But there must have been at least one remnant that was just large enough to survive. Gravity would almost immediately have caused plastic flows to render the surviving stellar core material spherical.

Thus, the planetary core of Azuria itself has to be hollow, with a relatively tiny neutron star orbiting inside it, almost certainly spinning at incredible speeds (any normal matter present would have wrapped itself around the neutron star remnant – it might not have been sufficiently compressed by gravity to become more Neutronium, however).

The orbit of the neutron star is almost certainly not precise; there would be wobbles and the likelihood that it was in the same exact direction as the rotation of the rest of the planet is infinitesimal.

As it approaches just a little closer to the surface, the increased gravity would super-heat the remaining surface material through tidal stress, but inconsistently – there would be geysers of metal constantly thrusting upwards and cooling in the winds of the upper atmosphere. Some would then shatter and fall back down, ready to be super-heaated again on the next pass. Others would cool quickly, courtesy of the strong winds present, and become spires of metal pointing skyward.

These are hollowed out and used by Azurials as places to construct their homes.

8.3.2 Planetary Formation

It must then have drifted through the debris of the exploded fragments, consisting largely of metals and other exotic materials, and then through an almost-depleted planetary nebula; if it were not depleted in this way, the planet that was forming would have become a gas giant, and it didn’t – quite. Or perhaps you could say that it did, but one composed of gasses other than hydrogen, helium and methane – making it one of the rarest planetary bodies possible.

8.3.3 Primary

And then it must have somehow blundered its way not only into a stable orbit around its current primary, but one that was in =exactly= the goldilocks position for a planet of this unusual composition. And picked up a moon or two, which swept up asteroidal mass and sent it plunging to the surface, accreting a rocky mantle. These also skimmed away any remaining hydrogen and helium.

8.3.4 Asteroid Rain

The impacts of some of those asteroids threw molten metal and rock almost out of the atmosphere – but it must have cooled just enough in the process to form solid structures hundreds or thousands of kilometers tall. Atmospheric skimming by the moons then reduced the atmospheric content enough that most of the time, those structures project out of what atmosphere remains.

8.3.5 ‘Surface’ Conditions

Charged particles from solar radiation strike the exposed metal created by past asteroid impacts, which conducts the resulting electrical charge to ground level.

Atmospheric tides crash against the walls of the resulting mountains, creating incredible turbulence, which in turn would create an electrical differential between atmospheric clouds and surface. This produces the incessant electrical activity.

All this drives unusual chemical reactions, some of which produce great pools of bubbling polymers in the lower atmosphere. Heat transferred to the atmosphere from the hot-spots below would push this material upwards, and spread it out into relatively thin sheets that were visually indistinguishable from the clouds that blanket the planet. These are the ‘solid clouds’ that Quasima described.

These would produce relatively cool areas in the atmosphere by providing shade from sunlight and a shield against the radiated heat; islands of semi-stable cool air surrounded by heated atmosphere. More atmospheric turbulence, more clouds, more lightning.

Because different compounds have different melting and boiling points, they would settle out at different rates, layering the polymer clouds and strengthening them. From time to time, some of these pockets of relatively pure gaseous compounds would escape through the sheets, especially when one was punctured; the results would be jet streams in the air that travel at hundreds of kilometers per hour.

This is an environment in which nothing is fixed or permanent, but some features would have such long lifespans that they are all-but-eternal. And that includes floating polymer clouds with electrostatic coatings of metallic elements, thinner in some places than a sheet of cooking foil, thick enough elsewhere and sufficiently resilient for a vessel to land on them – with care.

8.3.6 ‘Habitable’ Environment

The gravity of Azuria is far too intense for the planet to have normal composition, but because visitors never go near the surface, it is not much different to Earth-normal.

In many ways, though, the planet is a Gas Giant in which atmospheric layers have been compressed to the point where they present as semi-solid surfaces – that are free-floating on other gas layers like streamers or ribbons.

Azurians weigh next to nothing, and can easily manipulate that next-to-nothing with their telekinetic abilities, limited though those capabilities are. That being the case, they do not live on the (uninhabitable, even for them) surface of the planet, but amongst its cloud layers.

Some of these are solid enough for humanoids to walk on, being constructed of naturally-occurring polymers, while others are insubstantial as fog or mist, and most of the latter are indistinguishable from the former with the naked eye. Humanoids constantly probe the ‘cloud’ ahead of them to ensure it has enough substance to function as a ‘surface’ for them to walk on.

That Azurians can (and do) walk upon a cloud-like surface is no indication that it is safe for a visiting alien to attempt to do so. Because the differences don’t matter to Azurians, only those consciously accommodating the solidity of visitors will even think to point out an area of insubstantiality unless the visitor brings the matter to the attention of a local.

Should one do so, most Azurians will attempt to be helpful and mindful, just as the visiting alien might attempt to help a handicapped or crippled individual who was struggling in some way. Most humanoids do not tolerate this attitude as well as, perhaps, they should.

Sidebar: About Clouds

Two of the most astonishing facts that I’ve ever encountered: 1) Any cloud that you see in the sky above the Earth is actually at least 10,000 much smaller clouds aggregating; without sufficient density, they are virtually invisible. 2) Any such cloud easily weighs as much as a full-grown Bull Elephant.

Put those thoughts together and add a higher gravity field and more substantial chemical compounds, and you can easily discern the inspiration here.

8.3.7 The Long Fall

When a humanoid falls through a section of cloud that is sufficiently unsubstantial as to be unable to bear their weight, they will fall. If they are lucky, they will encounter another ‘platform of cloud’ of sufficient solidity to arrest this fall before they accumulate enough momentum to break through such a surface.

Unless they encounter ‘semi-solid ground’ within a few meters of descent, however, their velocity and mass will be such that they will begin the kilometers-long descent to the ‘surface’ of the planet. They will never reach it; the atmospheric pressures of Azuria are such that they will be crushed like an eggshell long before encountering something solid enough to arrest their fall.

Both this problem and that of transiting from one piece of ‘solid ground’ to another are solved – partially – by the wearing of some form of jet-pack. Note that these can be very difficult to control without sufficient training and practice.

8.3.8 Uncontrollable Descent

Complicating this problem is the electrical environment, which tends to play hob with any sophisticated control circuitry. Brute-force mechanical controls are necessary, anything else will be completely unreliable unless massively shielded – and the weight of such would be prohibitive.

Think of it as like trying to cross some incredibly thin ice – the more you weigh, the more likely it is that the surface will give way under your feet.

This is a very tricky engineering balance to get right.

One ingenious solution is to place the humanoid in a large plastic balloon; this distributes their weight over a much broader surface and lets them roll from place to place. Downhill is easy, even fun – uphill is harder work.

Other buoyancy aids may also be successful. You had better hope so if you’re relying on them!

8.3.9 Azurian Solutions

As a general rule, there are none. They don’t need them, and the environment is such that they get few visitors, so they have seen no need to develop any.

8.4 Atmosphere

The Azurian atmosphere is a cocktail of exotic gasses, which float hither and yon in streams. Extracts from these different compounds are used as biological components to manufacture the internal structures and processes that permit Azurians to control the electrical plasma within their beings; they consume biological compounds as though they were food.

One of the compounds is oxygen, a significant fraction of which is in the form of Ozone.

Many of the gasses are poisonous to humanoids, and some would be corrosive, either chemically or because they have been super-heated by lightning.

8.5 Surface Environment – from a visitor’s point of view

The first discovers of Azuria described it as a place that both is, and is not, habitable.

Azuria is blinding. There is constant electrical activity.

The planet is deafening. Lightning produces Thunder- constant and deafening to humanoids. Only those protected against those (and other) hazards should exit the shelter of the conveyance that brought them to the planet.

Azurian Life is all telepathic to some degree as a result of needing to communicate within such an environment. No other form of communications is possible there unless cocooned in an extremely well-protected sanctuary.



This is an excerpt from the main Azuria image that started the article, which I don’t think contains any copyrighted elements. It illustrates not only the environment described above, buit the Azurian style of architecture. (I thought I needed something at this point to break up a large block of text).

8.6 Energy Cycles

Earth has it’s Nitrogen cycle and it’s water cycle – Azuria has energy cycles. The flow of energy around the planet. mostly in the form of heat and electricity, is paramount to life there.

8.7 ‘Plasmatic’ Biochemical Cycles

All life on Azuria is electrical in nature. In a sense, that is true of all life, everywhere, but it is more literally true of Azuria than anywhere else.

This is a consequence of evolving within an environment containing the energy cycles described. Just as human cells retain the chemical structure of the sea in which the chemical compounds first came together, so the electrical nature of their environment is part and parcel of the internal structures of all Azurian life.

Electrical discharges are, to an Azurian, akin to a summer shower.

8.8 Telepathic Noise

Azuria is not perfect, not even for Azurians. They are suffering from the telepathic equivalent of Noise Pollution, the consequence of a population that is outstripping the habitable region of their planet.

Because they are almost two-dimensional, you can pack a LOT of Azurians in a given volume their architecture – flattened tower-like spires thrusting several hundred meters into the sky, smaller in horizontal footprint than any human skyscraper, grown like crystals. One of the primary features of this architecture is that it removes a family unit of Azurians from the company of others, or at least puts them a suitable distance away.

At ground level, where there are billions of Azurians coming and going, it can be so overwhelming as to overload psychics from other races.

Although they are typically not sensitive to it sufficiently to be injured, even non-psionic visiting races find it almost impossible to sleep anywhere near the surface due to the constant hum of billions of simultaneous conversations that no ear-plugs can keep out.

During the day, when individuals are active, this noise can usually be tolerated by visitors; at night when trying to sleep, no. Since most material beings are extremely dependent on sufficient sleep, this poses yet another hazard to visiting aliens.

9. Azurian Personalities

While Azurials are more individual than members of most species, there are traits in common that emerge from the “biology” of the species as a member grows and matures.

9.1 Proto-Azurials and Newly-formed Azurials

Like all infants, these are comparatively helpless, physically. Intellectually, they are relatively advanced; first telepathic communications (of simple emotions) takes place almost immediately, and coherent thoughts are frequently just a matter of weeks, though this can vary from one individual to the next depending on the traits selected for inclusion by the parents.

9.2 Young Azurials

Azurian young in the Azurial stage are curious and playful. They may or may not be respectful. Think of them as being like puppies, always shoving their (metaphoric) noses into everything around them, exploring the limits of their universe and their capacities for interacting with it.

The new fascinates them. They will ask a lot of questions, and expect simple answers that enhance their understanding of the universe. Should they not understand something, they will deem that to be important and will ask other, older Azurites for clarification. Some find understanding such an answer to be their life’s work – so such answers are treasured, when they occur, and can be personally transformative.

When groups of young Azurials come together, they develop a pecking order that is strictly adhered to. There are three primary factors – Experience / Development; Relative Boisterousness; and Age, in that sequence – though a high level of Boisterousness can overcome a deficiency of Experience / Development. They do this largely instinctively, and use this ranking to determine leadership, responsibility, membership in group activities, priority sequence when interacting with strangers, and so on, even down to the sequence in which they get to ask a question – and then, to the back of the queue!

9.3 Older Azurials

It must be remembered when considering any individual that they are the sum of the expression of their potentials and the opportunities they have been given to develop those potentials. The emerging personality, in particular it’s likes and dislikes, also plays a role; one may have the potential to be a concert musician, but if you never awaken a love of music, it’s not likely to happen.

Parents can design their young to have unique combinations of traits, but what the end result will be is anybody’s guess – you could hand a different group exactly the same set of potentials and the maturing Azurial will be markedly different.

Sidebar: An analytic tool for characters

This is more akin to what goes on in human societies than most humans like to think. The initial part of the process is simply largely hidden from view, inferred by the demonstrated traits and abilities of the parents. These create potentials, and social status and educational opportunities present what opportunities the child has to express and develop those potentials.

The intersection between potential and opportunity provides a relatively strict ranking of developed abilities: (1) Both; (2) Interests with the Potential; (3) Interests without the potential; (4) Potentials without interest; (5) No interest and no potential but socially mandated; and (5) No, interest, No potential, no mandate.

Insight can be acquired into any character by assigning their skills into these different categories. The higher the net score in the skill, the earlier it should appear in the lists. Try to distribute them as evenly as possible – so if you have 10 skills, you should have 2 per category on average, and no more than three in any one category. Four would be exceptional.

This can create hard choices, but those are where insights are formed. What you are essentially doing is probing the question, “Why is this skill at this score? Why not higher? Why not lower?”

For a single skill, the results can be interesting, even insightful. For a more fully-realized character analyzed in full, they can be revealing, even revelatory.

The GM can’t really do this analysis of a PC without the player, but he can do NPCs. Players can analyze their PCs on their own, of course, but a collaborative effort with the GM will frequently yield a better understanding of the PC for both parties.

When you have these insights, put them in writing. They will serve as signposts to what the character should be developing, in terms of future skills and personal growth, and should signal the GM what opportunities he should make available to the PC, what type of individuals the PC will relate to, and so on.

Useful.

9.4 Azurians

The Azurian stage marks two developmental paths which generally occur in tandem, though development in one can be temporarily retarded in some individuals.

The first is a refinement of personality and self-understanding.

The second is a greater capacity to interact with the world, generally manifesting in a more complex physical form. While it’s not necessary for this form to be humanoid, it often is – from the ‘waist up’, anyway.

A third line of development is in education and vocational training; during this stage, this aspect of the individual’s life is under their control and not the control of the parents. Quite often, this is not apparent to the casual observer, but it can be a defining factor, if the Azurian choose to seek off-world experiences, for example.

Azurians are either thoughtful, quiet, and contemplative (but not shy), or they are boisterous, outspoken, and energetic (but not empty-headed). Neither nerds nor jocks, though there is a tendency for individuals to be misdefined by outsiders into those categories. “Jocks” can be studying higher physics, “Nerds” can be contemplating Internal Plumbing. Both groups will frequently surprise those outsiders mentioned.

9.5 Azurites

An Azurite has a self-defined career that they find compelling enough to direct their full physical and mental efforts toward, the result of the blend of education, training, and personality.

No matter what the career path, an Azurian understands and appreciates how his particular personality profile creates an advantage within that career, even if it’s just “I find ‘X’, fascinating.”

Other aspects of the individual’s potentials are relegated to the status of “hobbies and interests” unless directly related to, or secondarily important to, the primary career. They represent fallback positions should the individual’s career not be in demand, or be oversupplied with qualified individuals – and are a diversion from any stress and strain resulting from the primary career. It’s all very human, really..

10. Azurian History

Until they were discovered by human explorers, Azuria had little comprehension of the wider universe. Too much of it was washed out by the riot of change in the night sky, and none of it was constant enough to be placed within a logical framework that would permit them to deduce the existence of parts of a structure that were not so densely packed with stellar bodies in motion.

They named it for the color which dominated both the landscape and the inhabitants.

11. Azurian Culture & Society

11.1 Something New!

Most Azurians will never encounter a non-Azurian. Such a visitor will be “something new” and will be the center of attention for everyone they meet, at least for a while.

But there are always a few who have abnormal reactions to the strange and different – some will view the visitor as a threat, some will view them as a danger, and some will regard them as inherently inferior.

While most Azurians will be too polite to do more than grumble to the alien or about the alien, there are a few who may take stronger measures.

Fortunately, the precautions that must be taken against the environment also protect the casual from most of what these malcontents can inflict upon their person.

11.2 Children are the responsibility of all

Any passing Azurite who encounters one or more Azurials automatically assumes responsibility for and over them until another arrives to replace them. Adults can and do come and go as needed, but there is always an adult at the heart of such swarms.

There is little or no control exerted over the children; they are free to go where they will, and (in general terms) do what they want; unless their actions place themselves or others in danger, authority is not exerted beyond making sure that their games do not get out of hand. They may need to resolve some minor conflict, as might happen when supervising any playground, but such control is light and usually takes the form of a “lesson”, engaging the endless curiosity of the young and leading them to decide that certain behaviors are unacceptable or unsafe.

12. Azurian Politics

Azuria is led by the “Ascendant Chorus”, which occupy a building specifically designed for government function, the Chambers Of Chorus.

The landscape and architecture leading to the Chambers is quite remarkable – a single isolated mountain rising out of the clouds does nothing but exaggerate the epic scale of the Chambers, which rise out of a valley in the base of the mountain, managing to feel both manufactured and organic at the same time, serious and whimsical in parallel – much like the Azurians themselves, you note.

The Chambers are actually two towers, connected at both top and bottom of the smaller. You ascend through the lower parts of the towers by ramps, staircases, and vertical shafts (which may or may not have lifts in them depending on the technology level of your campaign).

The smaller tower contains administrators and clerks, or their local equivalents, while the Council itself and staff occupy the taller tower, ordered strictly by seniority, rank, and the importance attached to their post.

12.1 Appointment to the Chorus

Positions are never allocated ‘at large’ or by seniority, the way it seems to happen in human administrations; instead, prospective candidates for a given position must advocate their ideas for improvement within the division for which they are applying, and a select group within the Chorus, whose job it is to evaluate prospective members, determines whose ideas are most practical and useful, assisted by experts in the relevant field as necessary.

Once successful in achieving Appointment to the Chorus, a Chorus Member is also allocated a specific segment of the population for whose interests they must advocate, who they must represent, and to whom they must report, in addition to carrying out the functions of the bureaucratic position for which they have successfully applied.

Chorus members can be removed at any time by the Chorus for failing the latter, or by those they represent if that representation is inadequate, so neither duty can be neglected.

Political Exposure

This creates a political atmosphere that is both distinctively different and yet familiar, as this excerpt from the adventure shows:

“This matters,” Quasima told you telepathically. “By asking for outside help, Meta-Lar has exposed himself to ridicule and accusations of inadequacy that could cost him his career.

The only way that fate can be avoided is if the situation is seen as serious enough that not seeking such help when it is known to be available would be tantamount to an admission of the same shortcoming.

Whether or not the severity of the situation has been clearly and correctly assessed, the act of asking for assistance defines how seriously Meta-Lar views the problem.”

[Meta-Lar was the name given to the current Leader of the Chorus, in effect, the head of Government.]



The final illustration for this article is of the leader mentioned above and his Assistant, who features in excerpts that follow..

 

Overstepping Bounds

You arrived at a well-appointed office with lots of smoothly-polished blue marble slabs, 20 feet tall by 4 feet wide, mounted on walls of a muted gray-white color. Tastefully used as highlights here and there are gold trim and golden lamps. Entering, you were greeted by an Azurite you have never met before, who seems to still be more late-stage Azurian than Azurite in many respects, just barely able to maintain a sufficiently-humanoid shape with which to perform his duties, which are presumably receptionist-secretarial in nature.

“Welcome – you must be the Doc-Tor and Quasi-Ma. Meta-Lar is in gestalt at the moment, obtaining the latest updates. I am Part-Eth, and serve as manager of Meta-Lar’s schedule. He has asked Social Engineering Expert Quantum-Sanz to attend as well, but Quaze – as he likes to be addressed – has not yet arrived. It’s entirely likely that he is also participating in the Briefing. In the meantime, may I get you a serving of particulate Nickle-Hrydrate ions?”

[The Doctor didn’t think that would be all that compatible with his Biology.]

About 15 minutes later, Meta-Lar emerges from his inner office, his voice booming across the room like rolling thunder. At least partly, this has to be a professional affectation, he wasn’t quite so voluminous at the Feast. “Doc-Tor! Thank you for coming. Have your biological needs been provided?”

Quasima interjected before the Doctor could frame a polite response: “The offered refreshments were entirely appropriate – to an Azurite, not to a demi-human analogue.”

The room seems to brighten dramatically as Meta-Lar darkens and sprouts additional bolts of lightning. “Part-Eth, you were specifically warned that a demi-human analogue would be arriving for an urgent meeting and that he was to be shown full courtesy! Your Azurian-first philosophy often works to your advantage in performing your duties, but this breach of protocol and ill-manners places your position in jeopardy. I will discuss this with you again when time permits. Schedule a twentieth-cycle this after-zenith for a dressing down and performance evaluation. And if I were you, I would spend the intervening time considering carefully the value that you intend to offer in service to the Chorus, hereafter.”

Doctor, it’s clear that Meta-Lar wants to tear strips off his receptionist-cum-secretary-cum-office manager for this diplomatic faux-pas. While you were not particularly fussed, I expect, having provided your own refreshments just in case, the next non-Azurian with an appointment might be less casual about such things, to the diplomatic detriment of Azuria. At the same time, you probably don’t want to be the reason he loses his career as a civil servant, which is a real possibility when you filter Meta-Lar’s words through what Quasima explained to you earlier.

I then put the questions to the player: “Are you intervening? And, if so, what are you saying and who too?”.

 

A secured War Room

With the unpleasantness dealt with, Meta-Lar turns back to you, and at considerably more intimate volume levels, advises that “The information you will need to understand the crisis is extremely sensitive. It can only be imparted in a secured environment. I do not know it, myself, at this time, because I have placed it within a secured compartment within my mind. Quasi-Ma, not all Azurites are capable of this, and it is not a failing on your part not to be one of them, given that you only Ascended to adulthood yesterday. If you cannot do so, then you must remain here.”

Quasima replies, As assistant to the Doctor, I found the need to have such a capacity. It will present no difficulty.”

Nodding, the planetary leader – all 10 feet tall of him – leads you into the outer chamber, a hub leading to multiple office spaces. Approaching a blank wall, he pauses to warn, “This room is telepathically shielded, and swept for other recording devices four times daily. To those accustomed to the constant conversation of the world in general, the silence can be disconcerting. It tends to make Azurians ‘shout’ – probably to try and fill the space with noise. I suspect that you will have little trouble, as you’ve had considerable time away from the noise of home, but wished to warn you. Social Engineering Expert Quantum-Sanz is already within, waiting for us – or so I have been led to believe.”

With that, he opens a hidden door and leads the two of you through into a chamber that seems to have been tacked onto the side of the tower in such a way that its existence isn’t obvious from the outside – and then hidden from the inside. Doctor, you notice that it contains telepathic shielding of very high quality embedded within the walls; the constant hubbub of telepathic conversations stops abruptly, and silence seems to rush in, creating a void.

Waiting inside, standing at a huge round ring-shaped table with inset electronic controls of some sort and a ring of 10 elevated view-screens facing outward descending from the ceiling. The walls contain a series of 15 even larger screens, with a series of small alcoves in between them everywhere except where one has been left out in favor of the entrance. Each alcove also contains a small workstation of some kind. Even smaller screens are inset and angled next to the controls; there are 16 such stations. Also at each station, in the position you would expect to see a chair, metal poles about two inches thick rise about two feet from the floor, terminating in a T. These earthing stations evidently form comfortable seating for an Azurial. At one of the stations, a human stool-top has been fitted to the crossbar, obviously for your use. You hope that you don’t have to work out how to use one of the stations, or your reputation for infallibility (assuming you have one amongst the Azurians) will be seriously dented! Or perhaps that might be a gentler let-down than what might be about to transpire.

Before you can say or do anything, the Azurite in the room rises and approaches. “You can only be Doc-Tor and Quasi-Ma. I bid you greetings from the Azurian Institute Of Higher Learning. My formal name is Quantum-Sanz, but I prefer to be called Quaze to the maximum extent that informality is permitted. Congratulations, young Quasi-Ma, on your Ascension.”

Quasima replies, “Thank you, Respected Quaze. My brother sends his regards; he is a student within your department, one of many so I doubt that you would know his name.”

“You speak, of course, of Semi-Phran. Quite the prodigy, that one, which is obviously why his name has come to my attention on a number of occasions. I had to formally approve his occasional service on behalf of the Council; officially, he is not yet old enough for such responsibilities.”

Doctor, it’s dawning on you that the field on which Quaze is expert might be better described as “Comparative Xenosociology”, i.e. “Diplomatic Relations”. He is probably the head of the Diplomatic Corps of Azuria – and it’s worth taking a moment to recall that most Intelligence Services are run through such departments. ‘I prefer to be called Quaze,’ indeed!

Meta-Lar takes up a position with Quaze to his right and the Doctor to his left, with Quasima one station further around from the Time Lord. Touching one of the controls, his section of the ring-shaped table elevates about eight inches, as does his seating and the floor from which it emerges. A second ring around rises four inches to form a step. Of course, the psionic shielding must interferes with the Azurian ability to fly, too.

 

In a nutshell

I don’t think there’s huge value in actually describing the crisis in detail. Instead, here’s a very quick summary, highlighting those parts that might be relevant to an understanding of Azurian Society & Politics.

The uniqueness of their world means that there are very few suitable worlds for Azuria to colonize. They have made such attempts in the past, in fact, three times, and each has been a catastrophic failure. There are multiple theories as to why – the existence of someone making sure their experiment doesn’t escape the lab not being one of them.

Because any experimentation to test these various theories would have placed the participating Azurites at considerable risk, all such experimentation was banned at the same time that it became enshrined in their legal code that any further colonization attempts be illegal. This was all some significant fraction of a century in the past. Azuria has an annual day of remembrance for those who were lost in the past attempts.
.
Five years ago, Meta-Lar very quietly reversed that decision and established a colony on a distant world that was being artificially “Azuria-formed” around another neutron star fragment. Azuria, of necessity, resides in a volume of space that is inherently crowded and energetic. This causes numerous repeated incidents of extreme violence, sufficient that most species would deem it to be uninhabitable. It is simply too close to the galactic core and the super-black-hole that lurks there. Although the public remains unaware of it, there have been more than 140 documented near-cataclysms that threatened our world’s ongoing existence over the last 3500 years, since our recorded history began. Some were closer to catastrophe than others, but in all of them, there was a tangible risk of the destruction of the planet.

Collisions between stars occur at a rate 900,000 times more frequent in this part of the galaxy as they do out in the arms that are more comfortable for other species. Gamma-ray bursts are 10,000 times more common, as are nova and supernova. Orbital mechanics are disrupted or rearranged at more than one billion times the frequency. Stars age at a rate more than 5,000 times that of more benign areas of the galaxy. To one in [Meta-Lars’s] position, the risk posed is unacceptable and intolerable. For the preservation of Azurites in the face of planetary destruction, an interstellar colony is essential.

Meta-Lar is a leader because he considers himself fit to make the big decisions, even overruling the general population if he thinks they are wrong. This, naturally, risks his career should things not work out right. “The Buck Stops Here!”

The rest of the briefing dealt with the most credible causes of the past failures and how every conceivable precaution was taken to prevent a repeat.

13. Azurian Naming

Many things on Azuria are not quite what they seem to be, and this is reflected in their names. Many of them begin with prefixes like Quasi- or Semi- or Neo- or even Partly-, or any of a dozen alternatives, all of them reflective of this fact.

The name is carefully chosen to be reflective of the individual identity, and settling on a clear and permanent name is one of the signs of imminent maturity. Most Azurians choose a name fairly youthfully, and 40% change it a number of times before choosing a definitive expression.

Azurians borrow liberally and with abandon from other languages to derive their names.

Quasima

The NPC representing this species in the campaign is named “Quasi-Ma” – “Ma” being a human word from Albania which means ‘Me’. His name literally means “Almost Me” – a reflection of the philosophic quality of a personal name being both an identity, and reflective of that identity, and yet not the totality of that identity at all, not even symbolically.

But in this case, it was chosen because all of the career choices open to the Azurite didn’t quite seem to fit – several were close, but none of them were quite ‘Him’. The resulting uncertainty regarding life direction is unusual in an Azurite, and this distinctiveness manifested in a name choice.

Wrap-up

Azuria is a unique environment, which draws upon a wide range of literary and gaming sources and binds these elements together in a pseudo-science that sounds plausible enough to pass muster in a game environment. The individuals get to be fun and boisterous and polite all at the same time. They suffer from many (but not all) human failings, or have their own analogues of those failings, making them as fun to play as any other species you can name. They make good allies, and implacable enemies. As with the previous offering, an artificial ‘hidden origin’ hand-waves away a lot of potential inconsistency. I hope readers have fun with this creation!

First, A Correction (and some expansion)

I wasn’t going to be talking about this stuff today. I’ve done almost half of the third “Strange Places” article, and that was my intended post of the week.

But….

When I calculated how much a Gold Dime would weigh last week, I uses diameter instead of radius. This has a big impact, as you will see:

What if a dime were made of gold?

There’s a purpose to this. For a start, a dime is roughly the size that I think of when I think GP. It For another, it’s a fairly ubiquitous coin size – not far away from the Australian 10-cent piece for example. And for a third, if I can say that a GP is the size of a dime, but the weight of × dimes, everyone will be able to relate to the numbers.

Weight (real dime) = 2.268g
Diameter = 17.91 mm = 1.791 cm
Radius = 1.791 / 2 = 0.8955 cm (that’s the step that I missed)
Thickness = 1.36 mm = 0.136 cm

Volume in cubic cm = pi × r^2 × ht
= 3.1416 × 0.8955 ^ 2 × 0.136 = 0.3426 cm^3.

Density of pure gold = 19.3 g / cm^3

so weight = 6.6127 g
= 2.91 regular dimes.

Three dimes would be a fraction heavy – about 2.8%.

Value, 24 ct = 6.6127 / 313.54573 × 20067 = $423.21 USD.
Value, 18 ct = $317.41.
Value, 15 ct = $264.51.

But 15-ct gold would also reduce the weight – not all the way to 62.5%, because whatever impurities there are have to weigh something, but that’s a start. 6.6127 × 62.5% = 4.133 g = 1.823 regular dimes.

My instincts throughout the remainder of last week’s post were that the value of $1058.03 was too high, by a factor of around 10, and 1/2 cubed is 1/8th. So my instincts were right, but misinterpreted.

Let’s scale that up a little: Ten gp = 18.23 g = almost exactly 8 regular dimes. With (at 15-ct), 37.5% impurities – even if they weigh only about 20% as much as gold – that would add 8 × 37.5% × 20% × 1.823 / 2.268 = 0.48 additional dimes, 1.0938 g.

That’s the weight of a paperclip, or a 1$ note.

But, given that value is no longer the crisis that it appeared to be last week, let’s go back to 18-ct gold and see what we get.

Value, 18 ct = $317.41.
Weight, 18 ct = 75 × 4.133 g / 62.5 = 4.9596 g
     = 2.1868 standard dimes.
10 standard dimes = 4.573 gold dimes..
5 gold dimes = 10.933 regular dimes.

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Good Meal Test

So let’s see where we’re at with the Good Meal Test.

A really good meal for 1 will cost about 1 gp (I call this the “Good Meal” standard). It will also cost $50-100 modern Australian dollars at the extreme, but $18-$30 is more reasonable, and that’s what I’ve been using as my yardstick. If I convert those numbers into US dollars at last week’s exchange rate, I get:

$100 AUD = $63.76 USD
$50 AUD = $31.86 USD
$30.AUD = $19.13 USD
$18 AUD = $11.48 USD

So US $19-32 would be a reasonable first estimate for the value of a GP, and more probably at the lower end of that range. $20 or $25 would seem about right.

The common meal standard

.This works on a 1/10th gp conversion. A mid-quality bog-standard common meal, consumed by thousands of people a day both here and everywhere else, will cost $10-$20 AUD, and closer to the top end of that range.

Apply the same exchange rate:

$10 AUD = $6.38 USD
$20 AUD = $12.76 USD

So, the equivalence is suggesting that 1/10th of a gp is around US $9-12, and therefore a GP is going to be worth somewhere close to USD $105.

That’s a big difference, but it’s not as extreme as the factor-of-ten that we got last time. Let’s try to reconcile the two values using the math tricks from last week:

Mathematical Trickery

Average of $105 and $20 = $62.50
Average of $105 and $25 = $65

$105 × $20 = 2100, square root = $45.80.
$105 × $25 = 2625, square root = $51.20.

