This is literally the second part of the article I posted last week, so I’ll forego all the usual preamble bits and pieces, just as I did the last time this happened, diving straight in from where I left off – well, almost.

Writing like this sometimes has strange confluences and coincidences, and in this case, it means that I need to insert a footnote that should have been part of the previous post, but could not possibly have been included.

Explaining that statement, and giving context to the actual footnote itself, requires a little real-life background. I’ll keep it as brief as I can.

One of the free-to-air TV channels here in Australia is SBS, or the “Special Broadcasting Service”. This channel specializes in multicultural content, sourcing programs from all over the world, often in multiple languages; where these are not subtitled, the channel has its own small-scale translation-and-subtitling operation. This is the channel that has broadcast everything from the original (Japanese) Iron Chef, South Park, Who Do You Think You Are? (British & Australian varieties, and sometimes the US franchise as well), amongst many others (some of them quite odd-ball).

They have also broadcast numerous science documentaries, championed Soccer and Cycling, taking them from virtually non-existent in terms of TV coverage to national prominence, and the channel broadcasts news services from many different countries, from Vietnam to Germany to the US.

I’ve referenced their programming in a number of posts here at Campaign Mastery – from

• A Hint Of Tomorrow: The Future Evolution Of Homo Sapiens
• The Thrill Of The Chase
• The Diversity Of Seasons Pt 3
• Thinking Alien Thoughts: Roleplaying First Contacts
• The Olympian Perspective: Personal Opinions, Fake News, and the GM
• An Amazing Ancestry
• Growing The Perfect Family Tree part 1 and Part 2
• The Miracle Of Wood
• The Inevitability of Extraordinary Characters
• Throw Me A Life-line: A Character Background Planning Tool
• Ask The GMs: The Passage Of Substantial Time
• The Poetry Of Place: Describing locations & scenes in RPGs
• Layers Of Mis-translation: RPGs and Dubbed TV
• And, last but not least, Flavors Of Victory: Why do good GMs fail?
• Plus, of course, a number of the documentaries were referenced in the Pulp Reference Library series (notably shelves 3 and 6).

They also do a lot of history doccos, and somehow the 5-30PM-6:30PM time-slots on Saturday & Sunday have become reserved as a “World War 2” spotlight. They’ve tried other programming then, but this is the subject that they return to, time after time – presumably because that’s what rates best!

So that’s the background, now to the footnote itself:

Blood Money: Inside The Nazi Economy

Over the weekend just past, in the 5:30-6:30 “World War 2” time-slot, SBS broadcast a two-part French documentary, “Blood Money: Inside The Nazi Economy” (link is to the IMDB page for the series). While this is not available (yet!) on DVD, Amazon has it for streaming, free, and the two parts can be found on YouTube (as of this writing: Part 1: A World War on Credit, Part 2: An Economy Of Death).

Had this broadcast taken place a week earlier, I would have referenced it in last week’s post; but at the time I didn’t even know that it existed. So I have to insert it as a post-scripted footnote, instead, because I think it’s worth pointing to (even though I have not yet had time to watch it, myself).

With that piece of old business out of the way, I can get back to business.

Government For The People

It’s a canonical element of the US Declaration Of Independence – “A government of the people, for the people”. From a modern perspective, it seems that the term “people” wasn’t treated anywhere close to universally until the post-war period, and the eventually successful Civil Rights movement – a success that some seem intent on undoing at the moment, but I’ll leave that alone.

The changes wrought by the Civil Rights movement had their roots in the more egalitarian treatment of minorities during World War 2, which paralleled those of Women in World War 1. This treatment was far from demonstrated equality, but it was the thin end of a wedge, paving the way for a gradual process of integration.

Rather than focus on that, which is very well-trodden ground, I’d like to draw reader’s attention to the other end of the relationship, and the effect on the government of accepting this philosophy of equality.

Governing for the people was generally held to mean protecting the populace from threats where the inequalities of power and wealth left them at a disadvantage; it didn’t matter whether or not that disadvantage was systemic or a function of the differences between theory and practical reality. The job of the government – well, one of them – was to stand up for the little guy in the face of corporate greed and excess.

Liberty Vs Social Responsibility

You can’t do that without restraining the liberty of those corporate entities that would or could put profits ahead of the welfare of the people around them.

I’ve read a lot of very bad fiction in which corporate ‘bad guys’ have a revelatory moment and turn from the immoral “dark side” of profits first, last, and at all points in between. While I have no doubt that individuals can experience a Dickensian transformation and re-prioritize the long-term over the immediacy of profits, all these works suffer from the same fallacy of wishful thinking:

As soon as these newly-enlightened CEOs tried to implement their new policies of “corporate responsibility’, the board of directors would vote the CEO out, because their job is to make as much money as possible for the stockholders. And if they didn’t, those shareholders would revolt and force changes in the board’s makeup, because they didn’t invest to be responsible corporate citizens, they invested to make money.

It follows that any corporation that is well-run will always prioritize profits over corporate responsibility, doing the bare minimum required by law (and less if they can get away with it, or think they can). Which puts the burden on responsibility onto the shoulders of those who write those laws.

Economic Protections

There are four primary tranches of protections created by, and enforced by, the government of the time. the first of these is economic – protecting the banks from failure and making sure that profitable businesses pay their fair share of taxes to support the work of government.

The latter function had always been part of the role of government, and often characterized (or mis-characterized) as self-interest on the part of those governments. The exemplar of rebellion against such self-service has always been the Robin Hood myth, but it has become recast as a form of social rebellion – in essence, claiming that if you object to some element of what the government is doing with “your” money, you are entitled to evade the tax obligation as much as you can.

But it was the credit restrictions and other financial reforms that emerged from the Great Depression as part of the New Deal that were the primary economic protection implemented in the course of the Pre-Digital Tech Age.

Extremes of perspective as a tool for GMs

I’ve often found it useful to think of government regulation as ‘defining the perimeters’ within which corporate entities can seek profit-making opportunities. This is a view which completely discounts the costs of compliance, making it an ideological perspective, but it simplifies and exemplifies the government perspective on such matters.

Business interests, on the other hand, live in what they like to think of as ‘the real world’, in which those practicalities have to be taken into account. There is a clear conflict between these interests, creating an ‘us-vs-them’ environment that is extremely useful for storytelling.

Neither of these perspectives are entirely accurate; they both carry their respective philosophies to illogical extremes. Realities can be more nuanced, and this can also be useful grist for RPG plotlines.

It must be remembered that the players (and hence their PCs) will almost always view both from the perspective of the ‘citizen’ caught in the middle, validating plotlines of both corporate greed and government overreach. By painting the extremes so starkly, and allowing gradations of social responsibility in specific cases, and taking this perspective into account, the direction of ‘satisfying’ plotlines can be easily discerned.

Which makes this a useful conceptual tool for the GM.

Personal Protections

Ralph Nader started the personal protections function of government, expanding the policy function from protection against criminal deprivation to a broader mandate with his drive to force the wearing of seat belts in automobiles, balancing the liberty to choose (or risk) of the individual against a policy of protecting people from the consequences of poor personal choices.

He argued, and fought for, the principle that part of the job of government was to protect people from themselves. From this beginning grew the entirety of what is now called “Consumer Protection”, which attempts to force business interests, through government regulation, to ensure that products are (1) safe to use, and (2) able to satisfy the purpose for which they were purchased.

Caveat Emptor

Many don’t realize it, but truth-in-advertising laws derive from this same tenet. Consumer Protection seeks to overturn the old warning of “Caveat Emptor” (Buyer Beware) – but it can only ever do so imperfectly, so that principle still has validity. Interestingly, it was originally a warning against buying stolen goods, and is often now manifested in the proverb, ‘if it seems too good to be true, it probably is’.

Regulation, after all, does a fairly poor job of anticipating potential future needs; it fairs much better when there is a concrete example of misbehavior that it can legislate against, and from which it can generalize.

Acceptance

It took a surprisingly short time for people to come to accept this role of government, and even to expect it to protect them. Nader published “Unsafe At Any Speed” in 1965; a decade later, and many jurisdictions had laws which mandated the wearing of seat-belts (compliance is, as always, imperfect).

The US was a little slower than elsewhere, but not by very much. Compare the details of different national regulations from the table in Wikipedia: Seat Belt Legislation with those of the US from the state-by-state table in Wikipedia: Seat Belt Laws In the United States..

National Attitudes for Characterization

This delay, widely attributed (rightly or wrongly) by the rest of the world to the conflict between personal liberty and consumer protection, has begun to assume mythic proportions and an underpinning perception of the USA held by many. Australians generally believe that they have more rigorous Product Standards and consumer protections than anywhere else in the world (which is sometimes true, but I could not say its definitively accurate in all cases).

Generalized, this provides a valuable touchstone for differentiating characters from different parts of the world – Americans are more likely to accept personal risk, and have shaped their legal protections to accommodate this (hence their gun laws). Non-Americans are more willing to trust their government to patrol and limit their personal risk, and consider the benefits of doing so to be worth the price.

Neither perspective has to be right or wrong, but they are a reality that the GM can employ.

Medical Protections

This gives me the opportunity to wax on about one of my favorite subjects, Snake Oil and Snake Oil Salesmen. I’ve been fascinated by the subject of deceptions and frauds and scams for a long time, covering everything from the manipulative genius of Derren Brown through to the intricacies of mystery plotlines and a long-standing fascination with Optical Illusions.

But I’ve already covered that subject extensively in earlier parts of this series, so I won’t do that; suffice it to say that this is one area of life in which consumer protection was (and is) sorely needed.

The FDA was formed in 1906.

The history of the FDA can be traced to the latter part of the 19th century and the Division of Chemistry of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which itself derived from the Copyright and Patent Clause. Under Harvey Washington Wiley, appointed chief chemist in 1883, the Division began conducting research into the adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs on the American market Wiley’s advocacy came at a time when the public had become aroused to hazards in the marketplace by muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair, and became part of a general trend for increased federal regulations in matters pertinent to public safety during the Progressive Era.

— Wikipedia, Food And Drug Administration

By the 1930s, muckraking journalists, consumer protection organizations, and federal regulators began mounting a campaign for stronger regulatory authority by publicizing a list of injurious products that had been ruled permissible under the 1906 law, including radioactive beverages, mascara that could cause blindness, and worthless “cures” for diabetes and tuberculosis.

— Same source

FDR greatly increased the regulatory powers of the FDA as part of the New Deal. These regulations also granted emergency powers to the FDA, which were employed to authorize the mass vaccinations against Polio in the 1950s.

After the Thalidomide Scandal of the 1960s, these powers were significantly enhanced again. Americans were largely spared the horrors of Thalidomide thanks to the refusal of Frances Oldham Kelsey to authorize it for sale in the US because she had concerns about the lack of evidence regarding the drug’s safety, a position for which she came under attack by the manufacturer.

Experts estimate that thalidomide led to the death of approximately 2,000 children and serious birth defects in more than 10,000 children, with over half of them in West Germany. I have to admit to a personal stake in this story – my mother was prescribed Thalidomide but found it to be of little benefit, and so stopped taking it, and so I have no observed defects resulting from the drug; I have always regarded this as a bullet dodged. I have a distant cousin who was not so lucky; his left arm ended at the elbow, and I was constantly amazed by his ability to overcome this limitation.

What none of the articles report is the allegation contained in Arthur Hailey’s Strong Medicine, alleging that even after the Scandal broke and the connection between birth defects and Thalidomide was established, it continued to be sold in various third-world markets as a medication for morning sickness. While some of the criticism of the novel’s flaws is valid, I still regard it as a fairly balanced review of the benefits and potential pitfalls of a for-profit drug manufacturing environment and the regulatory necessity that the environment necessitates. Say what you will about his characters, Hailey did good research for his novels, making them useful reference sources for GMs.

There is, of course, serious downsides to the level of protection provided by these regulatory requirements – delays and expense. Watershed moments in medical regulation that occur outside the scope of this era include the creation of the Generic Drugs industry, which derives from a more streamlined approvals process in the 1980s, the carving out of exceptions in the case of life-threatening health emergencies that derive from the AIDS epidemic, and which led to 21st century reforms which enabled the rapid approval and distribution of Coronavirus Vaccines – despite the claims of some, now the most widely-tested vaccines in existence.

It is ironic, but a measure of the level of acceptance of medical regulation by the public, that the complaint of many who otherwise oppose government regulation is that these vaccines had not been sufficiently tested.

Environmental Protections

It’s a shame that the same level of respect is not endowed upon the EPA – an agency proposed and created by Richard Nixon in the 1970s after about twenty years of growing demand for environmental regulation.

This is not to suggest that there was no regulation prior to the founding of the EPA; there was, but it was distributed through many agencies, piecemeal, and sometimes contradictory in what it permitted and what it made illegal.

Pesticides, for example, were regulated by both the US Department Of Agriculture and the US Department of the Interior. There may have been some additional regulations regarding its transportation under the Department of Transport, too.

A lot of the modern perception of corporate culture actually stems from the problems attacked by the EPA through the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, and the public perceptions created by popular culture in the 60s and 70s, for example by songs such as “Down By The River” by Albert Hammond.

Throughout the 1970s, there was a growing litany of stories about pollution and contamination of soil and water intruding into the public awareness. But my favorite references from popular culture stem from a later time:

• SIlkwood (1983 film starring Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Cher);
• Erin Brockovich (2000 film starring Julia Roberts)
• A Civil Action (1998 film starring John Travolta), and the 1995 book of the same name by Jonathon Harr;
• and The Pelican Brief (1993 film starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington), and the 1992 book of the same name, by John Grisham.

To those references, you can add awareness of the history of Wittenoom in Western Australia (made famous internationally by the Midnight Oil song Blue Sky Mine, and the decades-long fight for compensation by victims of Asbestosis here in Australia plus the broader international lawsuits on the subject (refer Wikipedia – Asbestos and the Law – Litigation). I could also refer to the Ozone layer and current attempts to eliminate single-use plastics – attempts which appear to be failing – but this section is more than sufficiently comprehensive already.

Between them, these paint an almost cartoonish impression of business’ willingness to look the other way when it comes to environmental concerns. When generalized, this impression provides a foundation for environmentally-related plotlines, in much the same way as oversimplifications of the pharmaceuticals industry and consumer protection provide a framework for drama.

Responsibility By Proxy

Citizens have grown so used to the protections provided by these and similar agencies that they have generally forgotten what things were like before they were significantly empowered. There is a general sense in some circles that they don’t have to worry because the government wouldn’t let anything bad happen, and even that excessive regulation can be pared back without risk of significant harm.

Business, too, has grown accustomed to having restrictions placed upon them by such agencies, and while they will continually demand the elimination of regulation as “red tape”, they too have the attitude of “nothing bad will happen”. In general, this stems from a myopic perspective in which only they are able to flout, evade, or escape the protections, rather than considering the cumulative impact of many such acts of contamination.

The economic protections put in place by the New Deal were systematically weakened and watered down by successive governments until history was permitted to repeat itself, resulting in the GFC. New regulations were then put in place, only to be weakened or eliminated by the Trump presidency – which led to the recent banking crisis, and could easily have resulted in another GFC / Great Depression, had not intervention been successful.

Similar stories are emerging about environmental contamination after the weakening of the EPA, and the active undermining of public confidence in the FDA over Coronavirus vaccines and treatments is well-known. But all these lie in the future of this era, when the general perception is that anything can be fixed by an enlightened government – but there is always a question as to whether or not the price of that cure and clean-up is worth it.

Aviation

After making a big deal about how I was saving this subject for this article, even though Aviation was born during the previous age, I managed to completely forget to include it when I initially laid out this article. Fortunately, I remembered before it was too late!

Aviation – specifically, powered heavier-than-air flight – began with the flight at Kitty Hawk by the Wright Brothers, though there were several others who came close, creating many competing claims to the honor.

Clement Ader of France flew 50m in 1890, but failed to achieve sufficient altitude to claim the honor – at least, according to some. Ader claimed in November 1906 that he had made a successful “uninterrupted flight” of around 300m on October 14, 1897, for two officials from the French War Ministry were not convinced – and the test was designated a military secret and not publicly revealed until 1910. This claim was widely believed at the time, but later discredited.

On 14 August 1901, Gustav Whitehead claimed to have carried out a controlled, powered flight in his Number 21 monoplane at Fairfield, Connecticut. An account of the flight appeared in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald and was repeated in newspapers throughout the world.[citation needed] Whitehead claimed two more flights on 17 January 1902, using his Number 22 monoplane.

Whitehead claims are ignored or dismissed by mainstream aviation historians,

— Wikipedia, Early Flying Machines

— though a few consider them to be the first manned, powered, heavier-than-air flight – with no proof that they actually took place.

On 6 May 1896, Samuel Langley’s Aerodrome No. 5 made the first successful sustained flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven heavier-than-air craft of substantial size. It was launched from a spring-actuated catapult mounted on top of a houseboat on the Potomac River near Quantico, Virginia.

— Same source

— but these were unpiloted, and attempts to scale the aircraft up to sufficient size to permit the carriage of a pilot failed when the resulting aircraft proved too fragile.

Perhaps the most credible alternative claim belongs to Richard Pearse of New Zealand.

Witnesses interviewed many years afterward describe observing Pearse flying and landing a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright brothers flew.:Ambiguous statements made by Pearse himself make it difficult to date the aviation experiments with certainty.

— Wikipedia, Richard Pearse

The problem is that all the evidence is undated. Confusion over the date was enough to deny Pearse credit for being the first – though he still has his champions, even today.

Pearse himself admitted in a 1909 interview, “I did not attempt anything practical with the idea until 1904” – but what he meant by ‘practical’ remains unclear; did he mean that he made his flights in 1904, despite the witness recollections, or that he didn’t take the successful flights seriously until then? Pearse died in 1953, so we can’t seek clarification, but in a 1915 letter to the Evening Star, Pearse wrote,

“The honor of inventing the aeroplane […] is the product of many minds [but] pre-eminence will undoubtedly be given to the Wright brothers […] as they were actually the first to make successful flights with a motor-driven aeroplane.”

— Same source

To his credit, Pearse also described his flights as failing to be sufficiently controlled to qualify; his rudder would not work at speeds of less than 20 mph.

There were a number of other claimants to the honor, but they also fail to attract sufficient credibility either as to the dates, the flight profile, or whether they even took place.

So the Wright Brothers retain the official nod.

Aviation In WWI

Aviation developed in leaps and bounds during WWI, initially for aerial reconnaissance. Specialized variations began to appear, and pioneers pushed the limits of their machines, leading to the development of fighters, bombers, and trench strafers. Arguably, it was in the logistics of coordinating ground activities and aerial action that would be the greatest legacy.

Post-War

After the war, these early aviators began taking contracts for the delivery of mail at premium prices, and – in general – accepting any excuse to take their machinery into the air. But, as yet, they had neither the range nor the cargo capacity to be commercially viable operations.

And this is a series about economics.

Commercial Aviation

Aircraft engineering steadily improved through the post-war years, increasing both range and carrying capacity. To some extent, these were aspects of the same problem – heavier lifting capacity enabled the installation of a larger fuel tank – so it would be more correct to state that engine & fuel efficiency, aerodynamics, controls, and instrumentation steadily improved. Eventually a tipping point was reached at which point a commercially viable aircraft could be manufactured, not as a bespoke custom creation, but as an industrial product.

The Douglas DC-3 was the first commercially-viable aircraft. Capable of profitable operation carrying passengers alone, or of being reconfigured in various ways to make it a cargo aircraft, it was an extremely reliable workhorse.

Everything that commercial aviation became by the time of the oil crisis – the chosen end-point for this historical period – began with the DC-3.

Origins

8 years before the DC-3, Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic, and a year later, Charles Kingsford-Smith flew solo across the pacific. These were harbingers of the impact that commercial aviation would have on the world, proving that it was now possible to get almost anywhere by air.

The DC-3 was preceded by the DC-2, a 14-passenger aircraft that competed with the Boeing 247.

In the early 1930s, fears about the safety of wooden aircraft structures drove the US aviation industry to develop all-metal airliners. United Airlines had exclusive right to the all metal twin-engine Boeing 247; rival TWA issued a specification for an all-metal trimotor.

The Douglas response was more radical. When it flew on July 1, 1933, the prototype DC-1 had a robust tapered wing, retractable landing gear, and two 690 hp (515 kW) Wright radial engines driving variable-pitch propellers. It seated 12 passengers.

— Wikipedia, Douglas DC-2

The year after the debut of the DC-2, Douglas unveiled the DC-3. It was all Boeing’s fault.

TWA’s rival in transcontinental air service, United Airlines, was starting service with the Boeing 247, and Boeing refused to sell any 247s to other airlines until United’s order for 60 aircraft had been filled. TWA asked Douglas to design and build an aircraft that would allow [them] to compete with United. Douglas’ design, the 1933 DC-1, was promising, and led to the DC-2 in 1934. The DC-2 was a success, but with room for improvement.

The DC-3 resulted from a marathon telephone call from American Airlines CEO C. R. Smith to Donald Douglas, when Smith persuaded a reluctant Douglas to design a sleeper aircraft based on the DC-2 to replace American’s Curtiss Condor II biplanes. The DC-2’s cabin was 66 inches (1.7 m) wide, too narrow for side-by-side berths. Douglas agreed to go ahead with development only after Smith informed him of American’s intention to purchase 20 aircraft.

— Wikipedia. Douglas DC-3

Many factors converged to make the DC-3 exceptional – improvements over the capabilities of the DC-2 in virtually every respect were incorporated.

The DC-3 cruised at 207 mph (333 km/h), carried 14 passengers in sleeper configuration or 21-32 passengers with traditional seats, or 6,000 lbs (2700 kg) of cargo, and could carry them 1500 miles (2400 km). It needed shorter airstrips than the DC-2. It was faster, cheaper to run, easier to maintain, more capable in the air, and more reliable.

Let’s put all that into a practical comparison:

Eastbound transcontinental flights could cross the U.S. in about 15 hours with three refueling stops, while westbound trips against the wind took 17½ hours. A few years earlier, such a trip entailed short hops in slower and shorter-range aircraft during the day, coupled with train travel overnight.

— Same source

Faster aircraft were soon developed – that cost a lot more to run and carried a lot less. Transports with greater capacity were developed – but they were slower and more expensive per pound of cargo. More economical aircraft were developed – with a fraction of the capacity, speed, and reliability. The DC-3 seemed to have magically landed on the ‘sweet spot’ of the optimum configuration.

If that were not the case, it is unlikely that it would have had the economic impact that it did; something else would have been the ‘iconic’ aircraft of its era.

Mail

The Universal Postal Union adopted comprehensive rules for airmail at its 1929 Postal Union Congress in London. Since the official language of the Universal Postal Union is French, airmail items worldwide are often marked Par Avion, literally: “by airplane”.

For about the first half century of its existence, transportation of mail via aircraft was usually categorized and sold as a separate service (airmail) from surface mail.

— Wikipedia, Airmail

The impact of air mail is best measured in days. Before the service, there would have been a zone around the poster in which next-day delivery was possible (let’s simplify and assume a single delivery each day, even though many locations had two or more mail deliveries daily).

Beyond this range, there would have extended psuedopod zones along railroad lines, in which overnight delivery might still have been possible, depending on the speed of trains and the terrain over which they had to run. Outside these additions to the ‘next day’ zone would have been another of roughly equal distance in which ‘day after next’ delivery could be achieved, and so on. For coast-to-coast mail, 3-5 days of travel were required.

The DC-3 made next-day delivery to anywhere serviced by air traffic possible. If the postal destination was not in such a location, it might still have been a two-day process – at worst.

For anything truly urgent, cables by telegraph remained faster – but forewent privacy and length. And for most commercial agreements, privacy is essential.

But the greater impact was on personal communications. Before air mail, the speed of communications meant that a letter a month was the most that could be reasonably expected from family members who had moved elsewhere. It might take a week for such mail to be delivered, so there was no sense of immediacy; everything was at a distance. Even when rail transportation improved delivery speeds, occasional long letters remained the norm.

With air mail, everywhere became so much closer that it created a psychological point of difference; people thought about mail differently, even when they weren’t using the service. It became a reasonable expectation to get a (much shorter) letter every week, perhaps containing a photograph or souvenir. People’s lives became far more entwined.

This effect was doubled or more with respect to international mail – instead of three months by ship, it might be a week or two to send a letter by air.

Business Travel

Business travel to somewhere some distance away used to be a major undertaking – one planned to be away for a week or more, and that’s just within the continental US. Significant planning was required. This naturally compromised the scope of business.

Air travel used to be very expensive. If a New Yorker really had a business need to visit (say) San Francisco, three-to-five days rail travel – each way – was involved, plus the duration of stay in the remote city.

If you could afford air travel, that becomes one day each way. It’s still not enough to travel casually, but it is enough to make such travel routine. And, with the shorter time requirements, it becomes more acceptable to travel for just a few hours or for a day. If your schedule worked out, you could even travel and have a business meeting the same day.

Networks of businesses and employees become possible. Instead of needing to contract locally, you could negotiate with suppliers anywhere else in the continent – you might need to factor additional freight costs for the commodities, but with those factored in, you effectively had dozens or hundreds of suppliers competing for your business.

And you, in turn, were competing with dozens or hundreds of rivals who wanted to provide a better deal to your customers.

Air Freight

And that’s without factoring in any impact from air freight. This trades speed for price – but when you absolutely have to have it ASAP, air freight was the answer. Initially expensive, but economies of scale would make mail-order shopping a reality before the 1950s.

For a while, there were even products custom-built to travel by air freight – lighter and flimsier, but cheaper. It soon transpired that unnecessary bulk became a significant negative factor for local customers, too; leaner and cheaper was an effective market division.

Tourism

The price of air travel also yields to economies of scale. At first, something only the rich could afford, but by the 1960s, it was entirely reasonable to pack up the family and fly somewhere for a week’s vacation once a year. In the 70s and 80s, this effect would become international in scope.

Instead of spending four or five days in the car getting somewhere, and then four or five days coming back again, you could be there tonight – and spending six or eight days at your holiday destination.

Travel for tourism would not become casual until after this era was concluded, but non-casual travel for tourism starts now.

Personal

It suddenly becomes possible to travel in order to attend some family function. It’s still a big deal, but it can’t automatically be ruled out. This has two impacts of note.

First, it brings family closer together, breaking down the barrier of distance that made family cohesion so much harder to maintain. This is already underway because of the impact of air mail; personal travel acts as an amplifier.

Second. it reduces the impost of such family functions; instead of something really major (significant anniversary, marriage within the immediate family, parental funeral), it becomes acceptable to travel more regularly, so you need less of an excuse (birthday, graduation, whatever).

Secondary impacts

These are all primary impacts, stemming directly from the economic realities and possibilities of air travel. Secondary ripples are just as significant. Spending and shipping gifts becomes far more normal. Lots more people want to pay for transient accommodations, and food, and entertainment. There’s a wholesale shift in spending patterns for at least part of the year.

In the past, you might have cabled a florist, who fulfilled and delivered your order. Now you could send a cutlery set or nick-knack personally chosen to be valuable to the recipient. Result – store that sells the nick-knack has your money and the florist does not.

This isn’t a complete transformation; florists don’t all close overnight. What changes is personalization; where once, it would have been extremely difficult to arrange, it now becomes possible to include a personal, handwritten, card with a floral delivery without your going anywhere near the city of delivery.

Although it won’t be expressed in such terms, or even noticed, until the next era, what has happened is that distance has compressed. Faster travel makes the world smaller, makes more people (effectively) neighbors, and more closely connects the world.

But not half as much as the next significant development in this era will – though that will have to wait until the next chapter, I’m out of time!

In the next chapter – Space Flight, Miniaturization, Atomics, and RPG economics!

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.

Welcome & General Introduction

With each part of the series, we find ourselves treading ground that is more and more familiar.

That’s both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it becomes more and more familiar, a curse because it gets harder to offer something new to readers, and because it gets easier for distinguishing features to get lost and confused.

From A Writing Perspective

This blurring is something that I’m keenly aware of, and will be fighting hard to overcome. But it’s not helped by the fact that right off the bat, there’s a half-truth necessary.

I could have called this ‘the Atomic Age’ – but Atomic Energy never had the impact that SF writers of the era anticipated. Why that was the case is one critical element of this article.

I could have called this the ‘Post-Industrial Age’ – but that implies that Industrial growth isn’t relevant, and that’s completely false-to-fact. The cause of ongoing industrial growth as an economic driver changes in this era, but the growth itself remains as relevant as ever – and that’s another central subject of this part of the series.

It could have been called the ‘Home technology Age’, which is completely accurate – and completely ignores the features that distinguish this age from the one that follows, sending entirely the wrong message. So the growth of Home Technology and its social consequences are a third defining factor of this age that needs examination.

In the end, I’ve titled it the “Pre-Digital Tech Age’ – but that implies that computers and digital technology in general play no part in the economy of the time, and that’s true only in comparison with future time-periods to come (‘The Data Age’ and ‘The Information Age’ – names subject to change!). So the nuances of the role of computers in society and the economy is another focal point that needs to be addressed.

it’s actually fairly rare for the title of one of my articles to drive the delineation of content so profoundly; quite often, the titles are amongst the last things that I fix, having used a working title as a placeholder during the writing – but this time around there is so much depth and nuance buried within the title that this discussion serves as something of a table of contents for the article to come!

Beyond those content elements, there are the four items that I’ve been foreshadowing at the conclusion of previous parts of the series – ‘The Gold Standard’ (again), ‘Resources & Regulation’, ‘Inflation & Hyperinflation’, and ‘Commercialism, Deregulation, Privatization, & Greed’, and there is the relevance in various RPG genres to discuss – fantasy, various sub-genres of Sci-Fi, spies & secret agents, apocalyptic visions, and more.

All this and a (mostly) cold war, too! Which adds up to 73 sections and sub-sections. Fortunately, I don’t have to cover all of this in just one article. – I’ve left myself scope to split it in two or even three. I would have preferred to cover it all in one got, so that I could steal the next for the article that I originally intended to write, before it morphed into this whole series, but that’s probably not possible, with so much to cover – unless I can squeeze most of them down into just a paragraph or two.

I have checked (as I usually do when this is a possibility) and the article does break naturally into both 2 or 3 parts. So we’ll just have to see how I get on!

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.

Where We’re At – 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 general principles contained within these bullet points are important enough that I’m going to be repeating them in the ‘opening salvos’ of the remaining articles in the series.

Beginning & End-Points of the “Pre-Digital Tech Age”

Defining the beginning and end points of these eras grows more complex with each additional part of the series, because these are thematic dividing lines, drawn somewhat arbitrarily; it would be easy to select different start and end points just by tweaking the thematic definitions.

Deciding whether or not make such changes ultimately comes down to whether or not the significance of those themes would be buried, confused, or lost by the change, so there are limits that have to be recognized. I’ve chosen definitions and end-points that I think recognize those limits, but this is subjective to a certain extent.
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Sidebar: A storytelling parallel

When you have a strongly serialized campaign, you can encounter similar questions regarding the points at which one ‘adventure’ ends and the next begins. I use the same basic criteria – thematic content and whether or not those themes become muddied, confused, or lost by expanding the end-point. That’s not the only way of handling the issue, but I think it’s the one that adds the most value to a campaign.

A far more difficult question would be whether or not I have chosen this approach to this article because I’m used to using it in RPG campaigns. I’ll leave that assessment to others, though.

The Rise Of Fascism

The beginning point is easy, because I announced it in discussing the end point of the previous part of the series. Fascism held a great appeal in the early part of the mid-twentieth century, something that I’ll look at as the article proceeds.

The original intent was to set the dividing line at that point in which Fascism began to have influence at an international level, but I soon found that this was much harder to pin down than I had expected – and the earliest possible interpretation of that definition intruded into a time when the previous era had clearly not yet run its course.

Overlap with The Age Of Electrification

This requires a softer boundary between the two eras, in which the transition is slower, more gradual, and more nuanced. A little reflection should have told me this would the case; after all many parts of the US did not achieve electrification until the 50s, and some took twenty years longer than that again.

Either the earlier era didn’t end so much as peter out, or some arbitrary dividing line had to be drawn, beyond which those communities who had not yet achieved full electrical supply were considered pockets of exceptions to the general rule. Ultimately, a hybrid of the two options seemed the best choice, one in which this era gradually becomes dominant over the previous one; priorities change, themes differ, points of distinction morph and shift, and one historical period becomes another.

Local vs National vs International

The dominance of issues on the national scale, rather than a uniform transition nation-wide, became the (rather nuanced) dividing line. So this era starts with the rise of ultra-nationalism in the 1920s and early 30s, first at a local scale and then as a significant national trend, even though the previous era had not yet reached its conclusion.

Beginning Of The End: The 1970s Oil Crisis

A similar problem arises when contemplating the end of the era. It’s not as though there was some watershed moment in which the perceptions of reality shifted; instead, there was a gradual drift from one set of policy priorities and agendas to another.

Thematic definitions make it clear when things started to change – the 1970s Oil Crisis, when suddenly scarcity of available resources intruded upon world consciousness like a bolt from the blue. This is so profound a change relative to the preceding period that it makes a natural demarcation point.

End Of The End: Windows 3.0 or The Fall of The Wall?

But not every thematic element of the era came to an end at the same time. Others persisted, creating another fuzzy boundary. It proved impossible to choose between two quite different end-points for the transition, simply because they had such different spheres of influence.

The two flagship contenders were the rise of personal computing (another somewhat amorphous boundary, represented by the release of Windows 3.0 on May 22, 1990) or the fall of the Berlin Wall (on 9 November 1989), symbolic of the end of the Cold War that had been such a dominant part of international relations and national economics & society through the 1950s and 60s.

Windows 3 began the transition to Graphical User Interfaces, and commercialized computing for the business and personal worlds. It’s easy to draw a straight developmental line from that point to the ubiquitous dominance of the modern smartphone, a thematic connection that is definitive of the era that follows; so that is a strong contender.

And the sudden and completely unexpected (at the time) fall of the Wall was a cultural landmark that sharply divides the Pre-Digital Tech Age from the era that follows it.

As with the beginnings of this era, I decided to answer the question by avoiding it completely. So that six-month period marks the transition between eras that defines the end of this historical period.

A rejected flagship moment: 20 July, 1969

Another watershed moment that, from a whole-of-planet perspective, at least deserves consideration was the first manned landing on the Moon. yet, it took hardly any thought to dismiss it as a contender.

The first moon landing was the culmination of years of effort on an international scale, but it did not mark the end of man’s exploration of space; arguably, the first weather and communications satellites (Vanguard 2, launched February 17, 1959, and Project SCORE, launched 18 December 1958, respectively) were better signposts to the long-term impact on human society.

Moon landings continued until 14 December, 1972, and three more planned missions were canceled. In terms of the cultural big picture, the fact of these cancellations looms just as large as the first success, so it can be seen that the ‘definitive moment’ quickly gets spread out over a substantial time frame.

More telling even than this uncertainty is the fact that social and economic trends already extant continued beyond them all. As a human achievement, Apollo 11 is a globally-significant landmark, but in terms of delineating one historical period from another, it is somewhat lacking.

Sci-fi economic footnotes of significance

There are two scenarios in which the first manned Moon landing would be a valid end-point, and they deserve amplification, however brief:

Scenario 1: Lunar Colonization

Had a successful case been mounted for ramping the Apollo program up rather than shutting it down, the next stage would have been lunar colonization. The case would need to be made that this would have a marked impact on terrestrial problems and cost-effectiveness would need clear demonstration, probably achieved through the opportunities for commercialization of colonial activities. While this scenario seems unlikely, given the existing social trends, it is at least a plausible possibility. The impact on society – technologically, socially, and economically – would have made the first landing a sufficient watershed moment that it would define a new socioeconomic era in human history.

The problem was that NASA was so busy working on achieving success that they never planned beyond it, simply taking it for granted. Had a credible plan for the development of Lunar resources been formulated and presented as taking effect after the initial success (whenever that was to be achieved), and all subsequent missions designed as stepping stones to that development, then the cost to date could have been redefined as an ‘investment in future prosperity’ that could have undercut the harshest criticisms of the Program.

Changes to our history would have to have predated Apollo 11, though they probably would not have attracted public attention. It’s also arguable that the landing difficulties experienced by Apollo 11 would have mandated Apollo 12 proceed as it did, historically, establishing the capacity for precision landing. But from that point on, history would have been increasingly divergent.

Scenario 2: Delayed Lunar Landing

It’s arguable that the Apollo program was a victim of it’s own success, that it took every shortcut to achieve that success because of the Space Race, and that the long-term national interests of the US might have been better served had it taken a different direction – aiming not for the showy Moon Landings but for sophistication in technological capabilities and a 25-year plan that focused on efficiency, reliability, and the development of foundational technologies. Unmanned Satellites / Mercury; Space Platform / Gemini; Space Station / Apollo; Colonization. This would have had the mantra ‘never a backwards step’, with each stage having a clear technological target with planned commercial .spin-offs after the achievement of that target, and each step building on the one before it.

Under this plan, instead of ‘before the end of the decade’, the lunar landings would have come in 1980 or 1985. Personally, I don’t think this scenario is as realistic as the first, failing to fully account for the cold war mentality and imperative; the goal of doing things ‘better’ instead of ‘first’ is a much harder sell. There’s too much hindsight in the mix, in other words, too much that was not obvious at the time.

Setting such criticism aside, however, it makes for a compelling sci-fi foundation. It especially makes sense in an environment in which the US government is receiving advice from non-terrestrials, being a more logical developmental program. A bold move, risking war, to handicap the Russian space program through an act of sabotage would have minimized the fallout from the delays, resulting in an environment well-suited to dramatic adventure in an RPG with just enough plausibility to succeed – as a piece of fiction.

Once again, it is the ongoing economic impact that makes the resulting Lunar Landing a significant-enough event to delineate the end of a socioeconomic era.

Themes Of The Pre-Digital Tech world

Having defined, however loosely, the boundary points of the era, the themes that dominate society and economics in the resulting period can be observed. I have to emphasize that these are not being identified from a perspective of assessing the ‘dominant themes’ of a defined span of history; instead, these themes are what give the era its cohesion, and define those end-points.

There are 12 of these themes to which I want to call attention.

Theme 1: Liberty Vs Collectivism Vs Authoritarianism

A hangover from the previous era is the conflict between the principles of individual liberty, collective welfare / security, and the abdication of liberty to perceived authority. The conflict between Business and Unions is an ongoing aspect of this broader theme; the political conflict between Democracy and Communism (in various forms) is another, that did not really exist prior to this era, and in its most overt form, one that is fully self-contained by it; and, of course, the perception of an authority greater than the will of the populace, to which individual liberty should be sacrificed, is both an element of the Democracy / Communist confrontation and of the earlier Fascism / Rest-of-the-world conflict.

Perhaps less obvious is that any form of ‘planned society’ – including those who abdicate personal liberty to the will of a religious authority, and those who call for a technocratic society – also falls under this heading. Such planned societies were popular concepts among sci-fi writers and futurists, and there was an actual political movement aimed at achieving one in the 1930s as an answer to the Great Depression (see Technocracy Movement.

Theme 2: Golden Hangover: A Mixed Blessing

There was a growing sentiment at the start of the era that the benefits of a Gold Standard or other form of fixed currency were not worth the liabilities. Such standards for national currencies can function reasonably effectively in isolation, but as soon as international trade enters the picture, problems arise. As explained previously, the Gold Standard is now considered responsible (at least in part) for the Great Depression becoming a global phenomenon rather than being confined to the USA. It was also my conjecture that it also played a significant part in creating the economic conditions that led to the rise of Fascism; blaming war reparations for those conditions now seems an oversimplification and superficial.

Throughout the early part of the era, governments would flirt with the concept of floating currencies as fixed valuations of currency came and went. By its end, the jury had made its call, and fixed currencies were largely relegated to the dustbin of history. The repeated turbulence of that transition would be another hallmark of the era.

In particular, World War II showed the extent to which industrial productivity was hamstrung by a fixed currency; in order to afford the war, without the now-evident problems of reparations, the US abandoned the Gold Standard (only to restore it at War’s end), but the writing was now on the wall for the concept.

That’s not to pretend that a floating currency doesn’t have its own problems, amongst them the temptation to run a deficit economy, spending tomorrow’s money to better one’s political today. When justifications for such spending are economic in nature – smoothng over rough economic waters, for example, by taking the top off anticipated future prosperity, or investing in creating the conditions necessary for such future prosperity – they can be justified; as soon as rationales move beyond these limits, however, cracks begin to show.

Currency controls are a hybrid option that has become more widely known of late, but ‘managed economies’ were largely viewed as a pipe-dream capturing the weaknesses of both systems through this period of time. Even now, the jury is still out on that front. During the era in question, a ‘responsive’ floating currency became the dominant choice, globally, despite the shortcomings.

Theme 3: Unlimited Resources

Although some were sounding warnings about limited natural resources through the latter part of the era, if not sooner, they were mostly ignored; both populations and governments operated under the presumption that there were unlimited resources waiting to be found.

No-one was so foolish as to deny that commercial quantities were clustered and concentrated in different parts of the world; this was viewed as the very foundation of international trade, and the basis of an ever-increasing standard of living.

Theme 4: Unlimited Opportunities

It followed that there were unlimited opportunities for those willing to seek them out, and this also colors international relations throughout the period. In particular, diplomacy became perceived as a means of achieving those opportunities in the post-war world.

Theme 5: Unbounded Optimism

The combination of the two meant that there was a perception that mankind was heading for a golden age, if only the horrors of extreme nationalism and atomic annihilation could be avoided. Much of the appeal of this era lies rooted in this perception, and it is still often viewed through rose-colored glasses because of it. This nostalgic preference for simpler times continues to be a political factor to this day; this lies at the heart of the MAGA movement, for example.

Theme 6: Legacy of the New Deal: Big Government

Throughout the preceding Age Of Electrification, the influence of Government had been waning, blamed for all sorts of social shortcomings. In particular, the failure of social engineering programs like Prohibition had highlighted the limitations of government. The Great Depression, and the need for government regulation, and the New Deal, combined to redefine the value of Government to the lives of the ordinary citizen.

Ongoing manifestations of this theme include the regulation / deregulation principles of many opposing political forces throughout this era, often characterized as Big vs Small government, and anti- vs pro- business conflicts. These competing social movements had existed long before this era began, and would continue long after it ended; what changed was the way in which they were perceived, both politically and by society at large.

In particular, progressive movements embraced the regulatory principle and conservative movements, the deregulatory principle. This is true not only of the Republicans and Democrats of US Politics; it manifests in the policies of many political parties in many countries around the world, and has become largely definitive of what those parties represent.

During the Pre-Digital Tech Age, Big Government and progressive movements dominate in the US, with conservative governments largely restricted to a social pattern of ‘two steps forward, one step back’. Many of the institutions and principles established in this era, and in the preceding Age Of Electrification, are still present and relevant today, though many have come under direct attack recently. The responsibilities accepted by governments and the institutions created to discharge them are characteristic elements of the era.

Theme 7: Delegated Responsibility

Are American readers familiar with the term “Nanny State“? It is more widely applied, and has many more interpretations in different parts of the world, than most readers will recognize, but in general it is held to describe a government that is perceived as overprotective of some segment of the nation under its authority. None can argue that there have been instances of overreach by governments in the past – Prohibition is the red-letter example. In general, the term is over-used, in my opinion – but there is a truth at the heart of it that manifests in the Pre-Digital Tech Age: the abdication of personal responsibility because the Government is there to act like a protective parent.

It can be argued that there is a line beyond which government protection should not extend, so that people are forced to stumble and fall and learn for themselves. The alternative is just as authoritarian as Fascism, albeit with a greater concern for the welfare of the citizens at its heart – a genuine Nanny State. I’m not going to try to debate that argument, or even take a stand on the issue, at least not in the course of this article; what matters in this context is not political philosophy, it is simply that the practice of delegating responsibility for personal safety of citizens begins in this era, and is characteristic of it.

Theme 8: The Power of Greed

Frequently cast as in opposition to protection of its citizens by Government is the ability of business, and individuals, to profit. In particular, the conservative position is to support business in an alleged environment in which that ability is constrained by excessive regulation. I think that this is a particularly short-sighted interpretation of Government regulation; you can’t get blood from a stone, and a smaller profit sustained over a much longer time-span will accumulate to a vastly greater sum. The real problem is impatience, the demand for immediate profit-gratification; make your money as quickly as possible, sell up, and hook your sleigh up to the next cometary rising star.

But that’s neither here nor there. In the context of this article, it is sufficient to note that shortsighted governments erode long-term protections to facilitate short-term satisfaction of greed; or, at least, that such satisfaction is the objective of short-sighted corporate executives, creating a perception – rightly or wrongly (probably both, depending on which example is drawn upon) – that a dominant social force is a conflict between business and the individual (which includes the customer). This perception is fostered throughout the era by politicians of all stripes for political advantage.

Theme 9: The Restraint of Greed

There is a principle in contract law that states that no agreement is legally-valid if there is an inequity in power between the parties. Thus, an agreement obtained under duress is legally invalid. This principle is frequently forced to apply well outside the boundaries of contract law, however – there are those who apply it to “Big Government” (implying that there is an inequality of power between government and those who elect them), and those who apply it to “Big Business” (implying that no contract with a commercial operation of any scale can ever be equitable). These interpretations give rise to “Sovereign Citizen” nonsense, but also give rise – through the delegation of protective responsibility of citizens to government authority – to the premise that it is a function of government to restrain the rapacious greed of large corporations.

This is the source of power of the belief that there is a conflict of interest between profits and customers, and that the maximizing of one must be detrimental to the other. This perception is at its height in this era, at least in some circles.

Theme 10: Regulation and Deregulation

These perceived tensions, often artificial in nature, give rise to the ongoing cycles of regulation and deregulation that have already been mentioned.

In this historical era, the forces of regulation are dominant, as already explained; short-term profiteering by corporations with no sense of responsibility to the public create a need for regulation that is hard to argue with. The problems generally arise through the implementation of regulation, and the inherent decrease in efficiency that results.

The forces advocating deregulation generally throw the baby out with the bathwater; rather than advocating the efficiency of regulation (not a very ‘sexy’ political position, but a responsible one), they favor complete deregulation because of the business and social costs of inefficient regulatory mechanisms.

Theme 11: Socialism Vs Authority

One can never completely ignore the lure of naked power, either; there are those who advocate against the welfare of others simply because it creates a pathway to power. When generalized into easy-to-digest soundbites, this becomes a conflict between Authority and Socialism, with the latter generally conflated with other political systems such as Communism. The polarizing effect of the Cold War pushes extremists into positions with respect to this perceived conflict. Although this line of argument had little impact in this era, because the focus was on the direct conflict of the Cold War, it has since become more tenable and overt as a political stratagem. But that didn’t stop politicians from trying, throughout this era, to paint any policy of which they didn’t approve as ‘socialist’, however accurate or inaccurate the characterization.

This frequently pushed their opponents into a position of being perceived as supporting policies and doctrines that they actually opposed, giving rise to the term “spin”. There were also times when public messaging would be subjected to “spin” as a defensive move. While this is a minor and secondary theme of this era, it starts here and will only grow worse in subsequent historical periods.

Theme 12: Anti-Fascist Hangover: Privatization

Finally, another minor theme that would become far more widely-applicable in subsequent eras is Privatization – the sale of a public utility or service contract to an outside entity that can be operated for a profit. In Australia, where the sugar rush of deficit economics was deemed by the culture to be unacceptable, this became a way of infusing treasuries with sizable chunks of cash; more importantly, by estimating the proceeds of such sales, even though they had not yet taken place, governments could spend the money in advance. This is deficit economics behind the curtain.

Citizens were rarely given advance notice or the ability to veto such sales; at best, some sort of guarantee of service standards could be demanded, for whatever they were worth.

It is noticeable, though, that many of the institutions privatized by various Australian governments were always in private hands in other nations. Locally, the attitude was that this guaranteed service delivery at the most affordable price; the anticipation was that service standards would slip, or the costs of those services would increase, or both. At first, there was little evidence of this, but those success stories were followed in time by others that were not so well-received, and still more that lived down to expectations. Those still lie in the future, beyond this era.

That is not to say that there were no examples of privatization elsewhere; there were. Because of the Big Government flavor of the era, though, I have a sense that most of them occurred afterwards: National carriers (airlines, train services), banks both central and not, telecommunications providers, city bus lines and metro rail services, health services, even prisons and energy grids. While the majority of these fall outside the extent of this era, there are some notable exceptions that demonstrate that this economic practice was as much a part of this era.

Fascist Germany privatized almost everything, in direct opposition to the public perception of the policies of the regime.

“It is a fact that the government of the National Socialist Party sold off public ownership in several state-owned firms in the middle of the 1930s. The firms belonged to a wide range of sectors: steel, mining, banking, local public utilities, shipyard, ship-lines, railways, etc. In addition to this, delivery of some public services produced by public administrations prior to the 1930s, especially social services and services related to work, was transferred to the private sector, mainly to several organizations within the Nazi Party.”

— Germa Bel, “Against The Mainstream: Privatization in 1930s Germany 1”, The Economic History Review, quoted by Wikipedia – Privatization.

Great Britain privatized its steel industry in the 1950s, and the West German government embarked on large-scale privatization, including sale of the majority stake in Volkswagen to small investors in public share offerings in 1961.

— Wikipedia, same page

Perhaps more than the actual practice, though, the era was characterized by ongoing threats of privatization. Governments through the era of electrification were increasingly perceived as the neutral power-broker forging balanced agreements between business owners and unions, and there was an ongoing perception of bias when the government itself was one of the parties to labor disputes, for obvious reasons; privatization was seen as a way to cut this Gordian knot. Other motivations would dominate the argument in the 1980s, and that might be one reason why so many acts of Privatization too place then.

It was also seen by some as a way to “shrink” Big Government, placing regulatory powers ‘where they belonged’ (in the hands of industry players), but in a broader context, the privatization debate was all about expectations of government, which were changing throughout this era.

Twelve themes, not all equal in impact or scope, but all characteristic of the era in one way or another.

Having erected the goal-posts and tied the backdrop to those pillars, we’re now in a position to see how those themes impacted history, and how history shaped those themes.

World War 2: Economics

Fascism was seen by many as the path of the economic future, so successful did it appear through the 1930s.

By late 1923, the Wiemar Republic of Germany was issuing two-trillion mark banknotes and postage stamps with a face value of fifty billion marks. The highest value banknote issued by the Wiemar government’s Reichsbank had a face value of 100 trillion marks (10^14; 100,000,000,000,000; 100 million million). At the height of the inflation, one US dollar was worth 4 trillion German marks. One of the firms printing these notes submitted an invoice for the work to the Reichsbank for 32,776,899,763,734,490,417.05 (3.28 × 10^19, roughly 33 quintillion) marks.

— Wikipedia, Hyperinflation

The history of this period in the Wiemar Republic is replete with stories of people turning up to buy a loaf of bread with a wheelbarrow full of banknotes; while these may be an exaggeration, they are close enough to characterize the impact of the Great Depression on the German economy. In 1923, prices of goods were doubling every two days because the purchasing power of the currency was devaluing so quickly.

Eventually, the currency was replaced with a new one that sliced twelve zeroes off the value and indexed the value of the new currency to the value of gold at the same rate as the old currency prior to the period of inflation; while there was some slippage of value, in general, the new currency held.

That alone wasn’t enough to restore prosperity, though, just to stop the slide. The period of ill-will toward the government that followed was instrumental in bringing the Nazi Party to power.

The fascists set about restoring economic vigor by selling off a range of significant publicly-owned utilities, and reinvesting the proceeds – a lot of it in military equipment, much of which was supposedly banned by the Versailles Treaty, but some of it in engineering and industrialization. And it worked, or seemed to – and that was what caught the attention of the rest of the world.

The Economic Truth of Fascism

What wasn’t appreciated at the time – in fact, was completely unknown until relatively recently, because the Nazis burnt almost all the records (for reasons that will become obvious) – was that the reality was a house of cards. While there is no doubt that Hitler and his fascists had ideological grounds for their repressive actions against various population segments, the money generated by the seizure or assets were enough to keep the regime’s economic heads above water, at least for a while.

But they were spending money that they didn’t have, and hiding the fact with every dirty bookkeeping trick under sun (and then hiding that fact by literally burning the books and issuing blanket statements of economic vitality with no substance behind them). Having spent big on a significant military, as much for the economic benefits of funneling cash into the industrial base as for any other reason, they now had no option but to use it.

Initial attacks were carried out with an ulterior motive: the banks were seized and any wealth within, confiscated. One source estimated that at the time of the invasion of Poland, the Reich had liquidity to pay its civil servants for no more than three weeks.

Once on the treadmill, every act of conquest had to be paid for with another, though each enlarged the industrial and economic base, slowly stabilizing the system.

So well-hidden was this economic reality that a myth of stolen / hidden Nazi gold remains in vogue even today; assuming that the economy was stable meant that all the stolen wealth had to have been hidden away somewhere, just like the stolen art and cultural artifacts. In reality, it was spent almost as fast as it rolled through the door of the counting-house, the ultimate game of economic smoke-and-mirrors.

World War 2: Nationalism

The war had many impacts and repercussions. Most of this is already well-known, so I’ll only hit a few high-points and connect a few inobvious dots that may have escaped popular perception.

The first of these was a profound impact on a sense of nationalism. Every nation affected by this experienced it a little differently. Malta resisted conquest with grit and determination that remained unmatched until the invasion of Ukraine a little over a year ago, and this remains a unifying point of pride to the entire small country. England pulled together to resist the Blitz; rationing persisted into the 1950s as a consequence of the war, and these were as responsible as any other factor for the downfall of the Churchill government, post-war. Notably, the damage inflicted on their manufacturing capacity permitted modernization that helped bring prosperity back. Denmark’s covert resistance and France’s more overt resistance movements became points of national pride, too, and helped stitch these countries back into unity far more quickly and resolutely than anyone could have predicted. Germany was flattened by the combined militaries of the allied powers, necessitating almost total refurbishment post-war; this investment eventually made West Germany prosperous enough to enable it to stand alone, post-War, and even to absorb East Germany. A new wave of modernization there made Germany the economic powerhouse that it is today.

Cold War

With the conclusion of the War, Russia went its own way, abrogating just about every agreement that Stalin had made at the Malta Conference. Russia created a web of puppets around itself that became the USSR. But everyone else was accustomed to thinking of the collective over parochial national interests – or, more correctly, perceived that without unity as a backdrop, those parochial interests were under threat. So they were strongly invested in the United Nations and NATO, when the latter arose in response to the Eastern Bloc. Subjugation vs Internationalism – the first brought a forced conformity, the latter brought the freedom to have national interests within the scope of the larger picture.

The cold war was as much about post-war unity and reactions to the Fascist Regime of Nazi Germany as British pride at having weathered the Blitz.

World War 2: Industrialization

I’ve touched on this already, but it’s worth adding to the discussion – war damages forced rebuilding of industrial infrastructure throughout Europe and Japan. This was never like-for-like; modernization was at least as cost-effective as simple replacement.

But the country that industrialized the most during the war was, arguably, the US, and it lost virtually nothing of its pre-existing industrial capability. What it discarded was a lot of its economic and social preconceptions and assumptions. At the height of the war, tanks and aircraft were rolling off production lines faster than anyone would have believed possible at the start of the conflict. In part, this was because people pulled together in a way that would never happen outside wartime; in part, it was because national pride had been deeply wounded by the affront of Pearl Harbor.

In 1939, total aircraft production for the US military was less than 3,000 planes. By the end of the war, America produced 300,000 planes. No war was more industrialized than World War II. It was a war won as much by machine shops as by machine guns.

Aircraft companies went from building a handful of planes at a time to building them by the thousands on assembly lines. Aircraft manufacturing went from a distant 41st place among American industries to first place in less than five years.

— Wikipedia, United States aircraft production during World War II.

Similar scales of production were achieved in the production of armored vehicles (see Wikipedia – American armored fighting vehicle production during World War II) and Naval production (refer Wikipedia – Naval history of World War II).

Post-war, the awareness of what was possible in terms of industrial production underpinned both expectations and policies for business, government, and workers. Neither of the first two groups listed made sufficient allowance for the unwillingness of workers to shoulder the economic burdens that had been acceptable during wartime; the coalition that had brought about the conditions that had achieved so much production quickly fell apart, eventually leading to confrontations. In time, more balanced positions were found on the key issues and more realistic targets were adopted, but even at the resulting diminished scale, the US was the world’s largest manufacturer and economy for the remainder of the era.

World War 2: Technology

There was a perception that technology advanced by leaps and bounds during World War I, but in that respect, the earlier conflict was blown out of the water by developments during WW2.

In the five years (or so) prior to the outbreak of war in 1939, there was FM radio, Nylon, the Z1 (the first freely programmable computer), Nuclear Fission and the Defibrillator.

During the war, the cavity magnetron (the root technology of both Radar and the Microwave Oven), Polyester, the V-2 rocket, the non-infectious viral vaccine, the Jet Engine and the Atomic Bomb. There were developments in all forms of armament, in tanks and armored vehicles, in troop transportation, in devices for remote sensing, navigation, communications, cryptography, surgical techniques, chemical medications, naval vessels, aircraft design, engines, small arms, anti-tank weaponry, bomb design, and engine technologies – and that list is not exhaustive. You can throw in everything from artificial fuels and fuel additives through to aerodynamics on top of that, and literally hundreds more – most of them little things that made some existing product or process just that little bit better or more efficient to use or manufacture..

While a few of these had only military applications, most of these developments would play prominent roles in the post-war world, both directly and as the foundations of technologies to come.

Post-war: Industry

Every time a technology was refined into a domestic application, it needed a manufacturing plant to deliver the resulting product to the customers waiting for it. While the industrial boom that may have been expected after the standards st during wartime may not have eventuated, the diversification that followed made up for it. This was another aspect of the ‘golden age’ perception of the 1950s.

Cold War Tech & Secrecy

Technological advance didn’t stop with the end of the war, of course. Fueled by the Cold War that officially started in 1947 but whose origins could be traced to late February 1946 and George F Kennan’s Long Telegram, discussion of which was instrumental in formulating post-war strategy against the Soviet Union.

Aside from the general drive to out-produce and out-advance the perceived enemy, there were continual efforts to safeguard existing secrets – and for the US, that started with Atomic Weapons and ended with anything else that could be obtained, or delivered, by espionage. Ongoing efforts were invested into protecting such secrets and developing technologies that could assist in the pursuit..

Paranoia in Nationalism

It was very easy to slip over the mark into paranoia in the intensity of the cold war environment. In the US, this led to the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and Joseph McCarthy.

In England, they did their best not to fall into that rabbit hole, and – arguably – tried a little too hard; the exposure of the Cambridge Five struck their intelligence services like a thunderbolt, and – internally, at least – they became even more paranoid than the Americans, as shown by the extraordinary lengths to which they went during the Spycatcher incidents.

Once again, the manifestations may vary from nation to nation, but most were touched by cold war paranoia in one way or another.

Post-war Personal Prosperity

The more of something you make, the lower the unit price tends to become; there are all sorts of efficiencies that become possible through scale.

The lower the unit price of many things become, the more individuals from any given economic class can afford without significant increase in payment beyond compensating for inflation, of course.

The technology / industrial boom that followed the war thus manifested in a steadily-rising standard of living even for those in the lower rungs of the economy.

New Products: Home Tech

Of course, the higher your income bracket, the sooner you could afford the latest must-haves and the better the toys that you could afford, so there were distinct phases of technological adoption.

Non-portable Color TVs, for example, started off $500-$750 in the 1970s (when the technology was new). By the mid-80s, a decade later, a price somewhere in between those two would not only buy you a comparable TV, it would buy you one with stereo sound – despite the shrinkage of the dollar with inflation. These days, for a comparable unit, we’re talking USD $85 to $120 – and you can get a lot bigger and better, again despite all the shrinkage in the size of the dollar over the last 40 years and the massive improvement in display quality. In fact, if I correct for inflation, the price of a modern TV in 1985-dollars is $30-$40.

If it’s new, it costs a lot more. If it’s been around for a while, a new one costs a lot less, in relative terms.

That means that standard of living was rising faster than wages were, and that was a source of consumer confidence. Again, golden age, right?

The God Of Convenience

Somewhere along the line, somewhere in the 1950s, Convenience and comfort became the new Gods of home life. The scene in Back To The Future in which Alex’s grandfather puts the TV on wheels so that the family can watch Jackie Gleason while they eat will always exemplify this development to me, but there were many more manifestations – everything from remote controls to air-conditioning to auto-changing turntables to TV dinners.

This was another manifestation of the conspicuous rise in standard of living; simply having a capability was no longer enough, you had to have its usage or operation that little bit more convenient than it might have been, even if that cost a little more.

New Markets: Rise Of The Teenager

Those factors alone would have been enough to create prosperity for the business owner, but the 1940s also saw the rise of a newly-invented market – the teenager, initially characterized as a Bobby soxer (a female teenage fan of then-contemporary pop music, especially that of Frank Sinatra.

It wasn’t long before teenaged subcultures flourished. The concept that these subcultures might have their own product preferences and could be marketed to directly with products designed to appeal to them, not to children or to adults, took a little while to develop, but by the 1950s it was in full swing, both in retail and in society in general.

In order for a subculture to become a viable market, they have to have some earning capacity. There were two viable choices for teens looking to earn coin of the realm – they could work in the new Supermarkets, or they could work in a fast-food franchise, both of which boomed in the 1950s.

Supermarkets

Supermarkets evolved from the grocery stores of the 1930s and 40s. The primary point of differentiation was that customers took products directly from the shelves rather than interacting with a shopkeeper who could advise on product choice. The purchase was then completed by a cashier who totaled the payment owed, usually accompanied by a packer who placed purchases in bags to make them more convenient to carry.

The fact that product knowledge and judgment was not required made these roles tailor-made for teenagers, who cost a lot less to employ than an experienced grocer would demand in earnings. The speed and ease of shopping (and lack of waiting) also made them attractive in the new convenience-first environment. This also permitted a sharp rise in the variety of products on offer, so they were soon outperforming grocery stores on almost every front.

Fast Food

Fast food had been a ‘coming thing’ since 1916, or perhaps 1912, or maybe 1902, or even 1896 – but it didn’t really arrive until the first White Castle in 1921 or the first McDonald Brothers restaurants in the 1940s. And the milk bars of the 1950s swamped both – for a while, at least.

Being served food prepared by someone of similar age (and presumably tastes) proved a powerful marketing tool, but not a recognized one – teens were hired because they had to be paid less. Anything else was just a bonus!

Retail Outlets

A comparatively minor source of teen employment that should not be overlooked is working in the retail outlets that catered to the teen market. These were people who spoke the same language as the customers, with whom those customers could identify, and the marketing benefits were far more strongly recognized (if still not the dominant employment factor).

It’s an interesting question whether or not the teen market would have arisen spontaneously anyway, given the combination of factors that created the employment opportunities for the age group. The more cynical could suggest that, given a subculture (however unidentified) with cash in their pockets, people trying all kinds of methods of extracting that wealth would have arisen, and inevitably, one of them would have stumbled across the magic formula.

I’m not sure of the answer, but I’m completely confident that once stumbled across, the teenage market would be just as thoroughly and permanently embedded into the culture.

Distribution

The final factor that is needed for an economic boom is some method to convey product from maker to potential customer – mass distribution, in other words. This is where the New Deal paid unexpected post-war dividends; rail is constrained in its destination, and expensive to lay; it needs those costs to be amortized (“spread over”) multiple customers over a substantial period of time to recoup those expenses. On top of that, the motive power units were also expensive and took time to earn back the investment – but they were absolutely essential to earning anything from a railroad.

Roads are comparatively cheap (and come in a variety of standards with different price points), can be constructed relatively quickly, create a web or network of destinations, all of which are equally-accessible, and can be used by a basic vehicle that the road-builder doesn’t even need to supply!

While the major cities could be serviced more cheaply by rail, and a subsidiary road transport network, and a few places could be serviced by river traffic, road freight was the obvious solution then, as it largely is now.

Air freight was a restricted choice back then, though unit costs have come down with increasing services; but rising costs have begun to bite, and its my impression that air freight is right on the cusp of becoming less economic than road transit once again, save only internationally.

Okay, that gets me to the 1/3 mark, and about 40 minutes past deadline – which becomes an hour and 40 minutes once I allow for edits, spellchecking, etc. So the decision is made to split this article into three parts….

“Show, don’t tell” is a common maxim when it comes to literary entertainments, and something that has been gleefully expropriated as good advice for other media.

That includes TV, Movies, and, of course, Roleplaying Games.

I was thinking about that during the last week, and noting how much easier it was for the other two modern media that I mentioned.

After all, they can proceed from the premise that there is no one-to-one identification between star characters and the audience, permitting producers to put audiences in a privileged position with a flashback sequence, or a prologue sequence.

In the past, I have stolen this leaf out of the TV/Movie playbook to great effect, and have recommended the same to readers here at Campaign Mastery.

I’ve also built entire campaign infrastructures around the concept of “Show, don’t tell”, going so far as to give villains an initial appearance in-campaign purely to establish who they are and what they can do, and discussing the impact on campaign pacing at length.

Today, I’d like to take a fresh look at the whole question of “Show, don’t tell,” offering up some alternative techniques that may not be quite as obvious, and even showing that following the maxim is something that a GM can occasionally get away with not doing – if it’s done properly.

Buckle up, it might be a bumpy ride.

Flashback From Tomorrow

Imagine a crystal ball, a magic item that does nothing but show PCs what the GM wants them to see. What it shows has to be accurate and truthful, mind, but illusions and deceptions are capable of deceiving it, and so are player misinterpretations.

Or perhaps, it’s a one-off – a magic pool or portal that reveals “the past”.

There are two approaches to this technique: the first is to make it an intentional and recurring part of the plot structure within your campaign, and perhaps an entire phase of the campaign might be dedicated to obtaining the item.

The second is to have it be only intermittently available, or available regularly but with a severe cost attached (name me a mage who is prepared to sacrifice a point of INT to power the device, even occasionally), or as a singular one-off. Heck, you could even have a Deity drop by just to show the PCs what they need to know (for plot purposes), so long as you can provide a reasonable in-game justification for them doing so (“I’ve a substantial bet riding on this…”)

I actually got this idea from a Superman comic that I must have read back in the 60s or 70s – Supes heads back in time because, while their game rules won’t permit him to change history, they will permit him to observe it.

Narrative shifts to third person

So you have an eyewitness, or someone who has been able to reconstruct the events (even if only theoretically) who is an excellent storyteller, start to relate the story, but after an introductory paragraph or two, you throw in, “so clearly does [X] describe the scene that you can almost imagine you are there…”.

You then shift to a third person narrative, and start off by mentioning a sensory impression or two that are clearly not visual, but are more visceral, just to lend truth and gravitas to that statement, and describe the past events (complete with errors and distortions) as though the PCs were actually there – even to the point of permitting them to ask questions. They can interact with you, as GM, but not with any participants in the scene.

For fun, there have been a time or two in which a delusional or paranoid NPC has used this technique to give the PCs a front-row seat to moonbeams. Once, the players were not fooled, on a second time, they were completely taken in.

The Prologue Encounter

Once again, this comes in two flavors, the major and the minor.

The minor variant is an encounter added to the plot simply to give a critical character (probably but not necessarily the villain) a foundation.

The major variant is an entire adventure whose sole campaign-level function is to achieve that same end, of providing a foundation for the character in preparation for their role in the ‘main’ adventure.

In terms of building a consistent and comprehensive campaign, this often seems like the perfect solution – you create and display the building blocks and then start assembling them into structures and plotlines. But there are potential drawbacks that have to be considered.

First. the prologue encounter may not unfold as expected, or may go further than expected. This is what happened when I introduced Mortus in my superhero campaign – I had planned a short-term solution that would leave him around as a building block, but the players rejected that because it was only a short-term solution and found a more difficult solution that actually resolved the character’s main driving plotline. The resulting character is still floating around out there, and will still be able to participate in the main plot when it comes around, but in a significantly-different role – essentially, as an ally, and not an enemy. As explained at the time, I could have blocked their solution, but had no good reasons to do so, and realized (before it was too late) that the main plotline could survive the change – and so accepted the change in campaign plan.

But that was all fortuitous – it could just as easily have meant that the character could not play his part in the big picture that I intended to paint, and that would have placed the campaign in a far more precarious position. It would have left me with a difficult choice: block PC agency in an unreasonable way, or find a replacement for that building block, one that was inevitably going to be second-rate because this character had been deliberately designed to tick all the right boxes.

Second, the prologue may go beyond foreshadowing into ‘giving the game away’. Surprises and plot twists are an integral part of any campaign, and the suspense from not knowing what is going to happen is essential. The better a prologue establishes a character, the more that suspense can be undermined, especially once imaginative players start speculating. You can evade that problem by having the PCs present for only part of the ‘origin story’ of the building block, with a key transformative experience taking place behind the curtain in between character appearances – but you can pull that trick only so often before it becomes predictable and boring, and starts to undermine your credibility, and the credibility of the prologue, defeating the entire point of its existence.

Third, there is a pronounced impact on campaign pacing. Creating building blocks takes time, and its time in which the players can feel that they are simply treading water and not getting anywhere. If you need a slowdown in the pacing, that can be fine – for a little while. But it does need to be counterbalanced by definite and visible progress in other areas, and that won’t happen by accident. It can even reach the point where you need to introduce problems for the PCs to solve that are intended to play no part in the main campaign plotline, simply so that they have a sense of achieving something along the way. But that stretches a campaign out, too.

Finally, what do you do if the prologue adventure, and the character at its heart, falls flat? It’s happened to all of us from time to time. If their one-and-only appearance were to be in the main plotline which justifies their existence within the campaign, you can get away with this, though the results will be less than optimal; if it happens in a prologue, you may be forewarned in time to do something about the problem, but if your solution fails, the ultimate plotline – the important bit – will suffer.

So this is far from an absolute solution.

Tell without Show

Until this week, I never considered this a viable option. But here’s the thing: an RPG is not a TV show or a Movie or a book; it’s a medium that in some respects resembles those, but in other ways, is absolutely unique.

The players are used to information coming from the GM. Whether he puts that information into an interactive format like an encounter, or pretends to be someone else providing the information in a dialogue, or simple narrates the relevant backstory (assuming one of the PCs knows it), it still boils down to the GM talking and the PCs listening – at a metagame level.

As much as that can be seen as a handicap, a barrier to immersion, it can also be a liberating realization.

Simple Foreshadowing

Another technique that can be used is to foreshadow without demonstration.

The PCs come across a village whose central shrine or temple has exploded. No explanation given. No backstory, no warnings, no prophecies, nothing. They are asked to help out in relief efforts, they rescue a trapped NPC and make a quick side-trip to a neighboring hamlet to buy supplies, they maybe beat off an attack by bandits who want to take advantage of the situation, and they are on their way.

In the next major town, the same thing has happened, but relief efforts are well in hand. They haven’t heard about the first incident though, and think this is purely a local problem.

This primes the PCs for an encounter / adventure that confronts the agency responsible,and introduces that agency through its handiwork,without it ever making a direct appearance until the Main Event. It’s very old-school in a number of ways.

This approach definitely has it’s virtues, but it also comes with significant shortcomings. It’s relatively superficial, and that can be at odds with the importance to the campaign that the GM attaches to the villain. It can undermine verisimilitude. It applies a blowtorch to campaign pacing, turning it up to 11. And it bets the farm on the integrity of concept and the excellence of realization of the villain in question.

While it’s undoubtedly the easiest technique to employ, it’s quite possibly the hardest technique to do well.

Techniques in context

How does one select amongst the different techniques? Well, my general philosophy is always to base the decision on the pacing desired, but to mix it up. It’s better, in terms of realism, to slow the campaign a little and then have it lurch forward, only to slow again. All possible techniques are on the table, and the decision should be based on whatever is best for the campaign at that point in time.

Always take into account the player response – if they are expecting to make a big step forward in terms of the overall plotline, any slowing will only frustrate them. It’s better in this situation to give them a step forward and then a more significant slowdown – achieving the same overall pacing while giving them time to come to terms with the changes in circumstances.

The way you handle any given encounter will therefore vary significantly depending on when in the campaign it takes place – your pacing needs will be different in the start than in the middle, or the end.

Some plotlines / encounters / building blocks lend themselves more strongly to one particular technique than another, and that forces a choice on the GM: tolerate or integrate the incompatible pacing element, schedule the encounter for a time when the pacing element is compatible with the overall plan, or force the introduction into a non-optimal pattern that fits the overall campaign better at that time.

I’ve often said that there is an artistry to campaign planning that is poorly understood and under-appreciated, especially by those who do little or no planning. When you have multiple options, the choice between them can be sometimes made on logical grounds, but sometimes it will come down to instinct; put hundreds or thousands of such decisions together and you end up with a distinctly different ‘picture’. What is highlighted and what is hidden in shadows?

It Doesn’t End There: Elements Of Mysteries

Initially, that’s where I intended to end this article – a nice, snappy couple of thousand words, done and dusted. But then I happened to watch an episode of a TV Crime procedural (which one doesn’t matter), and was struck by the similarity between the problems faced by the RPG GM and those of the director of such a TV episode.

They often don’t have the luxury of lengthy prologues – indeed, some formats stipulate no prologues at all (and others stipulate no flashbacks, which are essentially ‘a prologue shifted to later in time’ in this context). They have critical information being delivered by a character telling, not showing. Those may not be the only similarities, but they are enough to be going on with, for now, because it means that the solutions employed by the TV shows may have validity when applied to an RPG.

Anatomy Of A Mystery Plot

Before getting into that, though, I think that a little homework is in order – a different way of looking at the components of a mystery plot that might be useful both to readers and to the analysis of the TV Detective solutions.

Above, we have a quick infographic that I threw together this morning that – properly analyzed – tells you almost everything you need to know about the successful execution of a mystery plot in an RPG.

Solution Layer

We start on the left-hand side, where layers of content are described. The second layer is the primary plot – it could be called the “Mystery Layer” but the mystery itself is frequently less important than the solution, so I chose “Solution Layer” instead.

Action Layer

On top of that, there is the “Action Layer”. Characters need to “do” something in the course of the plot, in fact, every PC should have some active role to play in addition to contributions to the solution of the mystery.

Personality Layer

On the other side is the Personality Layer, which comprises both reactions by the characters participating to events and circumstances (and the opportunity to express same), and personality / character -driven content that is completely unrelated to the mystery.

Note that this content often cherry-picks aspects of the personality of the character, and that’s fine; no-one expects the entire personality to be on-show.

Background Layer

At the bottom, appropriately, is the most fundamental layer of them all – the background layer, which consists of any layers of the game world or its past (including past events surrounding the PCs) that other layers reference. As with the personality layer, content from this layer referenced during the adventure is heavily cherry-picked, and should only contain material that is, or appears, relevant to the plot or the character aspects on display.

Connective Sub-layers

These layers are all bound together by a web of connective sub-layers, usually implied rather than stated outright (usually because the connections are obvious at the time). If a character is distrustful of charity (personality layer) and this drives his behavior in the plot (solution layer), the association – the relevance – between the two is self-evident. And any history that explains that character trait is similarly bound to the other two datums by obvious connections.

The Solution Layer is dissected to the right.

Conundrum

Starting from the bottom, we have the initial conundrum – the puzzle or mystery that is to drive the plotline. There is usually only one of these, but there can be exceptions to that rule. As soon as you introduce a second one, though, the players will immediately suspect a hidden connection between the two, and will strive mightily to force the solution into a mold that creates such a connection, even if none actually exists.

Leads and Investigations

That initial mystery leads to some preliminary leads, and the investigation of same. These, in turn, lead to more substantial leads, the investigation of which leads to actual pieces of the solution. In most Detective shows, these have to be provable in court; and there can be no illegalities along the way; these constraints are an opposition force as significant as the actual target of the investigation.

Solution Pieces

These are the provable facts that bind one solution to the initial conundrum together, and only one solution. Any facts that dispute that solution have been explained away, leaving a proven solution, however unlikely that solution may have initially appeared.

Outlining a Mystery

There’s a reason Detective TV shows are called “Police Procedurals” – they are as much or more about the process of following a lead to a piece of the solution as about anything else.

The trick is making those procedures and processes interesting, even if they lead to dead ends, despite their being repeated every – single – time in every – single – episode.

There are four components to such investigations – there’s the starting point, the circumstances, the technique, and the outcome.

The Starting Point

NCIS is great for starting points that are unusual or distinctive enough to create interest that can be sustained through the course of an investigation. The more unusual or impossible the starting point, the more interesting the mystery. That’s the whole reason that locked room mysteries are an ongoing sub-genre of mystery!

The Circumstances

No investigation takes place in isolation – they all happen somewhere, and often involve interactions with the people who populate that somewhere. On top of that, the method of investigation can often be dictated by the circumstances, and may involve the potential for random encounters with the public, and those can be made more ‘entertaining’ at the GM’s whim.

I love dropping localities into my campaigns where (by the standards of the campaign) everyone is a ‘weirdo’ in some way or another. Whenever a plotline or an investigation leads into that locality, it’s an open license to have fun with it.

And sometimes, those plot threads can be significant, too.

The Technique

I commented above that the nature of the circumstances can often dictate the investigative technique, and that’s true, up to a point. Beyond that point, the entire choice of technique belongs to the PCs; the GM has no say in it.

This can pose a problem insofar as the PCs choose a technique that doesn’t lead to the desired (from a plot perspective) outcome. The GM has two basic options when this happens – he can compound up some plot thread that takes the PCs to the outcome desired by some indirect route; or he can use die rolls to lead the PCs to an alternate technique.

The latter is rarely, if ever, the best choice. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, though.

This problem usually results from the players either having some fixed notion of what they ultimate solution is going to be and shaping their investigation to suit, or from the players failing to think of the more appropriate technique (or dismissing the appropriate technique when they shouldn’t).

Recognizing the cause is important; if the first, confirmation bias can set in if the GM goes along with the ‘preliminary theory’ of the players. If the latter, then this isn’t an issue, but time pressure can be (under some circumstances). The decision of what to do about this choice of technique has to derive from the cause, and the urgency of implementing that decision is also dictated by its origins.

The Outcome

Finally, even a straightforward procedural step (perhaps dressed up by interactions with an interesting and colorful NPC – “circumstances” again) is forgiven if the outcome of the investigation is interesting enough.

As a general rule of thumb, the more boring the outcome is going to be, the more effort I put into dressing up the circumstances or injecting something “fun” into the mix – just to sustain interest in the plot.

Ideally, the outcome will be the most significant element, followed by the investigative process, followed by either of the other elements.

Preliminary Step

In creating a mystery plotline, the GM usually has the initial conundrum and the solution, and needs to plot a pathway that leads from start to finish in an interesting way. The fact that you don’t need to lead to the final answer all in one hit, just to a piece of that solution makes things easier.

That solution must include any attempt to cover-up their guilt or the crime by the guilty party or by a third party (and why, in that case) and how that obstruction can be overcome.

The first step is to spell out these key pieces of the solution, and the initial conundrum.

Investigation Structure

I next list the preliminary leads – the things that the characters will know they can investigate purely from the initial conundrum and any relevant background.

I order these in the sequence that they seem most likely to be followed up on by the PCs, allowing for the possibility of them splitting up to tackle the problem in multiple directions at once.

I then list, separately, the pieces of the final solution – who did what, to whom, when, how, and why, and why this wasn’t obvious from the start.

This permits me to construct sequences – a preliminary lead to a substantial lead to a piece of the solution. I continue until either every piece of the solution has been achieved, or I run out of preliminary leads.

Those sequences are often someone telling a PC something, and that means that “Show, Don’t Tell” is engaged as an operative principle. So now is the time to select an appropriate technique to impart the information.

There’s a song from the 1970s that just came up on my playlist that’s relevant: The Kursaal Flyers Little Does She Know, the chorus of which goes:

“Little does she know
That I know
That she knows
That she’s cheating on me.”

Think about that for a moment. There’s an action (cheating) with a reaction (she knows) that the singer has observed. That reaction is a mystery, one that he has solved by deducing the cause, and observing the behavior of the cheating partner. It’s not big enough or complicated enough to be an RPG plotline on its own, but as a connection from preliminary lead through investigation to solution, it’s a valid example of the sort of plot thread that binds the elements of investigating a mystery together.

If I have solution pieces left over

If this happens, then I need more leads. There are three possible sources: spin-offs from other leads, unrelated sources coming forward, or active developments.

Spin-offs from other leads

This is often the best source to employ, because it creates a plausible coincidence. Too often, coincidence is not plausible in an RPG or literary construct, however realistic it might be.

As a consequence, there is often a fatalistic element to RPGs in which everyone and everything has a purpose or a destiny.

Once the players decide that’s the case, it doesn’t matter what the GM does, he will be perceived as running a plot train in service of that purpose or destiny (I know, I’ve been there).

So the injection of a little obvious coincidence like this helps balance the ‘books’ and avoid that problem.

Unrelated Sources coming forward

Someone goes to the media or the police or whoever and makes a statement that deepens the mystery or complicates the circumstances, but inherently creates new preliminary leads for the investigators to follow.

This is the other side of ‘plausible coincidence’ – a coincidence of timing that (at least initially) can be viewed as working against the investigators but which ultimately leads to the solution to the mystery.

One such preliminary lead is always “How do they know what they claim to know?” and another is “Is what they claim to know accurate?” Those two are always part of such package deals. “How do they know [the victim] / [the accused]” is often a third – and those are all on top of anything they actually have to say.

Active Developments

Finally, it’s all too common to have criminals who just sit pat during an investigation and wait to get caught.

No, no, no! The environment and investigation should be dynamic and changing as the plot unfolds. At the very least, the criminals should try to keep tabs on the status of the investigation (‘Columbo’ uses this all the time – the ‘most helpful’ person is usually the criminal, being helpful so as to keep themselves close to the investigation).

But they should also undertake a clean-up of loose ends, and take advantage of any opportunity to obscure their involvement.

All of these activities have the potential to open up new leads for the investigators to follow. The most likely suspects after the most helpful NPCs are always those doing the most to obstruct the investigation, or someone connected to them.

By the time I have gone through the leads that I already have listed and added any secondary ones that seem interesting or reasonable, the mystery can often swing from having insufficient leads to having too many!

If I have preliminary leads left over

There are two courses of action to take with respect to excess preliminary leads: first, have them be dead ends, or second, use them as alternate paths to substantial leads or even other preliminary leads.

I always prefer the latter, because it means that there’s an alternative set of pathways for the PCs to follow without my resorting to “Make an INT Roll” (or, in the Heroes system, a “Deduction” roll) in order to get a clue that the PC should be able to see, but that the player can’t.

An alternative to that “Make A Roll” is to have an NPC associated with the PCs make a suggestion, or puncture an invalid assumption that is blocking the solution path from the player’s vision. But I’m also careful to have some of these lead to dead ends, so that the players never treat NPC pronouncements as “Ex Cathedra” pronouncements.

Action Sequences

Next, I go through the investigation and look for action sequences that I can insert. Most of these don’t have to happen; some of them can provide the link between ‘preliminary leads’ and ‘substantial leads’. I make sure that every PC has some occasion when they have to either do something or make some important decision, and the ramifications.

Personality Layer

There are two different aspects of the personality layer of plot to take into account. The first is personal plotlines, and the second is personality reactions.

Personal Plotlines

These are less common in fantasy campaigns, but not unheard of even there. If you have PC plotlines that are entirely separate from those of the collective group, then you should look to advance one for each PC in the course of the adventure. That frequently means that the start or finish of the adventure, but I look hard for opportunities to break out of that restriction.

A status check for the PCs in the Adventurer’s Club is illustrative:

• Dr Hawke: is renovating a disused hospital in New York into a Sanatorium, while dodging attempts by the City’s Coroner to appoint Hawke as his successor, and managing his relationship with Honeydew Halliday, an NPC.
• Steffan Bednarczic: raising his daughter, Anya, trying to keep her out of trouble, while navigating his relationship with Melanie Chen (an NPC) and her family while keeping a low profile. Other members of the Club have ‘adopted’ Anya and are training her in various disciplines, and one is pushing her to try out for the Olympic Pistol team, she’s so good a shot.
• Fr O’Malley: Beset by impending changes in his circumstances as the New York archbishop hands the diocese formerly serviced by O’Malley and his recently-deceased friend Fr Donelly over to a new priest, a firebrand named Fr Alvarez, while engaging in the lives of his regular parishioners and supporting the charities that help them.