Average of $62.50 and $65 = $63.75
Average of $45.80 and $51.20 = $48.50
Average of $63.75 and $48.50 = $56.13

$62.50 × $65 = 4062.5, square root is $63.74.
$45.80 × $51.20 = 2344.96, square root is $48.42
$63.75 × $48.50 = 3091.875, square root is $55.60

We seem to be honing in on a value of around $55.50. We have much bigger margins of error than 50 cents, so lose that and we get a rough conversion rate of

I GP = $55 USD.

The values that we got to last week were $23.34, $40.59, and $18.77. This is 2-3 times two of those values, and about 20% higher than the third.

A lot hinges on how many gp you would pay for a really good meal, in-game. If 1-2 gp, the $55 value is going to be the sort of number you should pick. If 3-4, I would set it to about $25.

From last week’s article:

Once you have that number, you can take a gem result – be it 1 gp, 10 gp, 50gp, 500gp, 5000gp, or 50,000 – and get the USD equivalent. Once you have that, and the information contained in this post and last week’s, and you can directly determine the weight and dimensions of the gem.

Special gems are easily handled simply by multiplying the base value of a 1ct gem with those special characteristics by an appropriate factor – times 1.5? Times 10? Times 100? – it’s up to you.

What’s more, if you do a little prep work and save the results, you can define a standard gem – in your game world – and up-scale or downscale it as needed.

Value / base 1-ct value will always give you the square of the number of carats. So if the dice say a 10,000 gp gem, you can simply divide by your base value, take the square root, and you have the number of carats.

New Thoughts On Depreciation & Appreciation

The diagram above is a little hard to read because I had to fit it into Campaign Mastery’s column size. I was going to provide a link to download a larger version, but then I realized that I could simply show both halves – slightly larger than full sized!

So lot’s do that, then.

Depreciation Sequence

It might nor seem it, but this is actually a far simplified model of the process.

Depreciation isn’t really a constant change, despite all attempts to treat it that way by accountants. There are three phases –

• an initial phase in which the real value doesn’t decline by much, which I have named the “initial phase”;
• a middle phase in which real value is lost rapidly; which I have named the “decay phase”; and
• a period in which depreciation slows and almost stops.

Overall, we have a total of 50 years. The decay phase is 10-20 years in the middle, probably closer to the 20 end of the scale. That leaves just over 30 years to account for.

The decline phase is going to be about 1½ times the length of the initial phase, so dividing 30-plus-a-couple by 2½ gets us the length of the initial phase – 12-13 years. Yes, I’ve shown it as too wide and the decay phase as too short. Never mind that.

If we call it 12 years, that uses 20 years exactly for the decay phase, and leaves 18 years for the decline phase. But, let’s simplify further and call the phases 10, 20, and 20 years in length.

A more technical approach

If you wanted something less arbitrary, the initial phase persists until the object has lost 20% of it’s value, or 15 years have passed – whichever comes first.

The Initial Phase

In the initial phase, decline in real value is much less than the accountants would have us believe. They want a flat rate that erodes a certain amount every year, in other words a formula that reads:

V2 = V1 × r ^ (T / I), where

     V2 = the depreciated value,
     V1 = the starting value,
     T = the age of the object,
     I = the interval of measurement, and
     r is the depreciation rate over a span of the interval of measurement.

This is what I’ve been trying to use, and it’s a pain because it’s so sensitive to both age and to the depreciation rate.

Whatever your base depreciation rate is, in the initial phase it will be a lot less. Generally:

     R(i) = [ 2 + R(b) ] / 3

will be about right.

Let’s compare that against a 10% depreciation rate, commonly used for motor vehicles and a 20% rate used for more perishable objects like furniture:

We’ll start with an object valued at a nice round $1000.

R1 = 100-10% = 0.9.
R2 = 100-20% = 0.8
R3 = (2+0.9)/3 = 0.9667.

  1 year @ R1: v = 1000 × 0.9^1 = 900.
  2 years @ R1: v = 1000 × 0.9^2 = 810.
  3 years @ R1: v = 1000 × 0.9^3 = 729.
  4 years @ R1: v = 1000 × 0.9^4 = 656.10.
  5 years @ R1: v = 1000 × 0.9^5 = 590.49.
  6 years @ R1: v = 1000 × 0.9^6 = 531.44.
  7 years @ R1: v = 1000 × 0.9^7 = 478.30.
  8 years @ R1: v = 1000 × 0.9^8 = 430.47.
  9 years @ R1: v = 1000 × 0.9^9 = 387.42.
  10 years @ R1: v = 1000 × 0.9^10 = 348.68.

  1 year @ R2: v = 1000 × 0.8^1 = 800.
  2 years @ R2: v = 1000 × 0.8^2 = 640.
  3 years @ R2: v = 1000 × 0.8^3 = 729.
  4 years @ R2: v = 1000 × 0.8^4 = 512.
  5 years @ R2: v = 1000 × 0.8^5 = 409.60.
  6 years @ R2: v = 1000 × 0.8^6 = 327.68.
  7 years @ R2: v = 1000 × 0.8^7 = 262.14.
  8 years @ R2: v = 1000 × 0.8^8 = 209.72.
  9 years @ R2: v = 1000 × 0.8^9 = 167.77.
  10 years @ R2: v = 1000 × 0.8^10 = 134.22.
.
  1 year @ R3: v = 1000 × 0.9667^1 = 866.70.
  2 years @ R3: v = 1000 × 0.9667^2 = 934.51.
  3 years @ R3: v = 1000 × 0.9667^3 = 903.39.
  4 years @ R3: v = 1000 × 0.9667^4 = 873.31.
  5 years @ R3: v = 1000 × 0.9667^5 = 844.23.
  6 years @ R3: v = 1000 × 0.9667^6 = 816.11.
  7 years @ R3: v = 1000 × 0.9667^7 = 788.94.
  8 years @ R3: v = 1000 × 0.9667^8 = 762.66.
  9 years @ R3: v = 1000 × 0.9667^9 = 737.27.
  10 years @ R3: v = 1000 × 0.9667^10 = 712.72.
.
If these rates persisted for the full 50 years:

  50 years @ R1 = $5.15.
  50 years @ R2 = $0.01 (0.015 if you prefer).
  50 years @ R3 = $183.90.

Even a single percentage point can make a large difference as it compounds over the years.

I don’t know how others treat their possessions, but a year after I buy mine, unless something extraordinary has happened, they are still in almost new condition. No way have they lost a tenth of their value, let alone a 20th.

There are exceptions – computers, electronics, and high-tech of other sorts, and anything that sees excessive wear-and-tear or significant daily use, like mattresses.

The Decay Phase

This is where the full rate kicks in, plus a bit more to make up for the slower rates at beginning and end.

Essentially, at the end of the Decay Phase (should it persist for the full 20 years), the object will have lost sufficient value that it will be where the accountant’s formula would have predicted.

Technically, that means working out what that value would be and then reverse engineering to get the 20-year rate:

  V1 = V × r1 ^ (20+ITP)
  V2 = V × r2 ^ (ITP)
  V2 = (V2 – V1) × r3 ^ 20, so

  V2 / (V2 – V1) = r3 ^ 20
  log [ V2 / (V2 – V1) ] = 20 × log [r3], i.e.
  log [r3] = 1/20 × log [ V2 / (V2 – V1) ]

eg: r1= 10%, V = 1000, r2=3.33%, ITP = 12 years:

  V1 = 1000 × 0.9 ^ (20+12) = 34.34
  V2 = 1000 × 0.9667 ^ (12) = 666.04
  log [r3] = 1/20 × log [ 666.04 / (666.04 – 34.34) ] = 0.0011495;
r3 = 1.00265 — which makes no sense, the rate has to be <1.

Back to First principles:
  666.04 -> 34.34 in one step = x0.05156.

  in two steps: square root of 0.05156 = x0.22707.

  log Y =log [ 0.05156 ] ^ 1/2 = -0.64384;
  Y = 0.22707. Technique confirmed.

therefore in 20 steps: 20th root of 0.05156;
log [0.05156] / 20 = -0.064384; Y = 0.8622.

Check: 666.04 × 0.8622 ^ 20 = 34.33.

So the depreciation rate in the decay phase is 13.78% – that’s what we need to get the depreciation back ‘on track’..

A rough shortcut

0.79228 in one step = × (0.79228 / 666.04) = × 0.00119

  in two steps: square root of 0.000119 = × 0.0345

  therefore in 20 steps: 20th root of 0.00119;
log [0.00119] / 20 = –0.1462226; Y = 0.71413

So the depreciation rate in the decay phase is 28.587% – that’s what we need to get the depreciation back ‘on track’..

Using our shortcut: 20 × 1.4 = 28%.

  20 years @ 28.58%, start $666.04: $0.79
  20 years @ 28%, start $666.04: $0.93.

14 cents. But that’s close enough for me.

A premature end

The decline phase can finish early – basically, if the value of the object drops to less than 5% of it’s original value, or less than $1, whichever comes first, plus one more year.

V2 = 5% of 1000 = $50

Our 10% drop carried us to $34.33, which is below $50. The rate was × 0.8622.

  So the 19th year, we had a value of 34.33 / 0.8622 = $39.82.
  The 18th year, we had a value of 39.82 / 0.8622 = $46.18.
  The 17th year, we had a value of $53.56.

In this case, the decay phase ends after 18 years, adding 2 to the length of the decline phase.

Our 20% drop gave a value of $0.93, at a decline of – using the shortcut – 28%.

  Year 19: 0.93 / 0.72 = 1.29
  Year 18: 1.29 / 0.72 = 1.79 (okay, that’s enough of showing the working)
  Year 17: 2.49
  Year 16: 3.46
  Year 15: 4.81
  Year 14: 6.68
  Year 13: 9.27
  Year 12: 12.88
  Year 11: 17.89
  Year 10: 24.84
  Year 9: 34.50
  Year 8: 47.92
  Year 7: 66.55

So the Decay phase stops after a brutal 8-year run and a value of $47.92. And the decline phase gets an extra 12 years tacked on.

Still more technical nuance to ignore

If you want to get technical, the rate itself in the Decay Phase starts off at the initial rate and changes over time to get to the correct value. But that’s too messy. The product of a series of products – I did some of that stuff back when I was doing higher calculus. No thanks.

The Decline Phase

Fortunately, the decay phase is time-limited. The decline phase then takes over, in which the devaluation effect starts at what was initially specified for the overall rate and moderates back to the initial value.

Again, that’s too much like work. So let’s use another shortcut:

  [R1 × (T-1) + R2 ] / T

Let’s say it’s 22 years, the 10% example.

  T=22, R1 = 0.9667, R2 = 0.8622.

  21 × 0.9667 + 0.8622 = 21.1629
  21.1629 / 22 = 0.96195.

A more realistic calculation would be (2/3 × R1) + (1/3 × R2).

  (2/3 × 0.9667) + (1/3 × 0.8622) =
  0.6444467 + 0.2874 = 0.9318.

Since this is significantly different from the simpler calculation, it is the recommended technique.

The Appreciation Sequence

So, one way or the other, you’ve gotten to the bottom of the curve. The object (assuming it has survived) will never be worth so little again.

Although it looks more complicated, this is actually a much simpler side to things. Of course, it’s possible to complicate things, but if you don’t have to, why bother?

The value of the object starts at the minimum determined in the depreciation stage and starts to grow – just a little each year. I’ve been using intervals of 20 years, but this diagram is marked in 5-year intervals.

At first, there’s hardly any change. It will be barely noticeable at the 60-year mark. But significant differentiation can take place at the 15-year mark.

This graph illustrates four different rates of appreciation. I’ll get to them in a moment.

A critical value is N. This is the number of time-intervals at which all the losses due to depreciation have been reversed, wiped out by the increasing value.

As soon as you cross that line, you can set depreciation to zero and simply subtract 50-n from your object age. From that point on, it will only increase in value – all other effects notwithstanding, of course.

N is the date at which you can ignore depreciation entirely.

Clearly, each of the growth rates will reach that point at a different date.

It’s also not uncommon for an appreciation rate to change after that landmark value, but that’s an unnecessary complication.

Value Spikes and the Tangent

If you expect an item to rise in value over the next X years, there is a temptation to factor that growth into the price you’re willing to pay today.

This causes the “value” to spike. It may even appear to be following the dangerous growth curve!

Once this initial spike is registered, however, the value increase flattens into a straight line – the tangent – until it reaches the correct value-growth curve for this item, at which point, “normal” growth will resume.

This tangent can be (usually is) upwards; it can be flat; it can even be downwards, though that only happens in more extreme spikes.

Spike severity is measured in the number of years of anticipated growth are incorporated into the value paid / demanded for the item.

If the example above were to the “typical Growth” curve, for example, at around the 82-year mark, the value would match the purchase price shown at age 65 – so that’s 82-65 = 17 years of increase.

• 1-5 years of increase: a minor ‘bump’ in the price. Almost negligible. Expect a rising tangent.
• 6-10 years of increase: officially qualifies as a ‘speculative investment’, though a fairly conservative one. Expect a flat Tangent, or one that is slowly rising. The line shown above would be about the most extreme.
• 11-20 years of increase: speculative, and not entirely safe. The tangent will be flat, rising very slightly, or even falling slightly.
• 21+ years if increase: highly speculative and extremely risky. Tangents are almost certainly downwards, and between 30° and 45° in slope (50 years × 100% graph)..That generally means that in 10-15 years, the tangent will intersect the true value line.

Slow Growth

Slow growth is safe, steady, and stately. Everything eventually achieves this growth rate.

Precious Metals and Gemstones are usually slow growers. But so is real estate. “Safe As Houses”, anyone?

Typical Growth

Objects that were once valueless or mundane, if nicely decorated, tend to follow the typical growth curve, which takes about 50 years to erase the impact of depreciation. Adjusted for inflation, a 100-year-old vase will be worth roughly what it was worth when new.

That adjustment for inflation is a killer, though. Shrinkage in the value of the dollar can be a 30- or 40-fold change in a century. So a $30 object can be priced at $750 – and still not have reached its initial value ($900 equivalent).

Objects of especial merit or value can appreciate still faster – an N of less than 50, in other words.

Up to ten years early (an N of 40) is tolerable, and signals an object of active interest to collectors. Anything faster and you start taking risks, albeit small ones at first.

Typical Growth is not without its risks, largely in the form of collateral damage to some more extreme fall in value. Such effects are generally minor and temporary; in the long run, they are little more than a rounding error. Value growth may be delayed but will make it up in the long-term.

Dangerous Growth

The dangerous growth line is set to an N of 25 and this marks a threshold to be crossed only at your peril. Anything faster than this is almost certain to suffer a value collapse – possibly even within the 50-year appreciation span showing. The growth in value is (generally) unsustainable.

It is so fast that it will attract counterfeiters and thieves and the costs involved (provenience in the first case, protective security in the second) directly detract from the value. Not having an object on display because it’s too dangerous also subtracts from its value, both in a slower appreciation rate and losses in social desirability.

The red zone a roller-coaster – and it can plunge values to close to zero, no matter what they started at – all corrections always over-correct. Look at what happened to the Dutch Tulip market.

Over $1000 in the currency of the time (or it’s equivalent) for a single bulb? This way lies lunacy! I’m sure investors who were caught in the dot-com bubble-burst can empathize.

Everything that I’ve seen suggests that most cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, are following a similar trend path. Several of them have crashed in value and even ceased to exist over the last few years.

Artworks and Exceptions

But there’s an exception to this rule – artistic merit tends to be conserved. While a few artists have lost value over the years, the worst that tends to happen is that they stabilize onto a slow or even very slow growth curve.

Of course, such a curve might not keep up with inflation, causing a drop in real value. But even that is rare.

An exception to the exception comes in the form of signatures – these gain their value through the name recognition accorded the (former?) owner of the signature, and if that fame diminishes, so will the value – perhaps precipitously.

Practical Matters

So, set the rate according to the age that you care about, determine the N accordingly, and simply start your appreciation from Base Value at year / interval N+1. You have all the tools you need.

Wow, that sure looks more like a typical post than I was expecting! Hope it’s worthwhile…

It’s been a long time since I’ve just had a ramble on about assorted semi-related matters but that’s what’s in store today.

I’ll move from topic to topic with what may at times seem gay abandon, but it will all come together in the end.

This is all stuff that’s derived from, or been inspired by, last week’s article.

We start with this:

How Large Is A (Cut) Gemstone?

Let’s say you have a gemstone of a known value. How large is it? I’ll work with a Ruby, but throw in what you need to work out other gemstones along the way.

You see, I had listed as a treasure in an adventure a ruby worth $25,000 USD 2023 dollars, but was concerned that it might not be large enough to suit the purpose, which was as the centerpoint of a turban.

I was picturing in my mind something about the size of a hen’s egg.

Weight (in Carats)

From last week’s post, there’s the rough estimation,

Value = value of an equivalent 1-carat gemstone × size squared.

The words ‘equivalent’ are important because they take every variable other than size out of the equation.

We start, then, with a standard gemstone of 1 carat size. If it’s particularly brilliant or whatever, we simply apply a value factor to take that into account.

Last week, I listed the base value (in 2023 US dollars) of a typical 1ct Ruby as $4625

I didn’t want this ruby to be all that exceptional in any other way, so I’ll worth with that figure.

Value = 25000 so

weight squared is 25000 / 4625 = 5.4054 so

weight in carats is the square root of this, or 2.325.

Weight in grams

A metric carat is 0.2 g, so

2.325 × 0.2g = 0.4645 g.

Volume

To get the volume, I need to know two things: the volume of the shape (when cut), and the density of ruby.

Density of major gemstones:

Diamond = 3.5-3.53 g / cm-3
Ruby = 4.02 g / cm-3
Sapphire = 3.98 g / cm-3
Emerald = 2.69 g / cm-3
Jade = 3.3 – 3.38 g / cm-3

I got this information from Rocks And Co dot com, where they list a vast number of precious and semi-precious varieties of stone, their hardness, their refractive index (relates to brilliance) and – most importantly – their relative density.. From Actinolite to Zultanite, they’ve got it covered.

So, if my weight is 0.4645 g, and ruby has a density of 4.02 g per cubic cm, then

Volume = weight / density = 0.4645 / 4.02 = 0.115547 cm3.

Is that a lot? It doesn’t sound like it, but we’ll see.

Volume of a cut

Some cuts are easy to work out.

A square cut is length × breadth × width, less 3-10% for the beveling.

A sphere has the volume 4/3 pi time radius cubed.

A pyramid shape has the volume 1/3 times height times base area.

A cylinder is pi times radius squared times length.

A conical shape is 1/3 pi times radius of the base squared times height.

A hemisphere is half the volume of a sphere.

A prism is base Area time height.

Most of these are primary-school maths.

‘Diamond’ Cut

Some shapes are more complicated – the typical “diamond cut” for example:

Here, you have two cones with their bases touching, and the top lopped off the upper one. To get this volume you need:

• the volume of the cone defined by r and h1,
  to which you have to add
• the volume of the cone defined by r and (h2+h3),
  from which you need to subtract
• the volume of the cone defined by r and h2
  – except that the r of this cone will be smaller, as you can see.
• As a rough rule of thumb, use (r-h2).

so that’s 1/3 pi times (h1 times r^2) + (h2 times r^2) – (h3 times (r-h2)^2).

It would be nice if we could assume symmetry, so that h1=h2+h3, but I don’t think we can. In fact, I think h1 is less than the other two combined, but that’s just an artists’ impression.

In the diagram, I deliberately made the top and bottom symmetrical and the angle of the facet ‘ring’ seems too flat to me – it should be more vertical to look right.

Technically. too, you shouldn’t use the “radius” (r) at all – as the bottom part of the diagram shows, you should use the average of r1 (what we’ve been calling r), measured along the long side to the corner of each facet, and r2, which measures to the flat surface in between – but as you can see, the error is so negligible that it’s not worth the effort.

Hearts

Hearts are another problem. There are three ways to do hearts: the complicated and messy way, the even more complicated and messy way, or the easy way.

Method 1
The complicated and messy way is to do a cone with it’s base the radius of the heart at the point of it’s greatest width, divide the volume by the width radius and multiply by the thickness radius to account for the flattening, then add two halves of identical spheroids at the top – radius of 1/2 r, two hemispheres.

This will; work, more or less – most heart cuts actually have a curved surface and not the straight lines of a cone, so your calculated value will be a little low, but it’s a workable ballpark number.

Method 2
This uses overlapping spheroids. There’s a ring around the conical shape that shouldn’t be there, but that’s a minor problem and could even represent a correction of the difference between a heart and a flattened cone.

It’s working out the overlap between the two hemispheres that’s the real headache. Of course, it can be done – but it’s a complicated process involving the distance between the two radii relative to the size of those radii, and frankly, not worth the effort.

Method 3
The third image might look more complicated, but it’s not. I started with the ellipse (actually, it’s closer to a circle, but that may not always be the case), selected half of it, and skewed it vertically.

If you remember the formula for the area of a regular trapezoid – which is a square that’s been skewed – it’s still the base times the height. Skewing a shape doesn’t add area, it just moves it around.

And the same should be true of a 3D, flattened, heart cut gem – you aren’t changing the volume, just moving it from the bottom of the heart to the top.

Which means you can use the formula for the volume of an elliptical spheroid (which I haven’t given yet), take the measurements of your radius from the widest part of the heart, and treat it simply as a distorted shape.

Spheroids

Which brings me back to what I needed for my Ruby.

An elliptical spheroid basically has three measurements that we care about: the thickness, the width, and the height. Half of each of these gives the radius along each of the three axes.

And then it’s a simple variation on the volume of a sphere:

Volume = 4/3 pi r1 r2 r3

…except that I used a, b, and c.

There will be some minor errors from the mitering of the edges to create the shape, but they are too small to worry about.

The size of a gemstone, elliptical cut – reality check

To start with, I decided to work out the size if the ruby was cut as a sphere.

V = 0.115547 = 4/3 pi r^3

Multiply both sides by 3/4 and you get

0.08666025 = pi r^3.

Now divide by pi:

r^3 = 0.08666025 / pi = 0.0275848

My calculator has x^3 and inverse-x^3 functions, which makes the result easy:

r = 0.302 cm = 3.02mm.

Diameter = 6.04 mm,

or about 3.8 sixteenths of an inch. Call it 1/4 of an inch, more or less, and you won’t be far wrong. About the size of a pea.

The size of a gemstone, elliptical cut – assumptions about shape

That reality check gave me some perspective. A ruby the size of what I was imagining would be about 100 times the size and 10,000 times the value – it would literally be worth millions.

On that basis, I could take a more realistic view of the results that I was about to get.

First, I needed to make some assumptions about the shape – specifically, I decided that (as a rule of thumb), the height would be 1 1/2 times the width. Or, if you prefer, the width would be 2/3 of the height. These are dimensions that I know look good, not to spindly or too fat; a definite oval shape.

With that done, I could simplify the formula, because A × B would be 1.5 B^2:

V = 4/3 × pi × 1.5 × C × B^2, or B^2 = V × 3/4 × 2/3 / pi C = 1/2 V / pi C
actual B × 1.5 = actual A

The size of a gemstone, elliptical cut – first calculation

I started with a C of 1.5mm, because that’s about as thin as I though a gemstone could possible get.

B^2 = 1/2 × 0.115547 / pi / 0.15 = 0.1226 cm^2

B = 0.35 cm = 3.5 mm

A = 1.5 × 3.5 = 5.25 mm

Gemstone is 3 mm thick, 7 mm wide, 10.5mm tall
Gemstone is approx 1/8th of an inch thick, a little over 1/4 of an inch thick, and 7/16ths of an inch tall.

That suddenly seemed disappointing, for the obvious reason that these were radii, not diameters. They were describing a gemstone 3mm thick, 4 mm wide, and 6 mm tall. (1/8th thick × 3/16 wide × 1/4 ” tall).

The size of a gemstone, elliptical cut – further calculations

To get a feel for how changes in thickness were affecting the size, I decided to try thicknesses of 2 and 2.25 mm.

C = 2 mm, so

B^2 = 1/2 × 0.115547 / pi / 0.2 = 0.09195 cm^2

B = 0.3 cm = 3 mm

A = 1.5 × 3 = 4.5 mm

Gemstone is 4 mm thick, 6 mm wide, 9 mm tall
Gemstone is approx 3/16, still about 1/4 of an inch wide, and 3 eighths of an inch tall.

C = 2.5 mm, so

B^2 = 1/2 × 0.115547 / pi / 0.25 = 0.073556 cm^2

B = 0.271 cm = 2.71 mm

A = 1.5 × 2.71 = 4.07 mm

Gemstone is 5 mm thick, 5.42 mm wide, 8.14 mm tall
Gemstone is still approx 3/16 of an inch thick, 3/16 wide, and 5/16 inches tall.

Finally, having realized that I was thinking of the C radius as thickness and not the C diameter, I tried a thickness of 0.8 mm:

C = 0.8 mm, so

B^2 = 1/2 × 0.115547 / pi / 0.08 = 0.22987 cm^2

B = 0.48 cm = 4.8 mm

A = 1.5 × 4.8 = 7.2 mm

Gemstone is 1.6 mm thick, 9.6 mm wide, 14.4 mm tall
Gemstone is 1/16 of an inch thick, 3/8 wide, and 9/16 inches tall.

Halving the thickness (more or less) certainly let the gemstone grow in its other dimensions.

At this point, I reflected that the smaller size might be more appropriate to the game circumstances anyway.

The size of a gemstone, elliptical cut – final calculation

Ultimately, and with that in mind, I decided that the proportions of the first calculation were actually closest to what I wanted, anyway – maybe a thickness of 2.5mm instead of 3 would be better, but it’s on the right track.

C = 1.25 mm, so

B^2 = 1/2 × 0.115547 / pi / 0.125 = 0.14712 cm^2

B = 0.3836 cm = 3.836 mm

A = 1.5 × 3.836 = 5.75 mm

Gemstone is 2.5 mm thick, 7.672 mm wide, 11.5 mm tall
Gemstone is 1/8 of an inch thick, 5/16 wide, and 7/16 inches tall.

If you have trouble working with the above, there are two traps that kept catching me out – convert mm to CM by dividing by ten in the B^2 line (so 1.25 becomes 0.125), and remember that these are giving radius values and not diameters, you have to double them to get the physical height, width, and thickness of the gemstone.

Special acknowledgment to Ginfab.com and their mm-to-fractions-of-an-inch converter, which helped get me out of a real tangle!

How much is a gp worth?

Of course, for this to be really useful, we need values not in 2023 US dollars, but in D&D / Pathfinder Gold Pieces!

Dimensions of common coins

There are two real-life gold-coin denominations that I can recall of the top of my head – florins and doubloons. So let’s start with them.

A florin is a 28.5mm diameter British and Australian coin. The weight was 11.3 grams. But it turns out that they were silver, not gold. Scratched.

Doubloons were 2.32″ (59mm) in diameter and
0.13″ (3.3mm thick). That’s about twice the size in both dimensions to what I always thought of as a GP, to be honest, but it’s a start.

From last week’s post: 1 cubic inch of gold is 313.54573 g if pure, and worth about 20,067 USD 2023. I’m going to start by assuming this isn’t pure gold – maybe it’s 15 ct, maybe even 18 ct.

volume = area × height = pi r squared × height

= pi × (2.32/2)^2 × 0.13 = 0.55 cubic inches.

0.55 cubic inches = 172.45 g = 2023 USD $11036.85 if pure.
= 82777.64 if 18-ct
= 6898.03 if 15-ct.

That seems a bit big to be a common currency as ubiquitous as the GP is. By a factor of at least 10 and probably 20 or 25 or more.

Applying a factor-of-twenty

Because it’s the value in the middle of my guesstimate, let’s do a factor of 20 scale reduction first.

To keep life (relatively) simple, let’s assume that radius and thickness are both reduced by the same amount.

That means that:

volume / 20 = old measurements × f^3

0.55 cubic inches / 20 = 0.0275 cubic inches.
= pi × (f × 2.32 / 2)^2 × 0.13 × f
0.0275 / pi = 1.16^2 × f^2 × 0.13 × f
f^3 = 0.55 / pi / 1.16^2 / 0.13 = 0.05004 (i.e. 1/20th)
f = 0.3685

So r = 1.62 × 0.3685 = 0.59697 ”
thickness = 0.13 × 0.3685 = 0.047905″.

About 1.2 inches across and less than 1/20th of an inch thick, eh? I think the thickness is now too small, and the radius still too large.

Tell you what, let’s try a dime:

What if a dime were made of gold?

There’s a purpose to this. For a start, a dime is roughly the size that I think of when I think GP. It For another, it’s a fairly ubiquitous coin size – not far away from the Australian 10-cent piece for example. And for a third, if I can say that a GP is the size of a dime, but the weight of × dimes, everyone will be able to relate to the numbers.

Weight (real dime) = 2.268g
Diameter = 17.91 mm = 1.791 cm
Thickness = 1.36 mm = 0.136 cm

Volume in cubic cm = pi × r^2 × ht
= 3.1416 × 1.791 ^2 × 0.136 = 1.3705 cm3.

Density of pure gold = 19.3 g / cm3

so weight = 26.45065 g
= 11.66 regular dimes.

Value, 24 ct = 26.45065 / 313.54573 × 20067 = $1692.85.
Value, 18 ct = $1269.636.
Value, 15 ct = $1058.03

But 15 ct gold would also reduce the weight – not all the way to 62.5%, because whatever impurities there are have to weigh something, but that’s a start. 26.45065 × 62.5% = 16.53165625 g = 7.29 regular dimes.

Okay, so that’s got a reasonable physical size sorted. The value still seems high, by a factor of about 10.

Next, we need to think about relative value.

What’s a GP worth?

We need to think about the sheer number of gp in circulation. 1,000 gp is a high price but it’s well within the bounds of ‘reason’ for an adventurer to be carting that around with him. Or 10,000. or 100,000.

100,000 gp, if each one weighs 26.45065g = 2,645,065g or 2,645.065 kg. For those who aren’t thinking metric, that’s 5831.37 lb.

Okay, yeah. 2.917 US tons. I can see that… not happening.

But, if they weigh something more than 16.53 g instead of 26.45, that’s a weight of 3644.6 lbs. That’s better, a step in the right direction.

But it’s still arguing in favor of an even lighter, smaller gp – maybe by a factor of 3 or so.

But that not only screws up the value of the ‘golden dime’ but the nice simple comparison that we derived from it.

The size thing with the dime works so perfectly that I’m loathe to mess with it. But that means that we’re left with adulterated (lighter) coins, which will reduce the value but not by as much as seems necessary, or abandoning the dime standard.

If the value is reduced to 1/3, so is the gold content, and so is the volume that it makes up within the coin. So to keep the dimensions, we need 2/3 of the coin to be made of something lighter. Like 0 grams, but that’s going a bit far.

How about reducing the gold content 75% from the 15-ct mark – that would be 4-ct gold.

The table I presented last time doesn’t go anywhere near that far. But the difference per carat is about 4.17%, so 4-ct gold would be:

Value, 24 ct = $1692.85.
Value, 4-ct = $282.37.

Wt, 24 ct = 26.45065g
Wt of gold in 4-ct = 4.412g = 1.945 regular dimes.

Density Of Adulteration

So, let’s do this: make up the weight to a number of standard dimes in total, derive the density required to keep the same physical coin size, and see if there’s something on the periodic table or list of common compounds that matches.

3 standard dimes = 6.804g, -4.412g gold = 2.392g other.
volume = 1.3705 cm3, – 4.412g gold / 19.3, = 1.1419 cm3.
density required = 2.392 / 1.1419 = 2.095 g cm-3.

4 standard dimes = 9.072g, -4.412g gold = 4.96g other.
volume = 1.1419 cm3 (this isn’t going to change).
density required = 4.96 / 1.1419 = 4.081 g cm-3.

5 standard dimes = 11.34g, -4.412g gold = 6.928g other.
volume = 1.1419 cm3
density required = 6.928 / 1.1419 = 4.88 g cm-3.