There’s one other, but the player hasn’t been in contact for a year now, so we’re preparing to write them out of the ongoing campaign.

Personality Reactions

It’s so much easier with the Hero System because the things that a character cares about are spelled out by the owner during character construction. But, even without that, a GM can learn a lot by observation of the PCs and listening to the players talk about them.

There are always going to be plot developments and circumstances and interactions that a character cares more about than others – things that will push one or more of their ‘buttons’, causing them to become more engaged and enmeshed in the plot.

I go over everything that I have in the plot so far and look for such triggers, and what impact they might have. I also look for circumstances that might frustrate the player (more than the character) and give them an opportunity to vent or calm down, as necessary.

Background Layer

Most of the background should already be available but there’s always something that needs more detail because it’s appearing for the first time in this adventure and is relevant to one of the cast of NPCs involved in the mystery.

Often, the biggest problem is distilling everything that you could talk about into just those background elements that you need to impart, or to remind the players of. Hint: You can almost always be more ruthless than your first instincts when culling irrelevancies.

A logical topology

The results are a logical topology, a view of the structure of the adventure. There’s always a temptation to translate that into a sequential structure, which is easier to play because it simply runs from A to B to C, but your players will often void any such script.

Thus, while you can and should package isolated elements together so that you can run them efficiently, with sufficient color and personality, but let the players decide how they are going to navigate the maze.

Wrap-up

It seems that I’ve imparted most of the tips that I’ve gleaned from Police Procedurals as I’ve traveled through this topological perspective on mysteries. That’s fine, and a consequence of the relatively unstructured approach taken to this article.

A mystery adventure is like a campaign in miniature; all the elements of a campaign are present, like timing, and sequence, and player agency, and an awareness of pacing and how to manipulate it.

That means that campaigns are good for practicing the structural processes that you need to employ for the creation of a satisfying mystery, and a mystery plotline can be a useful small-scale rehearsal for the processes that you need to construct a successful campaign.

So pay particular attention to the problems and solutions that you encounter in running mystery plotlines, and in particular to how the different techniques of “Show, Don’t Tell” impact the pace, and you’ll get better at creating (and running) both adventures of this type and campaigns overall!

Because this is literally the second half of the article I posted last week, I’ll forego all the usual introductory bits and pieces and dive straight in from where I left off.

Industrial Economics III: War & Depression

Many of the economic influences that defined the era came together in the First World War, and the consequences of that conflict combined with the rest to create the Great Depression. Even in hindsight, it is hard to see how the Depression could have been avoided, though it was far deeper and more severe than it had to be. And, in between, there were the roaring twenties and prohibition.

The links that bind these events together are both tenuous and inescapable, and we met almost all of them in the previous part of this article.

Internationalism

There is one major exception to that statement which needs mention before proceeding. Even though the Empires of the 19th century had experienced ripple effects from local or national events or trends, as a general rule the problems of one location were largely compartmentalized.

It was only really with the advent of the 20th century that international relations became so entangled and intertwined that local or regional issues could become multinational and international in scope, spreading beyond those directly involved.

Because these links were seen as heightening prosperity for all during the good times, the downsides were not fully recognized until it was too late to avoid them; and even had that not been the case, the fact that the overall trend was positive probably made the trade-off too attractive to resist.

There was also the widespread belief that intermingling made serious wars less likely, by attacking directly the perceived root causes of wider conflict. The transition from British Empire to British Commonwealth, and from a colonial mindset to one in which it was entirely acceptable for mature ‘colonies’ like Australia to transition to independence within a broader political union added to, and accentuated, the perception that the world had found solutions to problems that would have previously only been resolved with wars of independence.

In truth, despite the numerous wars since, this belief persists as an undercurrent attitude even into modern times. This is demonstrated by the widespread criticism of Russia over the current invasion of Ukraine; there is an element of shock at the barbarity of an invasion, so at odds with the spirit of Glasnost that was embraced in the 1980s. This has fueled much of the outrage over the invasion.

Pre-War

The first 13 years of the 20th century did little to dispel the optimism described above. The biggest conflict of the first decade of the century was the Russo-Japanese war, and it had little impact outside of the participants. The other great Empires were competitive, especially in terms of the scramble for Africa; again, while there were numerous local conflicts as a result of these imperial ambitions, for those in less remote parts of the Empires, they were little more than news headlines in terms of their impact on personal lives.

In modern times, it was the 1905 Russian Revolution that would come to be viewed as the most significant conflict of the era, but disasters – both natural and man-made – would have the greater impact on ordinary lives, and even those would be overshadowed by more positive effects from the spread of new technologies and the rise of mass literature.

When the 1910s began, there was no real indication that this decade would not be ‘more of the same’ from start to finish.

World War I

The First World War is widely regarded as starting with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but there had been a period of rising tension prior to that triggering event. The assassination was carried out in pursuit of Serbian independence, which was a cause that the Archduke was known to favor; it is entirely possible that, had he survived to assume the Imperial Throne, he would have overseen a transition to a Commonwealth-style political umbrella that granted independence to many of the nations within the Empire, but that’s just empty speculation.

Forgotten Nobility

In many nations, Nobility had long been extracted from the day-to-day political decisions, and there were conversations from time to time as to whether they were even necessary in the ‘modern day’. The usual consensus reached by such discussions was that they provided a valuable continuity of institution from one government to another, functioned as a brake against over-ambitious national authorities, and were still valuable in diplomatic terms.

It was widely held that the nobility had little day-to-day impact on the lives of the citizens of their empires, at least in comparison to the Kings and Rulers of past eras. Even Napoleon Bonaparte had greater direct impact on his citizens, his reign introducing legal precepts that are still widely accepted.

To most citizens, Nobility was like a natural feature of the landscape, like a mountain, or like the weather – just there, but of little relevance beyond the occasional inconvenience. To those who saw deeper, the Nobility was an abstract vessel into which people poured their trust and ideals, which they then expected to see reflected back on a grander scale; touchstones of national or Imperial unity of huge symbolic import, but forgotten except when the Nobility failed this test in some way.

This truth was laid more bare than ever before when treaties and alliances flowed through diplomatic channels following the Archduke’s assassination like dominoes. Russia was drawn into the conflict almost immediately, followed by Germany, France, Britain, and the Ottoman Empire, and only grew from there.

And yet, ironically, the ultimate trigger belied this attitude; it was the assassination of a member of this ruling social class, deemed so irrelevant to daily life, that would so profoundly reshape the lives of so many people around the world.

Revolutionary Science

War is widely regarded as a hotbed for technological advancement, a perception that started in the First World War and was driven home by the Second.

And, in a way, this is justified – but my personal impression is that the biggest impact of war on technological progress is that money is directed into R&D at a furious rate, a ‘cold-war-within-a-war’ that drives this advance.

At every point, in such conflicts, it is sought to nullify an enemies’ advantages while taking maximum benefit of their vulnerabilities. Where those advantages are technological in nature, so must the response be (or so it was deemed at the time); and that only made it natural to look for technological answers to the other questions, too.

It was also perceived that tactical problems were susceptible to technological solution that could not be resolved in any other way. The stalemate of the Western Front and its trenches gave rise to Tanks and Poison Gas, for example.

The biggest impact of technology is not on the battlefield, in my opinion; it is in the economic infrastructure that supports the warring parties, both as technologies are developed that will manifest in other forms within the economy, and in the logistics of their deployment, and indirectly by growing that economy to include the research, design, manufacture, and distribution of the new technology. In particular, there is the impact post-war of examining the newly developed technologies and searching for ‘peacetime applications’ (assuming that such were not inherently obvious to begin with).

Mass-produced Soldiers

Although early deployments, especially of conscripts, can be characterized as amateur and even shambolic, one of the most significant technological impacts that transpired during the course of the war is often unheralded – the application of mass-production techniques to the training of soldiers.

Initially, training was just as shambolic; I can never forget the naive enthusiasm with which the early British soldiers embarked, believing that the war would be over in just a few months, and the contrast this makes with the gruesome realities of trench warfare in an age of machine guns, landmines, and artillery.

Harsh realities and brutal lessons soon began to bite, and practicalities became the driver of innovations in training content and processes. The US, when it entered the war, started with a more theoretical approach, disregarding many of those harsh lessons in the arrogant light of assumed American superiority. They, too, had to be schooled by the practical realities when they got to the front lines – but, to their credit, I think they learned those lessons better and faster than the other participants, perhaps because distance imparted a greater objectivity, perhaps because the weight of tradition did not bear down on them quite so heavily.

Post-war, the training methods concerned would be used to revolutionize education and skills training. Sometimes, this infiltration and assimilation would be rapid, sometimes it would be slow, but the general principles would become universal by the time of the Second world war.

Wartime Finances

I spent quite a bit of time examining the consequences, advantages, and liabilities of a Gold Standard in Part 4 of this series, but that was written from a peace-time perspective, focusing on supply-side economic consequences.

Everything in an economy – both strengths and weaknesses – gets amplified by a war, even without direct and indirect war effects on the economy.

A gold standard means that a government has a fixed amount that it can spend without changing monetary policy – raising taxes, or issuing debt instruments. The latter are only useful if someone both wants to buy them and can afford to do so.

It’s not entirely inaccurate to describe WWI as a holding action fought until the economic investment by one side exceeded that of the enemy by enough to resolve the conflict.

The entry of the US into the war didn’t just deliver a mass of new men to the Western front; it added the mammoth US Economy and its manufacturing capability to the resources being marshaled by the Allies. There was nothing close to equivalent that the Central Powers could deploy as a counterbalance; barring stupid mistakes and sheer bad luck on a protracted scale, victory became eventually inevitable from that moment onward.

Personally, I think this perception is an oversimplified, but nevertheless captures an often-overlooked aspect of the story of the war. As soon as the US entered the war, the conduct of that war became about negotiating positions in the eventual peace talks, and what the ultimate price of victory – or loss – would be.

War Reparations

The fact that the participants all had to go into debt – to near ruinous levels – in order to finance the Great War is often overlooked as a factor in the scale and timetable of War Reparations demanded by the Allies in the Treaty Of Versailles.

Another factor was an assumption that the economies of the world – even those of the defeated enemies – could return to a peacetime prosperity without experiencing any consequences of note. And, if that had been the case, the reparations demanded might even have been affordable.

The role played by these reparations as the seeds of the next great conflict is well-known; not enough attention is paid to the reasons for the harshness of the demands.

Note that these reasons don’t have to have been correct; those participating in the peace treaty negotiations believed them, and that is enough.

In a nutshell, the allies wanted to be fully reimbursed for the expenses incurred in fighting the war, and were less concerned with bleeding the losers white than in restoring their own economic foundations. As a short-term position, this is hard to argue with; in the longer term, the attitude was short-sighted at best.

The Roaring Twenties

The post-war attitude was so optimistic that it made the pre-war enthusiasm seem quite lukewarm in comparison. America, in particular, thought itself saviors of the world, infallible and wise. The war outcome showed that there was at least some merit to this attitude, but not as much as was thought at the time.

And, in their hubris and pie-eyed optimism, they enacted the largest social reform intervention the world had ever seen – Prohibition.

The pages on Organized Crime linked to in the first part of this article tell the story of the consequences. America’s government may have been ready to embrace sobriety; America’s populace were not, with the exception of a handful of optimists.

Smuggling and distribution of illegal alcohol became insanely profitable, and money creates power. Rivalries exploded.

It’s a truism that people with power change; their tolerance for slights and offenses, real or perceived, thins, and their reflex responses to such affronts are amplified by their power. If you’ve been carefully educated in the effects of power and the reality of consequences, these problems can be overcome; but the latest band of Nouveau Riche not only had all the elements of the trope down pat, they punctuated them with automatic weapons.

By the time the Prohibition experiment wound down, Organized Crime had established itself in many nooks and corners of the American economy, from which they would be extremely difficult to dislodge. The smartest mob bosses took their wealth and turned (mostly) legitimate; others fled to Cuba, from where they could not be extradited; and, one by one, Federal authorities or gang violence got the rest.

The Seeds of Depression

If World War I brought many preconceptions crashing down, the Great Depression was no less traumatic.

The first thing that you have to learn about the Depression is that it was felt almost everywhere; the second is that the depth, duration, and dates of those effects vary from one country to another.

The actual downturn in the United States was only three or four years in duration, but the consequences and resulting pain was experienced until 1939, a full decade.

Causes

There are two classic explanations and several alternative theories that attempt to describe the causes of the Great Depression.

The current consensus of the Keynesian (demand-driven) hypothesis is that a large-scale loss of confidence led to a sudden reduction in consumption and investment spending. This theory suggests that the stock market crash of X was more of a symptom than a cause.

Monetarist theories agree, up to a point, but hold that the Depression started as an ordinary Recession, but the shrinking money supply deepened the short-term emergency into a deeper crisis. In other words, they see it as a banking crisis which caused a general reduction of available credit and a string of bankruptcies.

My Take

I’m not wedded to any one theory. I think they are all simplifications of a crisis that had many stages and knock-on effects.

In my view, it starts prior to the infamous stock market crash with stock instability over several months following a small crash on March 25th, 1929. This was made worse by the sale of shares to small investors over the preceding decade, and the issuing of loans to fund these purchases. Credit laws, fueled by boundless optimism and greed, meant that borrowed money was easier to come by than it had ever been, and the steady growth of the stock market made it seem like anyone who didn’t borrow to invest had economic rocks in their heads.

In mid-October, nervous investors began to liquidate their assets, driving the stock market lower; this convinced them that they were doing the right thing, and the demands to sell entered a state of positive feedback. Finally, on Friday, October 4th, the market crashed 11% at the opening bell.

The opportunity to restore confidence over the weekend was lost as more people became convinced that sticking it out might be the right thing to do in theory, but they couldn’t afford to do so. On Monday, there was another 12% drop and on Tuesday, another 11% fall.

Thousands of investors were ruined, and billions of dollars had been lost; many stocks could not be sold at any price.

The market recovered 12% on Wednesday, but the damage had been done.

— Wikipedia, The Great Depression

There was a period of recovery from mid-November 1929 until April 17 of 1930, but then a fresh decline began.

Thousands of businesses would close over the next few months even if they had survived the initial disruption, throwing millions out of work. This made the banks nervous, and so they began tightening up on credit practices, and pursuing those who who already owed them money – who, of course, no longer had the money to repay their debts.

Smoot-Hawley

But that took time to have an impact. In the meantime, the US passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in June, 1930.

Ostensibly aimed at protecting the American economy as the Depression began to take root, it backfired enormously.

— Wikipedia, same source page

Some even think that the Depression was caused by this backfire. Two thirds of economists in 1995 agreed that at the very least, it made matters worse. It caused a sharp decline in international trade and retaliatory tariffs, import quotas, and exchange controls.

Normally, International trade would have shielded participating economies from the worst effects of a local downturn by giving investors something about which they could be confident – the result might have been stock market turbulence, but some stocks would have gone up, helping to stabilize the system.

Instead, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act exported the pain of the depression to other countries around the world, and took away the last prop holding up the US economy.

Bank Failures

In December, 1930, the crisis hit a new panic point as a run began on the Bank of United States (a private operation that had no connection to the US Government). A run happens when depositors grow concerned that the bank doesn’t, or will not, have the money to pay them if they withdraw their money.

This causes many of them to withdraw their money, and the resulting loss of liquidity takes a bank that may have been financially sound and puts it under dire threat of collapse.

The rising number of bankruptcies, foreclosures, and unrepayed loans resulting from people losing both incomes and ‘nest eggs’ were the obvious cause of the belief in this particular case.

Unable to pay out to all its creditors, the bank failed. It wasn’t the only one; over the last two months of 1930, no less than 608 banks closed. But it was the largest; one third of the $550 million in deposits were lost, deepening the financial crisis.

The Gold Standard

The Gold Standard only made things worse, as Gold Prices in directly-affected countries caused Gold holdings to be moved to countries that were not directly affected.

This caused the value of their currencies to crash, inflicting the Depression upon their economies via a different mechanism – but the end result was the same.

The only way to prevent this was to inflict your own damage to your economy, in effect masking a healthy underlying economy with an overlay of confidence-sapping monetary policy.

But the worst effects were felt in the US. From April 17, 1930, until July 8, 1932, the market lost 89% of its value. By 1933, the unemployment rate was 25%.

(Further details are far too complicated to fit within the scope of this article).

In Germany & Britain

The depression was especially harsh in Germany, where entire industries began to close down, triggering bank failures despite propping up from international sources.

Part of the problem were the ongoing reparations, which some other countries (notably France) were relying on to boost their own economies out of trouble.

The crisis spread from Germany to Romania and Hungary even as it worsened domestically.

The world financial crisis next began to overwhelm Britain as investors from around the world began to withdraw their gold from London at a rate of 2.5 million pounds sterling worth per day. Credits from the Bank of France and Federal Reserve Bank of New York slowed but didn’t arrest the decay.

A political crisis arose as a result, one which almost brought down the MacDonald government. MacDonald himself wanted to resign, but King George V insisted that he remain and head up a new all-party coalition government. Most of the opposition parties signed up for the coalition, along with a handful of the elected government, but the majority of MacDonald’s party denounced him as a traitor for his involvement. The coalition took Britain off the Gold Standard, and consequently, Britain suffered less than the other major countries from the effects of the Depression.

You can read more about these events at this Wikipedia link.

Recovery

In most countries, recovery from the Great Depression started in 1933, but in many, it was a slow process. Unemployment in the US was still 15% in 1940, for example.

There is no consensus as to the cause of the recovery, and in particular, the role played by the New Deal. As with the cause of the crisis, I suspect that analysis are seeking a simple, “pure” explanation, when the reality is more nuanced.

The New Deal

The New Deal was basically the US government spending a lot of money on infrastructure, creating jobs in the process, and acting to support people in the meantime. Some of the jobs were undoubtedly mere placeholders, but many were more substantial.

At the same time, temporary policies were established to reinflate the economy, and reforms instituted to protect from the vulnerability in the banking sector that had made everything so much worse. Those temporary policies caused a small recession in their own right when they were wound up, and so did the Banking Act of 1935 which forced the banks to retain greater reserves.

There were a lot of measures in the New Deal, but some general principles stand out.

In Service Of The People

The government was firmly established as being in the service of the people as a whole. Republicans and Business lobbyists have been attempting to undo this, ever since; they have succeeded in some areas, but have failed in others. In particular, attempts to wind back Social Security have been doomed to failure. It’s also worth noting that systematic dilution of the credit protections put in place by the New Deal are considered responsible for the GFC, because what took place in that financial crisis was exactly what the policies weakened were supposed to protect against.

In Service Of Business

The government also established itself as being in the business of regulating business, but beyond protecting the populace from side effects of business, and regulating the labor market, staying out of the way as much as possible.

Bread & Circuses

FDR’s fireside chats were a key component of the New Deal, the means by which he buoyed spirits and restored confidence. But they also used new Technology (radio) to bypass the Newspapers and speak directly to the American people.

This also acknowledged the rise of the media as a new industry, one that would be hugely influential in the decades to come, though that is unlikely to have formed part of his motivation.

The New Demographic II: The Black Vote

The 15th Amendment of the US Constitution prohibited denying a black male citizen the right to vote based on ‘race, color, or previous condition of servitude’ in 1870. In theory, this was extended to Black Women in 1920, but effectively were blocked from exercising this right until passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The new voters had an immediate impact in many jurisdictions, especially in the South, where black voters turned out in numbers to elect non-whites to positions in state legislatures. Records show that these new representatives made positive contributions, and several economic and social indicators began to improve.

As a direct response, various forms of voting restriction were gradually implemented at a state level over the next several decades. Within a generation, usually a decade or less, these progressive elements had been effectively barred by restricting the Black Vote, and the progress that had been made was regressing.

In United States v. Reese (1876), the Court upheld voting requirements, such as literacy tests, which do not explicitly discriminate on the basis of race. Jim Crow laws enforcing legal racial segregation at the state and local level in the Southern United States were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by Black people during the Reconstruction Era.

— Wikipedia, Black Suffrage in the United States

Civil Rights movements started in 1905 with the formation of the Niagara Movement by a group of Black Activists. Other such groups followed, but the Civil Rights movement would not come to full effect until the 1950s.

In the meantime, a series of small victories, defeats, and legal skirmishes were fought.

In Guinn v. United States (1915), the Supreme Court struck down a grandfather clause that functionally exempted only white people from literacy tests.

The Court ruled against white primaries in Nixon v. Herndon (1927) and Nixon v. Condon (1932), upheld [them]in Grovey v. Townsend (1935), and finally banned them with Smith v. Allwright (1944) and Terry v. Adams (1953).

In Breedlove v. Suttles (1937), the Court upheld the constitutionality of a poll tax requirement for voting.

— Wikipedia, same source page

The resulting laws would remain on the books until the 24th Amendment banned poll tax requirements for Federal elections, and the Supreme Court ruled against state Poll Tax requirements at the State level in Harper v Virginia State Board Of Elections (1966)..

A plan to redraw the political boundary lines of Tuskegee, Alabama was struck down by the Supreme Court in Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960).

The struggle for electoral rights would be ongoing through the rest of this era, culminating many years later, as the above landmarks show. This, of course, is another representation of the principle of individual powers overriding those of the Government, a theme throughout the era.

In-Game Economics: Pulp (continued)

The Great Depression had several repercussions, among them the forfeiture of prestige by the Entrepreneurs and descendants of Robber Barons.

This doesn’t really fit with the ethos and atmosphere of a Pulp campaign, so one of the critical historical changes made in setting the Adventurer’s Club in the 1930s was to weaken the impact of the Depression significantly, while not throwing away the entirety of what had taken place.

But history is not this isolated narrative thread and that; we are continually confronted by questions of the domino effects of that change.

For example, in our history, labor unions get started in 1935; without the stimulus to business necessitated by the Depression, would that have been delayed or would the stronger sense of optimism have accelerated the process?

We had already established the presence of a very strong Teamster’s Union in New York City, with implied connections to Organized Crime (but nothing proven). So that argues in favor of answer #2, but it might have been just a local phenomenon, so it didn’t answer the question definitively.

As usual, we obfuscated and deferred the question until an adventure made the answer clear through the needs of a pulp plot. We are currently working on a plotline that will probably commence later in the year that contains a definitive answer.

The Needs Of Adventure

That’s an important principle to note – don’t decide on consequences until you need them, and then choose the answer that best fits your adventure needs.

Another example, because I can: The Depression was instrumental in the Nazi Party coming to power in Germany. We wanted the Nazis to be around because they make such dandy Villains in a Pulp campaign. So we needed the Depression in Germany to be (almost) as bad as in our world despite its causation being reduced in intensity.

So we made the French more upset over their losses during WWI, demanding reparations be maintained as much for spite as for economic need; and we decided that because the Depression was not as severe, a shortsighted USA might not offer the assistance noted above.

Since Depressions are as much a psychological phenomena as they are economic, we decided that this would be enough.

But this gives rise to a serious follow-up question: would the timeline of World War II be slowed or accelerated by these changes?

After some serious discussion, we decided that it was probably going to be delayed a little, because there would be less urgency. Weakening the Depression impacts in Germany as much as possible while still bringing the Nazis to power results in a more powerful German industrialist group, who would need to be won over – and who could supply us with the occasional non-Nazi German villain (or hero) in the meantime. We’ve never done anything with that concept yet, but it’s just waiting for the right adventure idea to present itself.

The Room To Adventure

If there’s no immediate plot need to dictate terms, and you can’t defer the question (perhaps because it will impact on the background of a PC or important NPC), we let ourselves make the choice that provides the maximum scope for adventure going forward.

Dark Spots

Finally, blanket statements like “The Depression was not as severe, and so the concept of ‘the Person with enough wealth and resources to go adventuring’ is more viable” are all well and good, but we always try to reserve the right to have ‘dark spots’ and ‘spot fires’ where circumstances were worse – possibly even worse than our history relates, if that is more useful.

General Principles

The above examples also reveal a couple of other broad principles.

• As a general rule, you can’t make things much better without impacting on the backgrounds of PCs, and you can’t make things too much worse, either.
• A general guide is to make things just bad enough to create the environment you need for adventurousness to be optimized, and no worse.
• A number of circumstances can swing either way, so if there’s something that particularly offends you, you can do something about it. For example, we decided that the Supreme Court had been a lot more proactive in striking down Black suffrage restrictions, significantly weakening discrimination in the American South – but pushing the KKK into more ‘Pulp Villainous’ responses. Don’t make knee-jerk assumptions, consider both alternatives carefully.
• Finally, look very hard at the underlying assumptions of your game world. If Weird Tech works, contemplate the economic and social impacts, and what you might need to put in place to restrict those impacts to manageable scales.

In-Game Economics: Sci-Fi

Some people date Sci-Fi to Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. My preference is an earlier story that some may have heard of by the unprepossessing Mary Shelley.

None of those early SF archetypes work well as Sci-Fi in an RPG-campaign sense. Frankenstein can work in a horror-genre campaign, and they can all work in a Pulp campaign

But this era saw the rise of Space Opera, back when there were no limitations to what was technologically possible in the imagination. Later eras would have more accurate information to work with, but would also be constrained by the technology that had been proven to work.

Such campaigns aren’t for every player or GM – they demand a certain level of freewheeling but controlled imagination. But if the mixture is right, such campaigns can be a wonderland.

A handful of general principles to keep in mind:

Laws are made to be broken

Forget what physics says is possible or not possible. Forget what established engineering practice tells you is required in order to achieve something.

That does not mean that there will not be restrictions or consequences; there will be, and they should be logical, given the assumptions your technology is making.

Go re-read the Lensman series, or the Skylark Of Space series, or just about any E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith, for that matter. Watch Star Wars again.

The Wikipedia page on Space Opera may be helpful, but I disagree with elements of it (especially parts of their list of representative examples), so take the contents with a grain of salt, and use your own imagination. Keep your internal ‘game physics’ self-consistent, and above all, have fun.

This sort of game should be about the problems and opportunities of the era, writ impossibly large, not about the solutions to those problems and the consequences of taking the opportunities that we know.

Money Is Infinite

No-one ever runs out of money in a Space Opera. They will run out of Rhodium or Tantalum first.

But that doesn’t mean that it grows on trees, or that it can buy you anything you want; generally, it’s so freely available because it can’t solve every problem or satisfy every need.

There is an exception to the above principles – money is freely available for one of everything, but extremely hard to come by for two.

Resources are plentiful

Another truism is that there’s plenty of everything out there somewhere, you just have to go out and find it. Bigger and Better are only ever limited by your imagination.

In fact, “Bigger” and “Better” are almost always synonymous. “Bigger” may not be “Better” necessarily, but “Better” is almost always “Bigger”.

There are plenty of people, there’s plenty of money, and there are plenty of resources out there for the taking/earning. The decisive limitation is skill and the ability to use it – not everyone should or will have what it takes, while some (on both sides) have a surfeit.

The Trend To Tomorrow

Don’t take your eyes off the bigger picture. Read anything you can get your hands on regarding how people from the era (through to the 1960s/70s) saw the future – not the science fiction, but the serious speculation.

When I was in high school, I had a book, “The Next 10,000 Years” by Adrian Berry (it’s fairly hard to come by now). I don’t know what happened to my copy, it vanished at some point, probably lent to someone, but it massively fired my imagination at the time. Would it still have the same impact?
I don’t know, I haven’t read it in more than 40 years – but I think it says something that I still remember it!

In-Game Economics: Steampunk

You may be wondering what Steampunk is doing here. After all, the previous age was “The Age Of Steam”.

Well, I was thinking about it when outlining this section and it occurred to me that in most Steampunk settings that I have heard about, the steam-based technology was already well-developed and ubiquitous- In fact, it’s everywhere.

And that doesn’t describe the Age of Steam – it described the period just after it, the early days of electrification – and that’s this era.

Besides that point, I have a couple of tips that I think worth offering for the genre.

The Ubiquity of Steam

The first one leads directly from the point already made – look around at the technology of the 1920s-30s, and try to think of a way to emulate it using “steam”-tech. Early Heinlein, where spaceships are controlled by mechanical cams (described in detail in Rocketship Galileo, for example) will help.

Look at anything you can find on the limitations of steam technology – why the internal combustion engine is more suited to motor vehicles, for example – and then ‘invent’ a way to overcome the critical limitations.

Non-humans for Humans

Something that I used when the PCs in my superhero campaign were in “Steampunk Mexico” a while back – replace people in ordinary roles with a blend of non-humans and steampunk-tech-enhanced humans. Find ways to turn the resulting advantages (natural or artificial) into achieving a better performance at their job, whatever it might be.

Inventors are Unstable Geniuses

There should also be a small infusion from Cyberpunk – the people who develop the Tech will have the latest and greatest. And they will be driven to make it better, if not downright obsessive.

Furthermore, there’s usually a reason for them being so driven. The inventor that I featured in “Steampunk Mexico” had survived a skiing accident in which she almost died, and had been maimed. She found the ‘replacement parts’ available to be inadequate, so she studied and experimented and started to design better. Along the way, she realized that some of her discarded ideas could be useful for others, and a new career was born.

Strange Tech

Weirdness should also be commonplace, usually attached to some myth or legend. The people in a Steampunk environment should think outside the box at every opportunity, and that should lead to weird solutions to commonplace problems.

The End Of An Era: The rise of fascism

As I said at the very outset, there are so many possible endpoints for this era that it’s almost impossible to pick one that is absolutely, definitively, correct.

After trying (and being unsatisfied) with a couple of possibilities, I decided that it was best to have this era and the next overlap to a certain extent.

That being the case, the chosen end-point of this era doesn’t especially matter – the transition to the next will be gradual, but eventually complete.

So the next era deals with World War 2 and the rise and fall of Fascism. But first, I’ll take some time to write something different next week.

Join me then!

In part 1:

1. Introduction
2. General Concepts and A Model Economy
3. The Economics of an Absolute Monarchy (The Early Medieval)

In part 2:

4. The Economics of Limited Monarchies (The Later Medieval & Renaissance)
5. In-Game Economics: Fantasy Games

In Part 3:

6. The Renaissance, revisited
7. Pre-Industrial Economics I: The Age of Exploration
8. Pre-Industrial Economics II: The Age of Sail

In Part 4

9. Industrial Economies I: The Age Of Steam
10. In-game Economics: Gaslight-era

In this part:

11. Industrial Economics II: The Age Of Electrification (last week)
12. Industrial Economics III: War & Depression
13. In-Game Economics: Pulp
14. In-Game Economics: Sci-fi
15. In-Game Economics: Steampunk

Planned for parts 6-7:

16. Tech Economics I: The Gold Standard
17. Tech Economics II: Resources & Regulation
18. Tech Economics III: Inflation & Hyper-inflation
19. Tech Economics IV: Commercialism, Deregulation, Privatization, & Greed

Planned for parts 8-10:

21. Digital Economics
22. Post-Pandemic Economics
23. In-Game Economics: Modern
24. Future Economics I: Dystopian
25. In-Game Economics: Dystopian Futures
26. Future Economics I: Utopian
27. In-Game Economics: Utopian Futures
28. In-Game Economics: Space Opera

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.

Welcome & General Introduction

I’ve said it before: With each passing entry in the series, the more familiar the ground becomes, the more like what we experience every day.

Think about that for a moment – it means that the building blocks of our current society are mostly in place already, and we’re just arranging the stack in the right shape. Historians like to stress the changes and highlight the differences that distinguish one era from another so that those characteristics become identifiable traits, and that’s perfectly valid in terms of creating awareness of history – but I think this relationship of relatability gets somewhat lost in the process.

These eras are more alike than they are different. One small change replicated a million times for several million families becomes a huge change in terms of influence, but it’s still just a different shade of the same essential picture.

Another consequence is that there is no consensus on where dividing lines should be drawn – they blend into one another and overlap and it’s consequently easy to group them this way or that. This played a notable part when it came to laying out this part of the series – my initial thought (back before I started) was that the Automobile was the narrative thread that tied everything together, but when it came to the actual writing, the spread of electrical power became more and more significant, even to the point of usurping the role of dominant theme.

And that had consequences for the structure of the series. There was so much to say on various subjects that I’ve had to split what was going to be one article into two.

From A Writing Perspective

As originally conceived, this era would start with the early automobile, continue through mass production, head into World War I, the roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and then emerge out the other side through the New Deal.

Well, by the time I had all that laid out, I had 47 sections and sub-sections, and I know that some of them will grow and need to be subdivided, and that there will be the occasional sidebar along the way – I know I will need to do one on Radium, for example, and another or Lead Poisoning, and one on home-grown electricians. One on the periodic table might sneak in, too.

It’s too much. So I’ve split it roughly equally in two. It means that this article will end kind of abruptly, only to pick up exactly where it left off, next week.

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.

Where We’re At – 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 what wealth even is, and what they can spend it on – and those, by definition, are the fundamentals of an economy.
2. Economics pressure Societies to evolve – that 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 contain 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 general principles contained within these bullet points are important enough that I’m going to be repeating them in the ‘opening salvos’ of the remaining articles in the series.

The Industrial Era II: The Age Of Electrification & Motoring

Electrification may, perhaps, be said to have begun in the latter days of the age of steam, but it didn’t come to full flower until this time period (the same thing happens with aviation between this era and the next). For that reason, many view Motoring as the definitive feature of this era, and the personal independence that it fostered (though that would not fully flower in some respects until the 1950s!)

In many respects, at least in its first half, this era is characterized by the development of these two industrial phenomena and their consequent impacts.

Three Trends

There are three trends in particular that I want to highlight as functional themes for the era.

Government vs Individual

Motoring, and the motor vehicles that make it possible, is symbolic of the individual being at liberty to go where he will, when he will, to a far greater extent than had ever before been possible. This sense of independence translated into many other spheres of activity, and the success of the suffrage movement (which was spreading like wildfire in this time period) created the perception, perhaps for the first time, that governments were answerable to the common people. Government actions were frequently seen through the filter of personal inconvenience and personal responsibility, and were frequently seen as government overreach.

This was also the era of the rise of the FBI and it’s claims to early fame under the stewardship of the controversial J Edgar Hoover; again, there is the theme of government vs the individual, carried to extremes and with a criminal twist.

This simply wasn’t part of the age of steam; government had been seen as protecting and nurturing the citizenry to the collective benefit of all, and within the boundaries of birth and society, how far one advanced was a function of intellect, networking, and conscience (or the lack thereof).

This only makes it more interesting to look at what happened to the most economically successful individuals of that prior age, the robber barons. Now in their declining years, they often became concerned with their footprints in history and how they would be perceived by future generations; perhaps belatedly, they seemed to grow consciences and become benevolent philanthropists. Perhaps this was the result of greater scrutiny and judgment of them as individuals rather than a social class which had intrinsically permitted the taking of certain liberties.

Or perhaps they were concerned by the changing social standards and the prospect of their past deeds being judged against the new standards of what was tolerable. Avoiding this danger demanded the rise of the “faceless corporation” and economic entities that were no longer characterized by a single individual as focal point. There were a few holdouts against this trend, as individuals seized the opportunity to become household names through deeds of adventure and bravery, who are remembered to this day – not always in a positive light.

Industry vs Unions (of individuals)

Individuals also had greater economic freedom than ever before, thanks to improvements in manufacturing and the consequent decline in price of mass-produced commodities. Individuals who were becoming accustomed to independence and oversight of their own activities, employed in their hundreds or thousands in harsh working conditions – the rise of unions as a collective voice was inevitable.

This created a new dynamic, that of the individual worker vs the industry or the factory owner. Often, it was seen as the role of government to function as powerbroker and umpire in the resulting confrontations, and it is this new social oversight function (and the way it differs from the perception of government listed in the previous section) that makes this more than simply another manifestation of the rise of the individual.

Of course, this became a focal point for political differences almost immediately; progressives became aligned with worker’s rights, while conservatives backed the business interests. Collectivism vs Big Business would not be resolved in this era; in fact, it’s still a hot-button issue today, more than a century after this era began.

The Growth Of Technology

The third theme to play out throughout this era was the rise of science. It wasn’t called that during the age of steam; back then, it was philosophy, or perhaps, natural philosophy. The transition didn’t happen overnight, but well before the end of this era, it was complete.

More significantly, science created technology, and technology empowered the people. Another term sometimes used for this era (and it’s more relevant to some genres of RPG than others) is “The Age Of Wonders”. There was a universal optimism for technology and what it could make possible.

Some of these wonders would take decades to mature and have their full impact on society; others would fade away as horrifying realities were uncovered. In the case of the former, I will defer doing much more than mentioning them until the era in which they become significant (Aviation, for example), but the seeds are laid in this time. The latter, on the other hand, are stories that will have to at least be touched on as the article progresses.

These three themes will pop up repeatedly in the course of these discussions, so much so that I will avoid mentioning them as much as possible; to do otherwise would make the contents dreadfully repetitive. So, I’m alerting readers now to remain alert to their relevance while we proceed.

Electrification

These days, electricity is so ubiquitous that it seems to have materialized in full bloom, like the flipping of a light switch. It wasn’t so.

“The commercial distribution of electricity started in 1882 when electricity was produced for electric lighting. In the 1880s and 1890s, growing economic and safety concerns lead to the regulation of the industry.

In 1878, in the United States, Thomas Edison developed and sold a commercially viable replacement for gas lighting and heating using locally generated and distributed direct current electricity.

Robert Hammond, in December 1881, demonstrated the new electric light in the Sussex town of Brighton in the UK for a trial period. The ensuing success of this installation enabled Hammond to put this venture on both a commercial and legal footing, as a number of shop owners wanted to use the new electric light.

— Wikipedia, Electric Power Industry

The first central station providing public power is believed to be one at Godalming, Surrey, U.K. autumn 1881. The system was proposed after the town failed to reach an agreement on the rate charged by the gas company, so the town council decided to use electricity. The system lit up arc lamps on the main streets and incandescent lamps on a few side streets with hydroelectric power. By 1882 between 8 and 10 households were connected, with a total of 57 lights. The system was not a commercial success and the town reverted to gas.

— Wikipedia, Electrification

In 1882, Edison launched generators in both London and New York. The big problem was that he was using Direct Current (which was a much simpler technology than Alternating Current) and it has massive inefficiencies and power losses over distance – so customers had to be situated close to the generators. Edison seriously proposed generators every couple of city blocks in NYC – generators that his company would sell, install, and maintain..

Westinghouse and others solved the problems of alternating current, and after a bitter fight with Edison (sometimes referred to as The War Of The Currents, the AC system became standard. The benefits of this change has made this the universal choice all over the world, though early DC systems would linger here and there – Helsinki had a DC system until the 1940s, and the last DC generator servicing NYC wasn’t shut down until 2007.

Those advantages come down to a far lower transmission loss over distance, and the ability to convey high-voltage current (still more efficient) and ‘step it down’ locally using transformers. This made it practical to have large, efficient power generators that were located great distances from the customer and became far more affordable through economies of scale.

Mergers reduced competition between companies, including the merger of Edison Electric with their largest competitor, Thomson-Houston, forming General Electric in 1892. Edison Electric’s merger with their chief alternating current rival brought an end to the war of the currents and created a new company that now controlled three quarters of the US electrical business.

Westinghouse won the bid to supply electrical power for the World’s Colombian Exposition in 1893 and won the major part of the contract to build Niagara Falls hydroelectric project later that year (partially splitting the contract with General Electric).

— Wikipedia, War Of The Currents

This generator wasn’t the first to be powered by the falls, but its completion in 1895 marks the boundary between this era and that of the past.

In 1938, the UK set up their National Power Grid, making electrical power of a uniform standard available throughout the country.

In the United States it became a national objective after the power crisis during the summer of 1918 in the midst of World War I to consolidate supply. In 1934 the Public Utility Holding Company Act recognized electric utilities as public goods of importance along with gas, water, and telephone companies and thereby were given outlined restrictions and regulatory oversight of their operations

The electrification of households in Europe and North America began in the early 20th century in major cities and in areas served by electric railways and increased rapidly until about 1930 when 70% of households were electrified in the U.S.

Rural areas were electrified first in Europe, and in the U.S. the Rural Electric Administration, established in 1935 brought electrification to rural areas.

— Wikipedia, Electrification

By 1930, nearly nine in 10 urban and non-farm rural homes had access to electricity, but only about one in 10 farms did. It wasn’t that farmers had no use for electricity. In 1923, the National Electric Light Association, a trade organization of electric companies, conducted a study in Red Wing, Minnesota, where a handful of farms were given access to electricity and electric appliances. Those households reported significantly higher productivity and happiness.

In May 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order creating the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) “to initiate, formulate, administer, and supervise a program of approved projects with respect to the generation, transmission, and distribution of electric energy in rural areas.” The REA was part of the suite of public works projects under the New Deal designed to counteract the Great Depression. Congress set aside $100 million ($1.88 billion in 2020 dollars) for the new agency, enabling it to make loans to finance the construction of electricity generation and transmission to rural areas.

“When you read books from that era, one of the things people always talk about is how rural communities can solve different problems by forming a co-op,” says Price Fishback, an economic historian at the University of Arizona whose research focuses on New Deal programs. “Every county had several co-ops of varying sizes.”

A co-op is an organization that is collectively owned by its members, making them both customers and shareholders … but there were few examples of co-ops designed to distribute electricity – only 33 electric co-ops existed in the United States in 1930.

Once co-ops organized and drafted a proposal, they could borrow at low interest from the REA (between 2 percent and 3 percent) to finance construction of transmission lines and to pay for wiring and appliances for farms and homes.

“The REA hired engineers to help design new ways to build the lines,” says Kitchens. Rural electric customers required a different type of load than urban customers, allowing engineers to use single-phase wires and space utility poles farther apart. The REA was also able to make bulk purchases for materials and standardize construction practices to further reduce the per-mile costs. These techniques allowed the REA to reduce the cost of laying rural power lines to an average of less than $825 per mile by the end of the 1930s — a significant drop from the roughly $2,000 per mile utilities had previously estimated.

Progress on electrification temporarily slowed with the outbreak of World War II, but by the end of the war, roughly half of the farms in America had power. After another decade, farms had nearly caught up to cities in access to electricity.

— Econ Focus, Electrifying Rural America

These landmark events show that it took about 40 years for electrification to become widespread. World War 2 then intervened, but even that only slowed the spread. By 1955, most places in the US and western Europe had access to mains power.

This map shows the spread of electrification, defined as public access to mains power as of 2017: But even into the 2020s, there are a few remote communities even in England that are not yet electrified.

This variability makes it hard to draw a dividing line between this era and the next, but – since I’m making the rules of this series and have no need to be consistent – I’m going to define the end of this period as the late 1930s, while the next era – defined by the rise of fascism – will actually overlap with this one.

Automobiles

I once saw a Top Gear segment in which the hosts (well, two of them) tried to identify the first automobile to have a controls arrangement that was recognizably the same as the ubiquitous and global arrangement found today – power under the right foot, clutch, brake, steering wheel, and maybe gear lever. They ended up with a Renault as I recall, having tried out three or four forerunners.

The history of the automobile is as rich and complex a subject as you will ever find, stalked by Characters and Personalities. But that’s not actually what we’re here for; what interests us is the social impact of cars, and the economic impact of road transport.

Socially, the automobile represented freedom and mobility far in excess of what could be provided by horse and carriage. Trains can only go where the tracks lead, and laying track is expensive and manpower-intensive work. Once the track is laid, train is far more efficient for freight and mass-transit – but only to the places where the train stops.

A recurring theme in the journey through Arkansas that the PCs in my superhero campaign have been undertaking lately is the number of times a community’s fortunes have ridden on the back of the rail line. They represent prosperity and growth and industry, and should they close or simply cease stopping somewhere, so those things all vanish like soap bubbles popping. In any sort of rural or semi-urban landscape, railroads are life, and deadly serious.

All that changes when a community reaches a certain size of urban center. Rail can carry masses of produce and products to a central rail yard, but distribution from there requires something else – the truck. The subways are busy carrying people around, and wouldn’t solve the door-to-door need of businesses; road freight is the only option. Without them, and their carrying capacity and speed, horse and cart is necessary, and a truck can haul eight times as much in a trip if not more. And that makes the truck cheaper to operate, and that in turn can make the difference between a business that is growing and prospering, and one that is floundering and failing.

Mass Production

But, in a way, the produce and products needed to fill that truck are only possible because of the automobile, more specifically, due to mass production, famously introduced by Henry Ford. Except that this is an urban myth – Ford adopted the techniques and made them famous, and even led journalists to coin the term, but he was riding the crest of a wave with much earlier origins.

Some mass production techniques, such as standardized sizes and production lines, predate the Industrial Revolution by many centuries; however, it was not until the introduction of machine tools and techniques to produce interchangeable parts were developed in the mid-19th century that modern mass production was possible.

In the Industrial Revolution, simple mass production techniques were used at the Portsmouth Block Mills in England to make ships’ pulley blocks for the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars. It was achieved in 1803 by Marc Isambard Brunel in cooperation with Henry Maudslay under the management of Sir Samuel Bentham. The first unmistakable examples of manufacturing operations carefully designed to reduce production costs by specialized labor and the use of machines appeared in the 18th century in England.

Prerequisites for the wide use of mass production were interchangeable parts, machine tools and power, especially in the form of electricity.

— Wikipedia, Mass Production

One of the pioneers in the field, working for Ford, was Frederick Winslow Taylor (who most people have never heard of). In 1908 Taylor was awarded the Dewar Trophy for creating interchangeable mass-produced precision engine parts, Henry Ford downplayed the role of Taylorism in the development of mass production at his company, but Taylor’s techniques were used to perform time studies and experiments to mechanize factory processes by Ford management, focusing on minimizing worker movements. The difference was that while Taylor focused mostly on efficiency of the worker, Ford also substituted for labor by using machines, thoughtfully arranged, wherever possible, regarding the worker as a machine operator and part of a larger process, rather than a processing unit in their own right.

Mass production makes it possible to make thousands of X in the time that it used to take a skilled worker to make one X, or more. That this is accomplished by a hundred or more workers is not all that relevant, because of the earning differential between the master craftsman and the pay scale of a (relatively) unskilled worker – those 100+ workers actually cost no more, or even less, than the single expert. And that means that the manufacturing cost of X drops more than 1,000-fold – say, from $400 to $0.40¢. Distribution might have added another 10¢ to that, advertising and promotion 5¢, profits for various hands in the distribution chain may have doubled the resulting price – but that’s still only $1.10 each to the customer.

I’ll deal with the impact of that reduction on consumers and consumerism a little later. For now, suffice it to say that the things that people already wanted became a LOT cheaper, and many products for which price would have restricted demand sufficiently to make them unviable suddenly became completely affordable.

Sidebar: a brief conversation about Design

The master craftsman was still needed to create prototypes, which engineers then translated into designs and assembly processes. There would still have been quite a lot of variability in the efficiency of the processes – a good engineer could make things possible that an ordinary one couldn’t conceive of, and make the resulting units cheaper at the same time.

Liberated from the need to be practical, designers started to focus on style and form, and this produced whole new schools of design, frequently called ‘movements’.

These ‘movements’ were philosophies of design that influenced everything from furniture to decoration to art to architecture. Art Nouveau was one, and the industrialized minimalism of Bauhaus is another (The Wikipedia page dedicated to the Art Nouveau movement is massive and full of images depicting variations on the style – strongly recommended as a ‘style guide’ to the start of the era).

The Bauhaus movement can similarly be used for cutting-edge designs in the latter part of the era. At the heart of the Bauhaus movement was capturing a sense of modernity and efficiency in design through bends and minimalism, and the success of the movement can be discerned from the fact that office furniture in the Bauhaus style still looks ultra-modern modern today. I can pretty much guarantee that readers have seen the style in use, even if they didn’t recognize that fact at the time.

You don’t have to employ these styles if they don’t fit your campaign world – the key point to emphasize is that mass production makes widespread adoption of A given style inevitable. You can pick any style that seems right to use as your template.

The Price Of Comfort

The Victorian and Edwardian eras are times of great change in the prices and availability of things. Mass production was a massive amplification of this effect, but it was already well underway. Only in more modern times have the true prices of some of the decorative and personal choices become known.

Victorian England, for example, is characterized by a particular shade of green – it was used in wallpaper and paint especially.

Scheele’s Green, also called Schloss Green … was invented in 1775 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele. By the end of the 19th century, it had virtually replaced the older green pigments based on copper carbonate. It is a yellowish-green pigment commonly used during the early to mid-19th century in paints as well as being directly incorporated into a variety of products as a colorant.

It began to fall out of favor after the 1860s because of its toxicity and the instability of its color in the presence of sulfides and various chemical pollutants.

The acutely toxic nature of Scheele’s green as well as other arsenic-containing green pigments such as Paris Green may have contributed to the sharp decline in the popularity of the color green in late Victorian society.

— Wikipedia, Scheele’s Green

In fact, there was a range of closely-matching colors that collectively are now referred to as Scheele’s Green – Hex #478800 (RGB 71, 136, 0) is most common, but Hex #3c7a18 (RGB 60,122,24) would also be accepted.

Toxicity

In the 19th century, the toxicity of arsenic compounds was not readily known. Nineteenth-century journals contained reports of children wasting away in bright green rooms, of ladies in green dresses swooning, and of newspaper printers being overcome by arsenic vapors. There is one example of acute poisoning of children attending a Christmas party where dyed candles were burned

— Wikipedia, Scheele’s Green

The lessons from these cautionary tales fell on deaf ears. Until the 20th century, it took a single day’s study to become a licensed electrician in the UK; other jurisdictions may have been more strict, but it was a matter of degree, not of kind.

As a result, there were all sorts of horror stories caused by incorrect wiring causing electrocutions and fires. It is fair to say that these were spread widely by the Gas Companies of the time (who were rivals to the Electricity suppliers) , and may have been exaggerated, but there remains enough proof that it was going on.

An Electrical Issue

In Australia, from the 1920s through to March 2000, there was a magazine called Electronics Australia. In the late 70’s, I came into possession of many issues from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and enjoyed reading a number of the articles, and especially a regular column called (I think) The Serviceman, who was an electrician who repaired televisions and other electrical appliances in the vacuum-tube era and beyond.

This provided me with my first exposure to the divide-and-conquer logic of diagnosing faults, something that has come in useful on any number of occasions, but that’s a side-issue.

One such column talked about an incident at a caravan park in which a borrowed (and badly-wired) extension cord made something – a boat? a fuse box? “live” and fully capable of electrocuting on touch. This was in the 1970s.

Luckily, the device supposedly being powered wouldn’t work in that configuration, and the person reporting the incident was clever enough to work out what the problem was without endangering himself (it transpired that both supply and extension cord were mis-wired; neither error on their own was catastrophic, but the combination was potentially lethal).

The deeper issue was that many caravan parks have (had?) home-wired electrical distribution systems by people who didn’t know half as much as they thought they did.

I’ve never forgotten that material, since (at the time) my father was living in a Caravan Park and my sister and brother-in-law were running it, and I had re-read the article/column just before visiting them, purely by chance. It stuck.

Even today, buildings are being discovered in which the builder either cut corners (and should not have), or otherwise messed up – usually in the act of restoring them. Some were ready to collapse under the wrong combination of circumstances, dangerous to reside in. Standards back at the turn of the century were not as rigorous as they are now, and training even less so, and that’s a dangerous combination.

A Healthy Radioactive Glow

Another area that was poorly regulated until the New Deal was pharmaceuticals. All sorts of snake oil was sold, so much so that the term has become associated with deceptive marketing in general.

Many 19th-century United States and 18th-century European entrepreneurs advertised and sold mineral oil (often mixed with various active and inactive household herbs, spices, drugs, and compounds, but containing no snake-derived substances whatsoever) as ‘snake oil liniment’, making claims about its efficacy as a panacea. Patent medicines that claimed to be a panacea were extremely common from the 18th century until the 20th, particularly among vendors masking addictive drugs such as cocaine, amphetamine, alcohol, and opium-based concoctions or elixirs, to be sold at medicine shows as medication or products promoting health.

— Wikipedia, Snake Oil

The discovery of Radium and of Radioactivity in general led, almost immediately, to its incorporation into all sorts of products and services. These days, it’s frequently referred to as Radioactive Quackery, which is defined as any practice that improperly promotes radioactivity as a therapy for illnesses, but I like to extend it to the misuse of radioactivity for convenience.

Radium was added to toothpaste, spa water, drinking water, and foodstuffs. Uranium, especially in its natural oxides form, was used in paint, sand houses, cigarette packets, jewelry, pendants, wristbands, and so on. For me, though, the ultimate example was the portable fluoroscope used for making sure that shoes fitted properly (see Wikipedia — Shoe fitting fluoroscope).

It was the practice of painting watch dials with radium that ultimately brought an end to most of this nonsense (some anti-5G products continue to extol the virtues of radioactivity, however, and there’s the negative-ion craze of a few years ago).

In the mid-1920s, a lawsuit was filed against the United States Radium Corporation by five dying “Radium Girls” – dial painters who had painted radium-based luminous paint on the dials of watches and clocks. The dial painters were instructed to lick their brushes to give them a fine point, thereby ingesting radium.[35] Their exposure to radium caused serious health effects which included sores, anemia, and bone cancer.

During the litigation, it was determined that the company’s scientists and management had taken considerable precautions to protect themselves from the effects of radiation, but it did not seem to protect their employees. Additionally, for several years the companies had attempted to cover up the effects and avoid liability by insisting that the Radium Girls were instead suffering from syphilis. This complete disregard for employee welfare had a significant impact on the formulation of occupational disease labor law.

As a result of the lawsuit, the adverse effects of radioactivity became widely known, and radium-dial painters were instructed in proper safety precautions and provided with protective gear. In particular, dial painters no longer licked paint brushes to shape them.. Radium was still used in dials as late as the 1960s, but there were no further injuries to dial painters. This highlighted that the harm to the Radium Girls could easily have been avoided.

— Wikipedia, Radium / Luminescent Paint

Remember what i said about warnings falling on dead ears?

In the U.S., nasal radium irradiation was also administered to children to prevent middle-ear problems or enlarged tonsils from the late 1940s through the early 1970s.

— Wikipedia, Radium / Commercial Use

The Luxury Standard

Despite these risks, consumers embraced the fact that comfort and even style were now commodities that they could afford. New businesses sprang into existence and were quickly profitable.

One consumer is a flyspeck. A thousand is something significant. An entire target market can make or break a manufacturer, and did, on a number of occasions. Competition between brands could be cut-throat, and manufacturers who risked offending customers – be it with poor service or shoddy goods – frequently paid the price.

There was an immediate impact on the upper end of society. With ordinary people now able to afford what would previously have been symbolic of success and prosperity, new symbolic tokens were needed. Hand-made – complete with imperfections that revealed this fact – became the new “gold standard” for luxury items. Fortunately, we seem to have shed that particular form of vanity at some point, though the attraction of hand-made luxury items remains.

Old Money

Which brings me to the tale of old money and the Robber Barons of the Age Of Steam. These people, and their families, began to turn toward benevolence as a means of reforming their images. Those of a cynical bent might suggest that the fate of the French Aristocracy during the revolution of 1789 had something to do with it, but for me, the gap is too great.

Inequity in social positions through wealth had been around since the landed Gentry of the middle ages, but until now it had been considered commendable, a tribute to the intelligence and business savvy of the entrepreneur.

In many cases, family money had descended through multiple generations, and wealth was long-established. Yet, it was in the Age Of Steam that many nobles lost access to their traditional sources of income and began having to pay for maintenance of their regal mansions and castles out of their own pockets. By the time the Age of Electrification begins, many have been forced to find innovative ways of raising additional funds – like tourism and souvenirs, hosting weddings, and so on.

In some cases, this was not enough, and the only solution was to sell the property to someone else who could do a better job of preserving it. Most found ways of keeping themselves afloat, even if it meant selling off some other lands.

Often, the person doing the purchasing of the larger estates was an individual whose wealth was wholly the product of the Age Of Steam, so this was only a partial redistribution of wealth, and certainly not enough in and of itself to overcome growing resentment on the part of the ordinary citizen. The wealthy had lost their protective halo of social class, and needed to find some other means of justifying their access to a greater level of prosperity.

The answer eventually found was Charity and Benevolence. Funding scholarships, and expansions of Universities, and new Hospital Wings, and the like, became the way to show that you were using the wealth your family had accrued for the benefit of society as a whole.

The Great Depression would further change this social class, but I’ll get to that later.

New Money

There were no shortage of rags-to-riches true-life stories in the late 19th and early 20th century. Someone with an idea could convince others to invest in it, and turn that investment into a fortune.

The great difference between those with this ‘New Money’ and the ‘Old Money’ is that the former had once been of lower social class than the former, no matter what their wealth now was. This gave rise to the trope of the Nouveau Riche (French for ‘new rich’) which started as a derogatory term denoting someone who had acquired wealth in the current generation and, usually, didn’t know how to behave in their new social class as a result.

That this concept is still with us is easily shown – I simply refer the reader to the movie, Caddyshack!

The concept itself dates all the way back to ancient Greece, and also appears in the Roman Empire. So it’s nothing new!

Beyond the original meaning, it has become associated with those who behave as though they had just acquired their wealth, whether they had inherited it or not. Actions such as conspicuous consumption and ‘common’ (vulgar) behavior.

Gaining acceptance within the new social stratum was made intentionally difficult by those already within it, perhaps out of snobbishness, perhaps out of valid criticism of the worst examples of the Nouveau Riche from real life. To achieve it, the newcomers had to be seen to behave like the perfect examples of the entitled upper-class, and even to marry into the ‘right family’.

The foibles and eccentricities which the Old Money could get away with were forbidden to the New Money. But they frequently found ways around the obstacles and roadblocks; for example, if prevented from donating a new wing to a hospital, they might establish a new hospital somewhere else and use their wealth to recruit only the best and brightest, establishing it as a leader in the field of medicine.

It’s going too far to describe this as a game between the two sub-classes, though it often took on childish and comic proportions, as the example above shows. But “I can be more generous than you are” is a valid trope for those who could fairly be accused of being Nouveau Riche.

Unions

I’ve already made a point of the inevitability of Trade Unions given the other social changes taking place, but the history deserves a bit of a mention.

Trade unions in the United Kingdom were first decriminalized under the recommendation of a Royal commission in 1867, which agreed that the establishment of the organizations was to the advantage of both employers and employees. Legalized in 1871, the Trade Union Movement sought to reform socioeconomic conditions for working men in British industries.

— Wikipedia, Trade Unions in the United Kingdom

Initially, following British laws, trade unions in Australia were suppressed, particularly under the Combination Laws of 1799 and 1800. A trade union or other association could also be regarded as illegal because of being considered a “restraint of trade”.

The British Master and Servant Act 1823, and subsequent updates, were generally regarded as heavily biased towards employers, and designed to discipline employees and repress the “combination” of workers in trade unions. The law required the obedience and loyalty from servants (i.e., workers) to their contracted employer, with infringements of the contract, or disobedience, subject to criminal penalties, often with a jail sentence of hard labor; and the calling for strikes was punished as an “aggravated” breach of contract.

Over time though, the position was slowly liberalized and through the British Trade Union Act 1871, alongside the subsequent Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875, trade unions were legitimized.

— Wikipedia, Australian Labour Movement
(note the British spelling)..

Labor unions represent United States workers in many industries recognized under US labor law since the 1935 enactment of the National Labor Relations Act.

National labor unions began to form in the post-Civil War Era. The Knights of Labor emerged as a major force in the late 1880s, but it collapsed because of poor organization, lack of effective leadership, disagreement over goals, and strong opposition from employers and government forces.

The American Federation of Labor, founded in 1886 and led by Samuel Gompers until his death in 1924, proved much more durable. It arose as a loose coalition of various local unions. It helped coordinate and support strikes and eventually became a major player in national politics.

— Wikipedia, Labor Unions in the United States
(note the American spelling)..

As the final extract makes clear, just because they were technically illegal, it didn’t stop unions forming; the law simply raised the stakes. The same was true in the other jurisdictions cited, too. After all, if no-one had ever committed a particular illegal act, there would be no law against it!

The rise of unions created an occasionally awkward four-corner dance between workers, unions, employers, and governments. Through the 20th century, there have been two driving forces within politics (occasionally superseded by other issues) – a liberalizing movement seeking to protect workers and amplify worker’s rights, and a conservative element seeking to protect business from unions.

In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher greatly reduced union powers; in Australia, the same was done by Malcolm Fraser and successive conservative governments.

But neither eviscerated worker’s rights to the same extent as the US, where state-level republicans enacted “Right To Work” legislation, that, despite the name, essentially permits the dismissal of a worker for any reason whatsoever save only members of a few protected classes – you can’t dismiss someone because of their race, for example. But you can dismiss that person because you don’t like the color of their socks. Twenty-eight states have “Right To Work” laws.

Unlike the right to work definition as a human right in international law, U.S. right-to-work laws do not aim to provide a general guarantee of employment to people seeking work but rather guarantee an employee’s right to refrain from paying or being a member of a labor union.

— Wikipedia, Right-to-work Law

The reason these Right-to-work laws have had this effect is by restricting or removing the ability of unions to protest and protect workers affected by unfair dismissal. While the intentions of the laws may be laudable, they frequently combine with other pro-business legislation to prevent regulation of labor practices.

The principle that Federal Law, when applicable, overrides any state law, and the constitutional guarantees in the Bill Of Rights overrules even Federal Law, afforded some protection for workers, despite the local legislation (that’s why the ‘protected classes’ exceptions exist).

Strong workplace protection legislation at a federal level, for example, would be binding on all states whether they agreed with it or not. Lately, some states have been enacting laws that would seem to disregard the Constitutional and Federal regulations, permitting the employment of teenagers in mining operations without adequate protective equipment for example. It seems inevitable that another in the long series of confrontations between Workers and Employers is coming in the near future.

Those confrontations have been taking part since before Unions became legal. Business always believes (correctly) that it can maximize profits if it is freed from regulatory restraint, but also believes that its only responsibility is to the stockholders of the company. Regulators, on the other hand, believe that corporations should have other responsibilities, including fair treatment of the workers who make the business functional, and that employers can’t be trusted to shoulder those additional responsibilities without legal force. That’s the thinking that gives rise to the EPA, amongst other government agencies.

The Boom-and-Bust Cycle

It’s going too far to blame the economic prosperity oscillations conflated in the term “Boom-and-Bust Cycle” on these periodic stouches over restriction and regulation. They don’t cause them; natural chaos in a noisy system does that as underlying trends shape the noise into temporary patterns. But they do make things a lot worse than they otherwise might be.

The Great Depression was caused by the collapse of institutions selling shares to ordinary people without adequate protections for those citizens. Afterwards, FDR wrote many such restrictions and protections into law. Businesses squeaked, but under the circumstances, didn’t have much of a leg to stand on.

Successive governments weakened those laws and protections as a result of cases put forward by the business community of how much better they could make the economy through this tool or that measure. George W Bush was the President who oversaw the removal of the last of the FDR protections. What happened? The GFC.

Would the GFC have occurred without the removal of those restrictions? Yes. But the practice of companies buying debt – and the potential future repayment of that debt – as a commodity would have been far more restricted, and the failure of one or two institutions after making bad investments would not have threatened the collapse of the entire financial ecosystem. At least, that’s my understanding of events.

Here’s the point: those tensions, those rises and falls of the stock market, those lobbyists pushing for deregulation (or against proposed regulation) and their opposite numbers pushing for tighter regulations, those are intrinsically part of the economic consequences of the electrification of society.

Organized Crime

The [Mafia] organization’s name is derived from the original Mafia or Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, with “American Mafia” originally referring simply to Mafia groups from Sicily operating in the United States, as the organization initially emerged as an offshoot of the Sicilian Mafia formed by Italian immigrants in the United States. However, the organization gradually evolved into a separate entity partially independent of the original Mafia in Sicily.

— Wikipedia, American Mafia

The Cosa Nostra weren’t all bad. They settled disputes and prevented oppression by land-owners, acting as Judges and Juries in a time when neither Judges nor Justice could otherwise be attained. But they also committed numerous criminal acts, and facilitated more.

Their central philosophy seems to be that crime is going to happen anyway; and so it needs to be regulated. Not too much from any one victim, nothing from those who deserve or are awarded their protection, and so on. If you accept that philosophic stance, it’s probably a reasonable position to take.

All that changed when Sicilian immigrants came to the US.

The Mafia in the United States emerged in impoverished Italian immigrant neighborhoods or ghettos in New York’s East Harlem (or Italian Harlem), the Lower East Side, and Brooklyn; also emerging in other areas of the Northeastern United States and several other major metropolitan areas (such as New Orleans[10] and Chicago) during the late 19th century and early 20th century, following waves of Italian immigration especially from Sicily and other regions of Southern Italy. It has its roots in the Sicilian Mafia but is a separate organization in the United States.

Mafia groups in the United States first became influential in the New York metropolitan area, gradually progressing from small neighborhood operations in poor Italian ghettos to citywide and eventually national organizations. “The Black Hand” was a name given to an extortion method used in Italian neighborhoods at the turn of the 20th century. It has been sometimes mistaken for the Mafia itself, which it is not.

From the 1890s to 1920 in New York City the Five Points Gang, founded by Paul Kelly, were very powerful in the Little Italy of the Lower East Side. Kelly recruited some street hoodlums who later became some of the most famous crime bosses of the century – such as Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and Frankie Yale.

— Wikipedia, American Mafia

With a tradition of breaking any law they didn’t like, illegal unions were an obvious avenue for the mafia to exploit, and one that would have earned them goodwill from many citizens.

Prohibition

On January 16, 1919, prohibition began in the United States with the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution making it illegal to manufacture, transport, or sell alcohol. Despite these bans, there was still a very high demand for it from the public. This created an atmosphere that tolerated crime as a means to provide liquor to the public, even among the police and city politicians.

The profits that could be made from selling and distributing alcohol were worth the risk of punishment from the government, which had a difficult time enforcing prohibition… Criminal gangs and politicians saw the opportunity to make fortunes and began shipping larger quantities of alcohol to U.S. cities. The majority of the alcohol was imported from Canada, the Caribbean, and the American Midwest where stills manufactured illegal alcohol.

In the early 1920s, fascist Benito Mussolini took control of Italy and waves of Italian immigrants fled to the United States. Sicilian Mafia members also fled to the United States, as Mussolini cracked down on Mafia activities in Italy.

Most Italian immigrants resided in tenement buildings. As a way to escape the poor lifestyle, some Italian immigrants chose to join the American Mafia.

The Mafia took advantage of prohibition and began selling illegal alcohol. The profits from bootlegging far exceeded the traditional crimes of protection, extortion, gambling, and prostitution. Prohibition allowed Mafia families to make fortunes.

— Wikipedia, American Mafia

Prohibition took a small problem and made it far worse, largely because proponents were too busy dreaming of the ‘perfect society’ that the lack of alcohol would create. Temperance movements had been dreaming of a prohibition on ‘the demon drink’ for decades.

The temperance movement in the United States began at a national level in the 1820s, having been popularized by evangelical temperance reformers and among the middle classes.

— Wikipedia, Temperance Movement

Would Prohibition have worked if its proponents had been more practical, holding off until adequate enforcement was possible, ensuring that counseling services were widely available and free, and perhaps providing medically-supervised chances to wean an individual off?

I doubt it. The more effective the interdiction, the higher the price would have gone, and the more incentive there would have been for the Mafia to find every weakness in the system – corruption, bribery, blackmail, and – if necessary – murder. It would have made things worse, not better.

Would preventing Prohibition have stopped the Mafia? I doubt that, too. It would have restricted them to the traditional avenues of exploitation – gambling, extortion, and so on – and hence their growth – at least until the advent of the drug trade.

The mafia dons actually opposed the family getting involved in narcotic smuggling. But by then, their control over younger, more ambitious members was slipping (not that it had ever been all that strong), and narcotics brought money – lots of money, more even than they had seen in prohibition. And money is power, and power makes the decisions. So it may have delayed the inevitable, but that’s about all.

No, the rise of Organized Crime of some sort is a natural consequence of the social changes in the economic times, and as inevitable.

Individual Leisure

Let’s turn to an altogether more palatable topic – leisure time. I don’t think I need to quote a definition, everyone knows what it is.

Leisure used to be the exclusive province of the upper class, but that ship had sailed long ago. Leisure was now available to all in at least some measure.

Unions played a part in the increase, negotiating shorter working hours. While opposed, many businesses found that worker productivity actually went up when workers were content and well-rested.

Equally importantly, new industries rose up to fill that leisure time, and extract the newly-disposable income. Entertainments – theaters and movies and radios; Sporting facilities and tournaments; restaurants, holidays and tourism, and so on. None of these would have become as ubiquitous as they now are without the new economic drivers; there was not enough membership in the upper classes to support them as industries. They had to target the masses.

Economic consequences

Any time you introduce new industries to an economy, you make that economy more robust, at least in theory. But that’s a theory that overlooks interdependence, because it complicates the situation too much. Nevertheless, even if it’s not completely right, it’s also not completely wrong.

Mass entertainment was one of the things that got the world through the Great Depression. Not only from a pressure-valve psychological point of view, but also from the point of view of keeping currency circulating through the economy. That keeps a core of the businesses functioning, and that keeps the banks functioning, and that enables everything else to keep ticking over.

The New Demographic I: Suffrage

I mentioned this in discussing the previous era because suffrage started then, but it spread like wildfire once it got going. So you have a newly-acknowledged sub-class, given power and authority and some measure of respect as a result, who are nevertheless constrained to the roles deemed acceptable in the Age Of Steam – can anyone else see problems arising?

Women’s liberation movements may have been largely inchoate in this era; the technological foundation wasn’t there yet, nor the political will, for anything more to be the case. But the seeds would have been planted now, the offspring of suffrage, and there would be early manifestations that would have revealed the future trend to anyone who looked closely.

Those manifestations would have been small things – a small increase in the level of responsibility afforded women, such as giving them control over household budgets and letting them own businesses in their own names. Greater freedom of choice in the areas traditionally afforded women, such as what to serve for dinner.

Trivial little things that could not reasonably be opposed, but from those beginnings, male control over women would begin to be eroded. Those who, in modern times, wish to turn back the clock are doomed to fail, because they are turning back the clock to a time when womens’ movements were about to explode in full force; they are simply creating a venue for history to repeat itself. To have any chance of success, they would have to target an era at least 70 years earlier than their stated goals, and undoing suffrage – and that’s unconstitutional, and so doomed to failure, too.

There are small social cues that would also have started to manifest themselves. It would no longer be necessary for a woman in public to be escorted by a ‘trusted’ male. Safer, perhaps, but 99,000 times in a hundred thousand, such safety measures would not be needed. And this was still an era in which gentlemen would come to the assistance of a woman in distress.

Women therefore would be better able to make choices for themselves – and their inclination (at least after the War To End All Wars) was to party. But I’ll get to the roaring 20s in due course – where aren’t there yet.

Governmental Lack Of Control

Control is absolute – you either have it or you don’t. With business grabbing control for themselves, and unions grabbing some of what was left, and individuals grabbing self-determination and a key economic role, and the number of such individuals doubling, and science taking some of what little remained, it could no longer be said that the government had absolute control over anything (except, perhaps, the military).

What they had, instead, was influence. They could shape the outcome of the inevitable confrontations, even those to which they were a party.

They didn’t realize this; from their perspective they were presiding over new prosperity, ultimately responsible for it all, and it would last in perpetuity because they would make it so.

The First World War would shatter that overconfidence and cause a shift in political attitudes; but I’ll get to that next week. For now, the subject is the pre-war years and the sense of optimism they held.

Fixed Currency

If you increase the amount of currency circulating in the economy, but not the fundamental wealth of the economy, that means that each dollar (or whatever) in that economy has to shrink just enough to make the books balance. The problem is that you have to predict in advance what the economic growth is going to be when you have no control over it, then match that with your currency production.

It simply is never going to happen. There are all sorts of dire consequences for producing too little – banks failing, economy collapsing, failures of public confidence, that sort of thing – so the only solution is to produce an amount that you know to be too much, but not too much too-much.

That’s called inflation, and it means that the currency gets a little bit smaller against your fixed standard. And that means that everything gets that little bit more expensive.

There’s an argument that a fixed currency is more stable than a ‘floating’ currency. I’m not going to delve into that, right now; but its worth recognizing that all the major economies have that attitude, and the confidence that goes with it.

Instruments Of Debt

Another consequence of the fixed currency is that there’s only so much money that the government has to spend. That’s going to become important next week, but for now, let’s look at the question: if the government needs more money, what does it do?

Answer: it issues instruments of debt, which it then sells to the public, and to other governments, and to its own wealthy citizens.

Not for free, mind you; they have to promise to repay more than they have borrowed. They percentage difference is called the Bond Yield.

Let’s imagine a hypothetical or two.

Scenario 1: Interest Rates much higher than bond yield

Bonds are typically issued for periods of 5 or 10 years – that’s when the debt has to be repaid. Let’s say we have an average of 4% inflation over a five-year period:

Year 1: 1×1.04 = 1.04
Year 2: 1.04×1.04 = 1.0816.
Year 3: 1.0816×1.04 = 1.124864.
Year 4: 1.124864×1.04 = 1.16985856
Year 5: 1.16985856×1.04 = 1.2166529024

A 5-year Bond Yield of say 10%? That means that the government has borrowed $100, say, and promised to repay $110 – which, by then, will be worth 110/1.2166529024 = 0.82192710675935177878387149771205 x $110 = about $90.40.

Who’s going to take that deal? It’s not going to happen.

Scenario 2: Interest Rates lower than bond yield

Same inflation rate, to make things simpler.

A 5-year Bond Yield of 30%? That’s borrowing $100 and promising to repay $130. Even with the devaluation caused by inflation, you’re still going to have $130/1.2166529024 = 0.82192710675935177878387149771205 x $130 = about $106.85.

That’s better, but it’s still only a 6-7% gain over a 5-year period – clever investing in the stock market is likely to earn more than that.

Then, too, 4% stable growth is a pretty healthy economy, and governments aren’t all that desperate to borrow money when times are good. So let’s mix it up a bit:

Scenario 3: Interest Rates much lower than bond yield

Year 1: 4% inflation. 1×1.04 = 1.04
Year 2: 2.5% inflation. 1.04×1.025 = 1.066
Year 3: 1% inflation. 1.066×1.01 = 1.07666
Year 4: -1.5% inflation: 1.07666×0.985 = 1.0605101
Year 5: 0.5% inflation: 1.0605101×1.005 = 1.0658126505

Call it 6.6% inflation over the 5 years. Notice that there’s a recession in year 4, but the government manages to keep it from becoming a depression – just barely – in Year 5.

How’s a bond yield of 20% sounding about now? Where do I sign?

But the government can’t afford to put the bond yield too high, because that’s all money that the government loses. Ideally, you want the yield to be just enough over the forecast inflation rate that it becomes an attractive investment.

You also have to factor in the security of the investment – governments have to repay their debt, or they won’t find anyone willing to lend them money. That helps keep the bond yield down to reasonable limits. So let’s set it to 2½ times the forecast inflation rate, plus 5…

Scenario 4: Realistic forecasts

So let’s say that the economic woes described in Scenario 3 are unexpected, but so is the growth of 4% in the first year, and set expectations to a more modest 3%.

2½ × 3 = 7.5, +5 = 12.5%.

First year, growth is great at 4%. Second year is a little down on expectations, but that’s okay – it’s just a “market correction” because of the higher than expected year 1 result. Year 3 is down, and the economy is noticeably slowing. The government is exerting all its influence to try and get things happening, but the economy usually has a mind of its own. The cause is something unexpected – maybe there’s been a collapse in housing prices, or the biggest bank in the country has been hacked, or something (if it were something expected, the government would have done more to prepare for it).

Year 5, and the government response is dragging the economy back into the black – if it doesn’t have to pay out too much in 5-year bonds (and ten-year bonds from five years earlier).

Overall, the inflation rate is 6.6% over 5 years. The stock market is likely to have gained clever investors three times this much – at the risk of losing their shirts. The yield that had to be set at the start of the 5 years, of 12.5%, is about 6% better than inflation – with the security factor, that’s probably good enough.

There are a couple of other tools the government has. It can set interest rates to push the inflation rate down or let it rise. And, if it finds that it isn’t selling enough bonds, it can issue some more at a higher yield – rinse and repeat as often as necessary.

Access To Education

I’ve talked a lot about social mobility, the capacity to improve your social standing, without ever mentioning it explicitly. One of the major tools of upward mobility is access to education, because it makes you able to hold down a better job, and actually makes you more intelligent according to some.

Access to education comes in three basic flavors.

Vanilla

The vanilla is universal basic education.

The Separatist Congregationalists who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620 obliged parents to teach their children how to read and write.

In 1852, Massachusetts was the first U.S. state to pass a compulsory universal public education law. In particular, the Massachusetts General Court required every town to create and operate a grammar school. Fines were imposed on parents who did not send their children to school, and the government took the power to take children away from their parents and apprentice them to others if government officials decided that the parents were “unfit to have the children educated properly.” In 1918, Mississippi became the last state to enact a compulsory attendance law.

In 1922 an attempt was made by the voters of Oregon to enact the Oregon Compulsory Education Act, which would require all children between the ages of 8 and 16 to attend public schools, only leaving exceptions for mentally or physically unfit children, exceeding a certain living distance from a state school, or having written consent from a county superintendent to receive private instruction. The law was passed by popular vote but was later ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court.

— Wikipedia, Compulsory Education

Western Australia was the first Australian state to make education compulsory, in 1871 – the same year as Michigan, Washington state, New Hampshire, and Ontario.

This was 9 years before England did likewise.

Pistachio

Not everyone likes pistachio. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t. So I’ve used it to symbolize option #2 – paid education. Private schools, and then a guaranteed university place. Only the wealthy can afford this, it’s been their ‘edge’ for many years.

Byakuya

Byakuya is a Japanese combination of white truffles imported from Alba, Italy; Parmigiano Reggiano cheese; and sake lees, a byproduct of the sake production process. The resulting frozen dessert costs an absolutely eye-watering ¥873,400 ($6,696) for a single 130 mL (4.4 ounce) serving.

— Foodandwine.com / world record most expensive ice-cream via Google

Option three isn’t for everyone. It costs too much, for one thing. And it’s not necessarily going to appeal to anyone outside Japan and fans of Japanese cuisine.

That makes it perfectly symbolic of scholarships and endowments – money provided by the wealthy to be used to give the meritorious an education, on the principle that they are likely to improve or benefit society as a result, and that in turn benefits the donor of the money.

And it makes you look good.

Vanilla with Sprinkles

Finally, there’s a fourth option – government scholarships.

Both this option and the preceding one raise the question of how you find the potential recipients. Do you only consider those who apply, for example? Or is there some sort of standardized testing that might automatically trigger an offer? Or perhaps you need a letter of introduction from someone?

If it’s available, the standardized testing is probably the easiest answer. But it means that states with poor educational standards are going to miss out, each and every time – and further assumes that such problems have no bearing on the test scores of individuals, that you are in fact comparing Granny Smiths with Red Delicious Apples.

When you take those considerations into account, you suddenly find that there are no easy answers. That’s why so many donors leave it up to the Universities themselves – when they find a student they would desperately like to keep, but who can’t afford it, they put his name forward for a scholarship.

Well, that system isn’t perfect, either.

This article will continue next week! Still lots of ground to cover!

Refer footnote for artist credits. Cropped and contrast-enhanced to highlight the background content by Mike

I love being able to bring something new to the attention of others. So much so that I’m diverging from the intended schedule (which called for the next part of the series on Economics on RPGs) to bring news of something exciting to readers.

The subject of today’s article has so many new elements to it that there is literally something that should be of interest to just about everyone.

In fact, there’s so much to get your head around that I’m not entirely sure where to start.

Perhaps, with a disclaimer. Yeah, that’ll work.

Refer footnote for artist credits. Contrast enhanced and background added by Mike.

Disclaimer

I am not affiliated in any official way with the project and do not stand to gain or lose financially by its success or failure.

That said, I can’t be said to have my hands completely clear of the project, in at least one sense.

I first became aware of Quantum State when the author, J. C. Kohl, reached out to me through Campaign Mastery with an invitation to look it over as a source of new content for blog posts.

Of course, I was interested. Who wouldn’t be? And I have to admit that the name was intriguing.

Correspondence / Core

That was the beginning of a series of emails back and forth, fourteen of them plus fourteen replies, over a two-month span.

Quantum State is a fresh new take on tabletop roleplaying with a focus on immersive experiences and engaging gameplay inspired by the Western, Cyberpunk, and Dark Fantasy genres. Its a technomagickal romp that focus on complex narratives, boundless discovery, and social emotional development.

Like most TTRPGs, players will create a Character to interact and explore with a world created and maintained by a Docent (GM). These Characters are built by selecting 2 of 9 Base Classes (each themed after a classic adventuring archetype that should be readily familiar to players) that will grow in an advanced Hybrid Class over the course of their adventuring career.

The Core Rulebooks include two texts: the Character’s Handbook(for players to make and maintain characters and the Adventure Guide (for Docents to build their own worlds and run the game).

Both the texts had been drafted and playtested and were in the process of being edited for publication. J C needed a fundraiser to obtain the funds needed to complete that process and guide the project through to publication.

Refer footnote for artist credits. Contrast enhanced and background added by Mike.

Clarification

The genre mix was not what the name, Quantum State, had led me to expect. As I explained to J C, I had often thought that Cyberpunk and Fantasy could play together nicely in a shared worldspace, doing things with magic that traditional cyberpunk does with technology. The infusion of “Wild West” threw me for a bit of a conceptual loop, though.

The two-archetype hybrid model, on the other hand, definitely seemed to relate to the quantum concept, in the sense of two sub-particles coming together to create a distinctive combination.

I suggested that focusing on the latter in promotional activities. That led into a conversation on how to market the RPG, which led to an advance copy of the first-draft press release.

I responded to that with detailed advice on how I would revise and edit it, advice that J C was happy to take on-board. So I bear some responsibility for the shape of the campaign and its marketing.

Expanded Clarification

Before we got to that, J C expanded on the fundamental concepts and how they related to the name, “Quantum State”:

The “Quantum” part of Quantum State is a reference to our default setting (called the Core State)…

Part of the character building process involves the selection of a Birthrite (a replacement for what is traditionally “Race” in most fantasy releases).

Refer footnote for artist credits.

Each Birthrite is an entire game setting unto itself, themed on different ideologies taken to their extreme conclusions, working in tandem. A Birthright doesn’t necessarily give a player a set of beliefs to follow, but indicates what type of society they were raised in/dominated their life leading up to the current adventure.

There a 4 “main” ones that have sweeping influence over the world:

• Axis (Cyberpunk/Hyper Capitalism)
• Kronin (this one is actually hard to define because I’ve never seen it before, but Biopunk/Anarchy)
• Armistice (Imperialist/Space Romans/Stratocracy)
• Requiem (Dark Fantasy/Theocracy)

A selection of the Birthrite Icons; refer footnote for artist credits. Background and compositing by Mike.

So how does this relate to Quantum State? Glad you asked.

You see, after the release of the core rule-set, we’d like to release a deep-dive expansion for each of the main four Birthrites… [that would include] pre-written adventures/missions set in that specific setting.

These expansions [would] also include missions set in alternate versions of these setting that are largely the same except [for] one thing that flips the ideology on its head [that] is taking place and causing chaos for civilization.

For example, in a Quantum State of the Axis Birthrite, instead of the normal Cyberpunk working for big corporations/gangs, they may find the mission focused on the rise of a grand workers union that aims to bring down the corporate elites.

Or we could have a different Quantum State of Axis where the players are working for a faceless Bureau interested in controlling rare, reality shifting artifacts. So in a Quantum State, everything is largely the same, but still different.

Refer footnote for artist credits. Contrast enhanced, and spot color & background added, by Mike.

Okay, Parallel Worlds – I always have a soft-spot for alternate worlds, and this implied the possibility of substituting one of the alternate versions for the “core” version. This wasn’t one game setting, it was a collection of 16 or more variations on a game setting with fixed focal points of difference, and the promise of potential collisions between the resulting ideologies.