6 standard dimes = 13.608g, -4.412g gold = 9.196g other.
volume = 1.1419 cm3
density required = 9.196 / 1.1419 = 8.05 g cm-3.

7 standard dimes = 15.876g, -4.412g gold = 11.464g other.
volume = 1.1419 cm3
density required = 11.464 / 1.1419 = 10.02 g cm-3.

8 standard dimes = 18.144g, -4.412g gold = 13.732g other.
volume = 1.1419 cm3
density required = 13.732 / 1.1419 = 12.0256 g cm-3.

9 standard dimes = 20.412g, -4.412g gold = 16g other.
volume = 1.1419 cm3
density required = 16 / 1.1419 = 14.012 g cm-3.

10 standard dimes = 22.68g, -4.412g gold = 18.268g other.
volume = 1.1419 cm3
density required = 18.268 / 1.1419 = 16 g cm-3.

Okay, let’s get busy with my SI chemical data…
…
…
…

Results, in order of increasing density:

Zinc 7.14
Tin (white) 7.3
Iron 7.86
Cadmium Oxide 8.1
Bismuth Oxide 8.9
Nickel 8.90
Copper 9.0
Lead Oxide, Red 9.1
Silver 10.5
Mercury Oxide 11.1
Lead 11.4
Tungsten Oxide 12.1
Tantalum 16.6
Tungsten 19.3

8.1 to 8.05 required is a fair match. In fact, it’s the only SINGLE additive that comes close.

If I assume a mixture, all sorts of possibilities arise.

(x%) d 1 + (100-x%) d2 = target…

Let’s take that old standby, Copper + Lead:

10% copper + 90% lead = 0.9 + 10.26 = 11.16
20% copper + 80% lead = 1.8 + 9.12 = 10.92
30% copper + 70% lead = 2.7 + 7.98 = 10.68
40% copper + 60% lead = 3.6 + 6.84 = 10.44
50% copper + 50% lead = 4.5 + 5.7 = 10.2
60% copper + 40% lead = 5.4 + 4.56 = 9.96
70% copper + 30% lead = 6.3 + 3.42 = 9.72
80% copper + 20% lead = 7.2 + 2.28 = 9.48
90% copper + 10% lead = 8.1 + 1.14 = 9.24

7 standard coins requires 10.02.

10.02 = an × 9 / 100 + (100 – a) × 11.4 / 100
1002 = 9 a + 11.4 (100 – a) = 9 a + 1140 – 11.4 a
1002 – 1140 = 9 a – 11.4 a
1140-1002 = 11.4 a – 9 a = 2.4 a
138 = 2.4 a
a = 138 / 2.4 = 57.5

So 57.5 % copper + 42.5% lead will nail the target exactly.

The limits of speculation

so, let’s be clear about this – having demonstrated that a solution is possible, that doesn’t mean that I am suggesting people adopt it. I’m certainly not recommending it.

This is simply a demonstration of how to get your own answer. Personally, I would have loved an 8-dime solution – dividing by 7 is a lot harder to do in your head! And maybe using Iron (low density) and Tungsten or Tantalum (high density).

Let’s take stock

So, 7 standard dimes = the weight of a single (adulterated) 4-ct golden dime – as a working solution – and has a value in USD $2023 of $282.37.

The value is still too high, but we’ve pushed the purity option about as far as is possible. We need something else to get that down to somewhere around the $20-25 range, ideally, but I could live with $30 or even $50.

Maybe I should attempt to nail that target a bit more precisely as my next step.

A really good meal for 1 will cost about 1 gp (I call this the “Good Meal” standard). It will also cost $50-100 modern Australian dollars at the extreme, but $18-$30 is more reasonable, and that’s what I’ve been using as my yardstick. If I convert those numbers into US dollars at today’s exchange rate, I get:

$100 AUD = $63.76 USD
$50 AUD = $31.86 USD
$30.AUD = $19.13 USD
$18 AUD = $11.48 USD

But, maybe I can get more traction by going down a step?

There are (the last time I checked) 10 silver pieces in 1 gp, and a moderately-decent meal will cost 1-5 of those (I guess I’ll have to call this the regular fair standard)!

So that’s 0.1 gp – 0.5 gp.

The sort of meal I’m talking about is $10 – $20 AUD. That’s a Chinese takeaway, or McDonalds, or Kentucky Fried Chicken, or a Pizza – something along those lines.

0.1 gp = AUD $10-20 = USD $6.38-12.76;
1gp = USD $63.80 – $127.60 USD.

0.25 gp = AUD $10-20 = USD $6.38-12.76;
1gp = $25.52 – $51.04 USD.

0.5 gp = AUD $10-20 = USD $6.38-12.76;
1gp = $12.76 – $25.52 USD.

The highest value – $127.60 USD – is 2.2 times our current gp value.
The lowest value – $12.76 USD – is 22 times our current value.

That says that we need to cut the value of the gp maybe 5-10 fold.

So, what else affects the value of gold?

Supply vs demand.

What happens to a commodity when there is a significant oversupply? The price crashes. I’ve already commented that there seems to be a lot more gold around in a fantasy game, so it would not be unreasonable to expect that to have some devaluatory effect.

The trick is getting the oversupply right. In the previous post, I talked about Tiger-eyes:

Tiger-eyes (sister to Cats-eyes) were highly esteemed from 1880-1890 and once sold for $6 a carat or about $11,200 per pound. Two speculators independently flooded the market in 1890, causing the price to crash to just 25 cents a pound – a loss of 99.997% of their value.

99.997% is too extreme for what we want. I don’t know if any economists have modeled the impact on price of oversupply, and I’m not sure what to search for in order to find out. But that’s not the sort of problem that’s ever stopped me before…

Hmmm… Back again.

“Competition among producers to increase sales leads to downward pressure on prices. You can show excess supply on a graph as the horizontal distance between the demand and the supply curves at a price above the equilibrium price.” — Pricing in mass markets, Kwanhui Lim

…
…
…
… I may be interpreting this all wrong, but:

Demand Curve – the change in demand with rising price
Supply Curve – the change in supply with rising price? rising cost? not sure.
Equilibrium point – the point at which they meet.

….more searching

(10 minutes later) …okay, I think I;me getting the hang of this. The theory seems to be that there is an optimum price at which demand matches supply, all other things being equal. If you have an oversupply situation, competition between sellers to be the one that actually makes a sale drives the price down. Most of the example graphs I’ve been seeing have used straight lines for both, but a few have used curves, which makes more sense to me.

The supply curve runs from bottom left (low units, low expenditure) to top right.

The demand curve runs from top left to bottom left. The higher the price, the fewer units people will want to purchase because of the expense. The converse is that the more units are available, the lower the price that people are willing to pay.

.

Wikipedia’s example chart shows an increase in demand for whatever reason – it shifts the demand line up and to the right. The point at which the supply and demand lines cross gives the relevant price and quantity that will be sold. The increase in demand means that both more units will be sold and the price per unit will go up.

If you put the price up without increasing supply, it shifts the supply curve up and to the left, so the intersection point will be at a higher price, but with fewer units sold.

Logically, increasing supply without increasing demand produces a supply curve that is down (lower prices) and to the right (more units available to sell, the definition of an oversupply situation). The two shifts might not be the same, I’ve assumed that they follow the demand line, so the greater the oversupply, the lower the impact per unit on price – diminishing returns, in other words, .I’ve modified the original graph to show the result, as I understand it.

One point to note is that eventually, your supply curve will drop below a price value of zero If you increase the oversupply even further, eventually the intersection point with the demand curve will get down to the irreducible minimum as well.

Salting the tail

So, if gold is more abundant, in a game universe, the value of gold will drop. How much, isn’t all that important – in fact, we’ve already defined (roughly) how much we want it to be.

It’s possible that we could even beat a hasty retreat and revert to 24-carat pure gold coins, and do it ALL with oversupply. That would probably be more in keeping with the vast amounts of gold floating around the game universe, anyway.

The combination means that we can set the modern value-equivalent of the gold piece to whatever we want so long as it’s less than what it would be worth in 2023.

Some mathematical trickery

There are three ways to get a value in between two known limits. The first and most obvious one is to average the two. In this case, we have 2.2 and 22 – which gives an average of 12.1.

When we’re talking about values that are to be multiplied by something else, though, I’ve often found that an alternate method yields better results: Multiply the two together and take the square root.

2.2 × 22 = 48.4, square root is 6.957.

A variation is to take that number away from the maximum result.

22 – 6.957 = 15.043.

I always try out the different results to see what best fits.

Base value of a gp = $282.37.

Oversupply: option 1: 282.37 / 12.1 = $23.34.
Oversupply: option 2: 282.37 / 6.957 = $40.59.
Oversupply: option 3: 282.37 / 15.043 = $18.77

How do these compare to our target values?

$23.34:

The Very good meal standard:
$50 – $100 AUD = $31.86 – $63.76 USD – not even close
$18 – $30.AUD = $11.48 – $19.13 USD – a little above

The regular fair standard:
$63.80 – $127.60 USD.- completely out of the ballpark.
$25.52 – $51.04 USD. – nowhere near it.
$12.76 – $25.52 USD – very close.

$40.59:

The Very good meal standard:
$50 – $100 AUD = $31.86 – $63.76 USD – right in the middle
$18 – $30.AUD = $11.48 – $19.13 USD – too high

The regular fair standard:
$63.80 – $127.60 USD- not high enough
$25.52 – $51.04 USD – right on target
$12.76 – $25.52 USD – too high

$18.77:

The Very good meal standard:
$50 – $100 AUD = $31.86 – $63.76 USD – definitely not
$18 – $30.AUD = $11.48 – $19.13 USD – just scrapes into the range

The regular fair standard:
$63.80 – $127.60 USD – nowhere near high enough
$25.52 – $51.04 USD – not high enough
$12.76 – $25.52 USD – right in the middle

I make that 2 votes for $23.34, two for $40.59, and two votes for $18.77.

An appropriate result?

In a way, I guess that could be seen as an appropriate result. So many other aspects of the game world are left to the individual GM to determine, surely something so fundamental should be one of them?

So here’s the upshot: decide for yourself what the “exchange rate” between gp and USD, even if you use it for no other purpose than this.

Once you have that number, you can take a gem result – be it 1 gp, 10 gp, 50gp, 500gp, 5000gp, or 50,000 – and get the USD equivalent. Once you have that, and the information contained in this post and last week’s, and you can directly determine the weight and dimensions of the gem.

Special gems are easily handled simply by multiplying the base value of a 1ct gem with those special characteristics by an appropriate factor – times 1.5? Times 10? Times 100? – it’s up to you.

What’s more, if you do a little prep work and save the results, you can define a standard gem – in your game world – and up-scale or downscale it as needed.

Value / base 1-ct value will always give you the square of the number of carats. So if the dice say a 10,000 gp gem, you can simply divide by your base value, take the square root, and you have the number of carats.

An Afterthought

Carats are divided into points, each 1/100th of a carat. If the smallest gem worthy of the name is (say) 10 points, or 10% of a carat, and that’s worth 1 gp, you’re ready to go.

A 10,000 gp gem? Divide by 0.1 and take the square root. Instant gem size: 316.23 carats.

Weight and size are right behind.

I was intending to deal with a third item – the value of an Ebony statue – but I’m completely out of time. So that will have to wait for another occasion. And maybe I’ll talk about Persian Rugs at the same time, who knows? And Tapestries. Tapestries would be good.

There are a great many objects of value out there. The better that you can define them, the more real you can make them seem to your players – no matter how outrageous those definitions might be.

It’s inevitable – there will be a “The Value Of Material Things” number III!

How much would this be worth if it were discovered in the American backwoods today? How much more if it had been found in the early 1700s, when no-one really knew the ancient Egyptian “style”?
Image by Artie_Navarre from Pixabay
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Two weeks ago, in the then-final part of the Economics in RPGs series, I presented the Asset Valuation Worksheet (Version 1.0, though I didn’t know that at the time).

I’ve since had occasion to use the worksheet extensively, and that has led to a number of revisions and improvements. So today’s post is to present you with the new and improved version.

There has been (by the time you read this) a slight delay in publication because of a Doctor’s appointment that I could not shift to a more convenient date.

An Introduction To The Changes

The infographic above was designed to introduce the changes.

• Revised Category Headings – the headings for “History” and “Antiquity” have been changed to the more descriptive “Maker Fame” and “Social Desire”.
• New Landscape Orientation – in addition to the old vertical orientation, there are now additional options in the form landscape orientation, which permits more items per page. Both the original A4 size and the landscape A4 size are pictured, so that you can make a direct comparison. The vertical version had room for 5 assets, the landscape holds 8.
• Version 2.0 has New Features: – the revised version has new features that make life a lot easier when using the form as a digital document.
  1. It’s now a single table instead of a series of three. This makes it easier to navigate as a digital document.
  2. Color Coding has been applied to all the headings within the table.
  3. The revision permitted Even more description space. The old space varied from adequate to insufficient.
  4. The Asset Identification details (especially the description) have now been centrally located so that when using the worksheet as a digital document, they can be seen while filling out both the top section (Inherent Value) and bottom (Appraised Value). No more scrolling back up to the top of the page!
  5. And, of course, the clarified headings already mentioned.
• Finally, there is a New Window-sized version – this is the one that I have been using. It’s not designed for hardcopy, it’s designed to fill the screen and be legible using my monitor (1396 pixels wide). The extra space allows for still more description and a massive nine entries – with the capacity for a tenth if you re-task the duplicate headings on the right-hand-side.

 
 
 
 

An Instruction Manual

To accompany version 2.0, I have compiled brief notes on using it into a short instruction manual. This is included in the zip file as a PDF, and I will be reproducing the contents below with some added notes in italics.

This is not the same content as appeared previously. It’s a lot more sparse and practical in orientation.

What’s the minimum normal retail price of a standard item to do this job? ie, what is the price for performing this function for the owner?

Always, in the currency of the time and place. Convert if you have to from some other standard.

If there is a wide variation, you can apply a genericized type. Instead of “What’s the minimum retail price for a hat”, you might need “what’s the minimum retail price for a Cowboy hat?”

 

Add the price of any materials, in local currency, at the time of purchase, in excess of the normal.

Treat precious metals and gemstones with care; it’s often useful to list them separately in the Factor column, adding the local / converted price each on a separate line in the box. Large or unusual gemstones should also be dealt with individually.

EG, I might list 600g of gold in the factor box, and 40 carats of rubies (or simply $20,000 USD 2023, the modern-day price) and the value of that 600g (plus everything already priced) in the Value column, and then the value of the rubies in the relevant era..

I’ve made extensive notes on the value of precious commodities relevant to the period of valuation. I’ll attach a redacted set of these to the article as an appendix, just to give you some idea of what should be done.

 

The retail price is assumed to include the basic costs involved in producing the minimum-quality item. This space is for any unskilled labor costs in excess of that.

If your function is “the price of a hat” and the item itself is a Crown, then there will be the labor of extracting enough precious metal, the labor of extracting the precious stones, and the labor of transporting those materials to the craftsman, and the labor of transporting the finished product to the seller.

As a rule of thumb, I count up man-days for this, then apply the minimum wage or its equivalent per day. If I don’t get too bogged down in fractions, a simple tally of man-days gets me a quick valuation for this element.

NB: Workers in a factory are also considered “unskilled” by the system.

It might take one man a day to chop down a big tree on his own. It might take two men with a saw 1/4 of a day each (total of 1/2 man-day). One man with a chainsaw might be able to do eight to ten in a day, so we’re talking 1/8th or 1/10th of a man-day.

Transport to the timber mill might take four men five days – but they are transporting a hundred logs at the same time, to that’s effectively 1/5th of a man-day per log.

The timber has to be dressed and turned into planks and panels. This is generally a fairly quick job unless it has to be done by hand, which might take a couple of man-days.

And so on. The more you can aggregate all this quickly in your head, using the Factor column to keep a running total, the more quickly you will get an answer and move on.

 

The retail price is assumed to include the basic costs involved in producing the minimum-quality item. This space is for any skilled labor costs in excess of that.

That includes the craftsman who gets paid more than most in his line of work because he’s good at this job, the craftsman who spends extra time to get this item just right, and the craftsman who has to bring skills outside the norm for this type of product.

Skilled craftsmen are usually paid a man-hourly rate, not a man-day rate, and it’s usually multiple times what an unskilled worker would earn in a full day. Five times is a good rule of thumb, ten times or more in an industrialized economy.

Again, think “hat” vs “crown” – the latter involves a jeweler, a gem-cutter, and a jewelry designer, none of which are involved in producing the basic “hat”.

 

A Maker’s Fame at the time of manufacture always adds value to an item. In the case of a document, the “maker” is deemed to be the person whose name appears on the document, and not any lawyers or functionaries who have worked on his behalf.

This can get tricky when there are several “Makers” involved. Don’t let yourself get bogged down – and remember that the Maker’s labor is already factored into the price.

 

No matter how skilled a cook you are, and how good the recipe, sometimes a pie comes out of the oven burnt. This category is not about the skill of the maker, it’s a valuation of how well they have used that skill.

Good workmanship can double the value of an item. Great workmanship can increase it tenfold.

The Maker’s Fame can be a good guide, as there is usually a reason that a maker becomes famous. But it’s not the be-all and end-all.

 

This will usually be where the owner obtained the item, but sometimes it can be more useful to list where it was originally manufactured, and not where it happened to be bought.

It can often be useful to list both – for example, “Cairo, Egypt (Roman Empire)” would describe a Roman item that just happened to be bought in Cairo.

“Babylon (Iraq) aka Mesopotamia” tells you everything you need to know, including the ancient civilization responsible for the item and the modern-day location.

 

Give each item a specific number to avoid confusion when referring to them. So important that it’s the only heading with a colon.

Some GMs may want to make this a global referent – items from adventure 21 will start being numbered one more than the last numbered item from adventure 20.

I’ve learned from cataloging images that you get a lot more usefulness and flexibility, if this is to be your approach, using a format of “Adventure number – Item within adventure”.

 

This should list everything that you need to know about an individual item to value it. You will need to be concise, though – no descriptive text, just raw facts.

An example:

“Scarab Brooch – Lapus Lazuli, Carnelian, Turquoise, Jade, 18 ct Gold, c.3210 BC. Tainted Provenience 10%. 1400, 120g.”

• It’s a Brooch in the form of a scarab.
• Lots of semi-precious gemstones, totaling $1400 modern value.
• 120 grams of 18 carat gold.
• It’s old, dating from c. 3210 BC – allegedly.
• Tainted Provenience can mean a number of things – suspected fake, suspected stolen, unproven claims, possibly looted. The percentage shows how much the item is worth as it stands (10% of what it otherwise would be).

Note that there’s no mention of exceptional workmanship. Doesn’t mean it isn’t exquisitely made, just that this was to be decided as you were valuing the item.

I will often base such decisions on what images I can find for an item. In this particular case, it was quite pretty, so I gave it a +100% value for craftsmanship.

 

Rarity valuation is a function of two things: How many of this item were made, and how many remain available? This excludes any factor for famous owners, it’s about the rarity of this type of item in general. Rarity should NOT take into account the actual age of an item.

There’s a temptation to label unique objects as “priceless”. Don’t do it. Apply levels of generalization until you find a definition that lets you assess the rarity – then inflate that factor for each level of generalization that you had to use.

To continue considering the Scarab example – Scarabs are one of the most commonly-found treasures of ancient Egypt, and they are usually a brooch. But it’s still from ancient Egypt, and that makes it rare. So I put x50 for the rarity, instead of x500 (a value that has been used for an alleged scroll from the Great Library of Alexandria).

Objects that are modern but still comparatively rare, like a gold armband, get a +% instead a multiplier.

 

Age represents an increase in value because an item is old. This shifts the basis of comparison from “all other items of this type” to “all items of this type and age.”

I usually work this as a factor – an increase of X% every 20 years (deliberately keeping the rate frequency fixed).

The sequence with my calculator is: (Age) / 20 =, Memory Clear, Memory Plus, (Age Value Factor per 20 years), x^y, Memory Recall, equals.

• The more fragile an item, the higher the factor.
• The more inherently valuable the materials are, the higher the factor.
• The more famous the maker, the lower the factor (it has to be presumed that they made lots of them, hence their fame).
• The higher the workmanship, the higher the factor.
• The older an item, the lower the factor (I’ll explain in a moment).

1. Each of these factors is rated between zero and five – but these aren’t linear assessments; a ‘1’ is typical, 2 is more than normal, and so on.
2. Add all four factors together, and divide by five, then divide by 10 to get a number between 0 and 0.5.
3. There’s also a sixth factor based on gut instinct and rarity, that’s worth up to 1 on it’s own. These results are percentage increases in value every twenty years.
4. Add 101 to the total and divide by 1000 to get the factor, a range of 1.01 to 1.03.

But once I have a ‘feel’ for what the results will be, I don’t follow the formal process – I’m quite happy to pluck a total out of thin air, based entirely on gut instinct for what the result will be. In some cases, I’ve even used a resulting factor of 1.05, going way above the usual limits.

• @ 10 years: 1.01 = +0.5%; 1.015 = +0.75%; 1.02 = +1%; 1.025 = +1.25%; 1.03 = +1.5%; 1.035 = +1.75%; 1.04 = +2%; 1.045 = +2.25%; 1.05 = +2.5%
• @ 20 years (obvious, used to check the math): 1.01 = +1%; 1.015 = +1.5%; 1.02 = +2%; 1.025 =+2.5%; 1.03 = +3%; 1.035 = +3.5%; 1.04 = +4%; 1.045 = +4.5%; 1.05 = +5%
• @ 50 years: 1.01 = +2.5%; 1.015 = +3.8%; 1.02 = +5%; 1.025 = +6.4%; 1.03 = +7.7%; 1.035 = +9%; 1.04 = +10%, 1.045 = +12%; 1.05 = +13%
• @ 80 years: 1.01 = +4%; 1.015 = +6%; 1.02 = +8%; 1.025 = +10%; 1.03 = +13%; 1.035 = +15%; 1.04 = +17%; 1.045 = +19%; 1.05 = +22%
• @ 100 years: 1.01 = +5%; 1.015 = +7.75%; 1.02 = +10%; 1.025 = +13%; 1.03 = +16%; 1.035 = +19%; 1.04 = +22%; 1.045 = +25%; 1.05 = +28%
• @ 160 years: 1.01 = +8.3%; 1.015 = +13%; 1.02 = +17%; 1.025 = +22%; 1.03 = +27%; 1.035 = +32%; 1.04 = +37%; 1.045 = +42%; 1.05 = +48%
• @ 200 years: 1.01 = +10.5%; 1.015 = +16%; 1.02 = +22%; 1.025 = +28%; 1.03 = +34%; 1.035 = +41%; 1.04 = +48%; 1.045 = +55%; 1.05 = +63%
• @ 300 years: 1.01 = +16%; 1.015 = +25%; 1.02 = +35%; 1.025 = +45%; 1.03 = +56%; 1.035 = +68%; 1.04 = +80%; 1.045 = +94%; 1.05 = +108%
• @ 400 years: 1.01 = +22%; 1.015 = +35%; 1.02 = +49%; 1.025 = +64%; 1.03 = +81%; 1.035 = x2; 1.04 = x2.2; 1.045 = x2.4; 1.05 = x2.7
• @ 500 years: 1.01 = +28%; 1.015 = +45%; 1.02 = +64%; 1.025 = +85%; 1.03 = +109%; 1.035 = +136%; 1.04 = x2.7; 1.045 = x3; 1.05 = x3.4
• @ 750 years: 1.01 = +45%; 1.015 = +75%; 1.02 = +110%; 1.025 = x2.5; 1.03 = x3; 1.035 = x3.6; 1.04 = x4.4; 1.045 = x5.2; 1.05 = x6
• @ 1000 years: 1.01 = +65%; 1.015 = x2.1; 1.02 = x2.7; 1.025 = x3.4; 1.03 = x4.4; 1.035 = x5.6; 1.04 = x7; 1.045 = x9; 1.05 = x11.5
• @ 2000 years: 1.01 = x2.7; 1.015 = x4.4; 1.02 = x7.25; 1.025 = x12; 1.03 = x19; 1.035 = x31; 1.04 = x51; 1.045 = x82; 1.05 = x132
• @ 4000 years: 1.01 = x7.3; 1.015 = x20; 1.02 = x52.5; 1.025 = x140; 1.03 = x370; 1.035 = x1,000; 1.04 = x2,550; 1.045 = x6,660; 1.05 = x17,300
• @ 6000 years: 1.01 = x20; 1.015 = x87; 1.02 = x380; 1.025 = x1,650; 1.03 = x7,100; 1.035 = x30,350; 1.04 = x128,825; 1.045 = x543,000; 1.05 = x 2,274,000

I could extend this table but it’s more than enough to make my points.

This process is an attempt to capture a non-linear process in a regular and simple progression. And, if you choose the right factor, it works perfectly – for a while.

Changes in value due to age are clearly not so straightforward; they are much faster than is reasonable over the longer term and then slower with increasing age. But trying to build that into the model makes it excessively complicated. So, instead:

You should Break The System. Deliberately choose a higher factor than you are supposed to for ‘younger’ time periods and scale it back with increasing age.

This requires you to note very carefully the rise in effect of regular increases in factor. It’s to make this clear that I extended the table as far as I did. Try something that seems about right, and if the results don’t feel right, modify it.

For the record, I got my best results by changing that flat 20-years interval to 15*log(age). But they still weren’t right.

Recommended Factors:

• 0 – 50 years: 1.2 – 1.35
• 51 – 100 years: 1.15 – 1.25
• 101 – 200 years: 1.2 – 1.25
• 201 – 250 years: 1.125 – 1.2
• 251 – 450 years: 1.11 – 1.15
• 451 – 600 years: 1.05 – 1.125
• 600 – 850 years: 1.05 – 1.1
• 851 – 1200 years: 1.045 – 1.1
• 1201 – 3000 years: 1.025 – 1.075
• 3001 – 4000 years: 1.015 – 1.05
• 4001 – 10000 years: 1.015 – 1.04
• 10,000+ years: Don’t calculate it, set it. 1.005 is too low, 1.01 is massively too high, and it’s too sensitive to small changes in factor.

 

If there are doubtful elements to the ownership or legitimacy of an item, this is where they get taken into account. There are several possible causes of such doubt, too many to go into in any detail. I use values of 1%, 5%, 10%, 25%, 50%, and 90% to indicate different levels of doubt as to the legitimacy of the item or the legality of its ownership.

On the other hand, even an otherwise unremarkable object – or even a somewhat dilapidated one – can accrue a massive boost in value because someone famous once owned it. Again, though, you have to be able to prove it.

Movie props actually seen on-screen are worth up to 1,000 times as much as ones that were legitimately made for the production but may have been used by a stunt double or as an unneeded backup.

A previously undiscovered Dead Sea Scroll? Until you prove it, it’s worth only 1% of what it otherwise would be valued at – and that much only because there’s a chance that it might be genuine.

In general, art and precious objects (Gold, Gems, etc) bump up to one step higher simply because they are innately valuable.

When assessing this adjustment, always think about what the seller could prove when the owner bought it / obtained it. And bear in mind the possibility that a Provenience can be flawed – you might not be able to prove that an item came from a fabulous Egyptian tomb but can prove that it is 4500 years old? It will lose some of its value, but far from all of it.

 

Deduct a percentage of the value for damage beyond that which would be expected of an item of this type of the claimed age.

One observation to note: Fools sometimes attempt to clean or repair such damage, in the process damaging Patina, i.e. the marks of natural time on the item. This can cut the value of an item by 90% or more, while the original damage only cost it 10% or less of its value.

This is also a good opportunity to round the value off to a neat round number.

Gems never lose value through damage unless subjected to extreme conditions – lava, fire, electrical damage, acid. Precious metals can be dented, and lose some of their value, but this loss is small. That’s why these things are popular – they hold their value except in extreme circumstances.

 

Deduct a percentage of the value for damage resulting from the age of the object. Depreciation only operates for 50 years. Over the 50-100 year range, it’s normal for depreciated objects to regain most or all of their losses.

Gems and Precious metals never depreciate. Art can depreciate through age, but this takes centuries and can be undone by professional restoration.

Unless the object is less than 100 years old, I tend to ignore depreciation.

When it comes to ordinary objects, Depreciation can be massive – a 50-year old walking stick or table is close to valueless, perhaps holding only a few percent of its original value. It’s not old enough to be valuable as an antique, and generally worn or damaged by age. Only 5% (at best) of such objects will survive long enough to reclaim their value, let alone become expensive.

The state in which an object is kept has a massive influence on losses through Depreciation. It is normally calculated based on the assumption of normal usage and normal wear-and-tear. If neither of those holds true, losses can be halved or even quartered.

But note that a lot of this ‘preservation of value’ is psychological, founded on the assumption that there will be a demand for it because it’s old. The antiquities lesson described in the Economics In RPGs final post – that the antiques market has largely collapsed – should be borne in mind.

 

Add a percentage increase or a multiplier for any increase in actual value. Most of the time, there won’t be any – the factors of rarity and age account for most such. But it can happen – the abilities of artistic genius can be underappreciated and then massively boost the value of one of his works.

There may be the prospect of cleansing a tainted Provenience, until this is actually done, the increase gets filed in the Appreciation space.

A critical role in history can add significant value – selling the crown jewels to finance a war, for example. This is a space in which to apply any adjustments not dealt with elsewhere.

FORGET most of what was written in the final post of the Economics In RPGs under this heading. It’s more trouble than it’s worth; the instructions here and in Depreciation, above, supersede them, and for good reason.

As a general rule, this category values the past history of the object. It’s a place to reflect any narrative that you want to add to the object, making the item itself more plausible and interesting. ANY SUCH NARRATIVE SHOULD BE DOCUMENTED SOMEWHERE – which is where the Source and Asset Number can be useful, linking the two pieces of information.

Contemplate, for example, a Viking Shield discovered in North America that can be proven to have been buried there for more than 500 years. Rarity would be sky-high (there’s only one of them); Age would add notably to the value; Provenience – you don’t know who owned it, but there’s no deduction for fraud, etc, either. Depreciation is irrelevant because of the age. Appreciation is where the tremendous historic value gets placed.

In particular, any object that extends historical knowledge, or that proves a suspected extension, gains massively in this area.

Whenever you have an artwork by a famous artist, you have to research them to discover when they became famous, and what they were famous for. A portrait by a notable landscape artist might be a curiosity but it’s unlikely to hold as much value as one the works for which he is famous.

It can be useful for narrative purposes / reference NOT to reduce Depreciation because of the condition in which something is kept, but to restore that value in the Appreciation space.

 

There are objects that people just want to own. A particular artist may be especially “Hot” in the market at the moment, for example. This space adjusts value for this sort of thing.

People didn’t really become fascinated by Egyptology until the major finds of the late 19th and early 20th century, for example; everyone knew it existed (you can’t hide the sphinx), but the discovery of the Valley Of The Kings (and other sites), with their treasures intact, caused a massive swell in interest, and that sent prices skyrocketing. As a conservative estimate, that lack of interest reduced the value of Egyptian Artifacts by 50%, and probably more.

This is where such ‘over the top’ value influences are incorporated. Add a percentage or a multiplier to the value, or subtract a value, to reflect social attitudes at the time of the valuation.

Wikipedia yesterday featured a book about the practice of covering books in Human Skin. Horrid and Compelling, both at once. A book covered in leather created in this fashion would increase in both Rarity and probably Provenience – but how many people would be comfortable owning such a tome? I suspect that the value in general terms, would take a bath.

 

Anything that is or was representative of, used by, or desirous of, a religion adds at least something to the value of an object. Adherents of that religion, or those who want to know more about such worshipers, will pay extra to obtain such items, and if anyone else wants the item, they will have to pay more, too.

The amounts can vary considerably – from 5% for a token from a faith that only experts have ever heard of (which can include those invented from whole cloth by GMs) to 100% or more.

I always remember seeing advertising on the early internet – “You too can own a genuine piece of the cross” or “…of the ark, just send $$$ to….” when thinking about this subject. These were (presumably) simple pieces of wood, perhaps old wood (if I give undeserved credit in case it’s due) – worth $1, perhaps less – inflated in value 50- or 100-fold because of the religious element. And people paid, I’m sure of it.

Initially, that was all that I had in mind for this valuation element. But then I remembered that to burn Beatles albums in the wake of the ‘Bigger than Jesus’ gaffe, people had to go out and buy them… And then there is the religious element of many of the Egyptian Treasures, which undoubtedly adds a little something to their cache in modern times…

Of course, if you really want to boost the value in this section of the worksheet, get the religion banned, and just watch how much the Black Market will charge for such objects.

The more I thought about it, and the more I worked with the Valuation Worksheet, the more I realized the simpler truth encapsulated in the directions above.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
I use these lines to make notes about factors that affect everything in a category or from a particular source.

For example, the 1860 valuations pages have the text:

     “NB: 2023 USD x6.07/2800 -> 1860 USD”

at the top of each sheet. If I estimate that an object has 25000 worth of gemstones (2023 USD), this gives me the conversion to the value to use in the chart ($25000 x 6.07 / 2800, which equals $54.1964 in 1860 money – which I would immediately round to $54.20.)

The 1938 pages that I’m working on at the moment update the 1860 values for another 78 years of history and technological progress. The notes on those pages reads:

     Inherent Value: 1938 [Inflation x1.7595. Gold x1.69328, Silver x5.31064, Plat x1.06796,
     Gems x46.6123, Unskilled Labor x0.7×2.5, Skilled x 0.5×5, Age +77

Let’s break that down:

• Inflation bumps the price of materials and labor up by a factor of x1.7595 unless otherwise noted.
• Gold has risen by less than inflation – prices in both 1860 and 1938 were fixed by government regulation. It adjusts by x1.69328.
• Silver has massively risen in value -back in 1860, it was worth about 1/80th of the equivalent weight in gold, now it’s more like one-fifth. Adjust the value of any silver in an item by x5.31064.
• Platinum has barely changed, which means that it’s fallen massively in comparison to inflation. $1 of platinum back in 1860 is worth $1.06796 in 1938.
• Gems have risen in price even more dramatically, almost fifty-fold- x46.6123.
• It takes, on average, an unskilled laborer 0.7 times as long to perform a task, but the basic wage level has risen by a factor of about 2.5, considerably more than inflation. Ordinary people have disposable income and the economy is re-engineering itself to the presumption that they will find something to do with it.
• Skilled workers are even better off; it takes them about half as long to achieve a task as it used to, but their basic income per hour has risen 5-fold.

which is the recommended practice.

 

These might seem pointless, especially if you are avoiding maths and updating the total values as you go, which is my recommended technique.

In modern times, Ancient Egypt is symbolic of fabulous wealth, both historical and material. That wasn’t always the case. The same is true of every source of legendary wealth.
Image by Thorsten Dittmar from Pixabay

I find that having a more prominent value draws attention to the bottom line.

You can, should you wish, use these to aggregate the value of multiple items across the page.

But there’s a potentially more important function: Objects are worth what someone will pay for them. Everything else is hot air and supposition, theory at best. The values recorded in these spaces do not have to be an accurate reflection of the totals to their respective points in the process.

Another point worth making is that the “Subtotal” is what the new owner can reasonably be expected to have paid (plus any after-purchase expenses, like postage, delivery fees, other freight costs, etc. Updating the subtotal to incorporate those extras gives you the number both ways – the “book cost” and the actual price that has to be paid for the item.

Most of the time, that won’t be of any value to you; it’s a dirty little technical detail that only bogs a game down. But there will be times when it’s a relevant factor – getting 100 tons of industrial machinery shipped interstate, for example.

 
 
 
 

 

So, what’s in the Zip file version 2.0?

Legacy Files:

• V1.0 – A4 Portrait Orientation – Word 97-2003 format
• V1.0 – A4 Portrait Orientation – Open Document format
• V1.0 – A4 Portrait Orientation – PDF Format
• V1.0 – Letter Portrait Orientation – Word 97-2003 format
• V1.0 – Letter Portrait Orientation – Open Document format
• V1.0 – Letter Portrait Orientation – PDF Format

New Files:

• V1.0 – A4 Landscape Orientation – Word 97-2003 format
• V1.0 – A4 Landscape Orientation – Open Document format
• V1.0 – A4 Landscape Orientation – PDF Format
• V1.0 – A4 Portrait Orientation – Word 97-2003 format
• V1.0 – A4 Portrait Orientation – Open Document format
• V1.0 – A4 Portrait Orientation – PDF Format
• V2.0 – Letter Landscape Orientation – Word format
• V2.0 – Letter Landscape Orientation – Open Document format
• V2.0 – Letter Landscape Orientation – PDF Format
• V2.0 – Letter Portrait Orientation – Word format
• V2.0 – Letter Portrait Orientation – Open Document format
• V2.0 – Letter Portrait Orientation – PDF Format
• V2.0 – Screen-sized – Word format
• V2.0 – Screen-sized – Open Document format
• Instructions excerpt- PDF

Value notes example (and other reference material

The following is an extract of the notes made for valuing precious goods etc in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, but they can be applied fairly universally with a little research. In particular, inflation calculators can be very useful.

A Cubic Inch Of Gold

1 cubic inch of gold
   = 10.013 troy oz
   = 11.06 normal oz
   = 313.54573 g

   = $206.96871 USD 1860 (fixed)
   = $350.455 USD 1938 (fixed)
   = $20066.92672 USD 2023 (26-10-23)

The Purity of Gold

Pure gold is 24 carats, meaning that it is 100% gold with no other metals added.

18-carat gold is 75% pure gold and 25% other metals, while 14-carat gold is 58.3% pure gold and 41.7% other metals. The higher the carat of gold, the more valuable it is, but it also tends to be softer and more susceptible to damage or wear.

To get value of impure gold, determine the weight of pure gold.

24 ct = 100%
22 ct = 91.6%
21 ct = 87.5%
20 ct = 83.3%
18 ct = 75.0%
15 ct = 62.5%
14 ct = 58.3%
12 ct = 50.0%
10 ct = 41.7%

Gold found in the wild is generally assumed to be 14- or 16-ct unless proven otherwise with an assay, which can cost USD $25-$50 1850s prices.

White gold has added Rhodium which adds strength and durability. It is normal for jewelers to add sufficient yellow gold to the alloy that the price matches i.e. 14-ct white gold is worth as much as 14-ct yellow gold.

The Silver Ratio

Long Term Trends gives the ratio of silver price to gold price over many decades.

Current = approx / 85.51
1938 = approx / 80.35
1860 = approx / 15.13

Platinum Ratio

Similarly, SDBullion gives the historic ratio of platinum price to gold prices (the page is less user-friendly though, be warned).

current = approx 1.996
1938 = approx 1.1
1860 = approx 1.03

Gemstones – General Notes

There has been very little study of the price of gemstones through the ages, notably because it’s a very hard subject to research. The most recent significant paper on the subject was published in 1934!

Three characteristics: determine gem value.

• Beauty (aka fire, brilliancy, or color)
• Durability
• Rarity

There is Fourth, artificial, characteristic:

• Perfection of Cut, aka the gem’s “Make”.

This is strongly responsive to changing tastes and other social factors.

Most Valuable Gemstones

From AD 26 to 1500, one-carat white diamonds were the most valuable gemstones. From 1501 to 1800, the ruby led; from 1801 to 1872, it was again the diamond; from 1872-1934, it was the emerald.

Rule Of Linchoten

A rule formulated by Linchoten gives a (frequently inaccurate but ballpark) valuation for exceptionally large gems:

Value = 1-ct price x square of size in cts.

This rule applies to all gemstones prior to 1874, and applies to all except diamonds post-1874.

The Carat – perils and pitfalls

Since 1907 the term Carat has referred to a Metric Carat, equal to 0.2 grams (0.00705 oz, 0.00643 ozt). The Carat is divisible into 100 Points.

It was originally a unit of weight equal to 1/1728 (1/12^3) lb.

While the term and concept spread from the ancient Romans and Greeks, it was normal until the adoption of the Metric Carat for each country to have its own definition.

An ‘international carat’ of 205 milligrams was proposed in 1871 by the Syndical Chamber of Jewelers, etc., in Paris, and accepted in 1877 by Diamond Merchants in Paris. This definition was used for Diamond sales exclusively; existing ‘national’ Carats continued to be used for other gemstones.

Notably, London and New York used the same measure of 205.303 mg and from 1887 on, 205.409 mg, while Paris and East India used 205.5 until the 1877 change.

Cyprus had the smallest Carat (187 mg), while Livomo in Tuscany, Italy, had the highest (215.99 mg). The United States adopted the metric carat on July 1, 1913, the United Kingdom on 1 April 1914. The Metric Carat is now used universally.

Measurement by Carob Seed

You read that right. Carob seeds have been used throughout history to measure jewelry, because it was believed that there was little variance in their mass distribution – but this was not true, and has caused significant reappraisals of some precious stones.

Uncut vs Cut

Up to 75% of a gem may be lost during the cutting process, depending on the flaws that have to be avoided. More typically, 1/3 to 1/2 will be lost.

Since cutting can greatly enhance the value, but can also completely destroy the gemstone being cut or reduce it to fragments, it is a very nerve-wracking process. Ironically, a steady hand is one of the most important factors in a successful gem cutting. In some eras and settings, the gem-cutter is responsible for any loss incurred during the process – which won’t help steady those nerves any. Particularly difficult stones may wait years or decades before anyone is brave enough to risk cutting them.

Especially large stones produce ‘Off cuts’ that are in and of themselves of gemstone size and quality. One of the crowns of England is decorated in diamonds that were off-cuts from the Star Of India.

Ease Of Cutting is second only to size in determining the value of an uncut gem. The most difficult cases are worth 1/25th of the cut gem’s value – bearing in mind the size loss. The easiest are worth about 1/5th. As a general rule of thumb, allow for cutting losses and use ten-to-one.

EG: A 1 ct cut ruby, worth about $4625 can be assumed to have been a 2-3 carat uncut ruby before cutting. That means the uncut gem would have been worth $4625×2-3 / 10 = $925 – $1387.50.

Valuation rule of thumb

As a general rule of thumb, exclude and manually calculate values of significant gems, and treat the rest by weight.

Diamond Notes

The most valuable (and rare) diamonds are deeply colored red, blue, or green. Next are white diamonds of unusual brilliance or size.

Diamonds are the gemstones with the highest Durability.

A Paragon Diamond is a flawless stone of at least 100 ct. in size.

Base 2023 prices: USD $4500-6000 / ct.

The price per carat does not increase linearly with increasing size. Instead, there are sharp jumps around milestone carat weights, as demand is much higher for diamonds weighing just more than a milestone than for those weighing just less. 0.99 carat diamonds are worth a LOT less than 1.01-carat diamonds.

Ruby Notes

Rubies of > 4 ct are especially valuable, worth much more per ct than smaller rubies. The largest run to about 9 ct. 1934 $3000-7000 per ct.

Rubies of 3-4 ct are the next most valuable per ct.

Rubies have high Durability, but are not quite as resilient as diamonds..

Base 2023 prices: USD $4625 / ct.

Sapphire Notes

Sapphires of exceptional quality are especially valuable relative to the more common stones. This is a more important factor than size, which is the second most-important factor in Sapphire value.

The largest Sapphire on record is the Star Of Adam at 1404.49 carats, mined in Sri Lanka in 2015 and owned anonymously. The previous record holder was the Black Star Of Queensland at 733 carats, mined in Australia in 1938.

Sapphires have the third-highest durability out of the major precious stones.

Base 2023 prices; USD $450-1600 / ct.

Emerald Notes

Emeralds of especially deep color, regardless of size, are the most valuable per ct.

Emeralds of unusual size and consistent (‘unblemished’) color are the next most valuable.

Both values are considerably greater than the base value of a 1 ct emerald.

Truly Flawless emeralds are practically non-existent [unless artificially produced by modern technology]. As a marketing device, gem dealers and Jewelers refer to any stone whose inclusions or imperfections are too small to be visible to the naked eye (assuming normal visual acuity) as ‘flawless’.

The largest emerald in the world is the Bahia Emerald at 180,000 carats (!), still uncut. It currently resides in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. It is allegedly Cursed.

Emeralds have the lowest durability of the precious stones, mostly because of the imperfections, which are points of weakness. It is sometimes claimed to be possible for a heavy emerald dropped from a height or struck with a hammer to shatter into numerous smaller stones of a mere fraction of the value.

Base 2023 prices USD $500-1100 / ct.

Semi-precious Stones Notes

Many of these have been overproduced which has devastated prices. EG: Tiger-eyes (sister to Cats-eyes) were highly esteemed from 1880-1890 and once sold for $6 a carat or about $11,200 per pound. Two speculators independently flooded the market in 1890, causing the price to crash to just 25 cents a pound – a loss of 99.997% of their value.

• SPINEL: Base 2023 prices USD $200-500 / ct
• AQUAMARINE: Base 2023 prices USD $100-200 / ct
• OPAL: Base 2023 prices USD $60-100 / ct
• AMYTHEST: Base 2023 prices USD $15-100 / ct
• TURQUOISE: Base 2023 prices USD $10-100 / ct
• PERIDOT: Base 2023 prices USD $50-80 / ct
• AGATE: Base 2023 prices USD $5-100 / ct
• AMBER: Base 2023 prices USD $50-60 / ct
• LAPUS LAZULI: Base 2023 prices USD $20-50 / ct
• JADE: Base 2023 prices USD $10 – 100,000 / ct
• QUARTZ: Base 2023 prices USD $8-65 / ct
• CITRINE: Base 2023 prices USD $10-30 / ct
• JASPER: Base 2023 prices USD $2-5 / ct

BONUS CONTENT:

Since I have the files open in order to extract the above, there’s some addition material that might be of use to GMs out there.

The Weight Of Rock

On average, a cubic foot of rock weighs 165.2 pounds, but depending on the type of rock it may weigh between 143.6 and 186.0 pounds.

Typical weights by size:

• Pebble: Diameter: 0.5 in., Weight .035 ounces = 1 g
• Landscaping Rock: Diameter: 1.25 in., Weight 1.41 ounces = 40 g
• Skipping Stone: Diameter: 1.6 in., Weight 1.41 ounces = 40 g
• Cobblestone (the largest it’s practical to throw): Diameter: 4.5 in Weight 2.6 pounds = 1.2 kg
• Basketball sized (most people can manage to carry these at least a short distance). Diameter: 9.5 in., Weight 42 pounds = 19 kg
• Yoga ball sized: Diameter: ~26 in., Weight ~920 pounds = ~418 kg
• Car sized: Diameter: ~10 ft Weight ~86,500 pounds = ~39,271 kg
• Bag of Landscaping Rocks: Weight: 50 pounds = 22.7 kg
• Pallet of Landscaping Rocks (50 bags): Weight 2,500 pounds = 1,136 kg

Density of rock types:

• Sandstone: Density: 1 ft3 2.30 (g/cm3) = 143.6 (lb / ft3) = 65.2 (kg / ft3)
• Limestone: Density: 1 ft3 2.70 (g/cm3) = 168.6 (lb / ft3) = 76.5 (kg / ft3)
• Shale: Density: 1 ft3 2.35 (g/cm3) = 146.7 (lb / ft3) = 66.6 (kg / ft3)
• Dolomite: Density: 1 ft3 2.60 (g/cm3) = 162.6 (lb / ft3) = 73.8 (kg / ft3)
• Granite: Density: 1 ft3 2.63 (g/cm3) = 164 (lb / ft3) = 74.5 (kg / ft3)
• Marble: Density: 1 ft3 2.71 (g/cm3) = 169.1 (lb / ft3) = 76.8 (kg / ft3)
• Basalt: Density: 1 ft3 2.90 (g/cm3) = 181.0 (lb / ft3) = 82.2 (kg / ft3)
• Quartzite: Density: 1 ft3 2.65 (g/cm3) = 165.4 (lb / ft3) = 75.1 (kg / ft3)
• Gabbro: Density: 1 ft3 2.98 (g/cm3) = 186.0 (lb / ft3) = 84.4 (kg / ft3)

Weight Of Paintings

A good quality canvas in a wooden frame weighs roughly the same as a typical canvas in a glass-front frame, i.e. 3kg for 60cm x 90cm.

Of this, 2/3-3/4 of the weight will be the frame.

This information can be used to derive the weight of most art, with or without frame, on good or typical canvas.

Standard Bricks – Of Gold

US Bricks were standardized (more or less) in the 1800s to 9×3.5×4.5 inches. What if you had one made of gold? And what if it fell on you from a height of about 2 feet?

It was to answer this question that I went looking for the weight and price of a cubic inch of gold.

• 1 standard brick has a volume of 141.75 cubic inches.
• x 313.54573 g = 44.88kg.
• …Worth 2,944,174.17 USD 2023, or 55,405.60 USD 1938, or 32,720 USD in 1860.
• Momentum = mass x velocity. So if such a brick fell on you from two feet overhead, it would be roughly equivalent to a 5lb crowbar hitting you at 125 km/h (77.64 mph). Ouch!

The Value Of Spices

Modern standards say 1-3 years lifespan, if properly stored, i.e. 1/2 value every 0.75 years.

Assuming sealed containers, you could maybe double this. = x 1/2 every 1.5 years – if the containers aren’t being opened regularly.

Standards in the past were less fussy (to put it politely), so assume 1/4 times the indicated rate of decay in value = x 1/2 every 6 years.

Cool, dark environments prolong spice life up to 4x, so if stored, decay becomes about x 1/2 every 25 years. And that’s giving the cache every possible benefit of the doubt.

EXCEPTION:
Saffron, in oil, can last for a century.

The oil itself becomes tinted and valuable in the process.

At the end of that century, though, it’s essentially worthless.

SECOND EXCEPTION:
Any spice mixed with honey will last for thousands of years. Good luck getting the honey back out, afterwards, though.

IN THEORY, a sealed container which is stored in another container that is filled with honey might be able to last longer, but I wouldn’t bet money on it.

Hopefully, all this will be of use to someone out there!

This image is composited from a great many sources, combined in various ways.
stars-7249785 by Gerd Altmann, ngc-2264-11176 by WikiImages, black-hole-7734792 by Bjørn Bråthen, star-trails-1846734 by Pexels, galaxy-3608029 by Lumina Obscura, silhouette-5465124 by Evgeni Tcherkasski, moon-3031977 by vivek, photographer-1674177 by 51581, night-927168 also by Gerd Altmann, planet-1497205 by AstroGraphix, mars-153566 by OpenClipart-Vectors, moon-1817885 by PIRO, space-681638, a third image by Gerd Altmann, all from Pixabay, plus
A_galactic_maelstrom_(20406319363).jpg from Hubble ESA, CC BY 2.0, ESO-Centre_of_the_Tarantula_Nebula.jpg from ESO, CC BY 3.0, and White_Star_1.png from Viktor Hahn (Viktor.Hahn@web.de), CC BY-SA 3.0, all via Wikimedia Commons…. — hopefully into one seamless whole! ALL of these images were changed or transformed in some way. This small image doesn’t really do it justice, so there is a large verion that you can open in a new table by , or on the smaller image above.

Okay, so here we go with #2 of three locations generated for my campaigns. This is definitely sci-fi in nature, and would especially suit Traveler campaigns, though it can be used more generally.

As usual, a bit of a preamble, but I’m setting it off in a text box so that those with no interest in it can skip to the good parts.

This world – Mydas – was created for my Warcry campaign, and the similarities in fundamental concept between it and Azuria (Strange Place #3, created for the “Dr Who: Vortex Of War” campaign, to be presented in another post) are too strong to ignore, and mostly coincidental – though it seems clear to me that Azuria served, at least partially, as inspiration for Mydas.

The final deciding factor – this world is scary, Azuria is not. And it is Halloween today, after all!

Reflecting on the choice has given me to muse upon the stylistic and tonal differences between the two campaigns.

For all that it’s a more “pure” Sci-Fi campaign, with lots of material that rooted in the real world cosmology that’s in our night skies, “Dr Who: The Vortex Of War” plays a lot faster and looser with the finicky details. It’s more “Soft Sci-fi with pretensions” than “hard”.

The Warcry Campaign has it’s roots in a blend of Superhero and Soap Opera and Space Opera. It takes occasional strange excursions into Sci-Fi oriented Fantasy, but the Sci-Fi strand within is also very strong, and much harder than that of the Dr Who campaign in many respects.

But that doesn’t preclude me from using Unobtainium or anything else necessary to get a plot over the line when necessary. Nevertheless, that’s the tonal difference between the two, and it will be important to keep it in mind when appraising both Mydas and Azuria.

Credit Where It’s Due Dept:

Parts of thie content below were inspired by the Gamma World Module, “Gamma Base”, by Kim Eastland, and especially the cover art by Clyde Caldwell.

Believe it or not, Amazon still has a few copies for sale (at exhorbitant prices, as you would expect when it comes to a module from 1987, 36 years ago!) Click on to contemplate purchase – I may get a small commission if you do.

Or, you can get it as PDF or even a physical copy at reasonable prices from Drivethru RPG – click on the cover or on .

Background

Space is big, like really, really, really big. And that means that it contains an awful lot of stars, like really, really, really a lot.

Galactic surveyors determine the targets that will be investigated according to a strict set of protocols.

1. Systems with indications of sentient life.
2. Systems that pose a potential threat to surrounding systems.
3. Systems with indications of life.
4. Systems with the potential for colonization.
5. Systems with unconfirmed or unassayed natural resources of value
6. Systems of specific scientific interest
7. Targets of opportunity.

If a system doesn’t land on that list, it might as well not exist. If exploring a system would bypass or delay the exploration of a higher-value target, it stays on the list – but the higher-value target gets visited by the galactic survey.

So it was not at all unexpected that System SG-134-12-158 came in for absolutely zero attention from anyone – at least at first.

SG-134-12-158 – remote observation

Just because no interstellar probe or galactic survey ship ever graced the system with a personal visit prior to the discovery of Mydas, it doesn’t mean that nothing was known of the system.

SG-134-12-158 is located near the inner end of one of the galactic spiral arms. It was regularly observed when astronomers studied the black hole at the center of the galaxy, without much attention being paid.

The primary is a white Dwarf star, a stellar type that is a dime a dozen. This particular example is located on the far side of an interstellar nebula, screening it from detailed observation. So far as could be determined remotely through this cloak of interstellar gas, the system had no significant planetary bodies, certainly nothing on the scale of a gas giant. Given the frequency with which stars have been found to have at least some planets orbiting them, this made the system a minor anomaly – enough to keep an eye on, but nothing more.

Over time, other anomalies began to crop up and stack into something more interesting. Gamma-ray observations showed that the nebula in question was being bathed in excessive gamma-ray radiation. Infra-red telescopes, at the same time, reported that the star seemed to be burning far hotter than was usual for stellar bodies of that size, for no reasons that could be identified casually.

The system itself was on a cometary orbit around the central black hole; so populated with stars is that region of space that it seemed extremely likely that the orbit was unstable, and the star would either end its days in the infinite well of the central hole, or would break free and escape to tell the tale.

So it was that SG-134-12-158 graduated from galactic background noise to ‘star of scientific interest’ – and stayed there for a century or so.

The Star at the heart of SG-134-12-158

A bored young cosmologist, afflicted with an excess of idle time on his hands, came across the different reported white-dwarf anomalies and realized that they were probably talking about the same system. It can sometimes be hard telling small stars apart from one another in that region of space.

Putting 2+2+2 together, he came to the conclusion that – impossible as it might seem – the primary of the star had to be composed of antimatter, not normal matter. That probably meant that it was actually an intruder from outside the galaxy, and the most probable path to reaching where it was found was coming in from Galactic North.

This theory explained all the anomalies by wrapping them into a far bigger anomaly, and raised all sorts of troubling questions – where there more like this out there? How many? What was their normal motion, relative to the galaxy? What kind of risk to the Empire did this example represent?

Many tried to lampoon the theory, but the improbability wilted in the face of the perfect fit between observations and theory. Soon, not only was SG-134-12-158 the subject of intense remote scrutiny and deep thought, it was reclassified to category 2 – potential threat – and earmarked for galactic survey at their earliest convenience.

Still, there seemed to be no urgency about that. The star had been there for thousands of years, it would be somewhere nearby for hundreds if not thousands more – it wasn’t going anywhere that they couldn’t watch it like hawks. There were always more demands on Galactic Survey Missions than they can hope to satisfy, anyway!

Calculations suggested that the star had to be constantly flirting with going nova. If it weren’t for constant radiation pressure limiting the influx of material – pushing it aside – it would undoubtedly explode catastrophically. But since that hadn’t happened, it had to be presumed that the radiation being put out by the star was at least enough to moderate the reactions to a tolerably-sustainable level. There might not be much safety margin – predictions differed – but clearly, there was enough.

The heat of SG-134-12-158

Slowly, theoretical models were built up. Assumption one was that any planetary system would be composed of the same elementary matter as the primary unless the rogue star had managed to pick the pocket of some other stellar systems along the way.

If they were made of antimatter, they would have been eroded into non-existence a long time ago. Just like a star has a solar wind, the Galactic Hub has a ‘galactic wind’, gasses and alpha- and beta- particles accelerated to a significant portion of the speed of light by falling toward the black hole but not quite crossing the event horizon. The passage past and break-up of stellar bodies created this particle soup, and gravity flung them away at varying speeds. Those that didn’t achieve significant velocity were doomed to fall back and re-accelerate; it was like a cat playing cruelly with a mouse.

But some would be slowed, but would escape, and would blast through nearby solar systems as sheets of particle radiation – which would bother no-one very much; they either had protective magnetic belts and ionizing upper atmospheres to deal with the problem, or they were a dead world anyway. The stars would experience somewhat accelerated life-cycles, ‘heated up’ by the extra gas and radiation, but it would not be all that significant – unless the system was made of antimatter, of course.

If that were the case, then things would get funky. Not only would the star burn a LOT hotter (as was already known), but even the occasional stray particle penetrating those planetary defenses would annihilate a particle of the planet, so it would be hellishly hot in both the thermal and radioactive senses, and would – over time – be completely erased from existence. Calculations gave such planets a lifetime of 10,000 years or so – at best.

Captive planets?

Ah, but what if the planets were captives, liberated from normal-matter star systems? Well, either they were gas giants in size, or they weren’t, and it was already known that there were no gas giants in the system.

And what of smaller bodies? Well, without a gas giant to sweep excess hydrogen and helium out of the system, any planetary body of significant mass would start picking up extra mass, and – over time – would become a gas giant (a smallish one, perhaps) whether it had started out that way or not.

And there weren’t any planets of such size – the orbital wobble would have been easily detectable. So, science decreed, there were no planets.

Expedition

Another cosmologist, going by the name Normal Huxley (don’t ask!) demonstrated that it was entirely possible for SG-134-12-158 to have substantially-larger asteroid belts than were normal, and – what’s more – those with certain desirable ores would possess unusually strong magnetic fields that would ‘warp’ particles and radiation away, an effect that should be detectable, making it easy to cherry pick the most desirable targets.

That speculation somehow reached the ears of Lord Maxwell Windsor-Brighton, Duke of a small cluster of stars on the safe side of the planetary nebula. The Windsor-Brighton domain wasn’t the only one that could lay claim to the system, but none of the others appeared to have heard of Huxley’s work, which suited Windsor-Brighton just fine.

In order to claim the system, and its potentially-valuable resources, the system had to be surveyed, any resources being claimed assayed and enumerated, the appropriate taxes and kickbacks paid to the right people, and if the claim landed on the right desk at the right time, the Emperor might be so moved as to grant the request, maybe – by proxy, of course. The trick was always to make a resource seem worth exploiting without making it so attractive that an Imperial Bureaucrat decided to expropriate it on behalf of the Emperor. A fine art that few mastered.

So Windsor-Brighton decided to commission a personal survey of the region – theoretically scouting out potential new colony worlds on newborn stars within the nebula (of course, none would be habitable, but he pretended that everyone knew it was a waste of time except him) – as a cover for the real expedition.

The sensitive nature of the potential trade coup demanded the highest discretion. so he placed his promising young son-in-law, Byron Windsor-Smythe, in charge.

Planets? At SG-134-12-158? You’re kidding, right?

Nope. Not one bit. Against all odds, the expedition to SG-134-12-158 discovered a dwarf planet, with a significant moon, orbiting contentedly within the goldilocks zone of the star. Not in what should have been the goldilocks zone if it had been a normal star, but in exactly the right orbit to be capable of sustaining life with this particular unique star.

They named the planet Mydas, a deliberate variation on the name of the King whose touch could turn anything to gold, for reasons that will shortly become obvious, and the moon, they named Goose – after the mythic layer of golden eggs.

Goose was almost exactly 1/7th the mass of Mydas, and showed evidence of repeated asteroid bombardment, and signs of having been heated to the point of having a molten surface any number of times. It was exactly what they would have expected a solid body of normal matter to look like in a system of this nature.

Introducing Mydas

Mydas was more remarkable. It’s magnetic fields were 1,200 times as strong as would be expected of a comparable planetary body. Virtually the entire core of the slightly smallish planet – about 78% the physical size of the earth – must be made of rare earth alloys and ores.

The crust was somewhat thinner, and seismic probes suggested that the mantle was somewhat thicker than would normally be the case. The mass and size made it clear that it was constructed with rather less iron in its makeup than would be expected. All of which meant that mining the ore would be a (comparative) doddle.

Jumping-off point #1

GMs can take everything above and stop at this point if they want this to be a world to be exploited by the PCs and or their patrons, without any of the complications that are about to be introduced. Make Mydas virtually atmosphere-free and it becomes a wild fluke, the results of one trillion cosmic monkeys typing at one trillion word processors, a world so improbable that there can only possibly be one of them in the Galaxy (and even that is not guaranteed). A curiosity, of great value – but nothing more.

Even if you choose to jump off the bandwagon at this point, it could still be worthwhile to finish reading, though – there are solutions to the improbabilities that the GM jumping off at this point may want to try to incorporate.

But there were complications. It had a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, and – in some areas – a vibrant green biosphere. It was human-habitable. And it’s exceptionally rare to find such worlds without some form of indigenous inhabitants – sentient or otherwise.

The planet was heavily cratered – even more so than Goose – and many of those craters were clustered in improbable distribution patterns that made it near-certain that they were the results of a major exchange of weapons of mass-destruction at some past time.

Entering orbit created new complications; the magnetic field was so intense that any ungrounded metal became electrically charged, shorting out systems all over the ship. Emergency Jury-rigged repairs (that fail on a regular timetable) enabled the mission to continue – and there was no way in heaven that Byron Windsor-Smythe was going to let anywhere as extraordinary as this fall into anyone else’s hands if he could possibly avoid it. Not only was this going to be a grand adventure, it was the stuff of legends – none of the crew present would ever have to pay for a meal anywhere ever again!

Mydasians

Details scans from orbit revealed a number of decomposing ruins, blackened swamplands, and pockets of greenery. No electronic signals were directed at the explorer craft, which suggested that whatever civilization had been there had wiped itself out long ago. Degenerate remnants of the native population might or might not still exist somewhere, but they could be using nothing more sophisticated than stone axes.

There’s speculation (not entirely unfounded) that the Mydasians were humanoid and bipedal, and culturally not all that dissimilar to the citizens of 2023 earth. They were clearly slightly more advanced in some respects, based on the weapons signatures found on the surface.

Squeeze Bombs

In particular, they seemed to go in for subspace implosion devices (Commonly nicknamed Squeeze Bombs or Pinch Bombs), weapons that compress a region of space (and the matter accompanying it) out of local space-time, causing it to cease to exist; where it goes, no-one can say.