That’s a much richer and more diverse game setting than is usual.

The Problem

J C then described the problem he was experiencing. First, he lives in Florida (An economic and social bonfire, as most reasonably well-informed readers would be aware).

Second, the US economy in general, like that of the rest of the world, was in a slow economic meltdown caused by interest rates In Australia, it’s being called the “Cost of Living Crisis” – I don’t know what terminology other regions are using. But it’s real, and it’s everywhere, and it’s sharpest impact is on financial discretion and discretionary spending.

Fundraising, of all sorts, becomes a lot harder under such economic circumstances, and existing cash reserves shrink faster than they otherwise would, increasing the need for more fundraising. Starting to see a catch-22 here?

J C had his team together – editor, digital designer, art team, etc, and the raw text was finished and tested. The machinery to take that raw text and turn it into salable product was all ready to go – as soon as he had the funds to pay these people for their services.

Refer footnote for artist credits. Mirrored, contrast-enhanced, and background added, by Mike.

Size and Scope

Exacerbating these problems is the size of the project – over 950 pages of content without artwork which created a price tag of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The size of the problem left J C unsure of how to progress the project; no reasonable course of action seemed open to him.

He mentioned that he did have a reasonable amount of Concept Art available as a starting point, and a Quickstart Guide that was ready to go.

That led to a discussion over digital-only vs print, and subdivision into smaller volumes, and how these would impact marketing and expenses.

The key takeaway from this conversation was J C convincing me that subdivision beyond the two 475-page volumes already discussed was not practical, but that the basic principle of a smaller release to bootstrap through the problem was the only viable solution.

This was not news to J C, his logic had already led him to the same conclusion; I think he just needed to hear reassurance from an outside source. In particular, if the bare-bones first release doesn’t hit its targets, the whole project could fall apart.

There was some discussion of finessing the publication road-map and the different mileposts, and the inclusion and treatment of art.

Refer footnote for artist credits. Individuals moved closer together for more efficient use of available screen space by Mike.

Content by the Numbers

J C broke the content down for me like this (paraphrasing mine):

Nine base classes, each with 4 class features, which are combined in pairs…

…to yield 36 hybrid classes, each with 6 additional class features, which can alter or improve base class features.

32 options for equipment training packages built around a modular equipment system, with options for customizing equipment as well as hybridizing it with mods.

550 perks that “passively tweak the way a Character plays”, with new perks available every second character level, plus a couple of extras along the way.

Refer footnote for artist credits. Contrast enhanced and background added by Mike.

Character progression is designed to encompass a 40-level career.

1330 ‘heroic action’ entries that are the analogue of spells (and which may literally be spells with some classes), but which include things like advanced melee techniques.

It was this listing that convinced me that there was no reasonable way of subdividing the content into smaller volumes. But I think my response to this breakdown is relevant:

Well, when you can’t eliminate a liability, the only thing to do is to repackage it as a marketing point. Emphasize the ability to customize characters, the diversity of characters, the resulting diversity of possible adventures, the richness of detail, the scope of vision that makes it all possible, and the value for money that will be received by backers.

That was the final stimulus J C needed to break his decision paralysis, which led to the draft press release I mentioned earlier..

Anatomy Of A Press Release

After sending my suggestions through to J C regarding the press release, I summarized what I had suggested with some advice that is worth passing on to every other writer / GM that has to deal with the issue.

Think of it as being like fishing: The first 2 paragraphs are the bait. The next paragraphs are the hook, line, and rod, and the last paragraphs contain a call to action.

In order, you answer the questions, “What’s this message about? Why should I care about its content? Does it have any credibility? What do I have to do about it, now that I’m interested?”

Another perspective: if you replace the call to action, the press release reads like a brief but valid Kickstarter promotion. It works for customers / backers as well as the media. That gets it a big tick :)

Refer footnote for artist credits. Cropped, contrast-enhanced & darkened, and background added, by Mike

The Kickstarter

The fundraising program launched last week, not quite in time to bump aside the article on Guesstimating. As I write this, it has 24 days to go, and 19 backers have pledged $2,041 of a $15,000 target.

Tiers of special interest are:

• The Bulleteater Tier which gives you the illustrated Quickstart rules and adventure and the Light (text only) Character’s Handbook for a mere $5, designed for those without the available funds for a more substantial investment.
• The Mercan Tier which is the full-price version of the above. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give you anything more, so I don’t think there will be many subscribers to this tier. $20.
• The Malowari Tier gives you the Quickstart rulebook and the Light (text only) equivalent of the DMG. This obviously lacks the character construction elements that make Quantum State unique, but gives you the world-building & adventuring resources and a pregenerated set of characters with which to explore it. $20.
• The Homestead Tier – gets you the light (text only) versions of both the Character’s Handbook and Adventure Guide, plus the illustrated Quickstart rulebook. $35. For those on a budget, but who can’t say no to 950+ pages of innovation, this is the best option.
• Remnant Tier adding another $15 gets you to the Remnant tier, which includes both the light (text only editions and the fully-illustrated PDFs when (and if) they become available, while helping to ensure that they do become a reality. This is the price point that I would personally zone into. So far, three people agree with me.
• Kronin Tier – finally, there’s the option at $200 for hardcover copies of both fully-illustrated books (and all the lesser versions to keep you productively occupied in the meantime). Yes, this is a lot – more than most RPGs – but the page-count is also a lot more than most RPGs.

There are others – you can opt for the PDF version of one of the books and hardcover of the other, for example – but those are the comprehensive ‘step up’ stages.

Stretch Goals

This is the biggest weakness of the campaign. Because the goal here is to get the core out, the only real stretch goals are to bring the ‘better editions’ closer to becoming reality. Unless, of course, J C throws in a few surprises along the way – additional adventures, for example, or previews, or a PDF of just the concept art. Who knows?

Certainly, the campaign needs something to give it a boost. Right now, Kicktraq is projecting a final result of $9039 – not enough to reach the $15K target, by some thousands, and progress appears to have stalled after the usual initial flurry.

Refer footnote for artist credits.

Verdict

I think that a project of this size and scope deserves more than that.

There’s more than enough material that its potential as a game system extends well beyond the current setting, and the setting itself promises a unique integration of strange bedfellows that can provide solution foundations for many GMs wanting to implement a more innovative concept in their own campaigns.

This isn’t just a game setting, it offers a new “how-to” for construction of your own game settings.

I have often said that I love to promote Kickstarters that have already achieved their funding goals and are reaching for the stars. I get ample opportunities to do so because I’m often not informed of fundraising projects until they have already achieved their initial targets.

The big benefit of doing so is that you are guaranteed something in return for your backing, at least as strongly as it’s possible to do in our chaotic world.

But I also love to promote Kickstarters that are worthy of success even if they are not currently on track to achieve that success. The big advantage to doing so is that if the project fails, it doesn’t cost you anything.

Quantum State Train Banner, excerpt cropped and enhanced by Mike. Refer footnote for artist credits.

An Epic Kickstarter Deserves An Epic Response

I chose the title for this review with some care and deliberation – then had to abbreviate it for SEO reasons. This section’s title is what it should have read.

The size and scope of Quantum State are sufficient to amply deserve the appellation, “Epic”, and the combination of elements in the game setting also earn that adjective quite handily a second time over. And yet, the premise also opens up gameplay to small-scale adventures set against this vast backdrop – the best of all worlds, some people would say.

The innovative game mechanics alone are worth pushing a modest sum toward the $15K target.

With the many reasons to back it, I can only presume that lack of public awareness is the major hurdle that Quantum State has to overcome. So I can only hope that this review helps overcome that hurdle.

If the project interests you, don’t just back it, tell other people about it – that will only help you get what you want! If you aren’t personally interested, but know someone else who might be, tell others about it, too, because that’s what friends do.

A project this big deserves big support from the RPG community, if only to encourage innovation and taking a risk. It’s clear from his emails that J. C. has put his heart and soul into this project for some years now – so let’s see if we can make it happen.

You can join in the fun, or find out more about the project, by clicking any of the illustrations used to decorate this article, or by clicking this link: .

Artist credits:

• Art Director: Alba Palacio – https://www.artstation.com/albapalacio
• Environment Concepts (Desert, Forest, Mountain, Train Banner):
  • Benjamin Reinsch – https://www.artstation.com/benjaminreinsch
  • Juho Huttunen – https://www.artstation.com/northernhermit
  • Diogo Yoti Yoshikawa – https://www.artstation.com/diogoyoshikawa (Also did the Gigaheart Logo)
• Character Concepts (Adept, Apothic, Brawler, Delinquent, Marine, Warden, and Light Armor variation examples):
  • Arnaud Carrasco – https://www.artstation.com/arnaudcarrascotexier
  • Lua Marquez – https://www.artstation.com/luamarques
• Emblems / Icons: Kerem Karadumon – https://www.artstation.com/fumonero-art
• Quantum State Logo: Raule Napier – https://maisonnapier.com/

The subject today is Approximations and Guesstimations in RPGs.

I’ve got a number of article ideas in various stages of development, intended to break up the series on Economics in RPGs. When the time comes to select between them, one of the key parameters that has to be assessed is how long the article will take to write, relative to the amount of time available.

Criteria: Enthusiasm

If I were to choose on the basis of what I most feel like writing – also a valid criterion – I would probably have chosen to write about a new game mechanic that I thought up a few weeks ago. But that article will need quite a lot of time and effort to finish, though the concepts are quite clear.

Criteria: Preparedness

The choice could be based on the level of structure and organization that has been done in advance, I would be writing an article on a source of plot ideas that pre-dates that game mechanic by a fair period. It’s been waiting around while I look for a third example, because I didn’t think the two that have already come to me were sufficient.

Criteria: Forgetfulness

If I were to choose based on how much of the concept behind the article was beginning to slip away, crowded out by more recent focuses of activity, then it would be an article on diseases that was inspired by something one of my players said, a month or two back.

Most of the content is still clear to me, but a couple of key details are becoming vague. If this rot proceeds too far, it can lead to the article being abandoned completely; I have a couple of other articles that fall into that category – one on Rumors and another on GM Decision-making.

Criteria: Clarity

Another approach would be to choose the idea that seems clearest to me at the moment – which would probably be a short one on the utility of whiteboards; it’s clearest because the idea only came to me this weekend. Or I could spin something off-the-cuff about the plotting difficulties of the adventure that’s currently being worked on for the Adventurer’s Club because it’s more of a sand-boxed concept than most of the more structured plots that I create.

Criteria: Writing Time

Both the game-mechanics article and disease article fall foul of the writing time limit; I don’t think either would be ready by the time deadline came around. By the time I factor in the lack of enthusiasm and the impact on my speed of writing, the plot mechanics article also begins to look a little dubious. The others are either abandoned (at least temporarily) or look okay on that front, but – being new to the queue – they also have a lack of urgency.

Assessing this factor requires practice at guesstimation and hand-waving, and since that’s what this article is about (as mentioned earlier), the stars seemed to align and the choice was made.

An educated Guesstimate

The more structured and prepped an article is, the more reliably the writing time can be guesstimated.

The Game Mechanics Article

The Game Mechanics article has 86 planned sections – some only a paragraph or two long, others involving a lot of statistical work behind the scenes. If I figure an average of 250 words to most of those sections, that’s an estimated 21,500 words.

In a previous article, Lightning Research: Maximum Answers in Minimum Time I think it was, I estimated that stream-of-consciousness writing – like what I’m using for this article – I could get through an average of about 1000 words an hour, more on a good day.

I started writing last week’s article on Economics in RPGs: The Age of Steam at 9:30 AM and finished it at 12:30 AM – call it 15 hours – and it came close to 14,000 words, so the average holds up fairly well.

So that estimates a best-case situation of 21 hours of writing – all of Sunday and Monday.

But if there’s significant amounts of research or layout challenges like tables or bespoke illustrations, that average goes down – way down. It halves for each of those factors. While that won’t affect every one of those 86 sections, it will affect enough of them that parts of the article will be written at 250 words per hour, maybe less. That adds 3 hours for each of these sections – so figure 8 of them times 3 additional hours, and that’s another 24 hours of writing, for a total of 49 hours. Call it an even fifty hours.

But note this: I didn’t have to calculate this when eyeballing what was going to be possible for today’s article – one glance at what was intended was enough to rule it out. Practicality probably means that I’m going to have to break it up, maybe into three or four parts – and I don’t want to start another series of that length until the Economics series is done.

The Disease Article

This doesn’t suffer from the same handicaps. The outline consists of 36 sections, and there isn’t a whole lot in the way of research / illustration / layout to eat into the 1,000 words an hour estimate.

On the other hand, I have a suspicion that the average section length might be a little greater – call it 300 words on average – so that’s an estimated 10,800 words and 11 hours writing time. But I have to make allowances for the fuzziness factor – figure a couple of extra hours groping around as a result. Thirteen hours is about three too many.

Again, I didn’t calculate this at the time – it was enough to simply eyeball the breakdown and get an uncomfortable feeling about getting it finished in the time available, and that was enough to take it off the table.

Skill & Experience

In effect, what I was doing was eyeballing the proposed articles and utilizing my more-than-ten-years experience to guesstimate the answer to a simple yes-no proposition: “Was I confident of getting the article done in time?”

That poses significant question – one that is the core subject of this article – and begins to elaborate on a “how” back-end to an answer : How accurate should guesstimates be in an RPG?

Guesstimate Standards Of Accuracy

With this as a starting point, I can define a couple of yardsticks for the accuracy of a guesstimate.

1. Binary
2. Within 50%
3. Within 20%
4. Within 10%
5. Within 5%

Binary

Yes / No.

Black / White.

Too much / not enough.

It’s Doable / It’s not practical.

Simple binary assessments are the broadest of the lot, and the easiest to make accurately. They completely ignore any gray fuzziness about the middle – any fuzziness gets relegated as potentially falling into one of the two categories, and is then judged as though that were the projected outcome. So there’s no ambiguity.

Fuzz?

Nor is there any accommodation for fuzzy-making ifs and buts. You either assume a best case, a worst case, or a somewhere-in-the-middle case, and make a hard call based on that assumption.

In fact, you can go further – on any project lasting more than a day, there’s the potential for something to go wrong along the way; on any project lasting more than a week, there’s a fair likelihood of that happening; and on any project lasting more than a year, it’s a near-certainty. Allow for multiple people working on the project and make it man-days, man-weeks, and man-years (with apologies to female readers).

So you can simply assume best case, somewhere-in-the-middle, and worst-case, respectively, throw in a fudge factor to overcome the risk, and eliminate the fuzz.

Within 50%

The next order of reliability is pretty vague, but its’ the first one that gives an answer to a “how many” or “how much” question.

If the correct answer (not known at the time) was “10”, this level of estimate reliability is “between 5 and 20”. You’re almost certain to be correct, but the guesstimate doesn’t have a lot of precision.

In fact, the precision has been sacrificed to obtain reliability; the range is so broad that almost any combination of “if” or “but” can be accommodated; the specific events along the way just steer the outcome toward one extreme or the other, or – more probably – both, more-or-less canceling each other out.

This is like gambling that you won’t roll a 3, 4, 5, 16, 17, or 18 on 3d6. Yes, it will happen from time to time – but most of the time, this would be a pretty safe bet.

Within 20%

There’s a significant increase in accuracy when you go from ±50% to ±20%. Again using an actual result of “10”, this is predicting 8-12. Depending on the circumstances, you might then target the low estimate (8) or the high (12) with your planning.

This is actually as close as realistic guesstimates are likely to get; even if you aimed for the next highest accuracy bracket, accommodating fuzziness and reverses of fortune by selecting the higher end of the 20% range costs so little and gains so much benefit that it’s common practice.

Within 10%

To get to within 10% accuracy, you are normally obliged to go beyond guesstimating to a more formal estimations process – the equivalent of what I did when analyzing those two articles for expected completion time requirements. This is essentially a more rigorous and formal guess, and is likely to be inaccurate because of good luck or bad luck as often as it is correct.

The larger a planned project, though, the more likely it is that changes in fortune (good or ill) will happen often enough to enter the realm of predictable statistics – and that permits formal estimates to incorporate allowances for these events. Those allowances, in turn, are what enable estimates to achieve this level of accuracy.

Nevertheless, in an RPG, it’s not impossible for characters to be able to think fast enough that they could apply such an estimating regime “off the cuff”, without even thinking about it – and that, in anyone else’s language, is simply a more accurate guesstimate.

Within 5%

If 10% accuracy is achieved by breaking a task down into smaller units that can be more accurately forecast, plus making allowances for setbacks along the way, then the logical next step is to apply a formal estimating process to each of those smaller units, breaking them down still further into sub-units if necessary.

This level of accuracy also generally means that a general number plucked out of the air is no longer good enough; that’s what I meant by applying a ‘formal estimating process’. You might, for example, apply formal statistics and industry standards for key parts of the process. Still more likely is a commitment to deploying additional resources as necessary to prevent (or try to prevent) estimate variances greater than this target.

Which means that what you really have is a 10% estimate, but a promise to work harder if you look like falling short by more than half of that, which essentially guarantees hitting that 10% mark, no matter what happens.

You can’t achieve this level of estimation without a relevant skill; but if a character posses such a skill, the same logic given in the previous section comes into play. Most characters will need a skill roll and either a very good result or overcoming a significant penalty in order to get an estimate on this scale of accuracy out of thin air. Only the rare super-genius with relevant skill, can hope to do so routinely.

Confidence In Guesstimates

The above standards all skirt around the question of reliability of the guesstimate – which can be interpreted more usefully as the level of confidence that a character can have in an estimate. What might initially appear to be a relatively simple function of skill and desired / required accuracy gets complicated somewhat by changing the techniques used to generate the estimate.

I’m going to simplify the problem by separating the two, then getting formal estimates out of the way as simply and quickly as I can.

Formal Estimates

I’m further going to simplify the proposition by assuming that any additional rigor of process is assumed.

• Succeed by 1 / Succeed with a modifier of -1 / -5% = Binary with 90% confidence
• Succeed by 2 / Succeed with a modifier of -2 / -10% = 50% accuracy with 75% confidence
• Succeed by 3 / Succeed with a modifier of -3 / -15% = 20% accuracy with 60% confidence
• Succeed by 4 / Succeed with a modifier of -4 / -20% = 10% accuracy with 50% confidence
• Succeed by 5 / Succeed with a modifier of -5 / -25% = 5% accuracy with 40% confidence
• +10% confidence for each additional point of success or each additional -1 /-5% modifier

This works the problem three different ways for three different types of game system. Which one you use depends on the circumstances of the roll, with the basic mechanics of the system being a secondary consideration.

Succeed by x – you have a fixed skill target. Depending on the game system, you might need to roll more than this target or less than it. The difference between the actual result and what you needed defines the ‘quality of success’, i.e. how much you succeeded by.

For example, Target number 14 or better on d20; actually roll a 17; 17-14=3; so this is ‘success by 3’.

2nd example: Target number 11 or less on 3d6; actually roll a 9; 11-9=2; so this is ‘success by 2’.

Succeed with a modifier of x – means that you are adjusting the skill target to try to achieve a specific desired target. Failure doesn’t mean that you haven’t produced a successful guesstimate, just that it is either less accurate or less reliable than you wanted. Simply go up the table the number of points or 5% increments by which you failed to get the level actually achieved.

3rd example: Target number is 60% or less on d%; actual roll is 37; 60-37=23; so this is a ‘success by 23%, which isn’t enough for ‘success by 25%. It’s a “succeed by 4’ result.


Use this type of roll when a character wants to make a formal estimate of something. The character should announce, before they roll, what their desired accuracy or confidence level is (they can’t specify both, the other one is determined by the die roll).

For example, a character succeeds by 5, having specified a 20% accuracy target. Achieving that standard of accuracy requires success by 3, and a base 60% confidence. That leaves 2 levels of additional success to be reflected in additional confidence, which is +20%, so the GM can provide a fairly close estimate and specify that the character is 80% sure that the end result will be within 20% of that estimate.

Example 2: Perhaps the character has said that he wants to be 100% confident in his estimate, even if that means the estimate is less precise. Same rolls and level of success. Start with the ‘success by 1’ category; base confidence 90%, so getting that to 100% would use only 1 more of the achieved success level. So, move on to the next level of result, 50% accuracy. Base confidence is 75%, and two levels of success are used in achieving that accuracy. Three more are needed to get to 100% confidence, and that uses up all five. So the character can be 100% confident of his ±50% estimate. Any higher on the accuracy list won’t leave enough levels of success to get to the 100% confidence (which is another way of saying that getting to 100% confidence doesn’t leave enough levels of success for the character to actually succeed at achieving higher accuracy). So the result is 50% accuracy at 100% confidence.

Okay, that’s the bare bones of a functional system for formal estimates, that assumes that the character is doing whatever is necessary to achieve the accuracy and reliability of estimation. Good enough – so let’s move on to the more interesting question of guesstimates.

Guesstimates

With guesstimates, it’s a fairly simple proposition: the greater the margin of error you allow, the more reliable a guesstimate will be.

A Realistic Approach?

The more realistic option would be to multiply the reliability and the confidence together to get the skill level of the character, written as a percentage of success. So if you had a 70% chance of success, whether that’s from 7 or better on d20 or 12 or less on 3d6 or whatever, your calculation would be:

Accuracy /100 × Reliability (%) = 70,

or, more usefully,

70 × 100 / Accuracy = Reliability

But what is “Binary”? it’s not 100%, and it’s not 50%. Realism, it seems, has functional limits in playable game mechanics – what a shocker!

Functional

Okay, so let’s go for something that’s more functional and less realistic as necessary, i.e. more abstract.

We can start by counting each level of accuracy as a ‘rank’ or ‘tier’ of results. That immediately kills the ‘binary’ problem, but replacing it with an abstract value.

Next problem: should ‘rank 1’ be the best possible result (5%) or should it be the entry-level ‘binary’ result? Well, let’s work on the mechanics and see what would be more convenient:

Skill Success (d20/3d6) – 2 × Accuracy = reliability (out of 10)

That looks like it should work and shouldn’t be too big a problem.

Now, if “binary” is a low rank number, reliability for a given skill level will be high, and each step up the accuracy ladder produces a less reliable result. That’s exactly what we want.

The alternative has reliability going up with increased accuracy, i.e. smaller fudge-factor – which is completely wrong.

So, “Binary” = rank 1; 50% is rank 2; 20% is rank 3; 10% is rank 4; and 5% is rank 5. But, since 10% and 5% aren’t normally available for guesstimates, unless you are exceptional (and hence are likely to have an exceptional skill level), let’s impose some additional difficulty: 10% is rank 5, and 5% is rank 7. There are no rank 4 or 6 results.

Example: So, for a skill of 12 or less required, we get

12 – 2 × Accuracy = Reliability out of 10.

• Binary, rank 1: 12 – 2 = 10 /10. Perfect reliability, complete confidence.
• 50% accuracy, rank 2: 12-4 = 8/10. 80% confident.
• 20% accuracy, rank 3: 12-6 = 6/10. 60% confident.
• 10% accuracy, rank 5: 12-10 = 2/10. 20% confident. This skill level doesn’t really support this level of accuracy in a guesstimate.
• 5% accuracy, rank 7: 12-14= -2/10, 0% confident. That confirms the previous assessment.

The same results would be produced if the goal was “eight or more on d20”, or “60% or less on d%”.

The shape of failure

Now, these are the results that can be expected from a successful skill check – no penalty levels or anything else, a straightforward succeed or fail.

Which raises the question, what does a failure look like? After all, even on a failure, a guesstimate should produce a number, however inaccurate and unreliable it might be.

How about this: on a failure, the actual result is as dictated by the next lowest rank (but the character doesn’t realize it) and the margin of failure subtracts 10% off the resulting confidence level per point.

Example: A character rolls to attempt a 20% accurate estimate; needing 13/-, he rolls a 16, and fails by three. The GM delivers an estimate that is somewhere in the 50% range (either high or low) but not the 20% range, and advises the character that he has only a 13 – 6 = 7 out of 10, less three for the failure, = 4 out of 10 = 40% confidence in the result – which will eventually prove to be a significant over- or under-estimate.

Subjects Of Guesstimates

Guesstimates and Estimates are useful for the GM because they permit him to generate an approximation for his own use, on the fly, if one is needed. There are all sorts of values that may need to be guesstimated in this way, and they all have their own unique foibles that should be used to tweak the general accuracy values that have been used to date.

Weights

Estimating weight is a more detailed way of asking “what will it take to lift / move [an object]”. There are a couple of useful facts that I use regularly for estimating weights.

Like-for-like

A typical, solid, house door weights around 45 kg (100 lb) – in my opinion and without measuring it or looking it up.

A castle door is 6 times as thick, four times as tall, and two-and-a-half times as wide (and there are two of them). There are three steel bands reinforcing it, one of which holds a heavy steel ring for people to grip while opening or closing the door. The doors are closed and barred by a beam that’s 1/10 of a door’s height, four times as thick, and five times as wide. The steel bands etc add a mid-sized motorcycle to the weight – call it 190 kg (420 lb). A character wants to guesstimate the weight of the doors as he wants to lift them off their hinges.

45 is an inconvenient number, I would use 50 and then trim 10% off at the end.

6 × 4 × 2.5 × 50 = 24 × 2.5 × 50 = 60 × 50 = 3000 kg. So each door would weigh about 2700kg (6000 lb).

Double because there are two of them = 6000 kg (12000 lb).

0.1 × 4 × 5 × 50 = 0.4 × 5 × 50 = 2 × 50 = 100 kg. less 10% = 90kg (200 lb) for the bar.

190 kg or 420 lb for the bars, locks, and what-have-you.

Total: 2700 + 90 + 190 = 2790 + 190 = 2980 kg (12000 + 200 +420 = 12620 lb).

In practice, I would use calculations like this to estimate it – but would round off to 3000 kg or 12500 lb.

Lifting those doors would take a King Kong. Unless you used a lever – one that wouldn’t break, like a steel beam with a wedge-shaped tongue and a solid slice of tree-trunk as a fulcrum. Doing that would cut the effective weight to 1/4 of the normal, or less – 750kg or 3125lb. The problem then becomes one of anchoring the character to the ground when he pushes down, because that’s well within the capabilities of a really strong human.

I don’t have to know the density of wood, or the exact measurements of the Doors – all I have to remember is ‘standard solid wood door = 45kg / 100 lb‘.

Water

Lots of things have a density around the same as water. People, for example. It’s probably not all that far off wood, to be honest. 1000 kg per cubic meter – or close enough to it. For those stuck in a non-metric system, 60 lb per cubic foot is about as inaccurate, underestimating the weight as much as the metric figure over-estimates it.

Liquid Gasses

Liquid Helium = 125 kg per cubic meter. And the tank.

Liquid Oxygen is slightly heavier than water – add 10%. And the tank.

Liquid Nitrogen is about 10% lighter than water. And the tank.

LPG gets up to a whole 1.882 kg per cubic meter, about 1/500th the weight of water for a given volume – at room temperature. Liquefied, it’s about 1/2 the weight of water by volume, plus about 5% to the result. And the tanks.

Those pesky tanks…. online sources, supposedly knowledgeable ones, list empty domestic LPG tanks as weighing 14.8 kg, or 11kg, or 14kg or 12kg or 10kg or 20kg.

Looking at the numbers more closely, though, the lower numbers are simply pressurized, while the higher ones appear to be also refrigerated. So, because it’s convenient, I would use estimated weights of 10kg for non-refrigerated tanks and 20kg for refrigerated tanks – the latter being the ones used for liquid helium, oxygen, and nitrogen.

That’s for the full sized ones that are about human-height in length. The little caravan-sized LPG bottles are 5-6kg in weight, and an empty scuba tank is 16kg. Compressed air and a valve will add about 3.5 kgs to the latter when it’s full.

Steel / Metal

There’s actually a range of 100 kg per cubic meter. I don’t care about that – the middle-of-the-range value of 8000 kg / cubic m will do me just fine. Multiply by 62 to get (approximate) lb per cubic foot.

Human ability to guesstimate weight

If we’ve got something to compare with, even without a scale, we can get to around 20% accuracy. But once we go far beyond a couple of kg – 4 or 5 lb – we are pretty appalling at estimating weights even if we have a known weight to compare with – at best, we’re talking the 50% accuracy. Estimating by eye actually tends to produce more accurate results.

How much more accurate? Well, there’s this study to contemplate: 17,205 People Guessed The Weight Of A Cow. Here’s How They Did.

In a nutshell – from a photograph, the average estimate was out by 5%. If you exclude the results to only those who had worked with cattle for a living, they were out by 6%. And the pattern of results is almost identical – right down to the cluster of underestimates around the 900-lb mark. (For the record, my guesstimate from the photo was about 1400 lb).

But, at the same time, a study of emergency personnel estimating the weights of patients (How accurate is weight estimation in the emergency department?) by the (US) National Institutes of Health found that they had only “moderate” accuracy – and that if a patients actual weight couldn’t be determined by measurement, dosages would be more accurate if based on the patient’s estimate of their weight, which tended to be “excellent”. Specifically, Patients: 3.9% error; 7.7% for Nurses, and 11% for Doctors. The percentages who got the results right within a 10% range were 91%, 78%, and 59%, respectively – the equivalent of 90%, 80%, and 60% confidence in the system described above.

So we’re better at estimating the weight of a cow than we are at estimating the weight of a person. Think about that for a while.

It’s also a known fact that manufacturers can trim 10-20% of the serving size out of a product by weight and a lot of people simply won’t notice unless there’s something to clearly call attention to the fact. If you introduce redesigned packaging at the same time and use that to imply some other cause for the reduction in gross weight of the product, even fewer will notice or care “New Eco-friendly packaging”.

We aren’t really very good at estimating weights.

Sizes – Lengths and areas

We have huge advantages when estimating small lengths and areas – the human body comes ready-built with all sorts of handy measurement scales (of varying reliability).

The second joint of adult male index fingers is about an inch. Hands are typically about 4 1/2 inches across and 7 inches long. Wrist-to-elbow is about a foot, and people are about 6′ tall. Strides are about a yard. Scale everything down for a female, of course. What’s more, we know fairly accurately whether or not we have longer fingers, longer hands, thinner hands, and so on, and so can adjust our personal scales without thinking about it.

Add a little experience or skill, and you can estimate the length of a two-by-four reasonably well – at least, until you try and cut it to size.

There are factors that can reduce accuracy considerably – if we have to turn our heads to see the far end of a span, or if it’s curved instead of straight, and so on. But our depth perceptions are a lot more accurate than we often think they are, up to a point – and that point is considerably broader than expected.

For distance and length estimates, 10% error is high. Divide the accuracy values by 4 unless you have some reason to reduce accuracy, in which case you should halve it.

We aren’t so successful at adding additional dimensions to get areas, and are even less successful at interpolating volumes. For areas, divide the accuracy by 2, and for volumes, use the base values.

Temperature

It’s a pet personal theory that might hold no more water than the top of a ball, but my personal impression is that 1°C (roughly 3°F) is about the smallest temperature change that can be felt by the human body strongly enough to cause a desire to modify our clothing choices.

Despite this, we aren’t very good at interpreting and measuring changes in temperature. More than about 2° of fever is “you’re burning up”. It’s as though we count “1, 2, many, ambulance”.

Environmentally, we can employ broad scales based around our comfort – cold, cool, neutral, warm, hot, too hot – but that’s about it. Subjective and relative scales play a bigger role in our thermal perceptions – ‘cold enough for a jacket’, ‘warm enough for a t-shirt’. Right now, my room feels “chilly” – which tells me nothing about the actual temperature, except that it’s slightly cooler than is comfortable for my current clothing choices. My thermometer informs me it’s 18°C (64°F).

There are all sorts of complications regarding acclimatization, too. I vividly remember wearing a short-sleeve shirt to work, many years ago, and coming out at lunchtime to discover “Huh- it’s snowing. Funny, I don’t feel cold.”

Age is also a factor – I know for a fact that I’m more sensitive to the cold now than I was twenty years ago. Not sure about hotter temperatures, though.

Within a temperature band, our perceptions can be fairly accurate – but the edges of the temperature band will be fuzzy, and the whole concept is relative and individual, anyway. Above about 43°C (109.4°F) Air temperature, temperatures are simply “hot”.

We are more sensitive to water temperatures; not too much hotter than that, we stop sensing temperature at all (and move directly to sensing pain) – and not far above that, even pain goes away.

The human pain threshold is around 106-108°F (41-42°C) for water temperatures; most adults will suffer third-degree burns if exposed to 150°F (65°C) water for two seconds, or 140°F (60°C) water for six seconds, or 130°F (54°C) water for thirty seconds.

A 32°C (90°F) day and a 38°C (100°F) day may feel similar – depending on the atmospheric humidity. But with water, 32°C is tepid – even slightly refreshing – and 38°C is notably warm, like a hot bath.

So we’re talking about a narrow span of temperatures within which we can make estimates, and those estimates are vague and perceptual. That’s why cars are such death traps on hot days, when the internal temperatures can climb 30° or even 40° higher than outside – a tolerably-hot 35° (95°F) outside can be a lethal 65°C (149°F) or 75°C (167°F) inside – and 75% of that increase occurs within 5 minutes of closing the car and exiting it. “I’ll just pop in [to the store] for some milk” can be a death sentence.

Elapsed Time

Within a span of a second or two, humans can be fairly accurate. if we use some sort of metronome system to count seconds, we can get to about 2 minutes with reasonable accuracy.

Human heartbeats are often cited in fiction as something that can be silently counted to estimate time. In reality, not so much – a normal resting heart rate can be 60 to 100 beats a minute but it can vary from minute to minute. Children often have higher heart rates than this. Any sort of stress or activity can send it skyrocketing to 190 or more beats a minute. The highest ever recorded is 480 beats a minute – comparable to the heart rate of a mouse.

Taking away any such ‘counting mechanism’ throws open the doors of subjective error. No, that’s too mild an expression – total inaccuracy comes closer.

External cues can help – I use albums (typically 42 minutes, or up to 74 minutes for a CD) to tell me when I need to take a break for eye health – I’m just about to do so, in fact! But these trade any reasonable accuracy for reliable inaccuracy.

Complicating everything is the fact that humans have several different timing mechanisms in parallel, each of which has a different level of susceptibility to various temporal illusions.

Throw in the cognitive variation – direct perception vs estimated temporal distance from the memory of events – and you have a total mess.

Temporal Illusions

Let’s start with quoting part of the summary of an article from the (US) National Library Of Medicine: Human time perception and its illusions by David M Eagleman

“Why does a clock sometimes appear stopped? Is it possible to perceive the world in slow motion during a car accident? Can action and effect be reversed? Time perception is surprisingly prone to measurable distortions and illusions.

“… Perceived duration can be distorted by saccades, by an oddball in a sequence, or by stimulus complexity or magnitude. Temporal order judgments of actions and sensations can be reversed by exposure to delayed motor consequences, and simultaneity judgments can be manipulated by repeated exposure to non-simultaneous stimuli.”

Saccades are “rapid, ballistic movements of the eyes that abruptly change the point of fixation. They range in amplitude from the small movements made while reading, for example, to the much larger movements made while gazing around a room” according to the (US) National Institutes Of Health. They aren’t just changing the direction in which you are looking, in other words, they involve changing what you are looking at..

I can’t do better from that beginning than a direct quotation of the relevant section of Wikipedia’s article on Time Perception:

Main types of temporal illusions

• Telescoping effect: People tend to recall recent events as occurring further back in time than they actually did (backward telescoping) and distant events as occurring more recently than they actually did (forward telescoping).
• Vierordt’s law: Shorter intervals tend to be overestimated while longer intervals tend to be underestimated.
• Time intervals associated with more changes may be perceived as longer than intervals with fewer changes.
• Perceived temporal length of a given task may shorten with greater motivation.
• Perceived temporal length of a given task may stretch when broken up or interrupted.
• Auditory stimuli may appear to last longer than visual stimuli.
• Time durations may appear longer with greater stimulus intensity (e.g., auditory loudness or pitch).
• Simultaneity judgments can be manipulated by repeated exposure to non-simultaneous stimuli.

There’s also the Kappa effect, a form of perceptual time dilation – recurring stimuli, whether spacial, auditory, or tactile – either seem to occur at greater or shorter intervals than is actually the case. For example,

When mentally comparing these two sub-journeys, the part that covers more distance may appear to take longer than the part covering less distance, even though they take an equal amount of time.

…and more besides – there’s Flash-lag effect, the Oddball effect, and reversal of temporal order judgment. I’m not going to detail these, because I think it time to move on to my main point. Besides, I’m running out of time – exposing the accuracy (or lack thereof) of the time estimates with which I opened this article! It’s worth your time to read the whole page. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…waiting…

…waiting…

…waiting…

…waiting…

…waiting…

… oh, back already? Okay, let’s continue!

Relationship to Optical Illusions

Optical Illusions occur for one of two main reasons: (1) Our brains are hardwired to take shortcuts that give ‘near enough’ answers and let us focus on what we are supposed to be doing, and the illusion exposes and exploits this fact; or (2) we received an evolutionary advantage of some sort and the illusion exploits and exposes an unintended consequence.

I’ve offered numerous examples of the first, notably in Blind Spots and False Illusions: How much can you really see?, but don’t think I’ve mentioned the second before.

Basically, if you can get everyone in a theater looking at one specific point on the screen, you can have something emerge from the vicinity of the “blind spot”, which causes an instinctive impression of a threat, causing people to jump.

Horror movies have been using this for ages, and it’s why some old conversions-to-TV were less successful just because the TV screen has different proportions to the movie screen – the advent of Widescreen has solved the problem.

It is unsurprising, therefore, that our perception of time – in the form of our perception of dynamic events – derive from exactly the same causes. Viewed in that context, it would be utterly astonishing if our perceptions of time were not subject to temporal illusions and distortions!

I’m short of time, so I’m just going to toss this out there for people to chew over.

1. While there are similarities, there is also the possibility that animals perceive time differently to humans. In particular, our color vision (which is better than that of most animals) may incur processing loads that make us more susceptible to temporal illusions.

2. There could well be species that take advantage of this effect, at least hypothetically. But that requires them to primarily hunt humans as preferred prey.

3. There is every likelihood that aliens and other non-human sentients would experience temporal illusions – but they might not be the same temporal illusions that we perceive.

Impact on Reliability of temporal guesstimates

Extremely short-term temporal estimates can be made by most people with reasonable accuracy through the use of mental timing tricks. You can estimate your personal reliability by two simple experiment:

1. Count to 100 in your head at 1 second intervals, timing how long it really takes (don’t look at the timer). At 100, stop the timer and see how accurate you are. Then repeat the test for counts of 10, 20, 30, and 60. Experiment with resets by taking a few seconds in between the tests or not (which will examine how the long count has tinkered with your sense of how long a second is).

2. Do the same thing, but this time silently mouth a word that takes about a second to say – the word I generally use is ‘elephant’. Compare with the results of the first experiment. Most people will observe a significantly greater reliability in test 2.

With skill, short-term temporal estimates can be made “reasonably accurately”. If you intend to do something in exactly a minute, without watching a clock, the odds are that you will start to do that thing within 40-90 seconds. But this depends on how much of the interval is spent doing something else and how much is simply waiting around – waiting makes it more likely that you’ll start early, without waiting the full minute, while doing things makes it easy to underestimate how long it’s been, causing you to start late. And observe that +50% is considered “reasonably accurately” in this context!

From about 3 minutes upwards, reliability becomes increasingly strained. Without visual cues or references or some sort of alarm, getting someone to do something “in an hour” could mean they do it in 40 minutes or in ninety minutes – the error margin scales!

“In a couple of hours” has an error of more than an hour. “In a week” has an error of more than a day. “In a month” – assuming that you don’t forget entirely – has an error of more than a week. (Conversely, “In 28 days” is much more accurate, because of the pattern imposed by this interval being divisible into weeks). And so on.

Here’s one more experiment to close out this section.

3. You’ll need a small group. Give someone the stopwatch, While the group watches, they start the watch and make some sort of visual display. At some point 10-120 seconds later, they stop the watch and write down the time they did so, while everyone else writes down their estimate of how long it was. Repeat (with different intervals) until you have 10-20 measurements for each participant. Then compare.

Time Required

If it’s hard to assess how long it’s been since something happened, it’s even harder to predict how long something will take to happen. Not only are all the temporal illusions still in effect, but you have to estimate the difficulties involved in completing the task and how long they will take to overcome.

I estimated this to be a typical-length article – about 4500 words or so. I passed that number a long time ago – it’s now 7140 words and counting, about 58% more than expected (so far).

That is a failure of the assumption, not the estimating process, but it’s an illustrative point, I think.

That said, the closer to an estimate you can make the process of guesstimation, the more accurate you will be. Even if it’s just breaking down the task into a number of roughly-equal sub-tasks will have a significant impact on accuracy.

I touched on that in pointing out that “28 days from now” is a lot more accurate than “a month from now”, because 28 days breaks down into four sub-tasks of equal length and with a recurring pattern; the base error margin is based upon that of the sub-task, not the task as a whole. You have to add a component for compounding errors, but that’s relatively small, and can be expected to mostly cancel out.

There are limits to this trick, though. “In three months” isn’t much worse than in “13 weeks”, due to the size of the “13” – in a nutshell, “four” is a number that we can directly comprehend, “13” is a number that we can only comprehend in the abstract. The “three” in “three months” doesn’t substitute for it, because “month” is inherently variable and fuzzy.

Three months ago was February 29th – except there isn’t one of those. It was also February 28th, February 27th, February 26th, March 1, March 2, and March 3. And, in fact, if something happened a week to either side of those dates, we’d probably still call it about ‘three months ago”.

Travel Time

Travel time is an interesting question to contemplate, given the problems already identified with time. It breaks down into two components: one linked to the speed, which provides the equivalent of the “counting elephants” throughout the trip if it’s consistent, and one relating to delays and interruptions – traffic, red lights, and so on.

A short trip

I live 2.4 km (1.5 miles) from the departure point of the 415 bus. While busses aren’t quite so predictable in speed – sometimes they have to stop and pick up / set down passengers, sometimes they don’t – that’s a relatively short distance. So you would expect the bus to be fairly reliable.