Unfortunately, this creates a short-lived discontinuity in reality, sometimes described as a ‘naked’ singularity, and that (combined with quantum uncertainty) meant that there was a chance that something would emerge from nothingness to replace the matter destroyed. It probably wouldn’t be Cthulhu – but there was no certainty of that.

Because of this unpredictability, the Empire banned such weapons long before they became obsolete; they were simply too dangerous.

To judge from the crater patterns, the Mydasians not only embraced Squeeze Bombs, they fought a war that utilized such weapons with gleeful abandon. An Armageddon, if you will.

Radiation signatures from the craters suggest that this final war (from the Mydasian perspective) was fought between 10,000 and 100,000 years before Byron and his team arrived – long before Humans were anywhere near this part of space.

Pathogen Payloads

Given that amount of time, the biosphere should have reasserted itself far more thoroughly that is the evident case. Speculation is that Bio-weapons were employed that sterilized large tracts of the surface, slowing the regeneration. It might be possible, following samples and analysis, to determine from the rate of reclamation, exactly how long ago the party kicked off.

The devastation was too wide-spread for a single pathogen to be responsible; multiple bio-weapon payloads must have been involved, to the point where it was fortunate that any life survived. Whatever was left would have to be much tougher than most in order to survive the devastation wrought on the ecosystem. Even non-sentient animal life might pose a significant threat.

These possibilities were factored into all mission planning forward of its being expressed – just in case something viable survived down there and could infect expedition members.

Mydas City

One structure appeared to have survived mostly intact – and detailed scans showed possible low-level energy use, suggesting that there may be surviving technology. Having ‘grown up’ on the planet, the Mydasians would have known a lot more about it than the expedition, and some answers could save lives or shed years from the exploitation schedule. Some intelligence regarding the weaponry that had been deployed – and in particular, anything that might still be dangerous – would also be exceptionally useful.

That structure was named Mydas City. It had been built on the top of, and probably into, a medium-sized mountain. Multiple enemy Squeeze Bombs had detonated on all sides of it, slicing great holes out of the mountain itself, but somehow, perched on the top of the apple-core that used to be a noteworthy peak, this structure had survived – or had been built afterwards.

In shape, it somewhat resembles a castle, and somewhat resembles a modern fortress the size of a small city.

Jumping-off point #2

There are a number of alternative plot destinations possible from this point.

It’s entirely possible that there are Mydasian survivors living underground beneath the fortress.

It’s also possible that those survivors are all in cold-sleep, awaiting only the arrival of an energy signature of sufficient magnitude to inform them that rescue is at hand.

Again, it’s worth reading on, even if you choose to take things in a different direction.

Planetfall

To investigate these matters and determine what could be gained in terms of knowledge of the original natives, and what threat they might still pose, House Windsor-Brighton obtained Imperial permission to send an expedition to the surface of Mydas.

All appropriate precautions were to be taken – full hazmat suiting for all, and as much of the work as possible to be carried out by remote-operated vehicles and drones.

Landing right on top of the fortress, with it’s suspiciously turret-like structures, was deemed too risky. Instead, a location a couple of kilometers away was selected, because it was close enough to a number of areas of interest to permit investigation, but shielded from all of them by intervening wasteland.

Jumping-off point #3

Again, this is a point at which different choices can be made by the GM to those that I have outlined, in whole or in part.

For example, you might decide that the fortress is far more ruined than it appeared from overhead, and center interest on the inhabitants of the Green Zone.

Or perhaps the swamp isn’t as black and dead as it first appeared. There are numerous possibilities.

Expedition Planning

The landing party split into a number of teams, each focusing on a different aspect of the environment. Daily briefings were scheduled at which each group would update the expedition as a whole with their findings and further plans.

Team one were the Atmospheric Research & Climatology team. They were to verify that the atmosphere was breathable (the work of less than a day), investigate any airborne contaminants or bio-threats, feeding any findings into the medical department, and then focus their attention on the climate and local weather events.

Team two gave their attention to the water sources. There was a river running not too far from the landing site – was the water potable, was it contaminated or home to pathogens, and so on. After that, there were the waters of a seemingly-dead swamp 2 km away. At the edge of that swamp was a lake fed by a different river with a waterfall; this was running out of one of the nearby ‘green zones’, where vegetation survived, and possible animal life.

Team three were to focus on the land, and on as many soil types as could be found. They were initially to retrieve rock and soil samples for later analysis from orbit if the whole expedition went pear-shaped.

That green zone and it’s plant life were the targets of Team four, while Team five searched for any animal life.

But the greatest activity was to revolve around teams Six and seven – Six were to conduct surveys and test digs into some relatively-intact ruins, while Team Seven devoted their time to the fortress and what lay within.

The medical group, Team Eight, were to have the greatest workload, and hence were bolstered in numbers beyond the trained medical staff. All the other teams were to feed bio-samples to them, and it would be their responsibility to determine how dangerous anything was, whether or not innoculants could be prepared, how to treat anyone who came down with anything and so on.

Finally, Team Nine were the vulcanologists and geoscientists; they were to carry on with a variant of the original mission, determining what ores were available, how much of them there were, how to extract them, what their values would be, and how to refine the ore.

Team Ten, command, were to keep track of everything that was going on, fix any problems with these plans as they arose, make sure everyone was working harmoniously, and pitch in anywhere that they could help out.

Survey Problems

Right away, there was a problem to be overcome: the magnetic fields were even stronger here at the surface. Anything metallic that moved through them quickly acquired a static charge that could only be dissipated through electrical displays that wrought havoc with electronics; the control systems needed substantial reinforcement to be able to cope.

This would limit the number of drones available to do this work, creating a bottleneck that would slow results, at least at first. Maintenance cycles that should have been completed annually were planned for every second day, to be adjusted once the expedition had actual data on the drone’s reaction to the environment.

It should also be borne in mind that this was the first planetary body ever found with such a high concentration of rare earth metals, and no-one knew even theoretically what impact that could or would have.

Another factor to be reckoned with was the fact that since no planetary bodies were expected, the expedition had not been equipped to deal with such – they were cobbling together bits and pieces to make do with what they had.

Initially, there were just two drones available, to be shared by all nine active teams. More would be brought online over the first week or two, but limited manpower resulting from the heavy maintenance cycle would chew up a lot of their time.

Communications soon proved to be another headache; there was enough radioactivity and ambient radio noise from the interaction of radiation and magnetic field that the ranges of their equipment were only 1/10th of what they should have been, at best, and a few hundred meters, at worst. That meant re-tasking one of the two survey drones to emplacing communications relays along a direct route between base camp and the area being surveyed.

Some time was saved by erecting some of these manually, creating a ring around the base camp and spokes leading out from it.

Initial Findings

Team Four quickly determined that the biosphere was slowly recuperating from the unnatural cataclysm that had engulfed the planet – so slowly that it must have been a hairs-breadth away from complete annihilation.

Certainly, no higher life-forms had survived. Team 5 was re-tasked to profiling the inhabitants and whatever could be learned about them.

The atmosphere was clean and viable. The water in the swamp was contaminated by heavy-metal oxides and nitrates and other nasties, and so was the river water nearby – but the water flowing out of the green zone was potable and reasonably safe.

There were a number of deposits of rare earth metals of sufficient magnitude to permit industrial-scale mining. Many were somewhat radioactive, but that could be dealt with.

Jumping-off Point #4

Different choices are possible here, particularly in regards to higher animal life. I chose not to distract the PCs with a side-issue.

Drone Failure

One of the drones detected a weak electronic signal coming from a small hillock at the edge of the swamp while on a flyby. It was immediately re-tasked to investigate – and immediately stopped reporting back to Command.

The other drone was sent out to retrieve the downed unit and bring it back for analysis. It, too, picked up the signals – some sort of digital data-stream – but was instructed to ignore them. Someone on the engineering team suggested plugging the good unit into the bad so that they could at least get some diagnostics to work on in the meantime, but this was vetoed as too risky; the engineers could wait the hour or so required to bring the faulty unit back.

As soon as the faulty unit was plugged into the diagnostic maintenance bay, systems began to go haywire. Activity levels shot up to 100% of capacity and stayed there, making the systems unresponsive to commands, and the problems spread from one system to another, even across supposedly air-gapped protections.

It’s getting way ahead in the story, but that story will make a lot more sense to GMs if I jump the gun on what was happening.

Most antivirus systems feature some sort of heuristic learning capability, permitting them to recognize threats that are similar to, but not the same as, a threat that they have already been designed to counter.

I combined that concept with the notion of emergent properties to create a computer virus that weaponized the antivirus software itself into the viral payload.

This not only got around any differences in computer architecture or programming, it essentially made all systems exposed completely vulnerable. A truly nasty idea that is, thankfully, well beyond our current capabilities – and I hope that remains the case for a very, very long time.

So this super-virus gets into the diagnostic software, jumps across into some bookkeeping / system resources software, into the common interface systems designed to give everything a similar look-and-feel, and from there is into the operating system.

It’s scorched-earth as applied to computer software.

Expedition Failure

The operators quickly realized that they were under attack from a worm / virus of some sort, and started shutting down systems, especially those that were critical, then reverting to backup copies and reinstalling. In the meantime, anything that used computer assistance – like maintaining a comms link back to the mother ship in orbit – was reduced to hit-and-miss manual methods.

Nevertheless, a commlink was established for long enough to appraise the mother ship of this development and send through their findings to date, as a precaution. Unfortunately, the virus piggybacked its way onto that signal and started wreaking the same systems damage on board as was being experienced by the landing party.

Mothership woes

Worse still, there are all sorts of things that you can survive on a planet, surrounded by breathable (if suspect) air, that leave you completely vulnerable in space.

Without warning, all the airlocks opened, and all the containment bulkhead hatches that were supposed to isolate areas against exposure to vacuum failed to lock down. 90% of the crew aboard the mother ship were killed almost immediately.

Next, the onboard security systems went haywire. Half the remaining crew – those who had been wearing vacuum suits as a redundant safety measure – were killed before this could be manually disabled.

The commander on board – Byron was leading the expedition to the planet – set an emergency beacon and hastily scrawled a handwritten report of the problem (something along the lines of “Computer failure – virus – everything down” – before the virus found its way into their suits’ onboard systems, leaving the mothership an orbiting graveyard and the expedition cut off.

That was thirty days ago.

Enter the PCs

The nearest vessel, by sheer coincidence, belongs to the PCs (or, at least, they are onboard). It gets commandeered by the Empire and sent to investigate, and rescue the expedition if at all possible.

Variations

Given the self-evident risks and dangers, it’s also possible that the PCs are NOT the closest help, but someone who has it in for them routes the assignment their way, anyway.

Any rivals out there? Anyone that the PCs have ticked off lately? Or who sees a potential advantage to getting them into trouble before they even know they have a hostile force against them?

For security reasons, they are given minimal information. Planetary survey, lost contact, nobleman and his expeditionary force in need of rescue, impossible star, improbable planet, details onboard the expeditionary vessel – and that’s about it.

I chose to break up the info-dump and give them everything down to “Planets? At SG-134-12-158? You’re kidding, right?”, and the first jumping-off point, which made it seem like the Empire was doing its best to be ‘helpful’.

PC arrival

When the PCs arrive, they should be in a state of extreme caution, for obvious reasons – the survey ship was a lot better equipped, with more resources and manpower and clever people on board to deal with any problems.

Any attempt to contact the mothership remotely will fail, it’s comms are offline. All they can get is the automated warning message, which tells them very little except that there’s something seriously wrong.

The onboard links to the ship’s computer are down. Any areas where suited individuals failed to manually compromise the security systems will attack the PCs. There are only a few places onboard where the mission logs can still be accessed, using computers that the PCs have brought with them. Wherever they choose to go, they will find that hand-scrawled warning.

Most people will respond by attempting to scan the computer system with the latest and greatest antivirus packages available to them. As soon as they plug in, the virus will attack those systems.

Unless the PCs are both brilliant and lucky, the computers they brought with them are now dead – but they may be able to get more / cannibalize more from the ship that brought them here.

Choices and Logic

Either the PCs choose to go in blind, not knowing where to look (unlikely), or they are stuck until one of them employs some logic – any manual backups to the mission logs that were made before whatever has happened took place should be safe.

This updates the situation with the discoveries made by the survey mission up to the point of failure of the first drone – that includes the first two paragraphs of “Drone Failure”.

Given their own observations, it should be possible to deduce what happened next.

There’s no-one left to rescue here – the PCs need to copy the mission logs and append their own investigations and deductions for safe keeping, forbid all attempts to contact the mothership (maybe even blasting it out of existence / out of orbit), and then head for the landing site on the planet.

Jumping-off Point #5

What’s happened below over the last 30 days plus PC transit time provides the next jumping-off point away from the main plot that I created to utilize this Strange Place.

They could all be dead. The computer virus may be the last remnant of a once-great (if planet-bound) civilization, equivalent to maybe 2050, maybe 2060, earth-equivalent.

They could be alive (mostly) and in need of rescue, their mission having ground to a resounding halt.

My PCs are of the ‘where angels fear to tread’ types, and the broader plot required that Byron be more capable, resilient, and resourceful than that; if that was all there was, it would have been very anticlimactic, and a waste of the opportunity presented by this location.

Alternative choices made earlier provide many alternatives at this point, too. Sleepers may have been awoken, for example, and the Citadel now an operating concern. They may have captured / rescued Byron themselves, or they may be hostile. These alternatives would certainly provide the ‘something more’ that I am suggesting is needed to complete the adventure.

Oh, and Before I forget –

Oh yes. There are certain possibilities inherent in the in-game physics that I made use of to ramp up the threat to levels appropriate for this campaign. Since your game physics is almost certainly different to something designed to accommodate superheros, those would not be appropriate to inject – so I have left them out of what follows.

Base Camp -What’s left of it

Landing near the Base Camp reveals that it has been destroyed by some sort of particle-disintegration mortar, something altogether more advanced than the Squeeze Bombs used thousands of years ago.

In fact, this weaponry is either somewhat in advance of that available to the Empire or at the cutting edge of such weapons research.

This suggests that something survived the attack, thousands of years ago, and has been conducting advanced weapons research ever since, but let the PCs draw their own conclusions.

It’s clear that someone survived this attack – by luck perhaps – because a number of casualties have been buried with crude religious symbols erected that match the dominant religions of the Empire> If the burials had not been performed by one or more expedition members, whoever did it would not have known that symbology, and would either have used their own or none at all.

Putting themselves in the shoes of such hypothetical survivors, the obvious place to go is the citadel. If there is any help to be had here, that’s the place it would be found.

Robot Down

En route, the team can observe the communications relays that have been set up by the Expeditionary Force. Near one of them, they find another of the robotic drones used by the expedition.

The antigrav-based scout-droid lay twitching on the ground, electrical energy arcing over its body. These were obviously very primitive devices; created out of spare parts but deliberately robust to permit them to function in this hostile environment. Most units would have been fried long ago, but this one is still at least semi-active.

Plugging in a diagnostic tool results in the Virus doing it’s thing to the diagnostic tool, making it clear what happened to the droid and confirming Mydas as the source. The virus seems in this case to have sent the power supply running wild, which had shorted out key components of the device.

Everything indicates that the expedition had either woken something up, or discovered something that had survived the conflict.

Approaching the Citadel

As they get closer, and obtain line-of-sight to the Citadel and the “apple core” on which it stands, a vehicle can be seen in the distance, and (with suitable vision zoom technology), a set of climbing ropers set nearby up to make the ascent to the top of the “Core”.

That seems to make the next target of investigation obvious.

As the PCs move closer to the vehicle, it quickly becomes apparent that it is not as intact as it looked from a distance. The far side is still relatively in one piece, but the far side has been struck by some sort of missile or exploding drone – and subjected to ‘small arms’ fire for a considerable period of time – enough to make Swiss cheese of the engine block.

A human body, deceased, remains in the passenger seat, but there is no sign of the vehicle operator.

Immediately someone gets close enough to the vehicle to notice these facts, they cross some kind of threshold. Turrets of some kind erupt from the turf, where they had seemed to be tiny hillocks, and short barrels extrude from those turrets. Other turrets mounting small automatic weapons (blasters?) rise to protect the larger ones from interference.

These weapons fire on the PCs, who should have just enough time to dive for cover. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a wild man with several weeks of beard growth, and wielding an electrified whip, uses his weapon to disable the weapons platforms.

I used a photo of Indiana Jones (with whip) for a moment of light relief, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.

Byron Windsor-Smythe

In a cultured accent, and no little urgency, the figure yells,

“Introductions later. Follow me, quickly – these weapons regenerate, but I’ll lead you through a path along which I’ve temporarily disabled them.”

Keeping low, moving quickly, and disabling more weapons as they emerge, he leads the PCs to a rock facade that proves to be a tarpaulin disguised with native rocks and dirt, concealing the entrance to a small man-made cavern.

Pulling the camouflage back into place once all are inside, he announces,

“I was expecting a rescue party who would need to be rescued. I am Count Byron Bartholomew Windsor-Smythe, last survivor of the expeditionary force to Mydas.”

“Call me Barry,” he adds.

Count Byron (Barry) then informs the PCs that the citadel above is vast, much bigger than it appears, and 90% underground. The fact that no ways in have been exposed by the Pinch Bombs (using their correct name), he explains, indicates that most of the complex was built after the initial bombardment.

Nevertheless, he – and three of his team – had made it to the entrance, forced entry, and managed to retrieve a data disc before being driven back by robotic security droids, obviously designed to operate in this electromagnetically-charged environment.

His three companions were killed during the escape, but he managed to create and conceal this cavern with a Plasma Disintegration Grenade, and use the covering and native materials laced with rare earth ores to shield himself from the sensors that detect approaching potential enemies.

Count Byron’s Story

The data disc was in an unknown file format, but digital is digital, and the Count had plenty of time on his hands. Most of the contents are indecipherable documents, but there were a number of video files; the alien language is completely unknown to him, but the video element could be played and interpreted.

The Mydasians are humanoids, but beyond that, everything is up to the GM – everything is possible from the ‘humans with strangely colored skin” to something much stranger.

I suggest starting with a Google Image Search for “Alien Concept Art” and picking something you like – being prepared for the likelihood that whatever you find is probably subject to copyright.

You may also find

• The Four Frontiers Of ‘Alien’,
• Alien In Innovation: Creating Original Non-human Species,
• Creating Alien Characters: Expanding the ‘Create A Character Clinic’ To Non-Humans
• >Thinking Alien Thoughts: Roleplaying First Contacts, and
• Studs, Buttons, and Static Cling: Creating consistent non-human tech

to be useful reference material.

The video footage shows:

Two different populaces, obviously of differing political persuasions. Rallies and denunciations of the enemy are fairly easy to interpret. Footage of the war from the perspective of the aliens in the Citadel. Increasing food shortages are indicated by images of meals that become more meager over time. Suggestions that the purpose of the Citadel was advanced weapons research. An uprising by the surviving personnel.

A leader emerges. Maps that suggest concern that occupying forces are potentially en route – clearly, the citadel-side won the war, but don’t know how total a victory was achieved. Footage of the devastated surface. Instillation of additional defensive systems as the leader looks on, smugly (or maybe you’re reading too much into his body language).

Plans presented to a gathering of the survivors, showing a vast complex built into the mountainside, powered by the abundant geothermal energy available. A vast computer installation being created, and some graphics indicating some sort of division within the circuitry. Which is where the recordings end.

Count Byron has had many hours to think it over while he consumed his ration packs. Within the mantle of the planet is a vast computer installation, constructed after the overt end of hostilities and the destruction of surface life. The occupants of the research facility had no way of knowing whether or not their enemy had also survived, or in what numbers. Assuming the worst, they used their latest designs to install additional defenses and then went to work on a long-term plan.

The computer would project and conduct weapons research in a digital (virtual?) environment, would assume that the enemy’s computers were doing the same thing, and would then research defenses against those weapons. Once some sort of protection was devised, the computer would assume that the enemy had also devised these defenses and begin designing new weaponry to penetrate the protections. Those who had set the program in motion had long since starved, leaving their legacy protected by an artificial intelligence doing exactly what it was designed to do.

War-world

Count Byron would ordinarily be consumed with the desire to get his hands on one of the AI’s hard drives – 10,000 years of weapons research for the taking? Who wouldn’t be? – but there are bigger fish to fry.

There’s every indication that this star system entered the Galaxy from the top, but it has clearly had a number of close encounters in this part of the Galaxy, and it’s plane of motion has been twisted until it now lies within the galactic plane. There are indications in the astronomical observations that it has now achieved escape velocity relative to the central black hole, and it – and Mydas – will be heading toward more habitable parts of the galaxy, right through the Empire, in fact.

The aliens seemed to have had no conception of life outside of their own world. Hardly surprising if they thought such conditions were what was needed for sentient life to emerge. Therefore, everyone the computer encounters will either be an ally or an enemy – and the allies would have defining characteristics that would need to be matched precisely.

To the computer, the Empire would be cast in the role of “The Enemy”, and the products of all that weapons research would pose a direct threat to the safety of the Empire. Already, the computer would be aware of the possibilities of space travel and would be designing its own such craft.

Mydas was a loaded plasma-cannon, pointed straight at the Empire. And it was up to him, as a member of the Nobility, to stop it, and to that end, he was conscripting the PCs into his service for the duration. Together, you have to take down the Computer, against everything that it can (and will) throw at you.

The significance of whether or not the War-world has weaponry that merely matches the best that the Empire can bring to bear, or is somewhat – even a little – ahead of them now becomes obvious.

Further speculation

The improbability of a planet existing in exactly the right orbit, with exactly the right composition, for life to develop in this star system with all it’s unique characteristics, so so high that someone is bound to wonder if it can all just be so by accident.

The answer is yes, but it’s not very likely.

Is it more probable to conclude that someone orchestrated the existence of Mydas deliberately, then stocked it with appropriate life for it’s own reasons? Quite possibly.

If you had done so, you might have been content to simply watch life develop in such a unique environment. But it’s far more likely that you would meddle, at least behind the scenes.

Once it became clear that the planet’s citizens were headed for a self-induced Armageddon, if you were already interfering, would you not make every effort to put the culture onto a different path? The only reason you would not do so is if this was exactly what you wanted to happen – which puts an entirely new spin on that “meddling”.

So you’ve created an improbable world and pushed it into a global war with advanced weaponry. Why? Is the (extremely improbable) survival of the Citadel another clue?

Could it be that this entire world was engineered to create a weapons platform to be utilized against an enemy, and the inhabitants just pawns?

It’s ruthless, treats the inhabitants as pawns, wildly improbable – but it explains all the anomalies and the alternative isn’t that much more likely (if it is at all).

Which brings me to the end of the second of this trio of Strange Places. I hope it’s been a fun ride! The third one will follow in a couple of weeks time.

A word of advice: Each part of the series builds heavily on the content from the previous one. While you may be able to get relevant information without doing so, to get the most of out of each, you should have read the preceding article. In this case, though, that “previous part” is actually the one before last, and a three-chapter set of quite lengthy posts. You might have to skim – just bear in mind that if anything is puzzling but not explained, it’s probably because it has already been explained earlier in the series.

Welcome & General Introduction

So here we are at last! The final part of what has been an epic series, far larger than I ever envisaged. Even before I start writing this final part (but with section titles in place) the total word-count is going to be over the 140,000 words for the series!

For this final part, I’m moving the table of contents to the head of the article; it’s been interesting to watch it change and evolve as the series has taken shape.

I’m hopeful of knocking this out in one hit, even though that may be impractical – I am going to lose precious writing time to bureaucratic nonsense tomorrow. It’s possible that the post will be delayed, as I won’t have time to prep anything else.

It’s possible that I will edit the series down into an e-book sometime next year. Would there be any demand for such a product? I may well find out.

A disclaimer: I am not an economist and I’m not trying to turn anyone else into an economist. An awful lot of this content will be simplified, possibly even oversimplified. Bear that in mind as you read.

A second disclaimer: I’m Australian with a working understanding, however imperfect and incomplete, of how the US Economy works, and an even more marginal understanding of how the UK economy works (especially in the post-Brexit era). Most of my readers are from the US, and number two are Brits. Canadians and Australians fight over third place on pretty even terms, so those are the contexts in which what I write will be interpreted. And that means that the imperfection can become an issue.

Any commentary that I make comes from my personal perspective. That’s important to remember. Now, sometimes an outside perspective helps see something that’s not obvious to those who are enmeshed in a system, and sometimes it can mean that you aren’t as clued-in as you should be. So I’ll apologize in advance for any errors or offense.

I’ll repeat these disclaimers at the top of each part in this series.

 

Related articles

This series joins the many other articles on world-building that have been offered here through the years. Part one contained an extremely abbreviated list of these. There are far too many to list here individually; instead check out

the Campaign Creation page of the Blogdex,

especially the sections on

• Divine Power, Religion, & Theology
• Magic, Sorcery, & The Arcane
• Money & Wealth
• Cities & Architecture
• Politics
• Societies & Nations, and
• Organizations, and
• Races.

 

General Principles – repeated from Part 3

Along the way, a number of important principles have been established.

1. Society drives economics – which is perfectly obvious when you think about it, because social patterns and structures define who can earn wealth, the nature of that wealth, and what they can spend it on – and those, by definition, are the fundamentals of an economy.
2. Economics pressure Societies to evolve – economic activity encourages some social behaviors and inhibits others, producing the trends that cause societies to evolve. Again, perfectly obvious in hindsight, but not at all obvious at first glance – largely because the changes in society obscure and alter the driving forces and consequences of (1).
3. Existing economic and social trends develop in the context of new developments – this point is a little more subtle and obscure. Another way of looking at it is that the existing social patterns define the initial impact that new developments can have on society, and the results tend to be definitive of the new era.
4. New developments drive new patterns in both economic and social behavior but it takes time for the dominoes to fall – Just because some consequences get a head start, and are more readily assimilated into the society in general, that does not make them the most profound influences; those may take time to develop, but can be so transformative that they define a new social / political / economic / historic era.
5. Each society and its economic infrastructure contains the foundations of the next significant era – this is an obvious consequence of the previous point. But spelling it out like this defines two or perhaps three phases of development, all contained within the envelope of a given social era:
   • There’s the initial phase, in which some arbitrary dividing line demarks transition from one social era to another. Economic development and social change is driven exclusively by existing trends.
   • There’s the secondary phase, in which new conditions derive from the driving social forces that define the era begin to infiltrate and manifest within the scope permitted by the results of the initial phase.
   • Each of the trends in the secondary phase can have an immediate impact or a delayed impact. The first become a part of the unique set of conditions that define the current era, while the second become the seeds of the next social era. There is always a continuity, and you can never really analyze a particular period in history without understanding the foundations that were laid in the preceding era.

 

THE COMPLETE TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 1::

1. Introduction
2. General Concepts and A Model Economy
3. The Economics of an Absolute Monarchy (The Early Medieval)

Part 2:

4. The Economics of Limited Monarchies (The Later Medieval & Renaissance)
5. In-Game Economics: Fantasy Games

Part 3:

6. The Renaissance, revisited
7. Pre-Industrial Economics I: The Age of Exploration
8. Pre-Industrial Economics II: The Age of Sail

Part 4:

9. Industrial Economies I: The Age Of Steam
10. In-game Economics: Gaslight-era

Part 5, Chapter 1:

11. Industrial Economics II: The Age Of Electrification & Motoring

Part 5, Chapter 2:

12. Industrial Economics III: War & Depression
13. In-Game Economics: Pulp
14. In-Game Economics: Sci-fi
15. In-Game Economics: Steampunk

Part 6, Chapter 1:

16. The Pre-Digital Tech Age
17. World War 2
18. Post-war & Cold War

Part 6, Chapter 2:

19. Government For The People
20. Aviation

Part 6, Chapter 3:

21. The Space Race
22. Tech Briefing: Miniaturization
23. Behemoths Of Blind Logic (early computers)
24. The Promise Of Atomics
25. A Default Economy

Part 7

26. Economic Realities (Inflation & Interest Rates explained)

Part 8, Chapter one contains:

27. The Digital Age: Themes
28. The Digital Age: 70s-80s
29. The Digital Age: 80s-90s

Part 8, Chapter 2:

30. The Digital Age: 90s-00s

Part 8, Chapter 3::

31. The Digital Age: 00s-2010s

Part 8, Chapter 4::

32. The Digital Age: 2010s-2020

Part 8, Chapter 5:

33. The Digital Age: Pandemic
34. The Digital Age: Post-Pandemic
35. An Imminent Pivot? (the near future)

Part 9, this post:

36. IGE (In-Game Economics)
37. Future Economics I: Dystopian
38. Future Economics II: Middling
39. Future Economics III: Utopian
40. IGE – Look Beyond The Obvious
41. IGE at the personal scale

41. Valuing Possessions
    41.1 Avoiding Mathematics
    41.2 Basic Possessions: Value
    41.3 Inherent Value
    — Functionality, Materials, Labor, Skilled Labor, History, Workmanship
42. Appraised Value
    42.1 Rarity
    42.2 Age
    42.3 Provenance
    42.4 Wear & Tear
    42.5 Depreciation

    42.5.1 Inflation

    42.6 Appreciation
    42.7 The Antique Furniture Lesson: Social Factors
    42.8 The Religious Factor
    42.9 The Sentiment Factor
    42.10 Remember The Bottom Line

43. The Mathematics (or lack thereof)
44. The Worksheet

start=”45″>
1. Valuables Types
   — Land, Buildings, Vehicles, Simple Businesses, Mines, Livestock, Old Valuables, Old Rarities, Cultural Relics, Artworks, Basic Valuables, Mementos & Personal Treasures

46. Genre Notes
    — Fantasy, Pulp, Historical / Detective, Modern, Superheroics, Steampunk, Cowboy / Western, Sci-Fi – near future, Sci-Fi – Dystopian, Sci-Fi – Utopian, Pirates / Swashbuckling

47. Synthesis: A general process:
    47.1 Sidebar: On Old Problem – currency conversions and historic currency values
48. The End Of An Epic

IGE (In-Game Economics)

PCs begin interacting with in-game economics very quickly in most campaigns – whether it’s shopping for supplies, coming into possession of a vehicle (intended to provide carriage from one adventure to the next), or simply acquiring valuables, souvenirs, and other personal property.

When they acquire a bit of money or resources of other kinds, they will generally think about upgrades to their equipment – which raises the questions of what is available and how much it will cost – and that’s in-game economics, too.

Other rewards from adventuring start entering the picture not long afterwards – a better place to live, a business on the side, an “investment opportunity”, you name it.

Ultimately, at least in Fantasy campaigns, PCs thought about building castles and other more permanent installations. By now, they may have been granted noble titles and various forms of wealth-generation (which generally go along with the title).

In other campaigns, the PCs may headquarter themselves in the vehicle they possess, or may have been granted residence in a facility owned by someone else quite early on. This is common in superhero campaigns, for example.

PCs are perpetually interacting with the game economy – but the mortal sin is slowing the game down as a result.

IGE: A Plot-based foundation

But let’s start with a bigger picture perspective. My advice in this area is to make your economic situation fit the needs of the plot, and use the information provided in earlier parts of this series to get from A to B.

If you need a stock market crash – or a temporary “correction” – then have one happen. It’s that simple.

It’s also metagaming outrageously, in my book. The “pure” thing to do would be to go to a lot of effort to understand the economy and internal problems of the game world, and how the society is creating a trend toward this change or that, and yadda-yadda, then extrapolate, and then adapt the adventure to the economic ‘reality’.

Nope, rejected. Too much work for not enough gain.

That said, a good general principle is put the economy back the way you found it by the end of the adventure unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

IGE: Modern

The modern world complicates everything. People have (hopefully) more understanding of how the modern economy works, there are many more products available, there are usually multiple vendors and sources for everything, there are multiple currencies and policies and interactions between them… it’s easy to get sucked in too deep.