The trip going the other way is more than twenty times this distance. Busses are frequently 5 minutes early or 7 minutes late. At a reasonable frequency, those numbers can be 7 and 10 minutes respectively. On that basis, you would be forgiven for expecting the error at my bus stop to be 1/20th of 10 minutes, or about 30 seconds. Heck, you could be conservative and call it a minute either way.

That’s not what’s observed. While it’s rare for the bus to be more than about 3 minutes early, it’s not uncommon for it to be 3, 5, even 7 minutes late. Ten minutes after departure. That’s a 70% error rate.

Two factors account for this: the inherent variability, which can also impact on the accuracy of initial departure – call that two minutes of the total, and two critical traffic lights. The first one is just before my stop, and it accounts for another minute of the error. The remaining four minutes all stem from a single traffic light where the traffic is heavy and the window for transit is small – creating the potential for significant delays. Not every time, but often enough – more than one trip in three, at least.

And, as explained in Sequential Bus Theory and why it matters to GMs, once delays happen, they tend to snowball.

A longer trip

My dad lives around 550km from my home town; it’s a trip that he makes regularly. It takes about 6 1/2 hours. The biggest variable is how long and how often he stops for rest breaks – typically, two or three times, one of which is to eat. Call it twenty minutes and the other stops 5-10 minutes. so that’s 25-40 minutes in stops. Google says that his route should take 5 hrs 59 minutes – adding in the stops and you get 6h 24m to 6h 39, or an average of 6 hrs 31 min. His estimated error could be as much as 29 minutes from this, or 7.4%, but it’s more likely to be 5 minutes, give or take – a mere 1.28%.

Metronomic regularity, controlled by the speed limits, a predictable loss to traffic, and a minimum of traffic lights – that combination more than outweighs the variability of the number of stops. If he gives an ETA, departure delays are more significant than how long he has to stop along the way, and if he’s not within half an hour of the ETA, something has gone wrong along the way!

Travel Time estimates

Travel time estimates are exactly the opposite of most types of estimates – the longer the trip, the more reliable an estimate will be.

When estimating the travel times for the PCs exploring the towns and cities of Arkansas for a new Base Of Operations in my Superhero campaign, he made reasonable allowances for traffic and worst-case assumptions for other forms of delay. Most of the time, these failed to materialize – and as a result, a planned 10-hour day left the PCs a couple of hours per day ahead of schedule. And that’s with a couple of unpredictable delays added onto the schedule, accounting for another hour or more.

After a single day, the Red Cavalier was so far ahead of schedule that they were able to spend three or four hours exploring neighboring Mississippi in a side-trip – and were STILL ahead of schedule when they resumed the main exploration.

Making anything other than conservative estimates would have been irresponsible of the NPC doing the planning – but nine times in ten or more, those conservative estimates badly overestimated how long things would take.

Score check: Deadline started 21 minuets ago. Word count is now 8190.

I allow myself an hour before I consider delivery to be ‘late”, but I still have a few sections to write, and then have to spellcheck, edit, format, and illustrate this magnum opus – which will probably take 30-40 minutes, maybe longer..

Conclusion: I’m not quite going to make deadline unless I finish in the next 10 minutes. Delivery 30-40 minutes late is moire likely.

Vaguer Guesstimates

Of course, the discussion above are all concerning the more precise types of guesstimate. But there are a set of others that are likely to come up from time to time, and they need to get discussed, too.

Weather

There’s a great tendency to slice weather up into discrete daily events with no rhyme or reason behind them. I’ve taken exception to this from time to time and offered alternatives to simply rolling on ‘random weather tables’ that build memory of yesterday into the generation process.

See, for example, Ask The GMs: Weather, Not Climate – and the unfinished series on The Diversity Of Seasons, which at some point I will get back to!

Never does this need resound more solidly than when a PC asks what tomorrow’s weather looks like.

Tomorrow’s weather never starts from zero; it always starts from the conditions that applied today, and then gets modified by the changes that are going to take place in the course of the next 24 hours.

Such meteorology is a pain for the GM because it’s a lot of work that’s rarely required – hence the existence of those random tables in the first place!

Things are a lot easier in Fantasy games, when the state of the art was something along the lines of “Red sky in morning, Sailor take warning”. Sure, they knew the seasons, and roughly when they would start, and what the climate said the weather would be in each season – in fairly descriptive language, but that was about it.

From the invention of the thermometer, that starts to change. First, you get written records and precise numbers; and then you get interactions with barometric pressure. The telegraph brings the chance to observe the progressive shift in weather from place to place as changes transit, in something close to ‘real time’. And then weather balloons, and weather satellites, and better weather satellites…. and forecasts become practical, and just keep getting better and better.

Right now, three-day forecasts are 90-95% accurate, at least where I live. This drops over succeeding days until it’s only about 50-50 a week from now. Each day added is an exponential increase in the difficulty of accurate forecasts, so it’s going to take some sort of breakthrough to extend the forecast window much further.

But here’s an interesting fact: the weather service that I used back where I used to live is not accurate for where I am now, and not accurate for the next suburb out. That’s three different weather patterns in a distance of about 1.65 km – just 1.025 miles. For more on this, look at The Diversity Of Seasons Pt 1: Winter, and specifically, section 4, Winter In Sydney.

Concurrent Patterns

At one point, I had to use the train. Railway stations on my line are only a minute or two apart. I went from rainy to cloudy to sunny in the space of about 4 minutes.

It’s my theory that it was only when travel became fast enough that we could be in two places in a short enough interval of time to notice how different weather could be from one place to the next. Travel by car, and those places were 5 minutes or so apart – enough time for the heavens to open or close. Suddenly, it’s not so obvious. Travel by horse or by carriage, and we’re talking at least 10 and more likely 20 minutes – plenty of time for the weather to turn. And the diversity of weather pattern becomes as clear as mud.

Implications for the GM

Reliability of forecast means that if you keep it narrative, it will generally be as reliable as it can be expected to be – with room for the occasional unexpected divergence.

But that only matters if the PCs are staying put somewhere. As soon as they move, perhaps as little as 1/2 a kilometer (1/3 of a mile), all bets may be off – especially if the weather experienced is within spitting distance of the weather forecast..

Stock Markets

Something else with a memory is movements on a stock market. In fact, i once wrote a software stock market simulation program which factored random events both in contrast to the prevailing trend and as a direct effect on the market index. At the end of the ‘day’ it went into ‘overseas markets mode’ and did something similar there, but added a factor describing the relevance to the market being simulated. The last thing that it did before the markets ‘opened’ the next day was to compound all these effects and use them to determine (1) an initial market ‘adjustment’ and (2) revise the ‘prevailing trend’ to accommodate the last 24 hours.

Actually, the ‘prevailing market trend’ was actually three different trends – a short term trend (daily), a mid-term trend (ten-day cycle) and a long-term trend (sixty-day cycle). These then combined in a biorhythm-esque way to create the next short-term trend and update the other trends when the day incremented.

Did I say that weather forecasting was a lot of ultimately-meaningless work for the GM? Well, stock-market forecasts are even more work and even more pointless. So far as I’m concerned, daily stock market movements in an RPG are comprised of equal parts ‘the speed of plot” and 3d6 up, 3d6 down. At most, if yesterday was up, there will be a 50% chance that today’s will also be up if the general news in the campaign is good and a 50% that it will be down if the news is bad.

If your PC want to predict what I will roll on 6d6, even with a bias from yesterday and the events scheduled for the day, go right ahead.

Manpower

How many people do you need to get X finished in Y time? This takes the task completion of the earlier section and compounds its variability with still more imponderables and unpredictables like relationships and leadership and industrial action and politics.

IF all things were to remain equal, it wouldn’t be much more difficult to extend that ‘time required’ guesstimate to derive a manpower figure required to reduce the guesstimate by X%.

The longer the resulting ‘project time required’ is, and the larger the workforce that is required, the more certain it becomes that all things will NOT remain equal.

On top of that, there are practical limits to how much task subdivision there can be. Throwing 10,000 people at a project that should take ten man-days does NOT mean that it will be complete in anything like 1.44 minutes. No way, no how. Not even 15 minutes.

So you assume that things will go wrong 50% of the time, and expand the workforce to accommodate that, and put a hard limit to how much time can be saved.

Obviously, the nature of the project is all-important; the more independent parts it can be broken into, coordinated, and supervised, the more simultaneous tracks can be accommodated. Each track is then subject to its own Manpower assessment, with the net effect that quite large projects can be completed in reasonable time. This applies to everything from building a skyscraper in a year or three to the Apollo program.

Don’t forget those administrative functions and overheads in your guesstimating, either!

Costs & Budgets

Hand in hand with manpower estimation comes the last of these specific categories.

There’s a simple rule of thumb that I use from my days in IT: “You can have it good, you can have it fast, or you can have it cheap. Pick one.”

The traditional form is “Pick two”, but if there is sufficient obsession with one of the three, the second is also necessarily sacrificed.

So, normally, you might be able to say “I want it good and I want it cheap.” Okay, that makes time the sacrificial lamb; you need to hire university students and promising grade-schoolers, buy their attention with cheap trinkets and promises of street cred in the IT world, and let them work on the code for as many years as it takes.

But if you want it really good, those won’t be enough; ‘cheap’ has to get tossed overboard, and instead you are Google, hiring the best and brightest for whatever it takes and paying them for as long as it takes.

There are, quite frankly, so many variables in this sort of estimate that another rule of thumb comes to mind: Estimate a best-case cost and multiply it by ten. Unless you want it good, or fast, or cheap, in which chase multiply it by 20, instead.

Shortcuts in engineering and software projects never seem to go where they are supposed to, in the long run.

Guesstimates for the GM

You will need guesstimates, and an understanding of the limitations inherent in them, to answer player questions and requests.

You can either do a lot of work basing these on reasonable and realistic estimates, or you can cheat and base them on guesstimates of your own, which you then modify as events arise that help or hinder.

Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

Okay, my deadline came and went two hours ago. I’m up to 9840 words, and still have that extra work to do, so I’m estimating publishing at
3:20 AM, local time – more than 2 hours late.

Update 2, 3:34 AM: Illustration done, spellchecking done. Formatting and final editing underway. Publication estimate is revised to about 4:15AM, about 3 1/4 hours past my (self-imposed) deadline.

Update 3, 5:22 AM: Formatting was a nightmare; for some reason, even though it was automatically generated by the CSM, the link to the Creative Commons License wasn’t resolving, and it was taking the rest of the caption with it – including the end-of-caption instruction. And all text until the next hyperlink. That, and everything that followed, was present – as part of the caption. But it’s all done and ready to post, 4 1/2 hours past deadline.

But I think it’s been worth it.

Welcome & General Introduction

With each passing entry in this series, we get to ground that is more familiar to all of us – either part of, or directly related to, our everyday lives, or part of the collective zeitgeist concerning the forces that influence those lives. This makes analysis easier (I know more of what I’m talking about and understand it in greater detail) and harder (because this isn’t a history lesson, I want to make these posts interesting to read and containing some novel content that readers will not have previously encountered – and that gets harder because readers also know the subject better).

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.

From A Writing Perspective

I try never to hide things ‘behind a curtain’ here at Campaign Mastery. Not only does a brief discussion of progress on the series (and elsewhere) help give each article an immediacy that might otherwise be lacking, but you never know what will provide the spark of inspiration to a reader. On top of that, I think that relating to readers on a more one-to-one basis – just friends talking together – makes my writing more personable and more accessible.

It’s always interesting, for example, to compare plans to delivered product. When I outlined this week’s post in (optimistic) hopes of including it in Part 3, it had 22 sections with, I thought, a nice logical flow from one section to another, but I hadn’t actually put much thought into the content – too busy focusing on Part 3 and on the many other big projects that I have underway (two of which have now been completed, and several others having advanced in the last week, BTW).

I found time in the intervening week to contemplate the story that is to unfold in this part of the series, and found a different narrative flow – one that I think is (gasp!) better than what was there originally, because it provides scope for some of those original thoughts and perspectives. One of the immediate consequences was highlighting the absence of some material that should have been included, but wasn’t.

This involved reordering some of what was already listed for inclusion, and the addition of some seven additional sections, taking the total to 29 – not counting these preliminaries.

Adventure Parallels

I see a lot of parallels in those changes with the way adventures develop in the course of writing them. I don’t want to get side-tracked too far, but the point is worth explaining, in extremely abbreviated fashion. If you’re looking for more details, consult One word at a time: How I (usually) write a Blog Post – the process is essentially the same. Incidentally, that also shows that this is hardly the first time that the equivalence has come to my attention!

Okay, so my plotlines all start as a single line or paragraph summary:

A happens, B happens, C happens, A causes D to happen as a result of B, C blocks the obvious solution, D players decide on a solution, E they implement it.

(That’s about as generic as I can make it).

How the pieces of the puzzle interrelate will be different every time, and often rooted in existent campaign circumstances and player-developed characterization & personal histories. This then gets broken down into bullet points:

• A happens
• B happens
• C happens
• A causes D to happen as a result of B
• C blocks the obvious solution
• D players decide on a solution
• E they implement the solution.

Each of these bullet points then gets broken down into individual events that collectively tell the ‘story’ contained in that “Act” of the adventure. Sometimes, a single PC might be involved, sometimes it will be all of them, the details vary.

A through C comprise three important elements of any adventure – conveying background events that the PCs would be aware of, relaying where the PCs are at the start of their involvement in the adventure, and describing exactly how the PCs come to be involved in the adventure. A fourth element that I usually try to include is advancing the personal lives of the PCs in some fashion, frequently involving players making decisions that won’t impact the PCs right away but which will profoundly influence them at some future point.

• A happens
  • Scene A1
  • Scene A2
  • Scene A3
• B happens
  • Scene B1
  • Scene B2
  • Scene B3

….

Here’s the connection: Quite often, when writing (say) Scene C3, I will discover the need to establish something earlier in the adventure, in an A or B section. I might also discover that the adventure will play better, will make more sense, and have more consistent characterization, if something from A or B does not come to the immediate attention of the players. So there is an organic growth in sections, and some redaction, and some conflation (collapsing two scenes into one), and some misdirection, and quite a lot of re-sequencing.

That’s the big advantage of bullet points and a simple word processor – I can move these bullet points around, up or down, as I find necessary or desirable. I can even build alternate paths into the adventure so that there’s scope for greater independence on the part of the players – no railroads in sight.

And, of course, once actual play – or, in the case of an article, writing – starts, all bets are off; this is a plan, not a road map.

One final illustration of the process and results, and I’ll move on:

The next adventure for the Adventurer’s Club campaign is “Lucifer Rising”. The “A, B, and C” sections (plus the D section – PCs personal lives) – comprised about 6 scenes for each PC, with one of these leading directly to the main adventure. So my co-GM and I carefully listed circumstances and developments for each PC, and planned a round-robin in which each PC gets an even share of the spotlight and no-one ever gets two scenes in succession.

When the time came to actually turn these into prepped-and-illustrated text, it became necessary to foreshadow some things, and break some large scenes up, and shuffle a few things around, and the upshot is that the “A through C plus D” now comprise 11 rounds of the round-robbin, and half the adventure, maybe more – and half those scenes didn’t even exist in the original outline, but were designed to bring the party together at the right time to participate in the main adventure.

It was once written that one of the greatest pleasures that can be found exists in creating order from chaos, or words to that effect. That’s what this is – a chaotic maelstrom of plot ingredients that have to be assembled in the right sequence and quantities to tell the singular story of these PCs in this set of circumstances encountering this specific plotline and wrestling it to some sort of conclusion.

Okay, so with that out of the way, let’s move on to what we’re actually here to talk about: Economics in the Age Of Steam! First, the usual preliminaries:

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.

Where We’re At – repeated from Part 3

So far, I’ve established a number of important principles.

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 what wealth even is, and what they can spend it on – and those, by definition, are the fundamentals of an economy.
2. Economics pressure Societies to evolve – that 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 contain 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 general principles contained within these bullet points are important enough that I’m going to be repeating them in the ‘opening salvos’ of the remaining articles in the series.

Industrial Era I: The Age Of Steam

There are those who would argue that the Advent of the (various) East India Trading Companies was the suppression of individuality and the rise of the Corporate Culture – certainly, that was the subtext of the second and third Pirates Of The Caribbean movies. While these events certainly began the process, I think the conclusion draws too long a bow.

Nevertheless, the rise of corporate power to rival that of governments, who had risen to usurp much of the power previously vested in nobility, was a seminal transformation that would come to full flower only in the Age Of Steam. Without this preliminary influence, the latter era would be profoundly different; the fact that the rise of some corporate power of this type was a consequence of dominoes already in motion, and hence more-or-less inevitable, makes no difference.

But it’s worth remembering, for context, exactly how powerful these non-governmental corporate entities were: they largely reduced Government to the roles of ‘Caretakers of the Economy’ and ‘Makers of laws regarding the interaction between corporations and everyone else’. The wealthy owners and stockholders must have felt like they were sitting pretty, perched at the top of the pyramid, the undoubted apex predators of the modern world. A pity, then, that so little was known at the time of the fate of the Dinosaurs and the warnings that fate holds for other Apex predators: when conditions change, survival is threatened from unexpected directions.

1. Rise of the Common Man I: Democracy

Democracy wasn’t a new idea; they had a form of it in ancient Greece, though it wasn’t quite what we would recognize as fitting that term, today. Some writers use the term “modern democracy” to distinguish between the two.

The seeds for ‘Modern Democracy” were sewn in the Magna Carta, way back when. Although those seeds had sent forth buds and shoots in subsequent centuries, it was as the Age Of Steam approached that they came to full flower, in the form of a tax rebellion in an English Colony.

Personal studies in ensuing years have shown that the simplified and sanitized mythos of the formation of the United States Of America are, well, a simplified and sanitized form of a far richer and more complex story. To understand it more fully, you need to appreciate the European influence on Benjamin Franklin (especially the influence of the Bohemians), and how these were translated through his publications into a philosophical doctrine; you need to understand the business and commercial realities extant in the Colonies at the time, especially those of Boston; you need to acknowledge the one arena in which Nobility still trumped Politics, and Government still trumped Commerce, War, and that a conflict between France and England led to attempts to clamp down and ‘bleed’ the Colonies of resources that could be used to fight that war; and you need to follow a trail of breadcrumbs through history that led to the Revolution, and the way a group of progressive intellectuals and hard-nosed businessmen came together to transform the philosophies inculcated by Franklin and others into the foundations of a new type of Political relationship between Government and Common Man.

All of which is far too complicated to go into in any further detail here and now! Suffice it to say that Government was rendered a servant of the People (at least in theory), giving the ordinary citizen more (collective) authority and power than ever before.

2. Power distributed

What’s interesting about this is that this represented a contract between the newly-formed proto-government and its citizens (who were given no say in the matter but who grabbed it with both hands – eventually and gradually), completely cutting out the middle-man, the corporations. That it was a continuation of the trend toward distributed power that had begun, arguably, with the Magna Carta was not given a lot of attention at the time – though it is worth noting that the Magna Carta remains at the heart of the American legal system to this day, renamed “Common Law”.

What was new was that the new political structure also distributed responsibility amongst the citizenry, who then conferred it on representatives to act on their behalf. If something needs doing, you tell your representative, and if enough of your fellow citizens agree, they smell it on the wind and either work to have that something done, or risk losing their selection as the representatives of that block of citizenry.

Cynics may suggest that this distributed power didn’t amount to much more than a clever con-job by the Founding Fathers; as anyone who has studied Australian Referendums knows, it’s hard to get a lot of people to agree on a lunch menu, never mind anything more substantial. The wonder of American Democracy is not that it is so hard to get amendments to the Constitution passed, it’s that so many of them were passed, despite the difficulty. Thus, the real authority remained vested right where the Founding Fathers wanted it – in their hands.

This cynical appraisal falls short, in my book. Certainly, with each additional State recognized, the difficulties of further Constitutional amendment increased exponentially, but the Prohibition folly shows that it was still possible. But it did create the ongoing tension between small government and big government, the one attempting to claw power back from the central authority and the other authorizing that central authority to act on behalf of all the smaller holders of power.

3. Rise of the Common Man II: The Gold Rushes

I mentioned these in relation to the Ages of Exploration and Sail, but the biggest Gold Rushes occurred in the Age Of Steam. Individuals could accrue vast wealth from virtually nowhere, and the mobility conferred on them in those eras put individuals in a position to capitalize on the opportunity – if they were brave enough to risk it all. The mythic image of the eccentric prospector has become ingrained in the modern sensibility, but this downplays and satirizes the boldness – or desperation – that was a necessary element in the makeup of those fortune-hunters.

Notably, it was often not those who actually found the precious metals who actually grew wealthy as a result; more commonly, it was those who provided services to those rugged individualists. There was a time, for example, when Laundry was carried by sailing ship from the California goldfields to Hawaii for cleaning and back again – a sweet racket for someone, to be sure!

At the time, this harsh reality did not intrude upon the myth; popular perception was that the lucky could “strike it rich” overnight. Nevertheless, the mere fact that it was possible must have had a profound effect on people, even those not directly engaged in ‘seeking their fortune’ in such financially-perilous pursuits, this is a factor that often seems under-appreciated, but it helps to explain the opportunism that manifests in the second Industrial Era, and the stock-owning frenzy that ultimately led to the Great Depression.

Rags-to-riches stories were not only possible, but everyone knew they were possible; they simply had to wait until fate presented them with their chance, then be brave enough to take a chance and seize the opportunity. This adventurousness plays out in a number of different ways through the time period.

4. An End To Slavery

There is, understandably, a lot of focus on the American divestiture of the slave trade, created by the melodrama of the Civil War; the fact is that Slavery was already dead as a trade through most of the rest of the Western World by the time that conflict started. In many respects, this was slavery’s “last stand” against the progressive forces within society that sought to outlaw it. Although not fully stamped out as a practice by the outcome, it was certainly a milestone and the last chance to reverse the course of events in this social arena.

It’s really difficult to put yourself into the mindset of the newly-emancipated. So much of your perceptions of reality must have been shaped by the events that had shaped your life, and even extremely-accessible depictions such as “Roots” couldn’t fully immerse the viewer in that mindset, though they tried. The TV adaption of Arthur Hailley’s novel was first aired in 1977; I was 14 at the time, the eldest of four children, but all of us (save my youngest brother, not yet 5) watched it avidly. You can judge the impact that it had by my attitude toward the institution of slavery, revealed in part 3.

Certain constituents of that mindset can be appreciated, though – a sense of liberty and freedom, a renewed capacity for pride and self-respect, trepidation over an unknown future, and a sense of hope and opportunity, all must have contributed to the psyche of the emancipated. And there are those themes again, resonating with the attitudes in others created by the awareness of what was possible.

What killed the slave trade? Idealism aside, I don’t know that any explanation that I’ve heard or read fully accounts for it, partly because of the focus on the American experience in that ending. Not that the ending was uniform or complete; there are associational links to Apartheid, which lasted into the 1990s. Certainly, the acceptance of the principles of human rights which found such firm expression in the US Constitution played a part (since those principles are fundamentally incompatible with the practice), but – as I pointed out earlier – the slave trade was already dead or dying elsewhere by the time of the US Civil War. Britain held in 1772 that Slavery was not recognized in British Law, for example. In Scotland, slaves worked in the coal mines until 1799, when an act was passed which established their freedom and made the practice illegal.

Ultimately, I think that economics were what killed the slave trade; mechanization made it possible to do more work with lower overheads without slaves. This enabled men and women of conscience to exercise those consciences, while weakening resistance on the part of the unprincipled and exploitative. Supply vastly exceeded demand, and (as usually happens in such cases), the market collapsed. History, in other words, wiped out the slave trade, and any other interpretation is simply putting a fair dress on an ugly reality. Oh, I have no doubt that there were a few idealists – there always are – but they were tilting at windmills until the social and economic conditions changed for the more progressive. I might wish it otherwise, but that’s a personal reaction.

An appreciation of historical dating

The other factor that is relevant is the popular misconception over when the US Civil War took place. Sure, most Americans can recite the dates (1861-65), but there is always the impression that this was a long time ago, even when discussing the Age of Steam, which started in 1712, or 1764, depending on what you consider the seminal event. Most simply date it to the 1760s and leave the nuances to one side. The key point is that the industrial revolution was already some 60-70 years underway by the time of the Civil War.

I suspect that people conflate the gunpowder weapons of the age of sail with those employed in the Civil War and those used in the War Of Independence, and think therefore that the Civil War and American Revolution were closer together than the Civil War and modern day are. One of the points made in discussing Throw Me A Life-line: A Character Background Planning Tool was that to characters who were adults in the 1930s (when our Pulp Campaign is set), the Civil War existed in living memory, and American Characters would almost certainly have heard first-hand stories from the events. Someone who was 20 in 1865 would be 65 in 1910; someone who was 30 in 1930 would have been ten years old in 1910. There’s plenty of overlap for Grandpa to tell his stories, and for the events of the time to have had a direct influence. Even if you advance the clock to 1938 – the current game year in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, more or less (we keep resetting the clock) – one’s parents would have been influenced by the Civil War, usually through the effect on their upbringing.

The other day, on Quora, someone posted a link to ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man”, which happened to include the date of the song – 1983. Two months from now, that song will be Forty years old. That still boggles my mind, because it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long – 2/3 of my lifetime!? 1/3 sounds about right…

This is important to understand. Adults past the age of 25-30 tend to interpret temporal distances relative to their adolescence onwards; add another 10 years to that, and it’s post-adolescence. I finished school in 1980, so (psychologically) that’s the end of my adolescent time, which would have started about 6 years earlier – call it 1971 to be precocious. My 25th birthday was in 1988, my 30th in 1993, and my 40th in 2003. With those markers in place, let’s place “Sharp-Dressed Man”: when it first came out, I had been an adult for 3 years (trivial) but my teens had started 12 years earlier – more than half of my lifetime. When I was 25, it was 5 years old, which was 1/5th (20%) of my total lifetime, 5/17ths of my post-youth period (~29%), and 5/8ths of my adult life old (40%). At the time, I would have thought of it in terms of the 20% figure, relatively recent. When I was 30, five years later, my perceptions would have shifted to an adjusted middle-figure (10/22nds = 45%) – so still a part of the second part of my life. When I hit 40, it would have been 20/23 of my adult life since it came out – cementing a perception that it was part of the soundtrack to my youth. The distance to it would have then been locked relative to the distance I felt removed from that youth – not very far at all, and certainly not as far removed as the calendar would have it.

The same is true of any other life event – if it happened to me past 25 years old, it is part of my adulthood; if it happened in the 7-12 years preceding that, it is part of my youth; and before that, it was either part of my childhood, or it predated me. Forty was just a few yesterdays ago, not a wholly-ridiculous twenty years! Nor does it seem like 12-going-on-13 years since Campaign Mastery started – it wasn’t in the last five years, so it wasn’t “recently”, but it wasn’t that long ago. Ten years, though, seems a LONG time…

Perceptions of time are inconsistent and easily led astray, is my point, and that plays into when people “feel” the Civil War took place.

A side-note

This can also go a long way toward explaining the differences in attitude to Civil Rights between Blacks & Whites. To whites, the battle was a long time ago, in the 1860s; to blacks, that was just round one in a fight that was only partially won with desegregation in the 1950s – and schools are now as segregated as they were in the 1960s, according to some. The 1950s are a LOT closer to ‘now” than the 1860s – and the scars are that much more fresh. I try to always bear this in mind when something related to the subject comes up.

5. The Role Of Government

Although it wasn’t there yet, the Age Of Steam comprised a transition between government as an enabler of business and manager of society to government as steward of the economy and voice of the people. It still had responsibility for treaties, and for the wars that resulted when those treaties were violated; increasingly, those treaties were about economic relations and trade, not politics or humanity.

Militaries still answered to the government – it was when that relationship broke down that a coup became likely, a pattern that is replicated to this day.

Even the status of government as framers of law was under pressure throughout the age of steam, in the name of providing a stable economic platform for business. This relationship would remain turbulent through subsequent eras – the New Deal used the weapon of business (money) to bolster the economic underpinnings of society while new regulations clawed back authority to the government of the day, but the fact that such regulation was necessary in the first place simply shows how much ground had been ceded to business in the name of prosperity.

6. Locomotives & Robber Barons

Several of these economic and social threads came together in the Age Of Steam to create the Robber Barons.

I’m a long-time fan of the 18xx railroad board game series. This led me to a game (“Railroad Tycoon” I think it was) in my Windows-98 days, in which a player took on the role of an entrepreneur of the railroad industry and competed against the others (computer players), each of which had a profile based on one of the Robber Barons of the railroad era.

Individuals could parley modest beginnings into vast fortunes by hitching their wagons to new industries such a transcontinental railroads. While some seed capital was necessary, those gifted with sufficiently silver tongues could convince others to lend their wealth and resources to business proposals, becoming investors in the business formed to administer the resulting operations.

These businessmen were often real pieces of work – ruthless, greedy, underhanded scoundrels. In reality, there were more of them outside the transport industry than there were within it, as the list provided by this Wikipedia page makes clear. Furs, Steel, Finance, Tobacco, Electric Power, Oil, Barbed Wire, Coal, Steamboats, Copper, and Timber are just some of the fields of enterprise of individuals identified as Robber Barons. Many of the names are also going to be familiar to readers: Astor, Carnegie, Gould, Harriman, Morgan, Rockefeller, Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Hearst.

It was common practice for these wealthy entrepreneurs to donate ‘gifts’ to institutions – hospitals, universities and the like – or even to establish them from scratch. Institutions, Buildings, Chairs, & Schools would thus be named after the benefactor who was providing the cash, conferring a certain level of immortality.

At the same time, I can’t help but note the transformative effects that the railroads had on society. Uniform time in the UK resulted from the need to synchronize clocks at all railroad stations so that people could know when the trains would be there to convey them to their destinations, and the impact of the railroads came up time and time again in my research into the history of townships in Arkansas.

Prosperity rode on the steam locomotive, it seems. If the railroad passed through your town, or better yet, stopped there, it would bring trade and wealth; if it bypassed your town, it was at risk of withering and dying.

The railroads enhanced and amplified another existent trend from the age of Sail – travel for social and recreational reasons. It was now possible to take a trip to the seaside for a day or two, or hop down to the nearest major city for shopping and return upon the same day. In fact, the economic influence of a city over a region could be measured to at least some extent by the travel time on the rails.

7. Victorian Sweatshops, Workhouses, & Poorhouses

“In Britain, a workhouse was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term workhouse is from 1631.

“The origins of the workhouse can be traced to the Statute of Cambridge 1388, which attempted to address the labor shortages following the Black Death in England by restricting the movement of laborers, and ultimately led to the state becoming responsible for the support of the poor. However, mass unemployment following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the introduction of new technology to replace agricultural workers in particular, and a series of bad harvests, meant that by the early 1830s the established system of poor relief was proving to be unsustainable.

“The New Poor Law of 1834 attempted to reverse the economic trend by discouraging the provision of relief to anyone who refused to enter a workhouse. Some Poor Law authorities hoped to run workhouses at a profit by utilizing the free labor of their inmates. Most were employed on tasks such as breaking stones, crushing bones to produce fertilizer, or picking oakum using a large metal nail known as a spike.

“As the 19th century wore on, workhouses increasingly became refuges for the elderly, infirm, and sick rather than the able-bodied poor, and in 1929 legislation was passed to allow local authorities to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals. Although workhouses were formally abolished by the same legislation in 1930, many continued under their new appellation of Public Assistance Institutions under the control of local authorities. It was not until the introduction of the National Assistance Act 1948 that the last vestiges of the Poor Law finally disappeared, and with them the workhouses.”

        — Wikipedia

Conditions

Although there were various attempts to use the labor of inmates for profit, or at least to make the poorhouses self-sustaining, whatever income could be obtained never matched the running costs.

Perpetually short of funds, the poorhouses were nightmarish places of last resort. Although slavery had been abolished in 1799, poorhouses frequently treated those in their care as little better than slaves. There was never enough money for adequate food, adequate clothing, or adequate healthcare.

“A government inquiry into conditions in the Andover workhouse in 1845 found that starving paupers were reduced to fighting over the rotting bones they were supposed to be grinding, to suck out the marrow.”

“Some Poor Law Unions opted to send destitute children to the British colonies, in particular to Canada and Australia, where it was hoped the fruits of their labor would contribute to the defense of the empire and enable the colonies to buy more British exports.”

        — Wikipedia, same article

It was quite common for the wealthier members of society to donate goods and money to the poorhouses, and this was often the difference between the poorhouse closing its doors or remaining viable.

It was also normal for whole families to enter the poorhouse at the same time – there was no-one to look after the children if a parent was forced into one by economic distress, so not placing them in a workhouse would have been both cruel and a potential death sentence. For those who were almost making ends meet, a compromise might be to place the children in such an institution until the parents got back on their feet. To the credit of many, these parents did return for their children after securing a more stable income, and there were also a few success stories of children who learned a trade sufficient to give them a secure, even prosperous, life as an adult.

Orphanages

“By the early nineteenth century, the problem of abandoned children in urban areas, especially London, began to reach alarming proportions.

“The workhouse system, instituted in 1834, although often brutal, was an attempt at the time to house orphans as well as other vulnerable people in society who could not support themselves in exchange for work.

“Conditions, especially for the women and children, were so bad as to cause an outcry among the social reform-minded middle-class; some of Charles Dickens’ most famous novels, including Oliver Twist, highlighted the plight of the vulnerable and the often abusive conditions that were prevalent in the London orphanages.

“Clamor for change led to the birth of the orphanage movement. In England, the movement really took off in the mid-19th century although orphanages such as the Orphan Working Home in 1758 and the Bristol Asylum for Poor Orphan Girls in 1795, had been set up earlier. Private orphanages were founded by private benefactors; these often received royal patronage and government oversight.”

        — Wikipedia

In The USA

“Orphanages were also set up in the United States from the early 19th century.

“In 1806, the first private orphanage in New York (the Orphan Asylum Society, now Graham Windham) was co-founded by Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, widow of Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

“Under the influence of Charles Loring Brace, foster care became a popular alternative from the mid-19th century.”

        — Wikipedia, same article

America didn’t just copy the Orphanage model through the Age Of Steam; according to historical research by the University Of Virginia, they also copied the poorhouse concept and relied on philanthropic donations to care for those who were poverty-stricken.

But there were a couple of alternatives that were also popular. “The contract system placed dependent persons under the care of a homeowner or farmer who offered to care for them for a lump sum. The process of “auctioning” the destitute resulted in an individual or family being placed with a local couple or family bidding the lowest amount of public funding needed to care for them. It should be noted the contract system and auctioning the poor were not prevalent outside rural or lightly populated areas. Part of the reason was evidence that the practice of entrusting the care of the poor to the lowest bidder essentially legalized abusive behavior and near starvation existence.”

        — Poor Relief in Early America by John E. Hansan, Ph.D. (2011) | Virginia Commonwealth         University Social Welfare History Project, retrieved May 22, 2023.

The haves and have-nots

These sections are included to show that despite the prospering of the middle and upper classes, there were some at the lower end of society who were left behind. Caring for these and other unfortunates was a vital element of the economies of the era.

Society is often, rather simplistically, divided into the “haves” and “have nots”; the problem is that people will fall into one category or the other based not on their true economic circumstances, but on the (often unspecified) commodity that they either “have” or “have not”. If the criteria is swimming pools, then I”m a “Have Not”, for example, but if the criteria is a roof over my head and regular food supply, then I’m a “have”.

The reality is that there is a whole spectrum of social economic standards, and individual cases who fall somewhere on the line between ‘filthy rich” and “homeless and destitute”. The lower down this scale that you go, the greater the dependence on government and social institutions like charities, and the smaller your economic clout.

How many homeless vote in elections? If the majority did so, would homeless programs receive a funding boost? The questions may be rhetorical, but the problem is not.

In prior ages, demand for workers outstripped supply, and the responsibility for those who were unable to contribute while primarily belonging to the family, was shared by the entire village or local population. There was often a military career or work as a laborer or miner for those with no other escape from poverty.

In the Age Of Steam, for the first time, the workforce begins to outstrip the economic need for workers, but there were no social safety nets. The poorhouses were the result.

Above the poverty-stricken are the poor, who have little wealth and little power, but who make ends meet, and above them are the lower-middle class, who can afford to buy things and have some level of discretionary spending, and so on up the economic ladder. Each step up increases individual wealth and power, but holds fewer members once past the middle class; collectively, they have less inherent political power as a class. However, wealth is a multiplier of political authority, especially in the US, so the wealthy tend to wield disproportionate power.

The end of the poorhouses

Ultimately, heightened prosperity through industry reached the point where governments and institutions could afford more humane alternatives to the poorhouses. Many became asylums or hospitals or ordinary schools, though those outcomes were largely features of the Age of Internal Combustion, to be dealt with in Part 5 of this series.

They went the way of the slave trade, and for the same reasons. Unfortunately, this didn’t solve the problem of the poorest in society, as homelessness shows.

8. Rise of the Common Man II: The Middle Class expands downwards

That’s not to say that there weren’t new standards of prosperity being set in this era, because there were. People who were no longer needed to tend farms migrated to the cities, and became lower-level tradesmen – chimney sweeps, street cleaners, laborers, and the like. Some learned a trade and became plumbers and builders – both necessary in order to house those migrating. Others became entertainers through natural ability or steady hard work.

The more prosperity there was, the more capacity for prosperity seemed to increase.

A key concept in economics is that a single dollar can produce many dollars of economic impact as it passes from one hand to another in exchange for goods and services. This gives rise to the concept of money ‘circulating’ in the economy. Individual to Retailer to wholesaler to manufacturer to financier/stockholder, with the various levels of government taking ‘their share’ at each step of the chain.

It can be argued that it’s only if too many of those dollars end up flowing into the hands of one individual who then holds onto them, that economic trouble results. Disparity in wealth is the result, but its’ arguable that philanthropy is a counterbalancing economic influence, at least in the Age Of Steam (as noted earlier).

It is, perhaps, also worth noting that philanthropy has made a bit of a comeback in recent times – Gates, Bezos, and Musk all have strong philanthropic histories – and all of them coinciding with an age in which economic disparity is again a serious concern.

9. The Responsibility Of The Gentry

Readers may have noticed that until this point, there’s been virtually no mention of the Gentry. They were once the dominant force, now they are a footnote.

Over the age of Sail and into the Age Of Steam, their responsibilities shifted; not only are they heads and architects of many social programs and charitable institutions, they are largely expected these days to pay their own way. They have taken on the role of authorizers of government and protector of the commons against excesses by the government; they provide a long-term stability that extends beyond election cycles.

That is, they do these things in places where they have not been abolished. The question then becomes, what has taken over these functions in places like the USA where this has occurred?

That’s a question whose answers change from era to era, but in some respects, the answer is always “No-one”. At other times, charities, non-profits, private philanthropists, or even the government itself have taken on part or all of that role.

Party Politics

Arguably, at times and to a limited extent, the two dominant political parties have also stepped into the breach – the Republican championing of small government helping keep the tax burden on the lower economic brackets moderate, and encouraging small businesses that can employ those without incomes, while the Democrats champion the environment in which they live, the educational system that can permit subsequent generations to escape the poverty trap, and other social aspects of their lives – at least in theory and according to the dogma of each party. And so long as they stick to those principles, both have valid points to make.

There were no political parties until after the American Revolution. That makes them a phenomenon of the Age Of Steam. The histories of the parties in North America is convoluted and not entirely relevant to this discussion; suffice it to say that what is articulated above were the party positions through to the election of Barak Obama in 2008. Since then, two parties have become polarized to such an extent that bipartisanship, negotiation, and cooperation sometimes seems an impossible dream.

They most definitely were not the positions of the dominant parties at the start of the American Adventure. George Washington ran unopposed in 1789 and 1792. In 1796, it was Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party against John Adams’ Federalists. Adams supported a strong central government and championed the commercial interests of the North, while Jefferson supported States Rights and the Agrarian interests of the South. Fascinatingly, while Adams was elected, several Federalists refused to vote for his chosen Vice-president, giving that position to Jefferson. A measure of how times have changed – the two made it work.

A key point to make is that where an individual stood on social issues would be defined by the politics of the day – you can’t blindly apply the demographics of today, the results won’t make sense.

10. General Education & the Discovery of Talent

More than had ever been the case before, the opportunity for talent to catapult one out of one social stratum into another was prevalent – but limited. Those consigned to the poorhouses arguably had less opportunity than others – but should their talents be recognized, the philanthropic connections made the connection to a sponsor far shorter and easier to bridge. The trick was to get noticed in the right way.

This is also the era in which the changing economic and social landscape encouraged education for the broader public, and not just the wealthy. Details will vary from one country to another, and should be researched when the question is relevant.

In The USA

In so many respects of their early society, America was derivative of the practices in England, so it is refreshing to observe that in this arena, they got there first.

“Colonial New England encouraged its towns to support free public schools funded by taxation. In the early 19th century, Massachusetts took the lead in education reform and public education with programs designed by Horace Mann that were widely emulated across the North. Teachers were specially trained in normal schools and taught the three Rs (of reading, writing, and arithmetic) and also history and geography. Public education was at the elementary level in most places.

“In 1823, Samuel Read Hall founded the first normal school, the Columbian School in Concord, Vermont, aimed at improving the quality of the burgeoning common school system by producing more qualified teachers.

“After the Civil War (1861-1865), the cities began building high schools. The South was far behind northern standards on every educational measure and gave weak support to its segregated all-black schools. However, northern philanthropy and northern churches provided assistance to private black colleges across the South. Religious denominations across the country [also] set up … private colleges.

“During Reconstruction, the Office of Education was created in an attempt to standardize educational reform across the country. While supportive of educational improvement, the office lacked the power to enforce policies in any state.

“States passed laws to make schooling compulsory between 1852 (Massachusetts) and 1917 (Mississippi).”

        — Wikipedia – Education In the United States – 19th Century

In England

Until 1870 all schools [in England] were charitable or private institutions, but in that year the Elementary Education Act 1870 permitted local governments to complement the existing elementary schools in order to fill any gaps.

The history of education in England extends all the way back to the Saxon settlement of England, and the first cathedral schools which were established in 597 and 604.