But it’s also a bigger part of life and harder to gloss over. My world doesn’t revolve around the strength of the Australian Dollar relative to the US Dollar, but it’s something that I have to pay attention to – and a change of a few cents can have spending ramifications at the personal level. So you have to pay more attention to it – it might not be as ubiquitous a subject as the weather and politics, but it’s third in the queue.

Fortunately, this also gives you more levers to pull in order to orchestrate the economic climate that best fits your plot needs.

Example: A flaw is discovered in the navigation systems of the most popular type of cargo vessel – they are ordered to drop anchor in the nearest port and stay put while a fix is prepared. Supply chains the world over grind to a halt, and the stock market writes down a number of companies in anticipation of the economic damage that will result.

Again, be careful not to get sucked down the economics rabbit hole, and make the time period work for you at least as much as it adds to the demands of your game.

IGE: A broader net

It’s really hard to write processes and mechanics for universal usage in an RPG. Like really, really hard. Once more, I apply the martial arts principle of using an opponent’s strength against them.

Being forced to consider both fantasy campaigns and modern-day campaigns, and recent-past settings, and both Utopian and dystopian futures, and being relevant to them all, is a great way to cut through the fog created by getting deeply into the economics of a setting.

Just pick one that’s very different to your own setting, and make sure that what you are doing translates into that genre in simple terms and you will get a reality check as to whether or not you are getting yourself bogged down.

In general, looking to the past is better than looking to the future because the situations are inherently simpler, but when you’re running a fantasy campaign that’s set in a pseudo-early-medieval period, you either have to go to the Roman or Greek Empires for your perspective, or look ahead in time. I find the second choice to be the easier one, simply because I know those periods better. Evaluate things in terms of the 1930s or 1950s if you have to.

The Background Of Choice

You can take this principle further during campaign creation. Pick one of the eras that I have detailed in the series whose economics and the social consequences thereof fit the adventures that you want to run, and model you in-game economy on something analogous.

You want dystopia? Model your economy on the Great Depression. You want a trend toward utopia? Model your economy on the wild Optimism that led to the Depression, or to the pre-WWI era of Empires, who thought their interlocking treaties made war between them impossible / unthinkable. And so on.

Some sci-fi games have been doing this for ages – the Swashbuckling influence over many basic Traveler campaigns is an obvious example; but it works for all genres.

I want to specifically mention Steampunk at this point – the principle architecture of the genre is late 18th to early 20th century. You can put a lot of spin and nuance on a specific interpretation of such a setting by modeling the economy on a different era, then translating the agency of change into steampunk terms – Steampunk meets 1970s post-scarcity, for example.

Future Economics I: Dystopian

Technology is mostly cosmetic in a Dystopia. Pick any past historic period and focus on the negative aspects – the workhouses of the early Industrial age, for example – and throw in a little tech on the top, for example to monitor production and boost productivity – at the cost of worker health and safety, of course. Throw in a society which considers this to be only reasonable, and hey presto – Dystopia.

To get a Dystopia, you only need politicians to consider their own self-interests (and the interests of those who fund the machine that keeps them in power), and a society in which privilege is answerable only to itself – and wait.

IGE: Dystopian Futures

Ultimately, most Dystopias function through the scarcity of resources, with workers considered one of those limiting factors. Economically, they all owe at least a tip of the hat to the 1970s, even if you use the campaign-setting tools and principles expounded.

Oh, and just because it’s a dystopia doesn’t mean that there’s no source of hope for the future.

Future Economics II: Middling

A late insertion into the contents, a future that – like today – is a mixture of both optimism and pessimism. Perhaps the most realistic type of sci-fi sub-genre. Think of sources like The Fifth Element, or the Marvel Comics Universe.

I tend to think of the Traveler Game Universe as falling into this category – there are historical allusions to the courts of Imperial Rome embedded within the background, and some elements of life in that environment can be pretty bleak and Dystopian, but the solution seems drawn from the Swashbuckling age in many campaigns – Trade being what makes the Empire go ’round. There can also be elements of the Western, especially out on the fringes of ‘safe’ society.

Some GMs don’t seem to realize that Trade can be more than boring purchasing and selling and counting the profits, it can actually be the driving force that delivers adventures to the airlock. That was a serious problem with the last such campaign that I played in – the GM wanted the PCs to take sides in a political conflict that he had orchestrated without giving any of us reasons to have skin in that particular game. We decided to go trading and leave the politics to others, as much as possible, and this threw his entire campaign plan into the wastepaper bin.

In response to that situation, i wrote up a game supplement that has been shared widely in the years since, Buy Low, Sell High – Trade In Traveler. Since it is clearly relevant, I’m offering another download link – just click the icon.

Future Economics III: Utopian

Utopias can actually be harder work than you think. Star Trek is largely viewed as a Utopian Future, especially as presented in The Next Generation – but the replicator has eliminated scarcity and material needs, completely revising one of the fundamental assumptions of society.

What the writers found, as the series progressed, was that they hadn’t completely eliminated the concept of an economy. There were still financial limits on what people could do; they had simply replaced one constraining factor with another that had already existed but that had not previously been dominant.

You could replicate all the parts that you need for a starship, but you still needed dockyard space and skilled technicians to install and calibrate everything. So there was still a limit to production, it was just a different one.

Utopian futures are ones in which life is at least comfortable for most people and opportunities are unbounded by social, political, religious, or other reasons; if you put in the work, and have what it takes, you can be anything that you want to be. What’s more, no matter how dark things may become, there is justifiable optimism for the future.

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance” – so wrote Thomas Jefferson (or maybe it was Patrick Henry or Wendell Phillips or Junius).

Regardless of the source, it’s just as true in a Utopia as it is anywhere else – you can change the nature of Society (a human invention) but that does not change the nature of humans; they are still just as capable of being venal, cowardly, greedy, corrupt, or any of a dozen other character flaws. Those flaws might be rendered less prominent by the satisfaction of material needs and holographic companions, but that doesn’t eliminate them. Utopia is under constant attack from both within and without, and needs to be defended.

IGE: Utopian Futures

That means that most Utopian futures are variations on the basic economic theme and not the wildly different economic beasts that they initially appear. Nevertheless, there will be ramifications of whatever made / makes the Utopia possible, and those need careful thought.

Or no thought at all. A good line of patter and a semi-plausible rationalization is enough to hand-wave the whole question. The critical question then becomes, ‘what’s the rest of society like?’ – what is this an idealized reflection of, in high-tech dressing? Which places utopias on the same conceptual footing as any other genre, at least in economic terms.

IGE: Space Opera

Oh, my goodness, talking about hand-waving!

It’s a fundamental tenet that there is always enough money to build something big, and if there isn’t enough money, that’s always a solvable problem, a passing inconvenience, nothing more.

Need money? There’s a planet out there somewhere that has deposits of Unobtainium – you just need a clever way to find it. Immediately, Asimov’s The Currents Of Space come to mind (Limited copies at reasonable prices through Amazon – mostly second-hand, I get a small commission if you buy one) – and, problem solved. It’s just another adventure on the way to the next adventure.

Right away, that tells me that Space Opera has to be based on an optimistic technologically-savvy era, far removed from the cultural shift of the 1970s. No matter how dark, a Space Opera is inherently Utopian in premise – some examples just bury that premise very deeply. Star Wars is fundamentally Utopian.

It’s up to the GM to create that gung-ho attitude amongst his players, and the best place to start is with an example like the one offered, and a galactic economy that supports a nigh-infinite economic strength.

There’s an element of the Swashbuckling, as well – did you ever stop to think about where ships come from in Pirate games? They just appear in ports at the speed of plot, ‘gifts’ from the governments that build them – and there’s always enough money to buy / build another one.

IGE – Look Beyond The Obvious

I think that I’ve amply demonstrated both the power and usefulness of the general principle with the analysis above. If there are only two takeaways from everything in the post to date, it would be that principle and the corollary, Look Beyond The Obvious for your campaign’s economic foundations.

As originally formulated, that’s where this article was going to end.

But, shown by the table of contents, there’s a lot more to come. But first, a little backstory – heavily censored to keep secrets from players.

As part of an adventure that’s currently being worked on, a list of antiquities has been generated. Some are inherently valuable, some valuable because of who is referenced by them or who created them, some have cultural or historical value, and so on. Most were available to the purchaser relatively cheaply, and said purchaser had a canny eye for objects that would appreciate in value significantly.

Which begs the question, how much are they worth?

I put together a spreadsheet to attempt to answer that question, but hadn’t put enough thought into the mechanics that were to be embedded within the mathematics of the spreadsheet. And it started to get very complicated.

And then i thought of another approach – one that could be described, ready-to-implement, in this article, where it seemed to fit like a glove.

IGE at the personal scale

When you get right down to it, there are three basic types of possession:

• Basic – The possession, an object, just is, and won’t change significantly in value – ever – from a campaign perspective. It has an intrinsic value / replacement cost, that’s it. Simple examples include a character’s personal weapon, the clothes on his back, and so on.
• Depreciating – Anything that wears out or declines in value is a depreciating asset. The word simply means that it loses value over time. That’s normally too technical a matter to keep track of in an RPG, but there’s a way to use the information to your benefit, as you’ll see. The simplest example is a credit card or cheque account (remember those?), where fees and interest erode the balance.
• Appreciating – This means that it’s going up in value faster than it’s going down, for a net increase in value over time. The simplest example is a bank account that pays interest.

It’s important to keep the type of possession in mind when determining the value at some time other than the time of creation, or the current value of something created at some other time and place. I’ve helped out with a list of valuables a little later, but first, some general principles…

Valuing Possessions

Every GM needs to have a process for determining the cost / value of objects in their campaign. I remember in one of the early adventures in the Zenith-3 Regency campaign, the players stumbled over a bunch of high-end thieves (which I had modeled on The Circus Of Crime). I renamed the leader Psyche, and made the Circus Assassins For Hire (who commit a little a lot of Robberies to cover their tracks amongst other motives. To create the appropriate sense of awe and anger amongst the PCs, I generated a list of unsolved major robberies – 5½ pages long, about 16 items per page, net value of 1701.7 Million 2055 British £.

Curiously, the thing that got them most worked up was the following entry:

Year/No: 2029/2
Report #: 2029598407
Victim: Adela Evangelina Love
Value: 44.5 £m
Object: Puppet – Original hand-puppet, “Kermit The Frog” (Children’s television Workshop/Jim Henson)

5½x16= roughly 88 stolen objects of considerable value. That’s a lot to invent off the top of your head, even doing it over time and in advance. And even once I had done so, and created the list of Victims, I had to try and come up with reasonable valuations for them all. How much should the original Kermit be worth, exactly a century after his first television appearance?

As I recall, I was running short of time and couldn’t devote deep thought to the question back then.

The Valuation process involves 6 factors to produce an Inherent Value, and a second set of 8 factors to get a final valuation.

Avoiding Mathematics

The basic premise behind the new approach is to avoid mathematics as much as possible. You decide on how much more something is worth, taking each additional factor into account, write it down and move on.

Choice

It’s the GM’s choice how big a role each factor should play and what the ultimate valuation should be. In fact, my original idea for the worksheet that I have generated was a simple checklist.

Random Choice

There may well be times when you have literally no idea. When that happens, roll 3d6 and record the result, divided by 10, in the appropriate space on the worksheet. The GM then gets to decide what that actually means in terms of the value.



3d6 was chosen because it delivers a genuine bell curve. 10 was chosen because it’s almost exactly the average and it’s a nice round number, making for easy maths.

To be honest, though, it gives extreme results a little too frequently; the ideal rate would be about half as frequently. But more dice is more inconvenient, and it’s just a guideline for the GM to interpret, so it’s not worth doing anything more complicated. 6d6/20 would be more accurate but not worth the extra effort.

I will be providing, with each factor, some sort of guideline for interpretation.

Maths for those who insist

While I’m going to avoid maths as much as possible, I will take a moment in discussing each valuation factor to describe the maths that would be involved, from a conceptual point of view.



I thought it might be useful to throw in a small-sized screen capture of the worksheet before I start digging into specifics. This image is now out of date, the worksheet has been completely redesigned. Much of what is written below will carry over, but not all of it. Click this link to open, in a new tab, the discussion post and download link to version 2.0 of the worksheet – for when you are finished reading here, of course!

Basic Possessions: Value

Most of what a character is carrying for use will have whatever value the “book” assigns them. That doesn’t mean that you can’t use this system to value them, just that you usually don’t have to.

On the other hand, if a character wants a jeweled pommel, and gold-inlaid motto, and other decorative touches, the possession starts to move beyond the basic valuation provided in the sourcebooks. That’s where this system comes into its own.

Always remember that the book value is the General price for a New version of the item. Second-hand will be worth half, or less. Rarity / Demand or other factors could double it or more. So even in these matters, the GM is required to make a few decisions based on the economy, both ‘globally’ and ‘locally’.

Inherent Value

The inherent value is value that can’t be eradicated.

Functionality

The object has a certain value because of what it does. In some cases and settings, this can be 75% of the total inherent value, for example firearms, swords, etc. In other cases, like jewelry, the functionality is often near-zero; the major exception is when the object has a socially-defined symbolic value. A wedding ring has a definite functional value to be taken into account, for example.

As a rule of thumb, assume that the functionality value includes the value of standard materials used in construction of the possession.

I have to admit that when I was adding this category, I was thinking about High-tech tools and such, and Magic within an object. A “Flame Tongue” sword has functional value because of the magical plus, and still more from the Flame Tongue ability.

You should never decide functionality value with a die roll. I can’t stop you, but you shouldn’t do it. That’s because the function doesn’t change, and so neither should its value.

Some readers may argue that demand for some functions will be higher than others, and that’s true – but already factored in, and with a later section (under ‘Appraised Value’) dealing with social desirability, this argument is moot.

Materials

Since standard materials are already taken into account, this category is purely for the exotic.

Materials includes gemstones and rare / precious metals and anything else along similar lines.

Purity is also a big factor – and value is not directly proportionate to purity, because some purity levels are rarer than others. 24-carat cold is not the most pure you can get – but it’s relatively rare, compared to both 22- carat (less pure) and 26-carat gold.

It’s complications (I’m tempted to say ‘perversions’) like this that complicate what should be a straightforward valuation.

A high roll could indicate that a rare purity of metal was used, or that there are some exotic materials, or something along those lines. And don’t neglect the possibility that the dice are telling you of a fancy scabbard or holster!

Labor

There’s a labor cost involved in turning the raw materials into the finished product, but in the case of standard materials, those will already be included in the functionality valuation.

This is for any extra work unskilled required to incorporate exotic materials or designs into the possession that isn’t already taken into account.

That’s an important point to note: if your materials includes the value of cut gems, then the cost of the gem-cutting is already included; if it doesn’t, for some reason, the gem-cutting would need to be included here.

A high roll here indicates that someone has taken extra care in manufacturing the object, or that a particularly labor-intensive process was used for some reason. A low roll indicates that the work was done in haste, corners were cut, and so on. Or, perhaps that the object was actually made by an apprentice – supervised or otherwise.

Skilled Labor

I thought about having just one category for Labor but realized that not all craftsmen are equal, and the ability to distinguish one labor source from another might be important.

For example, you could list the gem-cutting under ‘unskilled’ labor because it was done by someone far less skilled than the artisan who set the gems into a decorative brooch made of white gold, yellow gold (22-carat), and silver. Or it might be the other way around. Whatever – two or more sets of craftsmen are more easily dealt with by separating them out.

A high die roll here indicates exceptional use of skilled labor – some people insisting on being involved in the whole process, even those parts that can usually be trusted to others.

This isn’t so much about the skill of the artisans, it’s about the time that they have invested in the production, and how much more they expect in recompense..

History

This is about the Reputation / Name Recognition of the Crafter, not of any owner.

This can be a substantial contributor to value in the case of rare books, and – in the modern eras – of jewelry, for example. Some weapons manufacturers have a certain level of brand recognition that adds to the cache – who hasn’t heard of a Winchester Rifle, or a Colt .45? Or, for that matter, a pair of Adidas sneakers?

There can be cases when this is 95% or more of the valuation. One of the treasures that has been placed in the adventure that drove the creation of this section are Ostracon from ancient Greece. These are sherds of pottery in which a name has been scratched into the glaze.

In Classical Athens, when the decision at hand was to banish or exile a certain member of society, citizen peers would cast their vote by writing the name of the person on the shard of pottery; the vote was counted and, if unfavorable, the person was exiled for a period of ten years from the city, thus giving rise to the term ostracism.

— Wikipedia, Ostracon

Of course, some people carried prepared ‘votes’ around with them in case the opportunity arose to exile someone of whom they disapproved.



‘Plato’ in Greek (actually, ‘Platon’, a direct translation)

So, our treasure-hunter has acquired three of these bearing the name Plato – who, like all Philosophers, voiced unwelcome thoughts attacking the status quo from time to time, or so they were perceived. For all that many Greeks were enthusiastic supporters, he would have had enemies – people he had humiliated in debates, for example.

How much are they worth? A cent or so – until you add in the History and social purpose of the objects, and suddenly they shoot up in value. Maybe not very far, but high enough to be significant little treasures. That part of the valuation comes later, however.

I bring them up to ask: How much more would they be worth if it could be proven that they were owned by another prominent Greek who was contemporary with Plato?

That’s the value that gets encapsulated in this section.

The example should make interpretation of a random roll result fairly obvious, but it’s worth mentioning that even unproven or disputed claims can increase inherent value – not as much as authenticated value, but more than nothing.

One more example: Paul Revere (and his son) were famous as Silversmiths. Anything made by Revere is worth more than an identical object of identical vintage that was produced by a nobody. How much more? That’s for you to decide – but a factor of 10 wouldn’t be out of line, given his fame as both a high-quality Silversmith and a Founding Father.

Workmanship

Which brings me to Workmanship. Some objects can’t be ruined; others can be transformed by poor craftsmanship into scrap.

Before you can interpret Workmanship and factor it into you valuation, you have to decide into which of these camps the object belongs.

If a bronze statue comes out of the mold flawed, you simply melt the bronze down again while fixing the mold. But an unskilled baker can reduce flour, sugar, and eggs into a blackened mess of absolutely no value.

As a general rule, it’s the ability to undo or correct a flaw that separates one category from the other.

If a possession can’t be ruined, all you are looking for is the amount of value that gets added for craftsmanship. If a possession can be ruined, then poor craftsmanship should reduce the value of the object – while excellent craftsmanship should have an amplified impact on the valuation.

Putting it all together

There are two basic techniques, and either of them is valid. In the first, you write down the contributions of the factor to the total value; in the second, you take the previous line’s value and update it to include the influence of the factor in question.

Most of the time, I would expect to use the ‘as you go’ second option, but there may be time when I want the additional specificity of the former.

A third approach is possible – writing a multiplier in each space after the functional valuation, then doing a lengthy multiplication with a calculator. This is a more accurate representation of the effect of these variables, but it’s a very hard thing to get right, and it can be a right pain finding the one value that’s out of whack (assuming you only got one wrong)!

So this isn’t the recommended approach – but it remains possible if you insist on it.

Appraised Value

One you have an inherent value nailed down, it’s time to contemplate the broader factors that can influence the value placed upon an object.

I want to start by mentioning a factor that was in early drafts of the process and that has now been dropped, “Demand”. This is a driving factor in “Appreciation” and so has been subsumed into that heading.

Rarity

This is a can be a complicated thing to assess. Is something that was rare at the time it was made, but likely to have survived, rated more highly than something that was once present in large numbers but rarely survives?

Do you take age into account when deciding rarity, in other words?

The answer is no. This is purely an assessment based on how rare the possession is at the moment of valuation. And it’s always a value relative to similar objects.

The higher a die roll, the more one-of-a-kind the possession is. If that doesn’t tally with your description, you have multiple options:

1. you can amend the description to boost the uniqueness to match your roll.
2. you can interpret your die roll, not as an absolute, but as a point within a range of results that does tally with the description (my recommended approach).
3. you can re-roll, or just ignore the roll.

Age

I thought seriously about redacting the ‘random roll’ element for age guidance – if you can’t tell how old something is from the description, your description is incomplete.

But then I realized that descriptions might be incomplete, and that random roll used to discern one possible source period over another.

A low roll could indicate that the whole possession is a clever fake, wiping out almost all of the value.

And even if you know from whence a possession derives – be it 100 or 4000 years ago – there is going to be a fudge factor involved, a range. Whether an object dates from early in that period or late can also have an impact on the value.

So the dice roll in this category is not completely worthless.

An even bigger question is how much age should increase value? After devoting considerable thought to this question, I have come to the conclusion that it’s going to be different for every general class of object, and decidedly non-linear in all cases. A large question is going to be the lifetime of the possession and how far through that lifetime this particular example is.

To ensure clarity and consistency, I can only suggest that you process like possessions at the same time – and use past valuations as a guideline.

As a rule of thumb: from age 50 to age 100, antiques used to rise in value 10-20 fold – from a depreciated base price. From 100-1000 years, it’s 100-200-fold in most cases, relative to that depreciated base value. From 2000-4000 years, it’s 1000-2000 fold from the same base. But that’s a big variation.

An example to close out the sub-section: An object with an inherent value of $100 depreciates at the rate of about 2% a year, or about $2. If it was $2 per year, at the end of the 50 years, it would have an inherent value of 0 – but that’s not a correct assessment. The value is 98% of what it was at the end of each passing year, so the reduction gets smaller as the value drops. The formula is

100 x [ (1 – loss/100) ^ (N-1) ].

So, in this case, 100 x [ (1 – 2/100)^(50-1) ] = 100 x [0.98^49] = 37.16% of the original value. So the base value is $37.16 at the point it becomes an antique, and starts – theoretically – appreciating in value as a result.

Add another 50 years of age, and we’re talking $371.60 to $743.20. Call it $370-740.

Add another 100 years, and you’re into the lower reaches of a 100-200 fold increase – let’s use a factor of 105; multiplied by $37.16, that becomes $3901.80. 700 years later, and we’re in the upper reaches of the range – maybe a factor of 180, or a value of $6688.80.

Of course, technically, the object should have continued to depreciate for those additional years. But that’s a complication we don’t need right now.

Because here’s the thing – this increase is only a guideline. We’re not appreciating the value, that comes later; we’re trying to assess the increase in value because of rarity. The two questions are not unrelated, but you also have to take into account the rate of decay of the materials, state of preservation, and any similar factors. Since the estimated value impact doesn’t take any of these factors into account, it can be used as a base valuation, but has to be modified.

Note that 2% is relatively slow for a devaluation. Tech generally depreciates at 10-20% a year; non-tech at 5-10% if it’s relatively flimsy (cheap furniture, for example) or 2-5% if it’s sturdy.

Provenance

Was the object owned or used by someone famous? There are a number of gradations to such claims, and each one has a marked influence over how big a deal this is.

At the top of the scale, we have documented authenticated unquestionable proof. 1000 or more times the reference price is possible, but the amount has to be determined by you.

Below that, accepted as probably genuine. These can be hundreds of times more valuable than the reference price.

Then there’s contested, in which some experts say yes, and some no. This gets you about half of the potential increase – and that is something that you’ll have to determine.

Below that are untested claims. They rank higher than the next category down because there is an unknown possibility that the claim is correct. +10-20%, and more often toward the lower end of that value..

The second-lowest value is rejected claims. That happens when the authority doing the authenticating simply isn’t convinced. Note that this isn’t the end of the road – more evidence may be out there somewhere, prompting a reassessment. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. In the meantime, the object will lose up to half its reference value.

Below that are proven or presumed forgeries and fakes. These generally lose 90% or so of their value, and may even be ordered destroyed by the authority in question.

Note that this factor may already have been incorporated into rarity, in whole or in part.

Wear & Tear

Depreciation takes into account regular wear-and-tear; this category is for exceptional, out-of-normal damage. It always reduces the value of a possession. The question, as usual, is how much?

If the damage can be repaired invisibly, it might be a negligible amount.

If the damage can be repaired, but imperfectly, it’s going to be a more substantial reduction.

If the damage can’t be repaired, the loss can be significant – unless the damage itself is directly tied to the rarity of the object, and the historical significance is why repairs are out of the question, in which case the value can actually be increased. The Liberty Bell is a good example of the latter. The damage to the White House when the British set fire to it is another.

Depreciation

There comes a point at which a possession is considered valueless aside from any sentimental value.

But here’s the thing: the longer a possession depreciates, the smaller the impact of depreciation. In the earlier example, I calculated the effects of depreciation at 2% over 50 years as turning $100 into $37.60. Let’s expand that out:

50 years = 100*0.98^49 = 37.60%. Loss = 100-37.6 = 62.4%.
100 years = 100*0.98^99 = 13.53%. Loss: = 37.6-13.53 = 24.07%.
200 years = 100*0.98^199 = 1.79%. Loss = 13.53-1.79 = 11.74%
500 years = 100*0.98^499 = 0.0042%. Loss = 1.79-0.0042 = 1.7858%.

The loss per year is more informative:

50 years = 62.4 / 50 = 1.248% per year.
100 years = 24.07 / 50 = 0.4814% per year.
200 years = 11.74 / 100 = 0.1174% per year.
500 years = 1.7858 / 300 = 0.00595% per year.

Depreciation becomes a negligible factor after a while if a possession starts appreciating due to antiquity and increasing rarity.

The higher the depreciation rate, the more quickly this happens – and the above are the impact of just 2% depreciation. If the rate were 5% instead, you would expect it to happen at least 2 1/2 times as fast, maybe more.

Furthermore, it can be considered that the increases due to rarity compensate fully for those losses – so it’s the 50-year mark that is of concern.

2% at 50 years = 37.6% value.
5% at 50 years = 8.1% value.
10% at 50 years = 0.57% value.
20% at 50 years = 0.00178% value.

50-year old tech is essentially worthless – as tech. As a product, it may be worth thousands of times the original purchase price – a Ferrari sports car for example. Put a 50-year-old example up for auction and you can be certain of attracting interest!

Inflation
Another factor to consider is inflation – which, by making each dollar worth less, means that it takes more dollars to equal the value of a possession.

Inflation is like Depreciation in reverse. Except that the amount keeps varying.

Assuming a typical overall inflation rate is going to be a lot less accurate and a lot easier. In the bad years of the 1970s, inflation might well have a 10 in front of it, but most of the time, it’s a lot less. Maybe 3-5%.

So, let’s use 4% and see how that affects those depreciation values:

2% depreciation vs 4% inflation over 50 years = (1.04^49)*37.6% = 6.833 * 37.6 = 256.9208%.
2% depreciation vs 4% inflation over 100 years = (1.04^99)*8.1% = 48.56 * 8.1 = 393.336%.
2% depreciation vs 4% inflation over 200 years = (1.04^199)*0.57% = 2452.6 * 0.57 = 1397.982%.
2% depreciation vs 4% inflation over 500 years = (1.04^499)*0.00178% = 315,963,059 * 0.00178 = 562,414%.

Inflation grows more significant with increasing time. It more than compensates for the ongoing decline due to appreciation if it is higher than the depreciation rate – if I had run the above calculations with a 2% inflation rate, inflation would have exactly matched depreciation and I would have gotten 100% each and every time.

Inflation isn’t the same everywhere, and that’s what to read into any random die roll – how bad it was in a relevant location relative to the overall standard.

(Of course, by making the dollar smaller, Inflation also cuts earning power even as it puts prices up, a double whammy – which then becomes a triple whammy when pay rates go up in compensation, ironically pushing interest rates up or – at best – keeping it where it already sits.

Appreciation

So, we’ve covered how much value something gets from increased rarity. Now it’s time to talk about how much it increases in value just because it’s older – assuming that rarity doesn’t change.

This works in exactly the same way as inflation except that the actual value of the possession is increasing.

It’s often not as fast, at least for the first 50 years or so. In fact, it’s easier to assume that there is little or no appreciation until that time, then to load on a whole-dollar estimate rather than doing calculations.

Different types of possessions will have different appreciation rates.

The other factor to take into account in determining appreciation is supply vs demand. Demand higher than supply pushes prices up, demand lower than supply pushes them down.

We’re discussing demand for this particular object, or for anything similar enough to replace it, so bear that in mind.

Artworks can appreciate in value incredibly quickly, at least for a while. The values placed on some of these can be absolutely staggering – and, as they age, are only likely to go up in price.

The current record was set in 2017 (pre-pandemic, obviously) at $450.3 million (USD, presumably), for a work attributed to Leonardo da Vinci called “Salvator Mundi, the Savior of the World” (if the title is translated into English).

It is enormously helpful to have some idea of the degree of recognition an artist received and when. Some artists became famous while still productive; others found fame only after passing away.

The Antique Furniture Lesson: Social Factors

The other day, I read an answer on Quora stating that the bottom had fallen out of the antiques market. Furniture and objects that were worth $250K USD at the time of purchase were not worth the cost of having them hauled away (that’s what I call a collapse!).

The antique market, it seems, has been flooded by all the elderly people with their huge antique collections, dying, while – at the same time – younger, more affluent types were no longer interested in paying $20K for an antique dressing table.

Note that I have no knowledge of the situation either way – I am simply reporting it as an illustration of the profound impact on value of social factors.

Of course, the market has likely over-corrected, and a lot of the (ahem) less-valuable pieces will get destroyed, one way or another, driving up the rarity and desirability of what’s left until some rational equilibrium is achieved.

The answer referenced dates from October 13, 2023, but describes historical findings from about 20 years earlier. That’s plenty of time for the worm to have already turned – but you also need to factor Covid Lockdowns and the consequent social and psychological changes into account – living at home emphasizes functionality and purpose and comfort above all other considerations; so the situation may well have re-reversed itself, too!

I would recommend that any die roll results be evaluated with reference to some baseline; some things are always going to have incredibly high social value. If your instincts are that social valuation should at least double the value of an item, use the minimum roll result as indicating just that, and anything better as suggesting a valuation in excess of that doubling.

Beyond that, if the dice indicate an exceptionally low social valuation, you have to ask yourself why? The best answer is, no matter how exquisitely wrought, some objects raise uncomfortable questions for a prospective owner, and some are simply ugly or inconvenient in some way.

The opposite is also true – an amateur painter can paint a single breathtaking landscape throughout their ‘career’, never becoming famous; it will be worth a pittance in every way except social factors, where it gets a bonus for simply being pretty.

The Religious Factor

Religion always has the potential to mess everything up, and this process is no exception. Why? Because it inflates the value for some people massively while excoriating ti for others. The purely pragmatic will adopt a value somewhere in the middle, which is probably more correct than either extreme – but there are exceptions.

I remember, twenty-odd years ago, seeing adverts for pieces of the original cross. And for pieces of the original ark. And for an ‘original scan’ of the Shroud Of Turin.

Now, I’m not saying that any of these were fakes, or deceptions; nor am I suggesting that people didn’t get what they paid for. I’ll leave such implications to the imagination of the reader. But – how many pieces of the original cross were there that they can be sold over the internet at $20 a pop? I have my doubts…

But there are true believers out there, and they would and did buy such items indiscriminately, with boundless zeal. (Which did give rise at one point to thoughts of an adventure in which a believer was inadvertently shipped the real thing…)

The religious factor is an attempt to put a Conditional Adjustment on the valuation. It should be self-evident to whom the adjustment applies, but the GM is free to play with that in his plot – I remember a storyline (but forget the source) in which a collector of art buys a famous work, only to publicly destroy it before a horrified audience. Why? Because there were five, there are now only four, and he owns three of them – the appreciation for his remaining collection more than compensates for the loss…

More to the point, perhaps, I can easily say an enemy shelling out the premium price in order to destroy or suppress an object with the potential for undermining their own authority. Even a fake can be extremely valuable, if it raises the right doubts at the right time, and worth paying to eliminate.

(Suddenly, my mind is flashing back to the warehouse scene that concludes the original Indiana Jones movie…)

The Sentiment Factor

The final factor is the most nebulous of them all, because it is a function of the psychology of the prospective seller. Sentimental value can inflate a price five-fold or cause a seller to dispose of a possession at fire-sale prices. Neither option affects the true value of the object in question.