“Nineteenth century reforms expanded education provision and introduced widespread state-funded schools. By the 1880s education was compulsory for children aged 5 to 10, with the school leaving age progressively raised since then

“There was an unprecedented expansion of education and apprenticeships in Tudor England [where] … Edward VI reorganized grammar schools and instituted new ones so that there was a national system of ‘free grammar schools.’ In theory these were open to all, offering free tuition to those who could not afford to pay fees.

“Boys were allowed to go to school and began at the age of 4, they then moved to grammar school when they were 7 years old. Girls were either kept at home by their parents to help with housework or sent out to work to bring money in for the family. Apprenticeships were the main route for youths to enter skilled trades and crafts

Unfortunately, after this promising beginning, the English education system suffered reverses. There often wasn’t enough money, and private endowments were already commonplace by the 1640s.

A further blow took place in the early 18th century, when “entrepreneurs began to resist the restrictions of the apprenticeship system, and a legal ruling established that the Statute of Apprentices did not apply to trades that were not in existence when it was passed in 1563, thus excluding many new 18th century industries.”

“In the 19th century the Church of England sponsored most formal education until the government established free, compulsory education towards the end of that century.”

        — quotes from Wikipedia – History of Education in England

11. Emancipation, Egalitarianism, Suffrage, & Equality

The age of Steam has been shown to be a time in which there was Emancipation and increasing Egalitarianism. Other social advances were beginning to demand recognition – equality (although this theoretically already existed after the US Civil War, the reality in practice was often different, especially in the American South) and Suffrage.

“Women’s suffrage is, by definition, the right of women to vote. This was the goal of the suffragists, who believed in using legal means, as well as the suffragettes, who used extremist measures. Short-lived suffrage equity was drafted into provisions of the State of New Jersey’s first, 1776 Constitution, which extended the Right to Vote to unwed female landholders and black land owners.

“However, the document did not specify an Amendment procedure, and the provision was subsequently replaced in 1844 by the adoption of the succeeding constitution, which reverted to ‘all white male’ suffrage restrictions.”

This pattern was not confined to the state of New Jersey; for example, in Sweden, conditional women’s suffrage was in effect during the Age of Liberty (1718-1772) – but then removed.

Internationally

New Zealand was the first to confer Women’s Suffrage but they were not an independent Nation at the time. Australia soon followed, but had also not yet been granted independence.

The first province to continuously allow women to vote was Pitcairn Islands in 1838, and the first sovereign nation was Norway in 1913

The Kingdom of Hawai’i was in the box seat for the honor, having instituted universal suffrage in 1840, but they had rescinded it in 1852. Some US States had women’s suffrage long before it became nationwide; it was a notion that was growing in strength throughout the Age of Steam. Exactly what the local legal position was at any given time and place therefore needs specific research when the information is needed.

That said, because games are played by a modern audience and this is fairly fundamental, I recommend that – if necessary – suffrage be artificially inserted into a campaign world.

Implications

There are all sorts of rights and expectations that generally come along with suffrage – the right to inherit, the right to own property, the right to work and retain payment, the right to own a business, and therefore the right to economic participation – and the right to pay taxes. Universal education, as already discussed, is not necessarily a given – but, once again, avoiding a discriminatory stance against a PC probably justifies at least something in this direction, regardless of historical reality.

Civil Rights?

Whether or not the same egalitarianism should be extended to the question of Civil Rights is far more problematic. This fight has been going on a lot longer, and passions are higher as a consequence. I once would have assumed a ‘yes’ answer to this question, but discussions with a black contact in America have revised that decision; she was firmly of the notion that such a choice would cheapen the struggle, and the sacrifices made in the past.

My current thinking is therefore that historical accuracy should be the starting point in this respect, but that this should be discussed with any player who might be affected beforehand. And, if their character is directly affected, it would be wise to allow them to land at least a couple of blows in the cause, even if these are not to be decisive.

However, there are certain campaign genres in which fantasy is a much stronger component, especially Steampunk – in such cases, I would diverge from historical Canon (maybe dumping the issue of racial prejudice onto some non-human species like Orcs.

12. Individuality & Eccentricity

America is all about individualism in the face of anything attempting to force conformity, or so various sources would have me believe. I think the reality is that there remain social norms that are considered acceptable, but that anything not mandated by those norms is tolerable – and everyone is encouraged to find something in that line to call their own.

Some of those somethings are more acceptable than others, it should be noted, but there is less “Jock Vs Nerd” mentality in place in this period of history. In the 1960s, being a “whiz at chess” put you firmly into Jock cross-hairs; in the 1860s, not so much. Instead, you are likely to be regarded as a prodigy and sponsored to further education.

England in particular, and Britain in general, are far more working-class conservative, but that simply means that those social boundaries are drawn tighter – until, quite suddenly, they aren’t. There’s an inner ring of conservatism, but outside of that, almost anything goes – so long as it doesn’t annoy or interfere with others. And, if you are outrageous enough, or entertaining enough, even those limits can be weakened or overcome, graduating you from a status of “an odd bird” to an outright “eccentric”.

This is almost as true in the Age Of Steam is it is through the 20th century.

An avid birdwatcher is an “odd duck”. Their social nonconformity is blessed by society, and tolerated. Someone who insists that the Crows are conspiring against them is first thought to be joking – “having a lark” or “having us on” – but, if serious, is definitely into the range of eccentric or socially-unacceptable; there’s no middle ground.

Eccentrics are tolerated, even welcomed, for their entertainment value, and sometimes as a social gadfly if they are seen to be advocating for a worthy cause; the socially-unacceptable are shunned to a far greater extent than would be the case in the US.

The freedom to be eccentric can be hard for Americans to wrap their heads around at times. This is just a small start on the subject.

13. Leisure and Wealth

In both cases, two things are required in order for this liberty to exist: the leisure time to pursue the matter, and the wealth to do so.

Both become increasingly available in the course throughout the Age of Steam. I can best illustrate this with an example from American folklore: the Cat Lady.

To an American, this is verging on the antisocial and mentally disturbed. To the English, if the cats are properly cared for, and don’t intrude on their rights to enjoy their personal foibles and space, she is verging on the eccentric, but is treated exactly the same as anyone else. Unless she is a brilliant comedian, though, she had better not cross those lines – don’t annoy others and don’t neglect the pets. Either of those pushes her from Eccentric to Pariah.

14. A Cure For What Ails You

Medical science exploded in the age of Internal Combustion, but the seeds were there in the Age of Steam. The problem was that because there was no scientific testing, and no governmental standards or controls, anyone could claim just about anything to be a cure for something.

The terms “Snake Oil” and “Nostrum” and “Home Remedy” all stem from this time period.

Many of their notions may have been wrong, even dangerous, but they were serious about trying to cure whatever they thought the problem was.

“During the … 18th century, science was held in high esteem and physicians upgraded their social status by becoming more scientific. The health field was crowded with self-trained barber-surgeons, apothecaries, midwives, drug peddlers, and charlatans.

“Across Europe medical schools relied primarily on lectures and readings. The final year student would have limited clinical experience by trailing the professor through the wards. Laboratory work was uncommon, and dissections were rarely done because of legal restrictions on cadavers. Most schools were small, and only Edinburgh, Scotland, with 11,000 alumni, produced large numbers of graduates.

“The practice of medicine changed [in the 19th century] in the face of rapid advances in science, as well as new approaches by physicians. Hospital doctors began much more systematic analysis of patients’ symptoms in diagnosis. Among the more powerful new techniques were anesthesia, and the development of both antiseptic and aseptic operating theaters. Effective cures were developed for certain endemic infectious diseases.”

Many of the most lethal diseases declined in impact, but there are those who now claim that this was “due more to improvements in public health and nutrition than to advances in medicine”; others suggest that medicine, and the approach taken to it, was responsible for those improvements in public health and nutrition. It’s an argument that I’m not qualified to buy into.

“Medicine was revolutionized in the 19th century and beyond by advances in chemistry, laboratory techniques, and equipment. Old ideas of infectious disease epidemiology were gradually replaced by advances in bacteriology and virology.

        — quotes from Wikipedia – History of Medicine

15. The Gold & Silver Standards

“A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the early 1920s.” (It would be reinstated later in the 1920s, terminated again in 1932, then reinstated again from 1944 until 1971, but those dates are way outside the scope of this article).

“Historically, the silver standard and bimetallism have been more common than the gold standard.

“Great Britain accidentally adopted a de facto gold standard in 1717 when Sir Isaac Newton, then-master of the Royal Mint, set the exchange rate of silver to gold too low, thus causing silver coins to go out of circulation.

“As Great Britain became the world’s leading financial and commercial power in the 19th century, other states increasingly adopted Britain’s monetary system.”

“Up until 1850 only Britain and a few of its colonies were on the gold standard, with the majority of other countries being on the silver standard. France and the United States were two of the more notable countries on the bimetallic standard.

“The nearly-coincidental California gold rush of 1849 and the Australian gold rushes of 1851 significantly increased world gold supplies and the minting of gold francs and dollars.”

        — quotes from Wikipedia – Gold Standard

Consequences

With a currency pegged to a defined value, expressed as a certain weight of a commodity, the size of the economy is dictated by the amount of that commodity.

When more gold is found, a gold standard economy has more money to spend, and more money in circulation.

More people buy goods and services, which can lead to scarcity, which drives prices up.

Counterbalancing this to some extent is the fact that part of the value of a commodity is its rarity. Find more gold, and the value of gold dips a little.

Counterbalancing that are various mechanisms that take gold out of circulation – a central bank that adds to its reserves, a bank that does the same thing, a church that uses gold as a decoration, a private owner who sticks gold away in a vault instead of spending it.

It can be seen that a gold standard alone is not a guarantee of stable prices for goods and commodities, but it does actually help in that respect; and without growth in expenses, there is little pressure on wages, so the whole system is somewhat more stable.

Advantages

The following section is largely paraphrased from the same source cited above, and the quote is also from that source.

There are five major advantages recognized by modern economists as resulting from a fixed-commodity standard – whether that standard is Venetian Glass, Diamonds, Gold, Salt, Spices, or fluffy pink elephants.

1. A gold standard doesn’t permit some types of financial repression – in particular, deficit spending. You either have the money to spend on something, or you don’t.

2. While long-term price stability is considered an attribute of the gold standard, at least historically, analysis has shown that in the short term there can be significantly more volatility.

3. Currency Crises – the abrupt rise in the repayment cost of foreign debt – are far less frequent under a gold standard, because there is less currency volatility.

4. The gold standard provides fixed exchange rates between nations, which reduces uncertainty in international trade. This is complicated by the “price-specie flow mechanism”, which is a little bit less complicated than it sounds:

“Gold used to pay for imports reduces the money supply of importing nations, causing deflation, which makes them more competitive, while the importation of gold by net exporters serves to increase their money supply, causing inflation, making them less competitive.”

5. Hyper-inflation is less likely to occur, by definition, because it is caused by a loss of trust in a failing currency and the governments who create that currency.

Disadvantages

The following section is largely paraphrased from the same source cited above.

There are a whole heap of disadvantages, though.

1. Gold isn’t distributed equally throughout the world. A gold standard disproportionately benefits those countries that produce gold.

2. Some economists believe that the gold standard acts as a limit to economic growth. In particular, productivity gains do not cause the economy to grow, causing an effective scarcity of wealth to result; not only is this false-to-fact, the reduced credit in the economy that results inhibits investment, and this can cause an economy to stall.

3. Monetary policy can no longer be used to stabilize a currency prior to or during a recession because there is a fixed amount of money in the economy.

4. Banking Crises, in which a bank does not have sufficient liquidity to pay customers, become more common.

5. Deflation punishes debtors, causing debt burdens to rise, which causes borrowers to cut spending in order to direct more money to the debt. Lenders become wealthier under these conditions, but many will save some the gains, reducing the strength of the economy.

6. Inflation countermeasures are more difficult because they need to be backed by hard currency. This causes recessions to be longer and more intense.

There are a number of others, but those are the high points.

16. Oil & Resource Booms & Busts

Booms and busts in other commodities will always occur, but a floating currency tied to the hypothetical strength of the total economy mean that changes in the value of a currency are smoother than if the currency were tied to specific commodity. These market variations can have impacts as profound as a recession or even depression.

The reasons for this can be a little counter-intuitive, so let me see if I can explain it.

Let’s say that the economy contains $1 million in currency. That 1 million represents the value of everything else in the economy – so if there is suddenly a lot more of something else, like oil, the value of everything else has to fall, so that the total stays at $1 million. That means that more of the economy is suddenly tied up in oil – and the glut of supply makes the price of oil plunge. And there is always an overreaction – if everyone could rely on everyone else dropping oil prices by the right amount, everything would be fine, but you can’t. Oil producing countries don’t want to drop the value of oil, they want to sell it – effectively adding more gold to the economy, so that it grows by the amount of extra oil produced. That means that the countries that buy oil have to drop the price of oil by more, and the price that will eventually be settled on is one big guesstimate. yes, there will be a correction, eventually, but in the meantime, there’s that much less money to spend on anything else.

In other words, the currency can’t act as a shock absorber when your oil price (or whatever) hits a pothole or a speed-bump.

17. Wage Slavery & The Mines

“Slavery was abolished” – it says so, right there in black and white, earlier in this article. But along with the caveats offered at the time, there are still more that need to at least get mentioned.

There are many terms for this type of slavery – in America, it’s most commonly known as Debt Bondage, but the more general term in use these days is Truck Wages.

It works like this: worker puts in a hard day’s work, exceeding their daily quota. They get paid a fixed hourly wage for this plus they might get a small bonus for any excess over quota – but their pay will be docked if they don’t make quota. Comes payday, they expect to get a certain amount – only to find that the cost of the meals and accommodation provided by the company have been deducted, at whatever rates the company deems ‘fair and reasonable’, and the balance is paid in tokens that can only be redeemed at the company store – at whatever prices the company deems ‘fair and reasonable’. The net result being that you have effectively no money to show for your efforts – but you still have to work or you won’t get to eat.

This sort of scheme was rife in a number of industries, notably including the coal mines and steelworks of the Age Of Steam. This was especially true in the first half, but the practice (or variations on it) persist to this day; the United Nations estimated that there were 8.1 Million people still subject to it in 2005.

There have been numerous attempts to stamp this practice out, but it’s notoriously hard to do so. This is the sort of labor relations of which a true robber baron would be proud.

18. Steamships

The rise of the steamship had a profound effect on international trade. Not only could individual vessels carry many times the weight in goods, they cut a transit that would have taken months to weeks, or weeks to days. And they could do it cheaper.

Commodities that needed some preservative technique could be shipped ‘fresh’. Fish were often carried upriver in England on steamships, giving rise to the “Fish And Chips Shop”, for example.

Arguably, though, it was the travel time that was the biggest impact. if you were a clothing maker, for example, and it now only took one week for your materials to be delivered instead of four, you could cut the amount of money tied up in supplies to 1/4 of what it was. Similarly, if it only took one week to get your product to market instead of four, you could cut the money tied up in inventory to 1/4. This meant that establishing such a business required a lot less capitol, and was a lot more easily turned profitable.

The impact doesn’t end there, though. By only reducing materials and inventory by 50%, you could double the range of markets that you could reach, vastly expanding your potential clientele – and profitability. And you’re still making bigger profits because the transport costs are less.

From the point of view of the business owner, this is all good. But, it meant that you were competing against others from further afield – so there was an immediate downward pressure on prices; everything that could be shipped suddenly became cheaper, sometimes massively cheaper. So the consumer benefits too, finding that whatever they have to spend goes further.

Ignoring the impact of the Steamship is like ignoring the impact of the Railroad, and for exactly the same reason.

Now, combine the two – train to steamship to train to market – and your products can suddenly be competing globally..

19. Rise of the Common Man III: Professional Guilds to Labor Unions

The Professional Guilds of the ages of sail provided the template, but labor unions (known as trade unions in England) were an inevitable response to the combination of social progress and work practices of the era.

“While a commonly held mistaken view holds modern trade unionism to be a product of Marxism, the earliest modern trade unions predate Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848) by almost a century (and Marx’s writings themselves frequently address the prior existence of the workers’ movements of his time), with the first recorded labor strike in the United States by the Philadelphia printers in 1786

“The origins of modern trade unions can be traced back to 18th-century Britain, where the Industrial Revolution drew masses of people, including dependents, peasants and immigrants, into cities. Britain had ended the practice of serfdom in 1574, but the vast majority of people remained as tenant-farmers on estates owned by the landed aristocracy. This transition was not merely one of relocation from rural to urban environs; rather, the nature of industrial work created a new class of ‘worker’.

“Workers sold their work as labor and took directions from employers, giving up part of their freedom and self-agency in the service of a master.”

Critics called this arrangement ‘Wage Slavery’ but had no idea what real wage slavery (described earlier) was.

The road to modern trade unions was a rocky one, collective bargaining frequently deemed illegal, but the inequality of bargaining power between employer and individual worker made some sort of organization and coordination not only essential bur inevitable.

This was the common man wresting some measure of control over his life away from both government and employer. Business in general was strongly disapproving, but outside the US, encountered little success in removing them.

In Australia, it’s still illegal to stop someone from joining a trade union (I’m not sure about the status in England). However, government policies that (in theory) grant greater negotiating power to the individual have been eroding union membership here, and it wouldn’t surprise me if something similar were happening there.

In the US, Republican legislatures have eroded workers’ rights so significantly that an employee can be dismissed for any reason the employer likes (unless they are part of a population group protected from such treatment. If he doesn’t like the color of your socks, you can be gone. If he doesn’t like mustaches, you’re gone. If he doesn’t like your bumper sticker, you’re gone – unless that sticker references your religious faith or something similar.

Labor unions continued the trend of decentralizing power that has already been mentioned – ironically by centralizing it around a different center, albeit one that was democratically selected.

        — quotes from Wikipedia – Trade union

20. Wealth distributed

The impact of trade unions was for wages to start going up and working conditions to start improving. This ate into the profitability of businesses, but they could afford it, thanks to the Rail/Steamship boom. What it did do was increase the bottom line for a myriad of low-and middle-income workers – and they turned right around and spent that money. Most of the time, any savings were only temporary. The result was a slow but steady trend toward a consumer-oriented society, as businesses arose for these workers to spend their money in, and manufacturers arose to make the goods to stock those businesses, and infrastructure sprung up to connect the two.

An individual’s spending power might be one-one thousandth that of one of the captains of industry who owned these commercial ventures, or less. But put 10,000 of them together to create a ‘market’ for your goods, or 100,000, and they possessed a lot of clout. Public Opinion became an extremely potent social force, one that the union movement was able to occasionally harness when dealing with a particularly egregious situation.

Had any of these changes taken place in isolation, it’s likely that they would have failed. Each needed the other to progressively alter the economic environment that next step.

21. Opportunity distributed

Of course, all those new operations – retailer, wholesaler, warehouse owner, distributor, freighter, manufacturer, and materials supplier – all needed to employ staff. Plus accountants and bookkeepers and lawyers, and so on.

To go with the industrial boom of the Steam Age, there was a boom in employment opportunities. The number of unemployed and unemployable slowly began to drop. Preparing more people for employment demanded better educational standards. And that produced a greater demand for the goods and services that an educated people demand, such as books and plays and dining choices and holidays.

22. Inherited Advantages

The children of old nobility, those who had acquired fortunes during the age of sail, and the robber barons were no more assured of a life of ease than had their antecedents in the now-bygone era. But they had advantages that ordinary people could only dream of – education, and life experiences, and access to capital, and contacts amongst the other wealthy and powerful and opportunities to use all this to their benefit.

Fortunately for society as a whole, most of them were also raised with a sense of obligation, and those who did not feel that sense quickly had one drummed into them; then, as now, everyone looks down on those who feel entitled or who behave arrogantly. By and large, they are not begrudged that initial advantage; that’s something that their ancestors or parents earned for them. It’s what they do with it that matters, just as what an ordinary person does with his or her personal gifts makes the difference in how they are perceived.

23. Genre: Murder most Foul

Closing in on the end of this article now – with about 20 minutes to deadline, I might just make it!

There are, essentially, four major genre categories that find a home in this time period, and the first are the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. It always surprised me a little that these weren’t more popular RPG fodder – right up until I realized that creating credible mysteries without railroading plots was a lot harder than it looked.

But then I realized that those “How To Host A Murder” sets are solidly a part of this genre – and heck, even my sister has played one or two (complete with full costuming, a step that my games have never demanded).

The economy in such games is better dealt with by ignoring it except when it’s relevant, What’s more, it should be treated as a static phenomenon, again unless economic and social change is an inherent part of the plotline. For the most part, it all just is, and always will be, unchanging.

And any change that should occur for plot reasons should be cast as generally a positive one, even if that means you have to be selective about the voice used to brief the players on the things their characters need to know – pick someone who has clearly benefited from the changes.

24. Genre: Things Man Was Not Meant To Know

The second genre contains cryptid hunters, explorers of lost cities, uncivilized wildernesses, exotic tombs, and hollow earths. But more than that, they contain those who stand as guardians against the Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, those supernatural horrors that plot and scheme to take over the idyllic world of the Age Of Steam.

It matters not if they derive from Lost Lemuria, Sunken Atlantis, or some nameless Shadow Plane. It matters not if you sought out the confrontation, or have been tumbled into events head over heels.

The wealthy are always suspicious in such campaigns, because they have both the material means to satisfy idle curiosity, the world travels to put them in contact with such curiosities, and the loss of direct power that can breed anger over circumstances. Since you can’t address this without the social baggage and history that comes along with it, this genre is best addressed not by ignoring the transformative events that have swept across society, but by reveling in them.

25. Genre: Steampunk

Steampunk is, as I announced earlier in the series, not my forte. In fact, I know very little about what the genre is like to play – though I did employ some steampunk conceptually in describing the Mexico of my superhero campaign, admittedly without knowing exactly what I was doing.

So, here’s the skinny of the general principles I employed, phrased in the form of a recipe for success (I hope).

Pick an era, and a decade. Pick a second era for the current levels of science and technology, one that differs from the first by at least a decade. The first is the society and technological capability of the world around the PCs; the difference has to be explained through the use and manifestations of “industrialized magic”.

For example, I might pick the 1940s for the first era, and the 1870s for the second. That’s a 70-year gap, in which a lot of technological impacts have been experienced. They have hot air balloons and locomotives and machine guns and poison gasses and tanks and personal transportation – but all of it is based on ‘Industrial magic”, in whole or in part. In fact, it would be ubiquitous – everything you encounter would be ‘touched’ by it in some manner. Everything from the way lamps get lit to the way private secretaries carry out their duties. There would be robber barons who have gotten rich bringing this new technology to the masses. There would be some sort of magical radio – mass communications will have begun. And so on; everything that you describe has to be examined for a fun, magical, twist.

The economy is going to be as described, complete with changes and transformations, but always with the most positive spin on things that you can imagine – except, perhaps, for those who have been left behind, and who are dark and resentful. Every campaign needs some bad guys, after all!

26. Genre: Early Pulp & Other Gaslight

I’ve left “Other gaslight” in to cover anything that I haven’t though of, but there’s nothing that fits the category that’s coming to mind.

That leaves Early Pulp. To me, this also goes under another name – American Pulp, i.e. tough hard-boiled detectives chasing shadowy criminals through bars and warehouses. The more fantastic elements of European Pulp are part of an era a decade or two hence.

The primary reason is that there is nothing that is definitive of the early pulp era that isn’t part of this earlier period – save, perhaps, for the glossy automobiles. The pulp genre, i think, actually straddles the two eras, and takes advantage of that fact. It also steals liberally from the “Things Man Was Not Meant To Know” genre, if you hadn’t noticed.

27 Empires Colliding

The age of steam ends with one last hurrah for the old school, as political alliances deriving, in part, from still older relationships between royal families (both alliances and conflicts) create a domino effect that plunges the world into war. In the buildup to this event, the petrol engine is (essentially) perfected, supplanting steam power with gasoline and diesel, heavier-than-air flight begins, electrification begins, radio broadcasts commence, silent movies, speakeasies and prohibition – and the limitations of the Gold Standard and the wild optimism of the age comes home to roost. It’s not a sudden change; it happens piecemeal over the span of about a decade, and then continues to plunge headlong into a future of machinery and engineering. And space opera. And Pulp. It’s going to be a lot of fun – and hopefully, shorter than this outing!

In part 1:

1. Introduction
2. General Concepts and A Model Economy
3. The Economics of an Absolute Monarchy (The Early Medieval)

In part 2:

4. The Economics of Limited Monarchies (The Later Medieval & Renaissance)
5. In-Game Economics: Fantasy Games

In Part 3:

6. The Renaissance, revisited
7. Pre-Industrial Economics I: The Age of Exploration
8. Pre-Industrial Economics II: The Age of Sail

In this part:

9. Industrial Economies I: The Age Of Steam
10. In-game Economics: Gaslight-era

Planned for part 5:

11. Industrial Economics II: The Age Of Internal Combustion
12. Industrial Economics III: War & Depression
13. In-Game Economics: Pulp-era

Planned for parts 6-7:

14. Tech Economics I: The Gold Standard
15. Tech Economics II: Resources & Regulation
16. Tech Economics III: Inflation & Hyper-inflation
17. Tech Economics IV: Commercialism, Deregulation, Privatization, & Greed

Planned for parts 8-10:

18. Digital Economics
19. Post-Pandemic Economics
20. In-Game Economics: Modern
21. Future Economics I: Dystopian
22. In-Game Economics: Dystopian Futures
23. Future Economics I: Utopian
24. In-Game Economics: Utopian Futures
25. In-Game Economics: Space Opera

The plan is to do an article on something else next week. Which one of the several ideas I have on hold I’ll be excited enough to develop, I don’t yet know – just that it will be different from history and economics!

Welcome & General Introduction

Readers may have noticed that the previous part of the series promised the Renaissance and then barely mentioned the subject.

That happened because, at least at first, there wasn’t a lot of economic difference, and what trends later started to manifest themselves were essentially the same trends that drove industrialization in general.

The dog wags the tail, in other words, even if the tail started wagging first.

It must be noted that 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.

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.

Where We’re At

So far, I’ve established a number of important principles.

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 what wealth even is, and what they can spend it on – and those, by definition, are the fundamentals of an economy.
2. Economics pressure Societies to evolve – that 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 contain 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.

Look at the world around us, and you can see these principles playing out as we speak.

Given the impact that they have had on our lives in general, it’s fair to characterize our current era as the ‘digital age’, or perhaps ‘the internet age’. Inherent in, and developing within, most of that era are Artificial Intelligence Systems, from the ‘Expert Systems’ of the 1990s through to the modern AI developments of DALL-E and ChatGPT. Google’s Ad-sense, which selected advertising based on the browsing habits of an individual (and have done so since the late 1990s, more and more effectively), are (in hindsight) a milestone in the development of the new social trends, but only now are we reaching the point where they can intersect with social media to actually change lives significantly enough to consider us at the threshold of a new historical era.

And yet, the world around us doesn’t look all that different from what existed a few years ago, except in fine details – there is a clear continuity to recent history.

At least, that’s my impression – somewhat shaped by the ongoing development of these articles.

The general principles contained within those five bullet points are important enough that I’m going to be adding them to the ‘opening salvos’ of the remaining articles in this series.

From A Writing Perspective

When starting this article, I listed four major sections comprising 6, 11, 14, and 22 subsections, respectively. I knew exactly what each subsection was to contain. But…

53 subsections is a LOT. Each of the articles in this series to date have only managed to include two major sections, and the greater length of the last two proposed sections in this article would leave it triple the size of previous parts, give-or-take. Diligent efforts and a little conflation of subsections have incorporated 31 of them into a single post, which still makes this the longest article in the series to date; the 22-part Age Of Steam was more than would fit.

The good news is that this means that I have a significant head-start on the next part in the series!

The Renaissance, revisited

There came a time when culture and artistic expression seemed to start making great leaps forward, everywhere you looked. Underwritten by noble patrons, it became a measure of your enlightenment and social worth to be bankrolling as many outlets of culture and invention as you could afford. Not even the Church was immune to this measurement of social worth – that’s what gave us the Sistine Chapel.

The fine arts and cultural displays exploded in all directions – painting, sculpture, music, playwrights, poets, and natural philosophy.

In some respects, this could be seen as a defensive response to the rise of the middle classes in the late Medieval period, in which the power of the Nobility came under the most minimal of threats, albeit ones of their own making. Thrift, efficiency, and greed created the nascent Middle Class, whose members promptly carved out profe4ssional associations that usurped a little of the power that had been the exclusive province of the Nobility previously. To prove their superiority to these nouveau almost-rich, and justify their elevated social standings, the nobility needed to expand their social credentials; simply being seen as pious was no longer enough, even if it did bring the support of the church. Besides, theological circles were in the midst of their own internal politics and power struggles; who knew how stable that support might prove, or how ephemeral?

This progress in the arts of expression and understanding are considered the defining traits of the era. But there were inevitable consequences.

1. The Enlightenment of Limited Hierarchical Authority

First, the Responsibilities of the Nobility toward their subjects had not changed. What changed was that, instead of the backing of a complicit and compliant Faith, these sponsorship gave rise to members of the middle classes who were empowered and funded by the Nobility, who were free to guide and shape the manner of satisfaction of those responsibilities, and who felt free to gently chide and chastise when they were not being performed adequately in the eyes of the artists.

There were limits to how far such criticism could be pushed, but a steady drip can eventually erode even solid rock. The nobility was far less resistant than that, even with the ongoing concept of Divine Right to back them; and even that was slowly progressing and developing in response to the social pressures and realities within which the various Churches existed. Little by little, there was a steady progression toward enlightened rule, in which the power and wealth of the noble was generated by the health of the lesser social classes, and the realization that protecting their prosperity also protected your own.

Not everyone was so enlightened, of course; there were social repressives who saw only the threats to their traditional autonomy; but the new Middle Class were mobile, and fully capable of undermining the wealth of Nobles who did not live up to their end of the unwritten social compacts that characterized the Later Medieval and early Renaissance.

2. The Principle of Objective Understanding

The accurate portrayal of reality in art requires an understanding of the underpinnings of that reality – be it the principles of the physical sciences and geometry or the fundamentals of human anatomy. The natural consequence is that these artisans became students of what was known as Natural Philosophy, and with it came the concept that there was a natural order within the objective reality of the natural world, one whose workings depended not on the opinions or philosophies of others, but yielded the same objective understanding whether one believed in them or not.

Not since the philosophers of ancient Greece had the primacy of observed reality been so elevated over assumption or dogma. All of modern science flows from this fundamental principle. Understanding was not so advanced, then – observations were couched in terms of better understanding of “God’s Creation”, and would be for more than a century. But the beginnings were there.

3. Church Vs Science, Dogma vs Discovery

Inevitably, observations contradicted some part of the accumulated dogma that religions had built up over the centuries, and were interpreted as challenges to the authority of the church. These confrontations between Copernicus, Galileo, and the like, have become the stuff of legend. Even today, some of this tension remains unresolved – there is not as week goes by but that a challenge to Darwinian Evolution floats through my Quora feed. And second only to that collection are flat-earth proponents trying to deny a different objective reality, challenges that also seem to date back to this era.

What’s important to note is that the Churches won almost every one of these challenges. In temporal, day-to-day power, they were still in a position of dominance. What makes those legends of defiance (real or imagined) survive to this day is not that Galileo et. al. won – they didn’t – it’s that they were ultimately proven to be right. And with every victory earned in this era that was subsequently shown to be without merit, the authority of the Faiths to rule was eroded.

Different phases of this ongoing conflict remain a feature of historical eras from this time forward. Until recently, I was confident in the ability of Science to win the day – and even now, Science is forcing concessions to reality from religious authorities – but by resorting to various forms of outright falsehood, religion has been able to claw back some ground in recent years. (It’s not my Intent to take sides in this debate, even though I have strong personal opinions on the subject that inevitably leak out. All I want to do here is acknowledge the conflict and its history),

4. The trend to Decentralized Economics

The progression towards a profession-based Middle Class that characterized the late Medieval era continued through the Renaissance. The economic power of this professional class had to come from somewhere, and those lower on the social ladder had none to give – so the only place from which to draw it was the Nobility. In fact, the Nobles ceded the limited power they gave up of their own accord in pursuit of economic efficiency, as described in part two of this series.

The smallest pebble rolling downhill in a snowy slope can become a huge ball of snow and ice. When the professionals had absorbed all the power and temporal authority that the Nobility were wiling to concede, they started agitating to take more. Sometimes they colluded with like-minded members of other guilds and trade bodies, and sometimes they tried to create alternate paths to power and influence. Thus was born modern politics in its most elementary form.

Sometimes, these efforts failed; and the status remained quo; but the occasional success which did not lead to disaster accumulated.

5. The rise of the Middle Class

Temporal authority thus continued to migrate away from Nobles and to commercial operations and professionals. To monitor the exercising of the authority that was claimed by this middle class, additional professions were created and given the authority to act on behalf of first the crown and then the collective society. The transformation from rule by decree to rule by law was slow and inexorable, and also continues to this day.

As the middle class grew and accrued more wealth and power, they grew from being a minor footnote in the economy of the age to being an equal driver of that economy. This completed the creation of the social conditions described at the start of this discussion, showing that some sort of Renaissance was an inevitable consequence of the practices of the later Medieval. It may not have taken quite the form that it did in our history; that’s a matter for some debate. But something was almost impossible to avoid; at best, repression may have held it back for a while.

6. An accumulation of Technological Improvements

Despite all the obvious progress and enlightenment, the Renaissance was, in many ways, simply a treading of water, an attempt by conservative elements to preserve as much of the status quo as they could despite the many progressive elements at work in their society. Repression was used as a weapon whenever it was deemed necessary and everyone tried to protect their own power bases and keep their positions intact. But there was one factor that could not be overcome; eventually, it rose to overwhelming prominence and brought about a new age.

A direct consequence of the study of reality by Natural Philosophers whose work was founded on the utter practicality of the reproducibility of results (whether you liked them or not), a steady improvement in the technology that was available was both unstoppable and inevitable.

There are two primary (and closely-related) spheres in which such technological refinement tends to have significant immediate impact: communications and transportation. Well, the best form of communications at the time was mail delivered by some form of transportation, and the technology to offer an alternative would not exist for some time to come. It is obvious, then, that refinements in the capabilities of transportation would be the first, and defining, element of the next historical era.

Pre-industrial Era I: The Age Of Discovery

Despite the laudable and noteworthy achievements of the Vikings, Renaissance-era transport was fairly profoundly limited. The vessels were simply unable to support a sufficient crew for long enough while delivering them quickly enough, to facilitate the great voyages of discovery. As the Renaissance unfolded, improvements in technology and vessel design slowly changed that; until at some point, a line can be drawn between the two.

There is little consensus as to exactly where and when that line should be drawn. So far as I am concerned, the change was messier and more subtle than most, and the two historical periods overlap more than a little. This can be discerned from the citation of Darwin amongst the significant figures of the Renaissance, even though he was only in a position to make his pivotal observations in the course of one of those Great Voyages of Discovery.

I, personally, draw the dividing line in the Court of Queen Isabella of Spain, being persuaded by a smooth-tongued wannabe to send an exploratory party to find a new path to India by sea. That might be a manifestation of decades of exposure to American propaganda, I have to admit, but it seems reasonable to me. This was a voyage that would take months if not years, but whose conclusion would profoundly reshape the world that followed in its wake.

1. Professionals

Columbus was very much the definitive prototype of that American Ideal, the self-made man. He rose from obscure and humble beginnings, the son of a Baker, and self-educated. He was widely-traveled as a youth and employed this to become a trader representing a number of Noble families, and was sufficiently successful that he was able to marry the daughter of a Nobleman of Lombardi origins. Sadly, she would pass away less than six years later, while Columbus was on another trading voyage.

His self-educated nature and inaccuracies in some of the documents on which he relied combined to cause Columbus to drastically underestimate the distance that would have to be traversed from Europe to Asia via a western sea voyage. Seeing potent commercial opportunities, he attempted to persuade a number of royal families to back an expedition, but the learned men who evaluated the proposals repeatedly recognized the fallacy in the plan and consequent underestimate of the costs involved, leading them to reject the proposal. Some estimated that Columbus’ budget was only a quarter of the true cost.

Nevertheless, he was sufficiently persuasive that Queen Isabella and Ferdinand II did not reject the proposal completely, but invested in his personal development and well-being, even giving him a salary roughly equivalent of the annual salary of a sailor of the era and giving him a letter instructing all cities and towns within their domain to furnish him with free food and board. Eventually, politics swung in Columbus’ favor, as some became convinced that he would again take his proposal elsewhere. In 1492, the Monarchs promised that he would be given the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and appointed Viceroy and Governor of all the new lands he might claim for Spain.

Despite the impression conveyed by the role assigned him in modern narratives, Columbus never approached the continental US, instead exploring Central and northern South America.

There’s a lot to unpack in this story, but most of it can be packaged under the heading of Professionals: Columbus was from the lower middle class, but by making himself a professional Sailor and Trader and educating himself, he was able to rise to prominence, which he then used as a springboard to his famous voyages. He had the opportunity to become a self-made man. Not long earlier, that would have been close to unthinkable, but demonstrated ability and professional expertise now overruled the social restrictions of birth.

2. Professionalism to Guilds

It didn’t happen everywhere, but in many locations professionals had banded together to protect the collective reputation and authority of their profession, beginning a practice of self-setting of professional standards that continues into the 20th century. As those professionals gain in wealth, status, and authority, so does their collective political ‘muscle’.

3. Wealth plus Authority equals Power

Inevitably, the equation presented above results. This trend was already well-developed in the Renaissance, but it continued and strengthened as the independent traders and craftsmen gained in prestige and wealth. Many of the offices created to monitor the activities of the Guilds and Freemen and enforce the law, and even to codify that law, had started out as representing the Nobility, but increasingly, they were independent arbiters and a civil police force.

4. The Abdication Of Noble Authority

The more power that the Nobles handed off to proxies, expert or otherwise, the less direct authority they had to exercise of their own volition. Rule by decree thus continued to wane throughout the period, and the power of the Nobility became more and more about who they would appoint and who they would (financially) support.

5. The Impact on the Lower Classes

There wasn’t really a lot of change in the lot of the poorest members of society, however. Instead of being beholden to, and exploited by, nobles, they were beholden to, and exploited by, landlords, whose authority ultimately descended from those Nobles but which was no longer under their direct control.

I’m sure that there were cases in which this was an improvement in the ordinary lives of the poor, but it’s known that in several cases, living conditions became even harsher. The middle class had discovered systematized greed, and there was only one population group that they could exploit.

6. Patronage: the path to Prosperity

But there was an escape: Apprenticeship, and dreams of Patronage, presented a two-step path from nobody to Aristocracy, from the bottom (or close to it) to the lower reaches of the top. Of course, getting there was only half the fight – there were always those who would seek to cast you back down so that they could usurp whatever influence you had acquired along the way. Defining it as entry into a hotbed of political intrigue would be understating the case very dramatically.

Fortunately for those with a little less ambition or ability, this was a journey with many alternative stops along the way. Many of the wealthier families, themselves just below the ranks of the Peerage, sought to emulate the Nobility and provide Patronage. Others sought reflected prestige by finding those artisans who would eventually receive Royal Patronage. And some sought to simply become the preferred purveyor of goods and services to the Nobility, permitting them to promote the prestige of their work-product.

Every professional was expected to train the next generation, and there were usually incentives and benefits to taking on apprentices. So there were many measures of success and many roads to achieving it. Ultimately, all these pathways to prosperity are interpretations of Patronage, one way or another.

7. Rags To Riches: The Principle of Social Mobility

The existence of so many pathways to a better standard of success, some of them reaching into the uppermost levels of society, entrenched the concept of social mobility; regardless of your starting point, it was possible to elevate yourself through hard work and success and demonstrated forms of social propriety that you belonged to a higher stratum. Ability was a silk road to better times in the future, and there was always access to a further step up the slippery social slope from wherever you ended up.

Going ‘all the way to the top’ was rare, even the subject of myth, but the potential was there.

8. The Decline Of Dogma?

It seems a certainty that the demonstrated success of practical scientific advance and skill would have weakened the grip of dogma and religion on the populace. Three things stood in the way of such a development.

The first was that the Churches offered an alternative pathway to the top, one that was dependent on a completely different set of capacities than the less certain, more overt, choice. This sucked away much of the impetus that was generated by the surge of practicality. The second was that the Church excelled at laying claim to the strokes of inspiration that led to these practical developments, and being publicly critical of the Faith remained a quick path from social position to obscurity. The third factor was the mutual support network that had arisen between ruling nobles and the representatives of the Faith; while Divine Right was no longer publicly accepted as strongly as it had been, the Churches retained a lot of temporal power, and they used it to support those nobles who were ‘friends of the faithful”. Patronage again, but of a different stripe.

The battle may have been a defensive one, but the conflict wasn’t even publicly acknowledged – that’s how much capability the church had at its disposal for the squashing of those who directly challenged it.

9. The Last Defense Of Nobility

The authority of Nobility, and of the Churches, soon received a major boost, thanks to a new economic development: the discovery of new provinces with valuable commodities. The Spices of the East Indies, Sugar, Rum, Silver, Gold, Rubies and Emeralds… the list goes on and on. It seemed like every expedition brought a flood of new wealth into the coffers of the Nobles who underwrote the journeys of discovery, and those of the Churches who didn’t stand in the way.

Get in the way? On the contrary, they sent devotees into the wilderness on these expeditions to ‘convert the heathens and savages’. And since the locals were the source of the new wealth, however exploited, the church could cut off the spigot any time they really wanted to – once. Doing so would be tantamount to a declaration of war with the Monarchy, something that would benefit neither.

The vast treasures that they claimed gave the Nobility lots of money to splash around on patronages and military expenditures. Not so much that it couldn’t be frittered away on meaningless little wars in Europe, or their projections of power elsewhere; great trading empires would come and go, rise and fall, in the years to come. But the infusion of wealth, and the power that came with it, bolstered the positions of both Nobility and Church into the next era to come: The Age Of Sail.

10. Genre: Conquistadors

There have not been many RPGs to exploit this particular genre – in fact, there have been so few that Campaign Mastery doesn’t even list them as a genre type. But there have been a few – OI vaguely remember one with Black and White artwork that revolved around Ponce de Leon and the quest for the fountain of youth, and another (with no artwork) that cast the protagonists as Inca tribesmen seeking to defend their homeland against these invaders with their ‘thunder-sticks’.