The Mathematics (or lack thereof)

The values that in combination yield the Inherent Value are additive, even if you estimate them based on a multiple of the prior value.

     Value X x factor Y = revised value Z

really means,

     ‘Add a value contribution equal to (value X x factor Y) – Value X to get revised value Z’.

That’s not the case with the Appraised factors – these are multipliers.

What’s more, in several cases, they are multipliers which derive from the principle of “A change every B years”. Again, the simplest example is a compound interest bank account.

The maths can quickly grow horrendously complicated. At one point, I thought it might be possible to establish a common foundation term (five years or ten years), determine a modifier over that time frame, take logarithms and simple add and subtract the results across all the different categories to get a net change over the lifetime of the object (less the initial 50 years).

It didn’t work; it bogged down, and got too technical for practical usage. I wanted a system that was simple enough for a GM to work in his head if he had to, using this article or the worksheet as a checklist.

Mathematics are used in the sections above purely to give a sense of what the scale of adjustments should be.

Remember The Bottom Line

And always, remember the bottom line: the valuation derived is purely theoretical, the real value of a possession is what someone else will pay for it – as modified by what they can afford to pay for it!.

The Worksheet

Okay, so I have been referencing the Worksheet throughout this article; it’s time to talk directly about it.



Click to download Campaign Mastery’s Free Asset Valuation Worksheet

The Zip file contains the following:

• Worksheet, A4 size, PDF format
• Worksheet, A4 size, OpenDocument Text format (the original file)
• Worksheet, A4 size, Word 97-2003 format (.doc – an export that may or may not display properly)
• Worksheet, US Letter size, PDF format
• Worksheet, US Letter size, OpenDocument Text format
• Worksheet, US Letter size, Word 97-2003 format (.doc – note as A4 version).

…none of which is true anymore. This archive file has been removed and replaced. Go to Asset Valuation Worksheet 2.0 to read about and download the updated zip file (which still contains the legacy versions as well).

Usage

I am including the non-PDF versions because they can be filled out electronically and so provide maximum legibility. The chief danger of doing so is that you can overwrite your original. For that reason, I STRONGLY advise that the first thing you do is to ‘save as’ the file, renaming accordingly – or never open the original file at all, just a renamed copy.

Beyond that, usage is as described in the above text. The worksheet permits up to five valuations per page – I could have fitted more, but the description slot was the limiting factor. I thought about an ‘index’ section oriented differently to the current layout as an alternative, but by the time I’d added space for documenting any random rolls, I didn’t think I’d get many more across the page (my first draft actually had space for 7 valuations but felt too cramped).

Finally, if you don’t use the ‘factor’ column for 3d6 results, you can put a reference number in there, pointing to relevant notes on the reverse of the page.

Always, assume that at some future point, you may have to explain to yourself why you have made a valuation decision. This not only helps focus your mind into concrete terms right now, while using the worksheet, it can be invaluable when you have to revisit a valuation months or years later.

Valuables Types

As I was writing the preceding sections, I was always considering specific types of possession and how they would work within the appraisals process. This was largely so that I could make the process as universally relevant as possible, but it had the side effect of bringing various thoughts to mind as I went.

Consider this section as more of an appendix, providing specific notes regarding the valuation of specific types of valuable.

Land

Land never – well, almost never – depreciates. The caveat comes from traumatic events like damming waterways, redirecting rivers to new courses, etc. These events tend to be rare, tend to be the work of governments, and are often subjects for compensation claims.

The reason is that there is a fixed supply of conveniently-located land, and as populations grow, so will the demand for same.

Buildings

Buildings, on the other hand, DO depreciate.

It can be argued that there is a point at which the building is essentially valueless, and the point at which depreciation brings the net value down to that value defines the natural lifespan of the structure.

The corollary is that you can decide what the lifespan of a structure is intended to be (assuming regular routine maintenance), and determine the depreciation rate that matches.

Both are useful techniques to have in your back pocket.

Variable Lifespan, simple depreciation rate

Buildings in Australia are generally considered to depreciate at 2.5% every year for 40 years after construction, at which point they are valueless for rental properties. This is simple depreciation, based on the original valuation, not getting smaller each year.

But the US Rental market uses 3.636% each year for 27.5 years – which works out to a total loss of value if you use simple depreciation.

And the US Tax Office says that depreciation should be an equal share of the initial value divided over 39 years of aging – again, simple depreciation.

The reality is that all of these are simplifying the calculations to avoid confusing the lay public and make investment and tax returns simpler to complete and check.

And the underlying and unstated assumptions are that we’re talking about ‘modern’ buildings, i.e. those constructed in the last 40 (or 27.5) years.

In ages past, some buildings were built to last. Many medieval castles are still standing (if in need of substantial repairs) – they would have a lifespan on the order of 400 years. The exceptions generally come from warfare. 100-year-old barns are in a similar state. 50-year old log cabins, ditto.

Substantial renovations can ‘restart the clock’. That’s why there are old buildings in many cities that are still viable rental properties / homes.

All of which means that you need to take into account not only when the building was constructed but what it’s purpose was, and when it was last renovated top-to-bottom.

Simple depreciation doesn’t work for our purposes, but it does illuminate the basic settings.

Let’s set a ‘zero level’ – $2000 value remaining on a $50,000 initial investment. If the original was $250,000, the ‘zero level’ is a value of $10,000. These are the points at which it is more cost effective to remove the rubble and build anew.

The formula is:

y – 1 = log 0.04 / log [1-(D/100)]. But I’ve done all the math for you (I’ve only shown the working for the first value):

Depreciation Rate: 10%: y – 1 = log(2/50) / log [1- (2.5/100)]
     = -1.398 / log (0.9)
     = -1.398 / -0.0458
     = 30.5; so Y = 31 years.

More than anything else, this shows the stark difference between ‘real’ depreciation and ‘simple’ depreciation.

Depreciation Rate: 9%: Y = 35 years.
Depreciation Rate: 8%: Y = 39 years.
Depreciation Rate: 7%: Y = 45 years.
Depreciation Rate: 6%: Y = 53 years.
Depreciation Rate: 5% Y = 63 years.
Depreciation Rate: 4.5%: Y = 70 years.
Depreciation Rate: 4%: Y = 79 years.
Depreciation Rate: 3.5%: Y = 91 years.
Depreciation Rate: 3.25%: Y = 98 years.
Depreciation Rate: 3%: Y = 106 years.
Depreciation Rate: 2.75%: Y = 116 years.
Depreciation Rate: 2.5%: Y = 128 years.
Depreciation Rate: 2.25%: Y = 142 years.
Depreciation Rate: 2%: Y = 160 years.
Depreciation Rate: 1.5%: Y = 213 years.
Depreciation Rate: 1%: Y = 321 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.75%: Y = 428 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.5%: Y = 643 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.4% Y = 804 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.3%: Y = 1,072 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.2%: Y = 1,608 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.1%: Y = 3,218 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.09%: Y = 3,575 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.08%: Y = 4,022 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.07%: Y = 4,597 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.06%: Y = 5,364 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.05%:Y = 6,437 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.04%:Y = 8,046 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.03%:Y = 10,728 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.02%:Y = 16,093 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.01%:Y = 32,188 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.0032188% = 100,001 years.
Depreciation Rate: 0.001%:Y = 321,886 years.

Note that I’ve carried this far farther than would normally be needed, to accommodate realistic building lifespans, simply because magic in Fantasy campaigns (and superhero campaigns!) can have unusual applications. You want a dungeon to be 2000 years old? A depreciation rate of 0.05% means that it’s a crumbling ruin (perhaps granting access for the very first time), 0.025% means that it’s still got 1600 years or so on the warranty.

Predetermined Lifespan, derived depreciation rate

This is arguably the more useful value, though – one in which you pick a lifespan and calculate a depreciation rate to match.

The formula is

D = 100 – 10^[2 + (-1.39794 / (Y-0.5))]

Note that the “-0.5” is needed to correct a rounding error.

Unfortunately, this is a little more complicated than the previous formula. Again, I’m only going to show working for the first example.

Y=10: D = 100 – 10^[2 + (-1.39794 / (Y-1))]
     = 100 – 10^[2 + (-1.39794 / (9.5))]
     = 100 – 10^[2 + (-0.1471516)]
     = 100 – 10^[1.85285)]
     = 100 – 71.26 = 28.74%.

Y=15: D= 19.91
Y=20: D= 15.22
Y=25: D= 12.31
Y=40: D= 7.83
Y=50: D= 6.30
Y=80: D= 3.97
Y=100: D= 3.18
Y=120: D= 2.66
Y=150: D= 2.13
Y=200: D= 1.601
Y=250: D= 1.282
Y=300: D= 1.069
Y=400: D= 0.802
Y=500: D= 0.642
Y=750: D= 0.429
Y=1000: D= 0.322
Y=1500: D= 0.214
Y=2000: D= 0.161
Y=2500: D= 0.129
Y=3000: D= 0.107
Y=3500: D= 0.0919
Y=4000: D= 0.0804
Y=5000: D= 0.0644
Y=10,000: D= 0.0322
NB: doubling Y has halved D – a useful shortcut!

Y=20,000: D= 0.0161
Y=50,000: D= 0.0644
Y=100,000: D= 0.0322
Y=200,000: D= 0.00161
Y=500,000: D= 0.000644
Y=1,000,000: D= 0.000322
Y=10,000,000: D= 0.0000322
Y=100,000,000: D= 0.00000322
NB: increasing Y by a factor of 10 divides D by 10 – another useful shortcut!

Again, I’ve carried this table of results to ridiculous lengths to accommodate the most outrageous concepts. 100 million years ago, Earth was right in the middle of the Cretaceous period (66-145 million years ago); the dinosaurs of the era were reaching their peak in size, including Argentinosaurus and Patagotitan, which may be the largest land animals in history.



This stamp from Armenia depicts Argentinosaurus in what is believed to be its natural environment (most artists focus on the later days when Velociraptors and T Rexes were about). And yes, a number of the ‘creatures’ depicted in the Jurassic Park movies were actually from this period. Image Credit: Post of Armenia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Summary of relevant Armenian Copyright law on the file page)

There was little or not ice at the North or South poles; at some points in the period, sea levels were 170 meters higher than today.

So that’s the sort of timescale we’re talking about with later entries on the table.

Vehicles

Cars can lose 58% of their value in three years, 49% in four, and 40% in five, according to Wikipedia. And right away, there’s a logical problem – those numbers might be what the value drops to, but there’s no way that’s a reasonable depreciation statement.

Ramsey Solutions (credit where it’s due) suggest 9-11% value loss the minute you drive it off the lot, 20% value loss in the first year, then 15-25% from that value each year until the 5-year mark – with no indication of rates beyond that. Other sites peg the rate at the maximum 25% thereafter.

Working vehicles presumably go down in value faster, because they are on the road more often and hence running up greater risks and wear-and-tear. Heavy vehicles would also suffer increased depreciation relative to passenger vehicles.

Boats – modern ones – lose 15-25% in their first year but then drop by smaller amounts until the 6th-8th year, when they are worth about half the replacement cost. After this, they decline in value quickly – 20-30% per year.

But would the rate be the same for a Spanish Galleon? Or a Viking Longship? I doubt it. As with buildings, you should base your numbers on a realistic assessment of intended lifespan, bearing in mind that it’s inherently wasteful to have a vehicle that lasts longer than its date of obsolescence.

Aircraft lose 5% to 20% per year, depending many factors including type, condition, and market demand, according to Latitude 33 Aviation. According to Forbes., 5-7% per year is typical, rising to 10-15% if heavily utilized. Since condition would be a reflection of usage and maintenance, that means that the remaining two factors – type and demand – must account for the other 5%.

Spacecraft — who knows? I’d probably use aircraft numbers.

Mines

Mine value depends on how much ore is delivered in a year, multiplied by the value given its purity, less the costs of extracting that ore, of transporting the ore safely to a market, and possibly less the costs of refining the ore.

Use the building depreciation techniques to decide how long it will be before the mine “plays out” – which may not mean that there’s no more ore, just that it’s more expensive to dig out than it’s worth.

Costs will rise with every year of production, which is the source of most of the “depreciation”.

Do some research on the value of precious metals and how they change over time. This is always useful info to have, but can be critical in valuing a mine.

Finally, note that there can be a world of difference between how long a mine is expected to be productive and how long it actually makes a profit – with the value of the ore one of the biggest factors, and the value of labor as the other.

Simple Businesses

Businesses can be the most complicated assets to value, so I make them the simplest – they cost X, they make Y per year, and they will last as long as the business, its facilities, and its products are in contemporary demand.

That last is a key point – most of the impacts on demand will blindside a business. Public tastes can shift unexpectedly, new technological innovations, rivals undercutting profits, loss of reputation, government regulation, and a dozen other possibilities can all spring from out of nowhere.

If the management and product development teams are on the ball, they can adapt with new products and the issue become a minor hiccough in corporate history – but the older a corporate entity is, the harder it is to maintain that flexibility.

As a general rule of thumb, a business should be worth the value of the buildings (depreciated for age), plus the value of the installations, plus a year’s wages for the whole company, plus five years of expected profits, less taxes to be paid in that period, and less any other liabilities.

This will almost never be an accurate reflection of the share value multiplied by the number of shares issued (in a public company), even though the two are theoretically identical. There are traders out there who make their living exploiting the difference.

Another key point is to ensure that ownership is a hassle commensurate with the profit levels. How big a hassle that is, is up to you. If it’s too much, the player has grounds for complaint; if it’s too low, it’s giving the player an in-game advantage.

Of course, this will not be a constant – misfortune and headaches routinely come in bunches. The longer smooth sailing persists, the more paranoid the owner has reason to be.

Livestock

Livestock are – if fed, watered, and cared for – money on the hoof. The life of any single beast is one of appreciating in value until adulthood is obtained, then declining value (except in the case of stud value). But to convert the potential value into reality, you generally have to get them to market – and that travel is quite capable of depreciating the value significantly.

But, when you accumulate a number of head, all this tends to even out into seasonal highs and lows, and sometimes specialist breeds and schedules can take advantage of periods of higher demand and lower supply.

There will be some natural depreciation, too, in the form of accidental deaths and criminal acts.

In modern times, profitability is a bare minimum over time; livestock are often a debt trap that can never be escaped. You are too dependent on everything going right over a significant period of time in order to achieve full potential profitability. That was less true prior to the mid-war interval, and far less true before the industrial revolution.

Old Valuables

Jewelry and the like from long ago neither appreciates much nor depreciates much. Most of the value is usually inherent, in other words, though social factors can still play a major role. There are fads in the jewelry market, the same as any other. There may also be some owner recognition that adds a little cream on the top.

What is likely to increase with age is rarity. Because of the potential to melt unwanted pieces down and rehouse gems, this is going to be a relatively slow increase.

What you do have to watch out for is the impact of supply and demand – if supply goes up, the value of past extractions goes down, and vice-versa.

Quite often, the base prices are adjusted to compensate for inflation, so that’s one headache you don’t have to deal with.

Old Rarities

Ah, the value of old furniture. I was discussing the Quora answer linked to earlier with my Pulp Co-GM, and pointed out that the perception of such antiquities always increasing in value was baked into both our experience banks – we were quite literally in a brand-new world if the story were true.

But here’s the truth – up until the mid-to-late digital age, once past the 50-year decline, furniture will still appreciate in value, so the old experience remains valid, and – in the longer term – the market will correct itself, as I suggested earlier..

Things get more interesting when you’re talking about antiquities of little inherent value but vast value from other sources. A signed order by Julius Caesar, for example – how much is that worth? The Ostracon described earlier?

These can essentially be treated as furniture without the value cliff that actual furniture has fallen down – at least somewhat. So you have a Ming Vase? It will go over the cliff, but make a soft landing, because (1) they tend to be very pretty, and (2) people will speculate that the value will eventually rebound. Quality will become more important – the better an item, the faster it is likely to rebound.

So the question becomes, where is the level of that soft landing? I would suggest that it’s between 20 and 30% of the peak value if the item has intrinsic attractiveness or historical or social or religious value, and 10% if it lacks all of the above – and half that much if its not pretty to look at.

Cultural Relics

It’s the same story with cultural relics, except that these are likely to be even slower to rebound, because they are often less visually-attractive. Other factors can make up the difference, though.

A huge differential will be whether or not the culture still exists – if it does, there will be an ongoing supply that will water down and slow any recovery (but which may have mitigated the decline in the first place); if not, finding more is increasingly unlikely with every year that passes, and so rarity will restore the value more quickly.

Artworks

I’ve talked about art elsewhere, but it’s worth reiterating: A painting that was $20 at the time of painting can be worth $200,000,000 today. Most of them aren’t.

Pick an artist who’s right for the time of painting – google can be quite helpful – then do a search for “Value of works by [name]” and proceed from there.

In a fantasy or future-set campaign, where artists and art movements generally have to be invented out of whole cloth, pick somebody to be a doppelganger and translate their careers into suitable events and terminology.

Don’t neglect the impact of historical influence in making this decision; if there was a war twenty years ago in your canon, pick an artist from a period about 20 years after a major conflict.

I also suggest that you use artists you’ve never heard of, saving those with name-recognition cache for when you need them specifically. How much more valuable will a Rembrandt be, should one survive, 100,000 years from now?

Basic Valuables

Your basic valuables won’t change very much from Inherent to Appraised value. The possible exception lies in social factors.

It is equally important to note where the character is attempting to buy or sell an item – location can have a profound impact on demand, which in turn has a profound impact on value.

Mementos & Personal Treasures

These will have (relatively) colossal sentimental value, which is just as well because they are otherwise fairly valueless – until the character that owns them starts getting name recognition and fame, or gets mixed up in historical events. Once that happens, they can start acquiring historic value beyond the base.

Genre Notes

Heading for the home stretch, I have some general advice for the way different genres should handle their economics. I’ll try to keep these brief.

Fantasy

According to the US Treasury Department,

Depreciation accounting, as we recognize it today, began in the 1830’s and 1840’s with the advent and growth of industries employing expensive and long-lived assets. Railroads, in particular, were concerned with problems of accounting for the deterioration, repair, and replacement of plant and equipment.

— OTA Paper 64 – A History of Federal Tax Depreciation Policy (PDF)

Which means that prior to the beginnings of the industrial age, values were deemed inherent – even when that wasn’t the case. Rarity, Social and Religious factors, the fame of past owners – these would still have been relevant even in that era.

To the greatest extent possible, keep your economics as simple as you can, at least until your campaign reaches the politics / strongholds phase. Use the system to set a value for possessions, but don’t break it down for the players. “It costs X, you think it’s worth Y” is as deep as you should go.

Pulp

The economics of Pulp are also better served by not bothering as much as possible. Value specific assets to get replacement costs, and to put dollar values on items where that’s likely to be significant – if something is to get stolen, for example – but beyond that, hand-wave as much as you can get away with. A thug, a mugger, or some unexpected light relief can often distract from impertinent questions.

Historical / Detective

These days this includes everything from a Hill Street Blues campaign to Sherlock Holmes. Because these tend to be a lot grittier, pay closer attention to lifespans, unusual wear-and-tear, and depreciation for everyday objects, while cherry-picking the occasional bauble to get the full treatment.

Modern

Modern-day settings tend to be a half-way house – there are some things that need to be valued fully, but a lot of it can be dumped into generic categories and assessed en masse. Don’t worry about individual pieces of unexceptional furniture, for example. Pay closer attention to vehicle values, those are something that most motorists are keenly aware of. And the value of homes. And the net worth of Businesses. Most of the rest can largely be hand-waved.

Of greater import are the political and social ramifications of economic changes, especially those of things like energy and fuel.

Superheroics

Superheroics can deal with extremely unusual objects on a regular basis. How much is a captured force-field generator worth? So some specific valuables will need to be given the full evaluation treatment. Beyond these objects rare or valuable, though, the Space Opera rule should apply as much as possible (with exceptions) – there’s always enough money.

More significant is the impact of superhero activity on the economy of others. DON’T beat your players over the heads with this, because it can get both boring and in the way of the fundamental premises of such campaigns – but subtly hint at it from time to time. What’s happened to the price of coffee and a danish in Superhero City lately? IF a character is renting, what’s the movement on the rental market? You get the idea :)

Steampunk

I still know less about the Steampunk genre than I like, though I’m addressing that.

If a possession is being supplied by a corporation, probably on loan for some specific purpose, there’s always enough money.

When it comes to personal vehicles, there’s always enough money – within reason.

Those at the bottom rungs of society may be Victorian or Georgian in the impact of the economy on their lives. Be harsh in a Dystopian variant, be generous in a Utopian one.

Governments are somewhere in between. Expect them to have greater outlays than is historically accurate, but they will also have greater incomes.

In general, the economy should proceed at the speed of plot.

Cowboy / Western

Depreciation is all-important. Everything is running down the clock – mines, livestock, fences, farmhouses, businesses. Poverty will be everywhere to some extent – and there’s always a strong implication that the only exceptions require villainy. But always, there is hope.

Sci-Fi – near future

Treat as modern. Extrapolate as necessary – if there’s some new wonder-gadget, treat the situation as analogous to the introduction of some other tech, for example the iPhone. Broader economic strokes will frequently be necessary, but try hard not to get too bogged down.

Sci-Fi – Dystopian

The bad guys always have enough money and resources, unless the good guys specifically block something. Depending on the variety of Dystopia, good guys may have practically nothing and that badly deprecated, or they may have moderate resources that they have to leverage. Money (or trade goods equivalent) will usually be in short supply and will need to be carefully valued. Be careful about giving away too much loot, and remember the second part of the basic rule – an asset is only worth as much as someone can afford to pay for it, no matter how much they might value it or want it.

Sci-Fi – Utopian

The space opera rule broadly applies, and what restrictions might exist are dependent on restrictions other than material scarcity. That can fundamentally impact on the inherent value of a possession.

Pirates / Swashbuckling

Loot loot loot – any questions? You weren’t going to buy that ship were you?

Supplies and treasures need to get the full treatment. For everything else, there’s either enough money or nothing at all.

Synthesis: A general process:

Okay, it’s time to wrap the whole series up with a general process that I recommend using – preferably during campaign creation, but its better late than never.

1. Use the period notes to get your mind into the perceptions of the time.
2. Adjust this core perception for genre
3. Determine the Intrinsic Value using the worksheet
4. Adjust for Appraisal Factors using the worksheet

1. Use the period notes to get your mind into the perceptions of the time.

What matters to the people? To the government? What are attitudes to economic matters? What’s changing, and where are efforts going? What’s more important (if anything) than the economy?

2. Adjust this core perception for genre

Since I’ve just run through the genre notes, this should be fairly self-evident.

2a. Sidebar: On Old Problem – currency conversions and historic currency values

Here’s a conundrum:

     USD 2023 to USD 1930 = / 18.43
     USD 1930 to AUP 1930 = x 0.2055

     USD 2023 to AUD 2023 = x 1.58
     AUD 2023 to “AUD 1930” = .x 01198
     AUD to AUP at currency changeover = / 2

The above are all verifiable facts.

If something cost, say, $200 USD 2023, how much would it have cost in Australian Pounds (we decimalized in 1966)?

Path One:
     USD 2023 -> USD 1930 -> AUP 1930
     = 200 / 18.43 x 0.2055 = 2.23 AUP

Path Two:
     USD 2023 -> AUD 2023 -> “AUD 1930” -> AUP 1930
     = 200 x 1.58 x 0.1198 / 2 = 18.9284

Both can’t be correct, and the difference is too much to ignore. So which one is correct?

In the Pulp campaign, we’ve had to confront this problem, in both directions, on more than one occasion. The difference stems from the inflation rate differing between the two countries over the years. That says to my co-GM and I that the problem lies in the combination of a fixed 1930s exchange rate and the “AUD 1930” value.

USD 2023 -> USD 1930 = 200 / 18.43 = $10.85, and apply the fixed conversion rate of the era to get Australian Pounds – x 0.2055 = 2 pounds 2.76 shillings, call it 3 for convenience.

You will confront similar problems whenever you have a value in one currency that a character wants to spend in another – do you start with the historical value, adjust for all the Valuation Factors, and only then convert to the target currency (Path 1)? Or do you convert the historical value and then adjust for all the Valuation Factors (Path 2)?

In theory the two end up in exactly the same place, but I don’t think they do, because of the psychological impacts of small amounts vs larger amounts. I recommend path 1 as the one with the fewest problems, but whatever you choose, make sure that you are consistent about it.

3. Determine the Intrinsic Value

Once you’re seeing the valuation process from the point of view of the economic model that you have chosen for your campaign setting, as modified by the genre,

Use random values as inspiration as you feel necessary.

4. Adjust for Appraisal Factors using the worksheet

The intrinsic value could be a major component of the final valuation or it could be largely irrelevant. If it’s important, made doubly sure that it’s correct and then apply the Appraisal Value factors. If it’s not, spend that extra time making doubly sure of your Appraisal Value factors.

Focus on what’s important, in other words.

5. The final adjustment: GM Fudge

The ultimate purpose of the worksheet isn’t to give fixed, absolutely correct, answers, it’s to guide your thinking. Ultimately, the value of any object or possession in your campaign is whatever you think it should be – under the current circumstances.

Those circumstances include the in-adventure status, the in-genre foundations, and the campaign background. But those are fairly broad concepts and sometimes hard to narrow down to specifics. That’s where the worksheet can help – getting you to think about a reasonably comprehensive suite of variables in isolation, undistracted.

At the very least, round off to something practical!

The End Of An Epic

Hey Ma, I made it – Top Of The World! Well, bottom end of the series, anyway.

Reactions have been mixed so far – some people have praised the whole thing (even hoped that I could extend it backwards to cover Classical civilizations); others have found it too long, or too detailed – most of them not having read the whole. And there have been a few that liked some parts and not others.

Hopefully, it’s now clear what I’ve been drilling toward all this time, permitting re-evaluation of those parts that didn’t grab a reader. It’s been an epic journey of 160,000 words or so, but I think it’s been worthwhile!

What was the 17th and final post in this series, the Asset Valuation Worksheet 2.0, has now become the kickoff post for another series. If you’re looking for it, your can still find it here: Asset Valuation Worksheet 2.0.

I’ve decided to wait another week before posting the final part of the Economics in RPGs series, because yesterday, I thought up a new article.

I immediately set about outlining the article.

I know from past experience that if the outline is not substantial enough, by the time I get to actually writing it, I will be all “What on earth did I mean by this?” – sometimes those thoughts can be reconstructed or recaptured, but more than one article has been deep-sixed because they couldn’t.

So, by the time I got to the end of it, I found that I had written more than 4000 words, completed about 1/2 of the article, and didn’t have enough time to write the Economics post.

The only solution: press on and complete the new post idea as today’s article….

Excellence In GMing

A Good GM creates a game that everyone enjoys playing. That’s the bottom line – anything less than that and the game is some shade or nuance of ‘tolerable’, and that’s all that the players can expect.

An Excellent GM occasionally elevates expectations and meets those elevated expectations at least some of the time.

And a Great GM occasionally elevates expectations, setting a new standard for their table which they achieve more often than not.

The degree of disappointment when a session falls flat is directly proportionate to the level of expectations that the players had, going in.

Seems fairly obvious, right? So let’s talk a little about expectations.

Expectations

There are lots of different areas involved in GMing. It’s not necessary to excel in any of them in order to be a Good GM, but the more of them that a GM excels in, and the regularity with which they do so, the more likely they are to transcend Good and achieve Excellence.

If there is one area in which the GM regularly excels, they start edging their way toward Greatness. The more of them in which they excel regularly, the closer they come to that status.

So let’s briefly break down the process of GMing – regardless of genre – and identify the primary tool or skill that the GM uses to create and satisfy expectations in that part of the overall skillset.

1. Vibrancy & Worldbuilding

The world that the GM creates is thrilling, exciting, and feels somehow larger than life. Like many aspects of GMing, this is divided into two areas: Creation and Execution.

Creation, aka Worldbuilding: you need the ideas to start with, a unified view of the world as a holistic place of existence. These can be yours, they can be someone else’s, they are frequently some blend of the two. Primary tools: (a) Creativity & (b) Structure.

Execution: you need to present this place you are creating to the players, exploring it with plotlines and populating it with people. Primary tools: (c) Vision, (d) Plotting (adventure creation) and (e) Narrative.

2. Story

Once you have the world, you need to be able to create stories that explore it, that reveal the depths, and that convey the vibrancy to the players.

And they have to be good stories – exciting and/or intriguing and/or compelling. Primary tools: (e) Narrative again, and (f) Storytelling.

3. Characters

Some GMs are great at creating characters with relatable depth. It’s not enough for a character to have complex and realistic or super-realistic personalities, they have to be encountered in situations in which the players AND their characters can immediately connect with those personalities.

There are two aspects to this: Entwining established characters with the plot (modifying the plot if necessary in order to do so); and creating new characters that fit seamlessly into the role demanded of them by the plot.

The primary tools for the first are Plot Deconstruction (the ability to break the plot down into encounters, a form of Analysis that is usually considered a part of (b) Structure and (d) Plotting, and Personality Entanglement (connecting one or more aspects of the personality of the NPC with the plot in such a way that the story is enhanced or advanced because of their presence within it, which is an aspect of (d) Plotting, (e) Narrative, and (f) Storytelling).

4. Characterization

Once you’ve got a great character, one that will fit the in-game circumstances like a glove, one that will advance or enhance the plot, and one that the characters can reliably be expected to interact with, you have to actually bring them to life.

The primary tools here are (g) Voice Acting, (h) Expression, (i) Visual Representation, and (j) Theater Of The Mind. Those last two are going to be the primary focus of today’s article.

5. Depth

The adventures themselves need to possess depth. They have to matter, at least to the PCs and their immediate world. The choices of the players have to have Agency, i.e. they have to make a concrete difference in that immediate world, even if that is not immediately apparent.

The primary tools for achieving all this come under the headings of (d) Plotting and (f) Storytelling – again, creation and execution, respectively..

6. Immersion

To the maximum extent possible within the confines of a rules-based simulation of the alternate reality created by your Worldbuilding, you need to bring the world and events within it to life within the minds of the players.

Actually taking it to the extent that they can no longer distinguish it from reality is going too far, but you need to take it to the point where they can think and act as if their characters were real inhabitants of the place, forgetting momentarily that they are in a rules-based simulation.

There are times when this is not possible, and the game mechanics haul people back to reality. The key here is to designate certain parts of the story as focused on delivering immersion to an extent that disbelief can be suspended in those sections of the plot, and that this suspension of disbelief can itself be suspended when you have to deal with the mechanics.

If that sounds tricky, it often is. These are advanced applications of (d) Plotting, (g) Voice Acting, (h) Expression, and (j) Theater Of The Mind.

7. Surprise

Some plots are as predictable as a stone rolling downhill, and if the hill and the stone are themselves interesting enough, a campaign can last quite a long time with nothing more. Real longevity comes when your plot, and the ongoing evolution of the game world that results from it, throw up unexpected surprises, entanglements, complications, consequences, and ramifications. These usually take the form of Plot Twists.

I am a big fan of parallel story threads interacting to form a new and broader layer of story. These interactions can be predictable, in fact should be predictable if complete information regarding both is known, but in the absence of that perfect knowledge, are usually surprises.

I have devised advanced plotting techniques – See

• Part Eight in the Basics For Beginners series (Depth In Plotting),
• and a key article linked to within, with a slightly misleading title, Back To Basics: Campaign Structures,

– for example – and I would also recommend

• Scenario Sequencing: Structuring Campaign Flow, and
• Directed Plots, Undirected Narrative, and Stuff That Just Happens, too)

— that are designed to structure these entwinings, to the point where the campaign has three, four, or even five layers of plot taking place simultaneously.

This builds in a lot of the desirable attributes already identified while keeping the process itself manageable.

Ultimately, the major tools required are (b) Structure, (c) Vision, (d) Plotting, and (f) Storytelling.

8. Mechanics

Game Mechanics perpetually get in the way. It’s no surprise that a lot of game systems proceed from the premise of eliminating or simplifying them as much as possible.

But there’s a downside to this – it can come at the expense of Realism, which doesn’t have the same definition in this context as it does in most real-world settings. Realism here is all about internal consistency of game physics and the understanding that if you do (A) in this fictional world and under the current circumstances, the result will be (B).

That can be a lot harder to achieve than many expect.

As a first rule of thumb, the less time that is required to complete any given interaction with the game mechanics, the less stress they place on suspension of disbelief and immersion, and the less they get in the way of in-game entertainment (there is a certain vicarious thrill to rolling a 20 exactly when you need it, or suddenly being dealt a roll of 1, too).

Sidebar: Metagaming To The Rescue

I employ metagaming a lot as a substitute for mechanics. For example, over the weekend, a player attacked a bot. His attack would do 20d6 damage; the bot had around 75 hit points
(it was essentially a re-tasked autonomous vacuum cleaner).

20×3.5 (the average result of a d6) = 70. That meant that unless the player rolled significantly low, they would do enough damage to take the bot out. I asked him to roll his dice to hit (he did) and then roll his damage – but to only tell me the number of 1s in the roll.

You see, unless there were a significant number of 1’s – four, five, or six of them – the odds were that he was going to meet the target, even if there were a high number of 2’s and 3’s in the roll.

Even if If eight of the twenty dice were 2’s or 3’s, that is about 20 points (on average) and assuming 20 / 6 = 3-and-a-bit – call it three 1’s – takes the total to 23. That leaves 52 to reach the target, on 9 dice that roll 4 or better. Call that an average of 5 per dice, giving 45 points of the 52 required. So he might not quite have succeeded – but the odds were very high that he would have done.

Look at it another (faster) way – 75 points on 20 d6 needs an average roll of 75 / 20 = 3.75. If there were only a couple of 1’s rolled, the average result of the rest would have reached the total fairly easily – and the bot was almost certainly going to be crippled, regardless.

So I ruled (virtually instantly) that the value of the dramatic impact of the metagamed (faster) damage handling mechanic exceeded the need for mechanical precision, and move the game ahead as quickly as possible.

I’ve built an entire game system – The Sixes System – on making such assessments at lightning speed.

So, where was I? Oh, yes…

The speed with which you can implement game mechanics, and knowing when you can shortcut the processes, can be critical. It does require a very strong working knowledge of what those mechanics entail to make it happen, though.

The tool used here is (k) Rules Knowledge and understanding of the underlying mechanics.

But wait, there’s more:

There are ways of structuring interactions with the mechanics that actually enhance storytelling and immersion, just as there are ways of interacting with the mechanics that are detrimental. The latter may be the default, but it’s not always necessary.

A fast character check and bam! – an immersive, plot oriented outcome delivered in (e) Narrative (f) Storytelling form, and you close-couple the game mechanics to both player agency and immersion.

To achieve this, you need to:

• Know the character’s capabilities;
• Have precalculated the values of any rolls and all adjustments;
• Have prepared outcomes;
• Have translated those outcomes into Narrative;

– all in advance. When this prep is done, the gameplay looks like this:

“Marito [character name], you have the highest [Skill name] of the group. Under these circumstances you need to roll [x]. Please make your check now – what did you roll, a 15? Okay, Marito… [convey narrative outcome].”

9. Pacing

The pacing of your plots, and your in-session gameplay, can be a decisive factor in the quality of the game. It can enhance it massively or destroy it utterly. I don’t quite go to the extent of scheduling breaks within a game session – human biology is too unpredictable – but will constantly be aware of how far away the next point in the adventure is that suits taking a break if one is needed.

This applies doubly to where the session of play ends for the day. There’s nothing worse than having to interrupt things in the middle of something for a week or more!

I’ve done two whole series on pacing, plus a few add-ons to it after the fact:

• The “Swell and Lull – Emotional Pacing in RPGs” Series – Part 1
• …and Part 2; and
• The Further Thoughts On Pacing series (4 articles).

The primary tools involved are all ones that have been listed before, like (d) Plotting and (f) Storytelling, with one addition: (l) Plot Awareness – knowing where you are in relation to the plot.

And if you have to say, “That’s as far as I was able to prep because I didn’t know what you would decide,” there’s nothing wrong with that – I’ve done it a time or two, myself.

But, if you’re aware of such a point approaching faster than would place it conveniently at the end of play, it can sometimes be worth turning down the pace a little and throwing in some random encounter just to ‘pad out’ the day’s play.

Your alternative is to Improv from that point onward – hopefully, based on broader plans that you already know and understand. There are times when that’s possible, and times when it’s not desirable. All such decisions are also elements of Pacing.

10. Pace

The last part of the puzzle here is Pace, and I touched on a real-world example in the sidebar above. The more you can avoid having the game grind to a halt for any reason not deliberately inserted by you, the better the game.

All the good things have more time to be experienced, and all the bad things, less opportunity to get in the way.

As with any general rule, of course, there can be exceptions. Using game mechanics as a delaying tactic to increase dramatic tension, for example.

In character-interaction plot sequences, I tend to try and slow the pace down to permit the characters to ‘smell the roses’. In action sequences, I try to pick up the pace. Some dramatic sequences are best served with a “stall / delay / delay / tease / delay / everything-happens-at-once-in-a-great-rush / let-the-gravity-sink-in” pattern.

All this makes game pace something that is controlled at a plot level, within the bounds of what your mechanics and your ability with the mechanics, permit.

Once again, the tools are (d) Plotting, (f) Storytelling, (k) Rules Knowledge, (l) Plot Awareness, and finally (m) Quick Improv Capacity and (n) Self-awareness.

The Essential Skills

Fourteen essential skills in all, manifesting multiple times in 10 aspects of being a GM. I’m going to look at each of them in more detail in a moment – but first, let’s go back to the abilities of a Good GM, an Excellent GM, and a Great GM for a moment.

Excellence, Revisited

You don’t have to excel in all of these to be a Great GM. Let me reinforce that – you don’t have to excel in all these skills to be a great GM.

You do need to excel in at least one, and preferably several of them, but virtually every GM will have some area in which they are deficient – they just have to be that much better in another to make up the deficit.

Nor is consistency a likelihood. Some weeks, you’ll be “on it” in one or more areas more than other weeks, even in areas that are nominally supposed to be your strength at the game table.

That’s why I was so careful in my phrasing of the descriptions of those three standards of GMing.

The more areas in which you excel, the more likely it is in any given game session that you will be at the top of your game in that area of the GMing art. Self-awareness may have been last on the list of GMing skills, but it’s by far the least important attribute. And having prepped workarounds for those days in which you are off your game in a given area is vital.

So, to the fourteen skills. Because all of this is context to the main subject of the article, I’ll be brief (I hope).

a) Creativity

A GM needs to have ideas. Ideas for plots, for situations that will enable plots to happen, for characters, for stories.

I’ve written a lot of articles on how to direct and focus creativity, such as The Backstory Boxes – Directed Creativity (and of course, the whole Breaking Through Writer’s Block series applies in general terms).

What might not have been stressed enough is that creativity is like a muscle – the more you use it, the better you get at using it. If you struggle in this area, use the tools linked to in this section and not only will you get better results (because of the focus) in the short term, but you will exercise and strengthen that ‘muscle’.

b) Structure.

Johnn, Campaign Mastery’s co-founder, once stated that he had never encountered someone who could keep their eyes on the big picture while focusing on the smallest details the way I could, or words to that effect.

It’s an ability that stems from my training as a systems analyst, many years ago, coupled with a natural knack, but it’s proven valuable through the years.

Well, I can’t gift you any natural ability, but I can let you in on the secrets that derived from my training. It’s all about the relationship between the two pictures.



This montage is derived from mountain-8190836.jpg by Christel from Pixabay.

The image above describes how I think about an act from an adventure, or an adventure within a campaign. On the left is the original, big-picture image.

It exists purely to get the adventurers to the summit of the peak, and that purpose is always kept in mind. The purpose is symbolized by the second image – every bit as big as the first, but more focused.

On the right are three images constructing a logical sequence from the big image, focusing on specific details. First, there’s the village (featuring the Swiss flag in this case).

Then there is the valley walled in by mountainous rises and trees that offer lots of concealment. This is the trip to the foot of the mountain.

And, finally, there is the ascent itself, depicted in the third image. The exposed face looks difficult, with a serious overhang near the summit; there is just enough to suggest that the part hidden by clouds might be easier, but the clouds themselves would add their own difficulties.

Each of these is at least one scene in the adventure, with its own narrative and encounters. I can focus on those details using the purpose as a guide and the relationship between the detailed passages, as defined by the big picture, to define and keep the purposes of each of the scenes clear.

It’s simple hierarchical thinking, where the purpose of each line of code is defined by the purpose of the section of code, whose purpose is defined by the overall purpose of the module or piece of software.

The ability to take an abstract or analog scene or situation and separate it into a structure of component parts for subsequent processing is an essential skill for a GM.

c) Vision

It’s one thing being able to come up with isolated ideas that have no connection to each other, and quite another to be able to see how two or more of them will interact when composited together into one game world, one campaign arc or plot thread, one adventure, or just a scene.

There can be tens of thousands of variables involved, if you are creating an original game world intended to sustain a whole campaign or more. Fortunately, you can use the Structure skill to break the bigger problem down into smaller parts.

Using the example from the section above, let’s look at some different approaches to the adventure sequence in terms of increasing Vision, and what I’m talking about should become more apparent:

• Option 1: Isolated encounters in each of the three areas (town, valley, mountain climb. Vision level: low.
• Option 2: A mini-adventure or side-quest within the main adventure, it starts in the town, builds in the travel through the valley, and concludes on the ascent. Vision level: moderate
• Option 3: A mini-adventure as above that provides additional background or context for the adventure as a whole, turning what would otherwise have been dry narrative into a reward for solving the ‘side quest’. Vision level: good.
• Option 4: A mini-adventure as per option 3 that also drops hints or otherwise advances or links to a completely unrelated plot thread within the campaign, tying the campaign more closely together. Vision level: High.

d) Plotting (adventure creation)

This breaks an adventure concept down into individual logical stages or acts, breaks each of those down into individual scenes, with a natural flow and alternative routes to critical information, then breaks each scene down into narrative, encounters, dialogue excerpts & extracts, directions and outcomes.

If you gave 100 different GMs the same adventure outline, they would come back with 100 different adventures with some common themes and motifs. Each of them would have come up with a different plot to execute the general adventure concept.

“Tree-like / Ent-like refugees from another plane seek to destroy a village of humans, fearing their mastery of fire.” – that’s an adventure concept, a plot premise, or any of a dozen other things that it can be labeled. Ultimately, it’s an idea.

Plotting takes that idea, turns it into a story, creates multiple outcomes for the story based on key decisions by the players (well, actually, those first two are Storytelling, and then breaks that story down into a logical sequence of some sort.

e) Narrative

Narrative is description, read to the players by the GM. It is the set-dressing, casting, and stage direction for the Theater Of The Mind.

At it’s most elemental, it’s effective communication, but that description leaves out an awful lot. It needs to be descriptive, it needs to convey mood and tone and nuance, it needs to be detailed but concise, and it needs to be understood clearly by those who hear it.

That’s not an easy recipe to follow, but there’s a series at Campaign Mastery that can help: The Secrets Of Stylish Narrative.

f) Storytelling.

Storytelling is both one of the easiest things to do and one of the hardest things to do well. It even gets referenced in the description of what Plotting is, above:

In The Challenge Of Writing Adventures for RPGs, I look at why writing for RPGs is different to writing for any other medium, though there are still object lessons that can be taken from how-to’s aimed at those other destinations.

Stories need to be distinctive – A Palpable Difference: 14 Points of Adventure Distinctiveness might be useful to reference.

Ultimately, one of the best resources on storytelling here at Campaign Mastery is probably Basics For Beginners (and the over-experienced) Pt 7: Adventures, simply because it’s pitched at beginners and is therefore usable by everyone. There are lots of articles that focus on different aspects of the craft of storytelling, but not many that look at the subject broadly (because those are very hard to write, too).

But storytelling is more than that – it’s the ability to take the plot (that you have broken your story down into) and reconstructing it at the game table to tell the story that evolves from the interaction of GM-created circumstances and Player choices of words and actions.

It’s about the ability to weave every part of the content that you have within the adventure into a coherent tale, full of excitement and drama and PC agency and risk and reward.

To be a GM at all, you have to have at least a minimal skill at this. It can only get better from that starting point.

g) Voice Acting

I am not a Voice Actor. I might be able to manage a “What’s Up, Doc?” but my abilities in this respect flat-line if you even glance at them with intent.

Accents are a little hit-and-miss unless I pre-script dialogue in advance.

What I can manage fairly well is pronouncing foreign words (with exceptions) in such a way that they sound (to those who can’t speak the language for real, at least) as though they were being spoken by someone who does speak the language ‘for real’.

Part of GM Self-awareness is being aware of your shortcomings and find ways to work around them.

For my techniques in this arena, see The Secret Arsenal Of Accents and the article to which I have linked in the next section, as well.

h) Expression

When an NPC has something to say, Expression is how they say it – their turn of phrase, the tone and emotional overtones, the hesitations (or lack thereof), and so on. When this is written in advance, it is called ‘Canned Dialogue’.

I covered this subject in Speaking In Tongues: Writing Dialogue & Oratory back in 2019.

Modes of expression can supplement descriptive narrative, convey information and nuance that would otherwise need to be described painfully slowly either before or after the fact, can bind a visual impression (either represented or theater-of-the-mind) to a personality, and a great deal more.

Voice Acting or Expression – an adequate GM will be at least okay on one of the two, but you really have to be fairly good at at least one of the two to be a Good GM or better.

i) Visual Representation

There are two types of visual representation. The first includes miniatures and battlemats; the second involves showing the players an image rather than having them construct their own mental image using Theater Of The Mind.

I use the first sparingly, in particular when a complex tactical situation is taking place. It’s also good when you have a map that you can’t show to the players. When the first reason isn’t a factor, I’ll often look for some way to get the map into the players’ hands.

I am a big proponent of the second kind of visual representation. There are lots of reasons for this, some of which I’ll go into later in the article; but for now, suffice it to say that such depictions are not necessary, can be flawed, but can also be essential.

• Not Necessary – To some extent, graphic representations do nothing that can’t be done with pure Theater Of The Mind plus narrative input.
• Potentially Flawed – It’s extremely unlikely that you will find exactly what you are looking for, even if you’re good at Image Searches. You will almost always have to compromise to some extent. Overcoming that requires skill at photo editing, even photoshopping, and that can take time and effort. So you continually have to assess whether or not the time lost is worth it.
• Possibly Essential – There are two really strong reasons why this is the case – first, your image can depict something that would otherwise be really hard to describe adequately; and second, a picture may be worth 1,000 words, but can usually replace 500 words of narrative – and that frees up pacing and time to play, massively.

j) Theater Of The Mind

I’ve read a number of discussions of Theater Of The Mind in which the focus is on enabling players to represent the situation in their own minds.

Very few of the sources I’ve read acknowledge that the GM has to do this, too – and then describe what he is mentally “Seeing” to the players, so that they can incorporate the new information into their own visualization.

Nor has there been very much that emphasized the need for both players and GM to keep this vision alive in their minds while they are doing something else – looking up something on a character sheet or running the game, for example.

The better you are at Theater Of The Mind, the more clearly you can see things. You still have to extemporize descriptions of the events and circumstances that you are visualizing, but a clear foundation is a good beginning; without that, your descriptions can’t help but be vague and fuzzy.

Thwo articles seem relevant:

• I see with my little mind’s eye: The power of Visualization, and
• Things Easier With Pixels, Things Not.

I’ll have more to say on this subject of Theater Of The Mind later. For now, let’s move on.

k) Rules Knowledge

It’s possible to run an RPG game without knowing any of the rules, so that’s our baseline for this ability.

Sometimes, it can be easier to do so when one or more of the players has the knowledge you lack, but unless they are highly honorable, you can also lose control very quickly in this circumstance.

The next step up would be to have a good working understanding of the layout and a vague but solid understanding of the rules – so you know the most common stuff, at least in general, and where to find anything else.

How far this can carry you depends on a combination of three things: how quickly you skim-read, how deeply you comprehend what you’ve skim-read, and how quickly you can make a decision based on what you’ve skimmed. For D&D 3.5, this is my level of expertise, and for Hero 4th ed, it’s not much different, and I’ve run multi-year campaigns using both of these game systems. How you rank my expertise as a GM is up to you!

I have greater facility with the game systems that I’ve actually written – though input from a contributing player sometimes trips me up, in the case of the Zenith system.

Beyond that, we start getting into various degrees of “expert”.

In Happy New Year! – Lessons from yesterday (posted in 2009), I discuss an off-the-cuff campaign that I had to invent out of whole cloth without notice.

I still remember most of the (very simple) game mechanics. To make a skill check, for example, you rolled 2d6 (or maybe it was 3d6?), with high being better than low. You could add any expertise you had in that skill to one of the dice, but could not get it to a contribution higher than a Six. Once you had Skill in something, you could buy specialty expertise within; these did the same thing with the other die. And virtually everything was done using the same mechanics – to shoot a laser pistol, you used your laser pistol skill. A specialty in aiming would help with the other die, a specialty in maintenance or repairs would not.

Character construction: 2d6 for stats, each point of stats let you take +1 in a related skill, but I don’t remember what the stats were – I may have simply used the D&D model. After that, I just kept feeding the players skill points in batches of 6 until all the characters looked reasonable. I’m not sure how equipment was handled – I think I just hand-waved the question because of the plotline.

It was all Fast and Simple – and not bad for off-the-cuff! But here’s the point: I used that “game system” two-and-a-half times in 1998. That was about 25 years ago! I qualify as an ‘expert’ in it, not because I wrote it, but because I can rattle off the core mechanics so readily.

l) Plot Awareness

How does a plot survive contact with the enemy (the PCs, I mean)? The answer is, the GM’s Plot Awareness.

This is essentially just that big-picture-to-detail forest-AND-the-trees skill that I illustrated earlier. If you keep in mind the purpose of a given scene, the players can do whatever they want – anything other than achieving that purpose is icing on the cake. You can let them go completely off-script so long as that box is ticked.

Less experienced GMs are likely to be less adept at improv – or, more accurately, at keeping control when improvising. It’s so easy to go so far over the top with a half-baked spur of the moment idea that you can completely derail everything you had planned for the rest of the adventure, and the results at the end of the day are probably going to be less satisfying than what you originally planned.

At the same time, there will be times when a plot blind spot has created a plot hole so massive that what you had planned can’t possibly survive intact; coming up with a new road map to the adventure conclusion is necessary.

It’s not enough to be good at Improv; you need to be able to moderate your creative impulses and connect your flights of fancy to the plot, and that’s what Plot Awareness does.

m) Quick Improv Capacity

I suspect that I’ve stolen a lot of the thunder from this section with the description above. Rather than repeat myself, I’ll offer a couple of quick links to articles about Improv here at Campaign Mastery:

• Improvising an Adventure, and
• An Instinct For Story: 10 requirements for successful Improv play

— and turn my attention to a related thought.

Any adventure content can be categorized into one of two possible types: content that is necessary to propel the adventure into its next stage, and everything else.

Look over any written adventure – it could be a commercial module, or one that you or someone else has written – and identify how much of it falls into the first of those categories, and how much, the second.

When you improvise, your goal should be to get the PCs to the next critical moment in the adventure. You don’t (usually) care how you do that, or how long it takes, or what they do in the meantime. There are limits, but it takes a deliberate effort (on their part) to trip over them.

Keep those objectives and purposes solidly in mind, use them to censor your worst instincts, and you will be fine. The adventure might not be your most shining hour, but at worst, it will be acceptable.

n) Self-awareness

The final skill that can’t be underestimated is GM self-awareness. There are some people who seem to think that all GMs are extroverts – my experience is that a significant percentage (at least 1/3rd) are more introverted, and I speak as one of them.

You need to be able to honestly evaluate your strengths and weaknesses as a GM so that you can play to the former and deal with the latter.

Some quick advice on the subject, which doesn’t really get enough coverage:

Covering Weaknesses

Having prepped workarounds for those days in which you are off your game in a given area is vital. But even more important is making sure that one of your normal weaknesses is going to have minimal impact on the day’s play.

You can’t do that if you don’t know what they are.

Prioritizing Self-Improvement

It’s an old dilemma: work on improving something you’re already at least half-good at, or work on improving something you aren’t?

The answer, to my mind, depends on the access and ability you have with workarounds. If you can achieve a reasonable standard of success with your weaknesses intact, improve something in your mid-range of expertise, especially if it helps cover one of those weaknesses.

Again, with an honest self-assessment – both good and bad points – you can’t determine where best to invest your time and effort.

Natural Self-improvement

Finally, it should be mentioned that simply GMing successfully, despite any handicaps that you might have, is in itself a source of self-improvement.

Playing, too, can be beneficial – you simply need to occasionally put your GM’s Hat on, and try to understand why the GM of your game has made the choices he has displayed. You don’t have to agree with them. You do need to identify them and understand the consequences within the game. This need only take a few seconds; not enough to disrupt your playing in the game. Over time, you will get better at all facets of the GM’s craft – even those that you are trying to avoid.

Those aren’t the whole list of skills a GM needs, it’s just a starting point, listing the skills that are relevant to this discussion. Other skills are ancillary to these tasks, for example being good at Research (Lightning Research: Maximum Answers in Minimum Time) or at Google Image Search (Finding Your Way: Unlocking the secrets of Google Image Search, though they have changed image search significantly since that was written).

So, with all that understood, let’s get back to expectations.

Expectations, Again

Expectations come in two forms – those deriving from superficial impressions and those deriving from past experience.

Superficial impressions are those deriving from observing from the outside. That includes before and after actual play.

Experience impressions come from actually sitting at the GM’s gaming table, and they can either reinforce superficial impressions or paint an entirely different picture.

The first part is a combination of the visual representations that you have set up, props you hand out, word of mouth, and overheard gaming – usually a piecemeal impression.

The second part contains more depth and is less about game prep and more about actual abilities displayed at the table – though game prep can and should feed into multiple categories.

Both come together in the mind of any given player – new or a long-standing participant in your campaign(s) – to create a set of expectations. The better the impression created by one or both of these sources, the higher those expectations will be. Even worse, you may have been talking up the adventure or your self-satisfaction with your work, raising expectations.

BIG mistake – even worse (but not by much) than talking down your abilities.

And, of course, every past game session tweaks expectations up or down.

How good a GM you appear to be to your players then depends on whether or not you meet, or exceed, or (horrors!) fail to satisfy, those expectations.

Theater Of The Mind

90% or more of the game actually takes place in the theater of the mind. Right away, there’s a potential problem there – one player’s theater of the mind can be very different from another’s, and all of them can differ significantly from the internal visualization of the GM. And the actual shared reality is not so much a consensus as a compromise.

It only takes one misheard word, one misinterpreted statement, one forgotten detail to completely transform a player’s understanding of where their character is, who else is there, and what is taking place.

Sometimes, those errors create a comedic moment and nothing more. At other times, the significance can be more profound, as players make what are potentially life-altering decisions on behalf of their characters based on a flawed understanding.

At times, those errors are entirely understandable – when the PCs are using assumptions in place of facts, or when an NPC is deliberately trying to deceive the PCs. See The Heirarchy Of Deceipt: How and when to lie to your players. These deceptions are just ‘steering events’, they shape the story but the story itself takes them into eventual account, reveals the truth, and offers a pathway forward. The revelation of what is really going on is one of those profound plot twists that I discussed in section 7 [Surprise] earlier.

They are not the subject of deep concern. Far more important are the accidental and unintended failures in constructing a scene in the Theater Of The Mind that inevitably take place every now and again.

It’s going too far to say that how good you are perceived to be as a GM comes down to how well you handle Theater Of The Mind; everything else is a secondary factor. There can be great GMs who excel at storytelling, or at narrative polish, or at any of several other things that all feed into the Theater Of The Mind, without the GM actually excelling in that department.

That results in a moderate rating in one area that is propped up by one or more others. No shame in that, and it can result in a very satisfactory game for all concerned – with the wheels coming off every now and then.

But, because it is ubiquitous, and everything from analysis to zeal feeds into it, improving your performance in Theater Of The Mind enhances your game and your GMing chops faster than anything else that’s not both a critical skill and an abject weakness.

“He makes cardboard cut-out characters but don’t he describe them purty” is not a recipe for being a Great GM. Adequate to Excellent (at best), maybe.

So let’s look at some techniques to improve your Theater Of The Mind.

Guarding Against Error

The more condensed and effective your Narrative, the less likely it is that something will be missed by a player – but the more impact it can have when something is missed. Stylish Narrative can mitigate and guard against error, but it can’t completely prevent them.

As a GM, you need to be constantly alert to a PC taking an action that only makes sense if they have misunderstood something important in your description.

Whenever you suspect a failure of Narrative, you need to confirm the player’s understanding and intentions, just so that you are clear in what they are trying to do in your own mind. This can create tension if not handled delicately, so be prepared and phrase your queries carefully. In particular, make sure to give the impression that you think it’s your problem, not theirs – “I’m not sure I fully understand what you are trying to do,” works fairly well.

A Confusion Of Detail

Excessive Narrative often becomes confusing. It’s better to siphon off the excess and position where you can add it to the description if a player wants to look more closely.

Insufficient Narrative creates fog and fuzziness, so it’s important not to cut too far. Relay the essentials, and leave the details out – until they are asked for. This enables players to assemble a mental image and then adjust it.

Efficient Narrative

Narrative, ideally, has to be no longer than absolutely necessary, but still comprehensive enough to set the scene. I discuss this in detail in The Secrets of Stylish Narrative (again), which offers techniques for compressing and enhancing Narrative (which is anything other than dialogue offered by the GM).

Assembling The Mental Picture

Not everyone paints every mental image with the same alacrity, and some players are better at it than others. This is yet another factor that can vary from one game session to another in any given case, and can have a material impact on play – and on the GM’s conversion of expectations into actual satisfaction.

Just because it’s completely out of the GM’s control, doesn’t mean that their reputations and ability to deliver on expectations are not affected.

It’s also worth noting that this can all cut both ways – the GM has to integrate what everyone (both PCs and NPCs alike) are doing into their visualization of events. One misheard word, one misinterpreted statement, one forgotten detail (now where have I heard that list before?), and the whole thing can derail.

Creating Theater Commonalities

There are all sorts of tools, aids, and props that can be used to speed entry into the Theater Of The Mind, and which help create consistency over the critical details of the scene amongst all participants.

Careful plotting can be very helpful. Good writing is paramount. Visual representations are very useful. Images can be profoundly beneficial. Visual reinforcement and reminders are frequently helpful, but harder to orchestrate. Some form of self-correction mechanism within the narrative structure can be a lifesaver.

Vectors Of Theater

Obviously, each of these needs further amplification, but this article is growing in length – 8600 words as I write this – so I’ll try to be brief.

Compatible Plot Sub-structures

Good plotting introduces scenes and situations simply and then builds layers of increasing complexity on top of them, one at a time. I think of the initial offering as an “opening scene”, a term from TV and movie production.

In that “opening scene”, at first, nothing of important is happening, but the major features of the landscape or interior are displayed as the camera pans this way or that. Eventually, it finds someone capable of action – and that acts as a springboard to the next passage. Note that the first narrative passage ENDS at this point – it can’t continue any further, so there is a strong implication that everything significant has already been mentioned at this point.

Focused and Efficient Narrative

The narrative needs to be as efficient as you can make it, for reasons explained earlier. Avoid going into details that don’t matter, or that can wait – if you need to, you can always drop a hint that there’s more to observe about something, or even simply appended – “Your gaze is drawn to the silver locket, which is opened; on one side is a photograph of the victim, the other is empty.”

Visual Representations

Visuals – either of the figures and battlemap variety, or something more basic like the maps I showed in By The Seat Of Your Pants: Adventures On the Fly– are shortcuts into the theater of the mind, and (literally) start everyone off on the same page. Referring back to them serves as a reinforcement and clarification.

One tool that I bought because it was cheap – I didn’t expect to use it much at all – is a whiteboard, a small one about 10″ x 14″. It’s become an absolute essential, because I can draw something on it to serve as the foundation and update it as things change.

One person I know suggested a sheet of clear plastic, reasonably heavy in thickness, taped or attached permanently to the back, so that I could flip the plastic to cover the working area and add details that could then revised or taken away, leaving the original. I haven’t had the opportunity to take the idea any further yet.

Images

Images serve the same basic function as other visual representations, but they can also be used to impact other areas – an image of a character can provide a massive narrative shortcut, as can an image of a general area. Depictions of objects are less profound, but no less valuable – because the object has to be important to warrant an image.

Visual reinforcement and reminders

More than that – if the images are consistent (which can be a big ‘if’), they not only reinforce the Theater Of The Mind visualization that you want to achieve, they can serve as reminders of past displays, and as clarifications. This enables them to be a source of error correction for peoples’ visualizations..

Self-correction mechanisms

Of course, careful use of references to past description can also serve as an error-correction mechanism.

For example, describing a body, you might mention that a button has been torn violently from the victim’s shirt and his fists are clenched.

After the PCs poke around for a while, and discuss things for a while, one decides to check under the sleeves for identifying marks and tattoos. When he does so, the GM tells him that he realizes something is tightly clutched in the closed fist.

Opening the fist reveals a brass button with elaborate carvings, just like the others on the victim’s shirt.

That passage in italics is critical – because it reminds the PCs of the image created earlier and then puts it into a whole new light.

The Satisfying Of Expectations

Every player has some sort of expectation of the game and the GM who is delivering it, every time they sit down at the game table. The better the GM is by reputation, the more visually slick the presentation, the more often a GM has met or exceeded expectations in the past, the higher the expectations of this game session are likely to be.

There are those who might advocate for lowering of expectations so that they are easier to meet, and if the GM genuinely doesn’t have any practical hope of self-improvement due to real-life circumstances, that might be the right approach to take.

Outside of that limited applicability, though, it’s just an excuse for not doing your best, and for not striving to do better. That defines a Good GM, and may even apply to an Excellent GM. But is that recipe something you would consider compatible with being a Great GM?

It’s not, at least in my book.

One Final Thought

Every campaign is different.

Every GM’s strengths and weaknesses has to be filtered through their relationship with the genre of the campaign, which can color some aspects of the GM’s ability, flatter others, and put still others under pressure.

Gerry X may be a great GM when it comes to Fantasy, but comparatively weak when it comes to Horror, or Sci-Fi. Paula Y may be brilliant at Werewolf, weak when it comes to traditional Fantasy, but have an unsuspected talent for Space Opera or Steampunk or whatever.

Expectations need to be filtered from one genre to another, and from one campaign to another within a given genre. Some ability sets will port across to their genre-equivalents quite readily; others may be more problematic, and their can be surprising twists along the way, too – I’ve met one GM online who has an astonishing facility for Narrative in a Fantasy setting, but who can barely string two words together in a more high-tech situation; the language required just doesn’t come naturally to him.

Every GM has the right to expect that the expectations of them will be realistic. Well, to hope for it, at least. Another, eleventh part of the GM’s task is to provide the foundations for the setting of those expectations.

But every GM also has the responsibility of living up to, or bettering, those expectations once they are set. What do the players expect of you when you sit in the Big Chair? Knowing the answer to that gets you half-way to the goal of at least satisfying them; not knowing leaves your performance to blind luck.

Confidence comes from being ready, from knowing what is expected and having a reasonable plan for satisfying those expectations. And confidence makes everything else easier.

And there we are – a mere 8,400 words or so, exactly double the “outline” that I was finished with last night!