Where there are two, it seems certain that there have been others.

I can certainly see the appeal of a Fantasy/Pirates campaign in which the PCs are a group of Conquistadors who earnestly believe in the virtues that are supposed to be definitive of the Nobility, seeking to survive and prosper in a world full of corrupt Churchmen, Ignoble rivals, and hostile natives. Heck, I see a lot of parallels with the Rebellion from Star Wars! Everyone’s against them, but something – perhaps atoning for some past misdeeds before they became enlightened – keeps them in the neighborhood, trying to beat the odds…

Pre-industrial Era II: The Age Of Sail

Just as the Age of Discovery blends into the Renaissance so well that dividing lines can be disputed (or even ignored altogether), so the Age Of Sail blends with the Age of Exploration. Nevertheless, there are some pronounced differences that distinguish the two.

One difference should be pointed out from the outset, as a means of framing the discussion: In the Renaissance, Power earned wealth; in the Age of Exploration, the two were on a more-or-less equal footing; in the Age Of Sail, money produces power.

1. The Educated Elite

The peerage is no longer able to lay claim to the right to rule by decree, but they remain wealthy landowners; the source of their power has shifted, as has (to some extent) what they can and can’t do with it, but the power itself remains. What’s vanished to a certain extent is any entitlement to advantage; although they start life with advantages, nonetheless. It is then up to the members of the Peerage to convert the potential represented by those advantages into wealth and power.

Those who succeed in doing so remain in an elite social class, with a second group of successful newcomers hot on their heels; the latter having earned (or stolen) vast wealth, and leveraged that into positions of power and privilege, they lack only the inherited prestige of titled ancestry.

With their traditional sources of income often diverted into the hands of others, estates begin to come under economic threat for the first time, and the easiest means of addressing this problem is to arrange marriages between those with the titles and those with the wealth to support those titles, conferring legitimacy on the latter and prosperity on the former.

One of the biggest advantages that the peerage can offer its children is a first-rate education, one that qualifies them for positions of authority and command. With the newfound dominance of wealth as the source and measure of power, this ensures that the elite are in positions that enable them to dominate, economically. To some extent, this buffers them from the changes, giving rise to the trope of the layabout inheritor of wealth and privilege who assume entitlement by reason of privileged birth – an entitlement that the ‘real world’ eventually beats out of them.

For the first time, then, there is a significant pathway for downward social mobility from the ranks of the formerly privileged, and a sense that titles have to be earned, and re-earned over and over again. There were always such pathways, but they were previously seen as ignoble falls from grace; now they are perceived as justice meted out by harsh reality. This counterbalances, to some extent, the upward social mobility that arrived in the Age of Exploration.

2. Politics Of The Wealthy

With positions under threat of poverty and irrelevance, and power in the hands of the wealthy regardless of origins, politics as something distinct from relationships between the noble families of Europe, and distinct from the internal politics of Theological bodies, emerges. Politics is sometimes referred to as ‘the game that never ends’, with every day presenting a new challenge to prestige and authority; this is very much a modern perspective on the subject, and one that derives from this era.

3. Brilliance Alone

Another indication of how significantly lives had transformed can be found in the treatment of natural genius. In days gone by, no matter how gifted a peasant might have been, talent was rarely recognized unless it happened to apply to a narrow band of ‘acceptable’ pursuits; social class restrictions dominated. In the Renaissance, it became a signal of prestige to unearth these talented people and sponsor their endeavors, but this was still something of a hit-and-miss affair.

The Age of Exploration saw it become possible for the best of the best to rise from lower-class birth to high social position, but it was usually necessary to hitch one’s wagon to someone already possessed of privilege in order to use them as a stepping-stone; even the archetypal example offered, Columbus, was dependent on the continued success of the wealthy families that he represented; had they failed, at least some of the blame would have landed at his doorstep, potentially bringing his social ascent to an end. His own success and ability helped stave off that downfall, so both were well-served by the arrangement, until he no longer needed their commercial patronage.

In the Age Of Sail, even this patronage became less important, because there were now other sources of wealth. The brilliant innovator could now approach men of wealth directly, and – should those men be convinced of the potential offered by the innovator – could have their research funded. For the first time, brilliance alone presented a pathway to a form of prosperity and privilege that had evolved to meet the needs of those who qualified to receive it.

This opened up the number of clever people who were able to contribute to society, and the accumulated benefits they produced for their societies are the source of the great acceleration in learning that became so noticeable in the 20th century. At one point in time, it was easily possible for a witness to the first object leaving the solar system to have been alive and aware of events when the first heavier-than-air flight occurred. Such individuals would now be 120 years of age, so it is unlikely to still be true, but twenty years ago, there would have been a number of centenarians who meet the description.

4. The Ascension of Economic Power

The treasure-troves being brought into the economies of Europe by the colonists and exploiters had delayed the eclipsing of the old Nobility, but wealth ‘there for the taking’ was a finite resource, and could only delay the inevitable. Increasingly, it became necessary to invest time, money, sweat, and blood before potential earnings became actual ones. Commercial operations, used to the concept of such investments, thrived and prospered even more than individuals.

To a certain extent, this could be seen as a continuation of the trend toward decentralized wealth and privilege; no longer focused on discrete individuals, but diffused throughout the administrative leadership of a collective with the singular purpose of pursuing profit.

Economic power was increasingly the dominant force within society, taking control of the resources that had once been the exclusive domain of those with birthrights amongst the peerage. To those living in such times, it must have seemed that this development had already been taken to its logical extreme – from our privileged positions, we now know better, but one would have been prescient indeed to foresee the age of steam and the robber barons and captains of industry that it made possible.

The extent to which economic power dominated can be observed through another factor: tithing and the common bartering of goods were practices that had largely been shed from society over the course of the Renaissance, and the last vestiges had died out in the Age Of Exploration. Everyone, from tenant farmer to landowner, received payment in currency, paid taxes on those receipts, and spent the balance (if any) as they saw fit – with a myriad of opportunists presenting alternatives on which to divest such pittances. Many such pittances created prosperity, and many such sources of prosperity created wealth.

In politics, too, these developments played a part. For the first time, a sense of national identity arose that was divorced from, or at least at arms’ remove, from the noble families who ruled.

5. The East India Trading Company

Perhaps the most powerful example of mercantile economic power is the rise of the East India Trading Company. Without looking it up, how many can name the founders and directors of this famous and infamous institution? I can’t, and I’m reasonably well-informed on the subject, but there is a view that these individuals are less important than the company that they ruled.

To be fair, much of what is known or perceived about the East India Trading Company is fiction, a blending together of the stories of two different entities: The Dutch East India Company and the East India Company of Britain, together with occasional contributions from the histories of other institutions such as the French East India Company and the Swedish East India Company (sensing a common thread, here?) Conflating all of these into a mythical super-organization is false-to-fact but resonates so strongly with the twentieth-century experiences of mega-corporations that it was, perhaps, inevitable.

There was also a Genoese one, a Danish one, and an Austrian one – and that’s not an exhaustive list!

Perhaps the best place to start in comprehending the overlaps and proper attribution of historical roles played by this plethora of institutions is with this disambiguation page, from which that list (and its links) derive. Note the timelines of the different organizations, which are listed in sequence of their founding.

Although it was not the first East India company to be founded to exploit trade with India, the dominant player in modern perceptions is the Dutch East India Company, more accurately titled the United East India Company. This amalgamated several existing companies to form the first joint-stock company in the world, in which any resident of the United Provinces of the Netherlands could buy or sell shares through several secondary markets, one of which became the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. It was granted a 21-year monopoly by the Dutch government to trade in Asia, possessed quasi-government powers including the ability to make laws, wage wars, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, mint its own currency, and establish colonies. Statistically, the VOC eclipsed its rivals in the Asian trade between 1602 and 1796, during which time it sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asian trading theater on 4,785 ships. The rest of Europe combined sent 882,412 people over a similar time-frame.

The nearest rival to the VOC was the English (later British) East India Company, which had a total of 2,690 ships and shipped a mere one-fifth of the tonnage of the Dutch company. At its peak, though, the EIC was considered the largest corporation in the world, and it seized control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and colonized a number of areas in Southeast Asia, using its 260,000 soldiers – twice the size of the British Army of the time. Eventually, it would eclipse the VOC, but only after the latter had ceased operations; it had a profound impact the global balance of trade, and were almost single-handed in creating the British Empire.

That’s how dominant economic power became in this era – private corporations had more power and wealth than governments, who had more power and authority than the historical peerage.

6. The Plight Of The Commons

Just because there was a pathway out of poverty for the cream of the naturally-gifted, and the poor were viewed as cogs in the economic machinery, that didn’t do much to better the lives of those who didn’t meet the standard of being exceptional. With little power over their own economic positions, it must have seemed to many that only the names of their masters had changed. Other people dictated how much their labors and products were worth, and how much they had to pay for access to the land that made farming and farm produce possible, and so on.

It was never formally described as such, but it was nevertheless a form of wage slavery, one in which the poor were ground up by the machinery of society for the betterment of the already-prosperous and wealthy.

7. The Slave Trade

Of course, even the poorest were better off than those victimized to the ultimate extreme of enslavement. This was a means of getting a day’s labor done while only spending a pittance of what it would have cost to pay someone to perform the same work. Although I deliberately left it off the list, slaves were another of those natural resources that were exploited starting in the Age of Exploration.

The increased workforce made expansion possible that would otherwise have taken decades if it were economically-possible at all, revealing another operating principle of modern economics – opportunities for employment will expand, in any prosperous economy, to the limits of the available workforce.

Connection to Now

There is a resonance with the current economic situation in our post-COVID world, at least here in Australia (and I see many similarities with the US economic situation) in that many businesses, especially in the agricultural sector had grown reliant on cheap labor imported from elsewhere. With Covid, that mobile workforce was largely halted, forcing businesses to adapt to employing locals; because the work is hard and pays relatively poorly, many viewed these as undesirable jobs, but even a partial employment boost was enough to empty the pool of available labor, leaving many operations struggling to recruit the workers that they needed for continued growth. Combining this with the pent-up demand for goods and services and the strain on economic supply chains and you have a high-demand low-supply situation that inevitably demands price rises (so that businesses can recruit in a constricted labor market). Where this will lead is beyond the scope of this part of this series, but was its original purpose – simply because of the high level of misinformation that I was seeing on the subject.

Personally, I find the concept of slavery to be repugnant, even as I am forced to accept the historical reality. It doesn’t matter that some were not abused; enough were, and it remains an affront that they had no power to alter their circumstances, being completely dependent on the goodwill of their ‘masters’. In many ways, this was a more modern recapitulation of the system of serfs and peasants, as though the emancipation of the lowest rungs of society demanded that these indentured laborers be replaced in order that those who profited from the exploitation of the workforce could continue to do so. This is an attitude that encompasses many aspects of my gaming worlds, however unrealistic it might be – slavers are always the bad guys and those who fight the practice are heroes, however flawed in other aspects of their personality they might be. Others may not feel this to the same extent or strength; it’s a bias that I’m happy to acknowledge.

Slavery was rife and expanding throughout the age of Sail. It was taken as the right of the social betters from Europe to dominate and exploit the ‘social inferiors’ – islanders, indigenous populations, and African natives. It took time for this to change, and even now the process can be considered incomplete.

The economics of the slave trade have to be understood as an essential component of the broader economic times; and not something that can be conveniently ignored, however uncomfortable a subject it might be.

8. Genre: Arrrh, There be Pirates

Strictly speaking, Pirates are a feature of the Age Of Discovery that preceded the Age Of Sail. The Pirates Of The Caribbean movies are set in the more contemporary era, however, and found their stories on the premise of the last dregs of the more noble past age confronting the reality of the modern day, of romanticism vs a harsh political and economic reality.

This underpinning gives a greater resonance between a modern audience and the characters of the time, enlarging the popularity of the whole genre, but in and of itself, it’s not enough.

My Pulp co-GM and I have frequently discussed the concepts of niche genres and come to the conclusion that such only really succeed in the era of Blockbusters by using infusions of something else. There was a time – Douglas Fairbanks etc – when a Pirate movie could stand on its own feet and be profitable, but the genre waned as the 20th century unfolded. A few attempts in the later 20th century to re-fire the genre, such as Master And Commander, didn’t flop but didn’t set the movie world on fire, either.

Pirates Of The Caribbean succeeded by ladeling in great infusions of fantasy, a few horror overtones, and drenching the whole in a cloak of comedy. Each of these brought in additional support from a different community of fans, and the combination was enough to create a hit. But that subtle philosophic element underpins everything, throwing in a broader context to the swashbuckling.

Seventh Sea is the premium representative of the Pirates genre in RPGs (and on of the outstanding crowdfunding success stories in TTRPGs. It also throws in slabs of fantasy and some deeper philosophical territory to underpin the game world, substituting exploration and politics and action-adventure for much of the comedy of POTC; and yet, I would lay odds that most Seventh-Sea campaigns occasionally – ‘lapse’ is the wrong word – into comic overtones, if not into genuine farce. Most campaigns do, regardless of genre, to be fair; very little can be grim and gritty and serious all the time without a little sunshine for contrast, every now and then.

I don’t think we’ll ever be able to fully extricate the occasional burst of lightheartedness from the Pirate genre. It’s here to stay. The combination also resonates with another, more recent hit, this one set in deep space – the Guardians Of The Galaxy movie series. Strip away the super-heroics and the sci-fi elements, and what you are left with is an expression of the same swlect-band-against-the-world philosophic underpinning and the same comedic overtones.

9. Exploration to Colonialism and Expansion

Another significant difference between this era and that which preceded it is the psychological shift from exploration and looting / pillaging to systematic exploitation of resources. As described earlier, the wealth that was easy money for the taking had all been taken; what remained was greater in total value, but would require more to extract.

The resulting exploitation often came in a package deal with colonial attitudes. These undervalued native cultures and civilization, even to the point of trying to stamp these out (generally unsuccessfully) and overvalued the worth of ‘western’ society, largely by setting the metrics of measurement to suit themselves and elevating technological prowess to primacy amongst them. There is no doubt that these contributions to local societies were valuable, but the technological ascendancy did not equate to superiority in other fields, like ethics and morality. Just the opposite, it sometimes seems – but that’s because we are judging the whole based on the worst excesses and not the general standard.

Those ‘worst excesses’ were deplorable, there can be no doubt. Whether we’re talking about the Indian subcontinent, the Opium Wars, the dispossession of Native Americans and Canadians, or the abuse of Islanders, and Australian First Nations peoples, there’s plenty of dirt to go around.

Another contentious element (from a modern perspective) is the conversion and proselytizing of the natives to the religious beliefs of the West. If you are a believer, this is entirely justifiable under the notion of saving the souls of the natives; if you aren’t, its using dogma and religion to claim temporal authority via a religious back-door. Frankly, I don’t think there is<./em> a right answer in this aspect of colonialism; for what the religious authorities did to be “wrong”, you first have to believe that they did not believe that they were doing the “right thing”; without that guilty secret, the worst they can be accused of is misjudgment and arrogance, because if they truly believed, they had no other choice but to be driven by that belief.

Of course, the enslavement of some is the most egregious of these activities, as stated earlier – at least in my view. Doing better than that is, as the saying goes, a low bar to slither over.

The colonies were designed and intended to force the local populations into a global market for the goods and products that they could supply, an economic driver aimed at profiteering to benefit those Europeans who sponsored and established the colonies. That’s the economic reality that has to be taken into account in any analysis of the era.

10. More Rags To Riches

Administration of these colonies opened up still more channels for rags-to-riches stories. You could enlist as a sailor or man-at-arms, work your way up in military rank, retire from that and release yourself into an administrative position, and climb the social ladder until returning to your home ports with wealth and a record of ‘public service’ that made you a respectable member of society.

I have no doubt that some of those who followed this pathway sincerely tried to do the best that they could for the natives given over to their authority; the holy books at the root of the religions of the time, as now, were replete with instructions to care for others, be generous and honest, and so on, and these would have been taken to heart be many. But there were none to stay impulses toward domination, and plenty of opportunity for frustration to spill over into hostility when the natives forcefully assimilated ‘refused’ to see the ‘benefits’ of assimilation.

10a. Gold Fevers

I find it enlightening to contrast and compare an aspect of the era that followed with the colonialism of the Age Of Sail: Gold Fever and the Gold Rushes, in particular those of North America and here in my native Australia. Gold Fever led the victims to stake their entire existence on the prospect of striking it rich, and excused any lengths to which one would go in pursuit of that goal. The colonies were simply a less-directly valuable ‘gold’, and the resulting imperialism was the consequence of the blind pursuit of that ‘fortune’.

The Gold Rushes serve as a functional metaphor for the colonial exploitation of existing populations – right down to those who profited from the sale of ‘kit’ to those out to make a ‘name’ for themselves. Throw in the arrogance of assumed cultural superiority, and the recipe is complete; in the quest for wealth through dominion, any brutality or injustice was tolerable, when the ‘fever’ was at its height.

I bear this in mind whenever an analogous situation arises in a game, be it a government ‘trading’ with Orcs or a space colony which has been established on a world already inhabited. Even in an era of enlightenment, unless there is constant supervision, a cycle of excess and exploitation will arise.

11. Genre: The Wild West

I’ve never been a big fan of Westerns, for some reason. I’ve never played in, or run, a Wild West RPG. Nevertheless, there have been the occasional isolated example that has penetrated my defensive armor against such things – movies like Evil Roy Slade, TV series like F Troop, and the misadventures of Cattlepunk in Knights Of The Dinner Table, to name three. So my ability to exert any sort of expertise in dealing with this genre is limited and largely second-hand.

There are, for example, a lot of similarities between elements of the Superhero genre and the concepts that lie at the heart of the Wild West of American Myth, and I have extensive experience and expertise in the Superheroic genre that can be translated across that genre divide. All of which means that there’s the potential for me to offer advice and analysis of substance, but readers should probably take my contributions with a grain of salt; they may look good in theory, but have no practical value.

So, here’s my take on the Wild West Genre, for whatever it’s worth: The genre, as a whole, straddles two different eras: that of Sail (which is why it’s being referenced now), and the age of steam that follows. The broader concepts can be subdivided into three general categories.

• The Exploration Throwback – pioneering explorations into the unknown that are more strongly related to the Age Of Discovery and provide an outlet for those who yearn for the far horizon and being the first to find or do something. This aspect of the pioneering spirit is the one that was tapped to create Star Trek when it was sold to Paramount Studios and Desilu as “Wagon Train To The Stars”.
• The Outsider Of Justice – a loner stumbles across an isolated and lawless town and is persuaded to become the lawman who will pacify it. Or the independent-minded lawman dispatched from a distant authority to become law and order in the lawless west. This is the part of the Western Myth that was actually co-opted into Star Trek, and its also the part that resonates most strongly with the superheroic genre, and a lot of general action-adventure movies. Heck, there’s a lot of resonance with Dr Who, too.
• The quest for life and prosperity (and sometimes redemption) in an unforgiving environment surrounded by hostile forces – with the Wilder aspects of the Wild West muzzled (if not tamed), it becomes possible to eke out a living while dreaming of prosperity. Challenges will need to be overcome, but there is vast potential for social and economic gain if you can meet those demands. I’ve drawn on this concept any number of times in all sorts of genres, from Science Fiction settings to Fantasy adventures – sometimes, these are a gateway to a larger background, sometimes they are part of an ongoing series of smaller-scale confrontations.

Obviously, the last is the one that contains the Gold Rushes, and the Barbary Coast, and driving the Railroads west, and therefore are the part that crosses over into the Age Of Steam (no steam, no railroads!).

In all cases, finding some analogy that you can get a handle on is the key to unlocking the genre if you aren’t already an aficionado. With this foundation, I would not hesitate to run a Western adventure or campaign if I were asked to.

But it would be critical to understand the economics – where does the wealth come from, who has it, what are they doing with it, what opportunities does it present to those who don’t have it, and how do those without, survive?

12. Revolution Is In The Air

The rise of individualism, the redistribution of power and authority into a colonial mold, inevitably leads to revolutions as those with some power come into conflict with those who traditionally held power in their own right. Although history contains a few other examples that could be used, the one that everyone knows something about is the American Revolution. Colonial Rebellion, sometimes successful and sometimes suppressed, are the hallmarks of a paradigm shift into the Age Of Steam – even though they may predate or post-date the actual rise of Steam and Industry. .
Such revolutions and attempted revolutions are an inevitable response to the abuses of colonialism, and usher in an age of political turbulence that lead to the Victorian Gaslight period, a fertile setting for RPGs of many different and diverse genres.

But that’s for next time. For now, it’s time to wrap up this post and revise the series plan – and I’ll see you all next time!

Even in this relatively primitive economy, you can see some of the trends and practices evolving that we take for granted in the modern era, but the evolution of economic model in our history took a turn before those trends really manifested themselves, going from an Absolute Monarchy to a Limited Monarchy, and in the process sewing the seeds of both the Pre-industrial and Steam-age economies.

In part 1:

1. Introduction
2. General Concepts and A Model Economy
3. The Economics of an Absolute Monarchy (The Early Medieval)

In part 2:

4. The Economics of Limited Monarchies (The Later Medieval & Renaissance)
5. In-Game Economics: Fantasy Games

In this part:

6. The Renaissance, revisited
7. Pre-Industrial Economics I: The Age of Exploration
8. Pre-Industrial Economics II: The Age of Sail

Planned for part 4:

9. Industrial Economies I: The Age Of Steam
10. In-game Economics: Gaslight-era

Planned for part 5:

11. Industrial Economics II: The Age Of Internal Combustion
12. Industrial Economics III: War & Depression
13. In-Game Economics: Pulp-era

Planned for parts 6-7:

14. Tech Economics I: The Gold Standard
15. Tech Economics II: Resources & Regulation
16. Tech Economics III: Inflation & Hyper-inflation
17. Tech Economics IV: Commercialism, Deregulation, Privatization, & Greed

Planned for parts 8-10:

18. Digital Economics
19. Post-Pandemic Economics
20. In-Game Economics: Modern
21. Future Economics I: Dystopian
22. In-Game Economics: Dystopian Futures
23. Future Economics I: Utopian
24. In-Game Economics: Utopian Futures
25. In-Game Economics: Space Opera

The game plan at the moment is to do 1-2 parts of the series, then interrupt it for an unrelated stand-alone article on some other subject before resuming. But don’t hold me to that schedule, it’s subject to change without notice!

A Status Update

It can be readily observed that this is not part 3 of the ongoing series on Economics in RPGs that I’ve been publishing for the last couple of weeks.

Right up until the last moment, I was uncertain as to whether or not to continue with that series this week, but two – no, four – factors compelled a break.

First, I have been coming up with a number of good ideas for articles outside of the series, and wanted to keep the queue of these short – I still have a couple left over from my last burst of creativity (‘The Collision Of Aphorisms’ and ‘Measurements In Hand-waving’) that have not yet been published, and while the first of these is well-documented but conceptually incomplete, the second is vague and uncertain. I’m sure I knew exactly what it was about when I came up with the idea… ‘striking while the iron is hot’ is more than just a casual consideration (this also plays into why I have so many series here with one or two parts remaining before completion – the intent and desire are there, but the difficulty has risen).

Second, Economics is hardly the most stimulating of topics to most readers. I like to think that I’ve been able to keep the series entertaining and interesting to readers so far, though I may be deluding myself; but there is a risk of burnout from a tinder-dry subject on the part of both the audience (that’s everyone reading this) and the writer (that’s me). And that also plays into those unfinished series that I mentioned. A change of pace, for anyone who hasn’t been bothering with the Economics series, or who doesn’t run a Fantasy campaign and so has found the content thus far to be of limited relevance to them, is not a bad idea.

Third, there’s been a serious time-crunch lately. I’ll go into the reasons for that in a moment; for now, suffice it to say that I’ve got a lot of time-sensitive major projects underway simultaneously.

Even with all three of these taken into consideration, the decision was still 50-50 in my mind, but this fourth item was the kicker: the content of the third article is still taking shape in my mind. Without all those distractions, I might have been able to better focus on that content and be writing a very different article right now! With more time up my sleeve, I would have dived into the writing even without a full picture of content in mind, confident that I would be able to use narrative momentum and experience to get me through to the end. Either way, I would now be writing about economics in the Renaissance and Pre-industrial eras. Without those luxuries to fall back on, a quicker alternative was called for. So, here we are.

What are these major projects that are getting in the way? I can’t go into too much detail, but thought a quick roundup would be in order:

1. Campaign Mastery: Economics In RPGs

Obviously, this is still on my mind. I expect to be able to deliver Part 3 next week.

2. Dr Who: Azuria, Azurials, Azurians, and Azurites

The next adventure takes place on the homeworld of the Doctor’s current companion, Quasima. Q’s species started out conceptually as ‘a sentient shade of the color blue’ but the campaign is more hard-science with a soft-science gooey shell around it; imparting at least a veneer of pseudo-scientific credibility demanded amplification of the concept of the Azurites, a concept that continues to grower deeper, richer, and more complex as I work on it. Currently, they are a viewed as an almost two-dimensional sheet of sentient energy, a complex internal arrangement of electrified plasma given form by virtue of its self-awareness.

2a. Homeworld Of Sentient Blue

If the adventure is to take place on Azuria, the homeworld of Quasima, I need to know what that environment is going to be. Hint: it’s going to be manifestly strange! Actually, the fundamental concepts concerning Azuria came to me fairly quickly, perhaps because I’ve had months of this being in the back of my mind.

The major project is to illustrate what’s been forming in the back of my head. To that end, I have 28 major components to the illustration ready to stitch together (and four more to do), 23 bolts of lightning with which to adorn those components (and cover any imperfections) and 22 high-resolution images of inhabitants (which won’t be enough, but the balance are all going to be small, and low-res images that will be quick to produce). So this project is coming to a close, on Thursday if not sooner.

In fact, it’s so close that I’ve thrown together some of the components to form the image used to illustrate this article. The final composite will be very different from this one, in which the natives dominate.

2b. Life-cycles Of Sentient Blue

Other aspects of the species have also been playing on my mind, especially their life cycles; one reason I have put together so many high-resolution examples is so that they can be compiled into an infographic. (I also have vague ideas about using lightning elements to link these in a visual way, but that might not work.

2c. Societies & Lifestyles Of Sentient Blue

You can’t think about these subjects without also starting to think about the society in which they live. One thought along this line triggers another thought about the life cycle or the environment which then gives a new idea bout the society; the whole grows not as isolated ideas but as consequences of broad concepts that daisy-chain their way through multiple aspects of their existence. This is one technique for creating a consistency within the concept that will withstand being presented to the player in smaller chunks, observations, and events.

In fact, you can lump it all under the heading of “background”.

2. Dr Who: Adventure 8: The Coming Of Ageless

One thing that I concentrate on is making sure that the adventure draws upon and highlights elements within the background. How does where something is happening impact what a character would perceive as happening? The victims, their habits, their protective social mechanisms, all will be different. A heist in Elven lands should not be the same, and should not feel the same, as one in South America, or one in Los Angeles, or one in 1812 Germany. Everything from what is being stolen to who is doing the stealing should be different, and the expectations of what a PC is supposed to do about it will also be different.

It should be noted that I am using the ‘heist’ as an example deliberately, because the adventure is not a heist!

I have a clear enough idea of what’s going to happen in my head that I can run it even if completing the earlier projects takes up all the available time, but improv is so much better when it’s supported by prep – and the whole purpose of thinking about the environment and society is to inform the adventure. The prior listings aren’t isolated entities, they are all contributions to the actual adventure.

All this Dr Who work needs to be completed in the next 2 weeks, because that’s when the adventure is to start – whether it’s ready or not. That’s the shortest deadline, so it gets the highest priority right now.



3. Pulp: Adventure #33: Lucifer Rising

Speaking of composites, I have a composite image to complete for the next Pulp Adventure. Below is a screen shot of the elements of that composite, which has been on the back-burner for a while but slowly approaching completion. To the right is a screen capture of the elements either underway or completed. I really need to get my finger out on this one, it will be needed in 3-4 months. Note that I am using a very thumb-nailed screen grab because it won’t give any hints to the players.

The adventure itself is complete, but I also need to finish indexing the selected images (getting them into the sequence we expect to use them in play) and referencing the resulting image sequence number in the adventure text. That won’t take long – maybe a day, maybe less – but it still needs to happen within the next 2-3 months.

4. Pulp: The Map Of New York

I started generating a large-scale map of New York City (plus all of Long Island, most of New Jersey, and up to Sleepy Hollow to the north) so that I could put markers down for where various events and locations were situated, relative to each other. The scale is just enough to show individual streets, enough of them with names that specific locations can be identified. As it happened, it turned out not to be needed – a burst of inspiration solved the plot problem the map was to help us address – but it’s so close to completion that I’ve been pressing on, regardless. This is a composite of more than 200 screen grabs from an internet map. Unfortunately, the original map was too large to keep as one piece – instead, it’s going to end up being 6 or 8 image files by the time it’s all done.

Another 2-3 days work and this should be done – but I’m going to have to start lowering it’s priority rating, since the need is no longer urgent. I’ve been desperately trying to finish it before that happens.

5. Pulp: Adventure #34: The Kindness Of Strangers

The adventure for the Pulp campaign that my co-GM and I are currently working on, and for which the map was initially required. We’re probably about half-way through it. I can’t say too much, the players all read this blog from time to time!

6. Zenith-3 / Team Shadow: Act 10 (ongoing)

I had a huge project to synchronize the events that comprise this act of the current adventure to accommodate a number of possible player decisions. Most of those decisions have now been made and I know that they will be following a prepared pathway through the rest of the act, so I am focusing on the final scenes. This content will need to be completed about 2 months from now.

7. Zenith-3 / Team Shadow: Protocols & PCs

A large part of that content will be describing the suggested Protocols that the team will need to think about in terms of modus operandi. Currently it looks like: (a) Discover an emergency; (b) gather everyone; (c) pile into their cars and drive at top (legal) speed to a remote location about 10 minutes away, briefing as they go; (d) transform into hero guise; (e) travel to the emergency at the speed of a fast car – but in a more-or-less straight line; (f) resolve the emergency; (g) reverse steps e, d, and c; (h) debrief.

Limited travel speed and overheads are something that the team haven’t really had to deal with before; they are used to teleporting in the wink of an eye to the adventure. Now, we’re talking 15 minutes to an hour, maybe more – it’s up to them whether or not they put a limit on it. This situation will impose additional judgments on the team – “what’s the likelihood that an emergency of type ‘x’ will be resolved before we can get there?” will need to be considered for the first time. Before they can make decisions, I need to figure out the questions that will confront them.

8. Zenith-3 / Team Shadow: Data: Places To Go and Things To Do

Now that they have chosen a base of operations (a ‘mansion’ located in Royal, Arkansas) and are on their way to buy it, I need to view the place as a hub. Certain plot threads will come with the location – I need to nut those out. There are going to be shopping expeditions in and around the location.

I have generated a huge list of places of interest and businesses for the PCs to shop in, and am in the process of documenting travel times (and flying times in cases of emergency). There’s maybe another 16-20 hours of work in data gathering – so that’s 4-5 working days. I could get it done this week, but next week is a more likely target. Especially since I keep finding more stuff to list!

Along the way, I’m also compiling mini-adventure ideas based on suggestive locations. The PCs want to spend several game weeks building up a local reputation and fitting out their chosen base before the real action starts, and they haven’t even started to figure out how they are going to do it (another protocol question). So I’m building up resources to facilitate the PCs doing what they have said they intend to do.

9. Zenith-3 / Team Shadow: Documentation: Places To Go and Things To Do

The info gathered in project 8 will get presorted by type put into a number of tables and sub-tables that I have designed, which can then be individually sorted in various ways – so that if they want the nearest hairdresser, for example, I can simply scroll through the table to get an answer.

Completing the data acquisition will take another 3-4 sessions of about 4 hours each; populating the database will take weeks, there will be hundreds of entries. The more time I can fill up with Acts 10 & 11 (initiating those plot threads), the longer I have to get this done – so I have a 2-3 month timeline before this project needs to be complete.

10. Zenith-3 / Team Shadow: Mansions & Mapping

I recently purchased, as a bundle, Campaign Cartographer 3 and a bunch of add-ons, with the express intention of using it to design the floor-plan of the Mansion in Royal. I have a list of rooms (now approaching completion), I have the design philosophy that was used in the 18th century to build the place, and I have a concept of layout and how the PCs might change it.

I know what functions they have identified as things they want to be able to carry out there, and identified a number of the existing rooms that can have those purposes mapped onto them.

Right now, they can’t even really explore the place because it isn’t fully designed yet. So doing that is a major task that hasn’t yet really started.

10a. HD Space / Laptop Cleanup

One reason (aside from time) that it hasn’t started yet is that I started to run out of space on my Hard Disk. I can see gigabytes being used for the process, with me editing the labels (or adding new labels) to a copy of the map in real time, as the players discuss their options. So one task that has more or less wrapped (for now – it’s an ongoing thing) was to archive off a whole bunch of stuff that I don’t use regularly.

I started with a free capacity of 50.4 Gb. That’s now up to 77.2 Gb – so that’s 26.8 Gb of space cleaned up, most of it in old documents and unwanted MP3s and backups of installation files for software. There’s at least another 2.25 Gb in Campaign Mastery archives that I can ditch from the working Hard Disk if I need to, maybe more. That amounts to about 29 Gb of space freed up to enable the Mansion Mapping project to take place.

And, once I’ve installed CC3, I can delete it’s installation source files, too (they’re already backed up) – that’s another 16 Gb, bringing the total cleared to 45 Gb, or about 10% of the HD’s capacity.

11. Warcry

The Warcry campaign rolls on. Designed to be low-prep, I have a game session in hand but need to start thinking about the next adventure, due to start in just over a month. That will involve between 2 and 20 hours work over the next 5 weeks or so.

12. Campaign Mastery: Other Article Ideas

I mentioned at the top of this ‘status report’ that I had a list of other articles for Campaign Mastery in progress. There’s –

• ‘Looping Rolls’, a new concept in game mechanics, which will take a lot of work;
• ‘Disease At The Speed Of Plot’, about diseases in RPGs, obviously!
• ‘The Collision Of Aphorisms’, which I’ve mentioned already;
• ‘The Alignment Of Decisions’, which is also about GMing style, and which revolves around alignment as a metaphor (which is a lot more problematic these days!)
• ‘Patterns Of Alien Intellect’, which I actually started in 2016 but never finished,
• ‘Measurements In Handwaving’, ditto;
• ‘GMing Style vs Playing Style’, which is barely a concept yet;
• ‘What is Magic?’, which is a shortish article about half-finished;
• ‘Rumormongering For Fun and Profit’, which I started and set aside;
• ‘Beware Old Habits’, which is nothing but a title;
• ‘The Changing Needs Of Content With Blog Growth’, which is a beginning and not enough substance;
• ‘The Trouble With Disaster’, which is about 8,500 words long and about 90% unfinished; and which may end up being a multipart series if I ever get back to it;
• And, of course, all the ongoing series, and a load of other ideas that are nothing more than a line of description or a title.

Not all of these will make the cut. Some have been abandoned for some time – tomorrow, as I write this, it will be six years since I’ve done anything with ‘The Alignment Of Decisions’, for example. But some of them deserve better. The higher up that list an item is, the more likely it is to ever see the light of day. So the top 5 or 6 look good, but the others are on shakier ground.

As you can see, I have a LOT of irons in the fire at the moment. Thinning that list before something else comes along is a high priority of my day, every day.

Well, if the Economics article wasn’t going to be ready, and might not have been finished even if I had started it, I needed something else – and that brings me to the subject of today’s post.

This is one of those ‘set-aside’ ideas that looked like it could be finished relatively quickly and easily. So far up that list of unfinished articles that It’s popped right off the top.

Fade Into The Background: The Premise

GMs should always strive to fade into the background as much as possible during play. It’s impossible to do this as completely as is ultimately desirable, unfortunately.

The goal is one that demands continual monitoring of our GMing habits and style to ensure that we are getting as close to that theoretical ideal as is possible.

Why?

There are two questions that I always like to answer right after giving some advice. The second is ‘How’, and I’ll get to that in a moment; first there is the question of ‘why?’

A player can only pay close attention to a limited number of things at once.

• Where their PC is and what they are doing there;
• The campaign background, and what parts of it matter, and why;
• What the NPC / creature / location in front of the PC is doing or saying;
• What the rules are for what the player wants to do;
• How to enter combat if that takes place;
• The PC’s current health and any ongoing status effects;
• What the GM is saying.
• What the GM is doing, eg what he has just rolled;
• What the PC is saying or about to say;
• What the other players / PCs are saying.

That’s ten things, and the GM’s presence is only one of them (I don’t count what he’s doing, because it’s irrelevant who is doing it; it could be anyone moving a piece on a battle-mat or rolling dice. All the player really cares about in this category is what is going to affect his PC and how).

At the same time, the GM wants to be heard; he’s imparting what he considers vitally important game information. There is, therefore, an important distinction to be made: the GM should fade into the background, not the content of what he is saying. That distinction provides the ‘why’ – the more attention the player focuses onto the GM, the less attention he has available for assimilating and responding to the content that the GM is imparting.

In fact, it’s quite common for three or four items on that list to ‘go missing’ at any given time during play. You don’t want to add to that list.

How?

When I’m a player in a game, I like any situation to start with what scriptwriters call an “Establishing shot”. A snapshot of the scene that enables me to visualize the location and environment and what is happening in the background. I assemble this, as best I can, from what the GM describes, then try to keep it in mind as the backdrop to everything else that happens.

This can be more difficult than it sounds, because other players are often more intent on getting to the action, or are more willing to make assumptions about the environment or ignore it as irrelevant. They lean in, asking questions and stating actions or making chitchat or simply start switching off, no longer listening. As soon as the GM perceives this, he has a difficult choice to make: keep imparting the details he thinks important enough to mention (possibly after demanding refocused attention), or assume that the PCs aren’t paying attention to those things and move on to the events that are to transpire.

The first involves the GM making himself the focus of attention, possibly forcefully, then shifting it back to the scene. The second fades the GM into the background, a shadow lurking somewhere behind the information that he is imparting. Doing this successfully means assuming that PCs will notice anything the GM hasn’t described yet as soon as it becomes significant, and also that the GM has been combining obviousness and importance to rank the information he is providing.

A Sitting Room

Let’s say that the PCs have just entered a sitting room. The GM wants to end his description of the setting with the figure seated in an easy chair, because that’s an obvious call to action or interaction. What description of the room and scene are absolutely necessary before mentioning that figure?

Would you spend time on the Oriental Rug? No. Would you mention the fireplace and it’s ornate wrought-iron screen that prevents sparks from reaching the rug before the hearth? Yes, and no, respectively. In fact, if the fire is not lit (worth mentioning), the screen might never rate a mention – or not until a PC pays special attention to the fireplace, anyway.

How can you front-load as much description into individual terminology? “A Victorian drawing room, vivid green wallpaper, two easy chairs before the roaring fire with a small table between them, an instant feeling of comfort and warmth. One of the chairs is occupied by…”

The keywords here are “Victorian drawing room”. Everything else is refining the resulting vision. So long as the GM can clearly envision the room, any additional details can be provided on demand.

In fact, the example description offered is so sparse that an additional detail can probably be sneaked into the narrative, just to further individualize this particular drawing room. “A stuffed owl dominates brick-a-brac on a shelf above the fireplace.” or “Portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert hang proudly on the wall in gilded frames.”

The NPC Description

The decision on whether or not to include such detail comes down to whether or not I need to add such details to the description of the NPC sitting in the easy chair. If I do, that takes priority; if not, then I can spare it to provide some additional color to the room, in the process adding characterization to the owner.

“A man with a long nose is slumped in an easy chair, deerstalker hat, pipe in hand still smoking, with a heavy tome opened upon his lap, finger poised as though tracing a line of text, with two pronounced and bloody holes visible in his jacket.”

Someone has murdered a Sherlock Holmes fan…! or maybe, Holmes himself!

Once again, the call to action / interaction has to come last, because once it is stated, anything that follows will be overshadowed by it.

In Case Of Interruption

What if I got only as far as “pipe in hand still smoking,” before a player announced, “I step forward and present my hand to shake his, saying, ‘Mr Holmes, it’s a great honor and pleasure to meet you.”

The answer is to build the response into the description – “He doesn’t look up at you, his finger still poised above a line of text in the heavy book in his lap; perhaps he’s distracted by the two obvious and bloody bullet holes in his jacket.”

The change to the last phrase is important, as it is just a bit facetious, the sarcasm implying a gentle rebuke over the interruption (my experience with many Americans is that they wouldn’t recognize sarcasm if they tripped over it, but I have high hopes that a gamer will be amongst the cream of the crop in understanding such nuance, and have rarely been disappointed in that regard).

Of course, the book itself might mean everything, or nothing; its simply what the NPC was doing when he was shot. Unless and until one of the PCs moves the hand, perhaps to try and take a pulse – in which case, it was pointing at a last dying (and frightfully obscure) clue from the great detective as to his murderer, a clue that has just been carelessly lost!

Content Is More Important Than Delivery

There’s enough of an example here, I think, for readers to begin to discern the key elements. Description is kept minimal, but leaving out nothing important. Save for any calls to action /; interaction, information is delivered in a logical sequence – it will often be that of decreasing significance, but may not be. Loaded terms are used to provide maximum description and flavor for minimal verbiage. And the GM has followed the important principle that the content that he is delivering is more important than the delivery itself. He doesn’t want the object of attention to be himself, he wants it to be that information content.

Other logical sequences include distant to close, left to right, right to left, floor to ceiling, ceiling to floor, or still to moving.

One More Iteration

I couldn’t resist one more variation on the example as a further demonstration of the technique. What if the figure wasn’t dead, hadn’t even been shot, but was simply concentrating hard on what he was reading?

“A man with a long nose is slumped in an easy chair, deerstalker hat, with a heavy tome opened upon his lap. As you enter, he raises one hand in an unspoken plea for silence, smoking pipe still clasped between fingers and thumb, while his other forefinger traces lines of obscure text in the book. Reaching the end of the passage, he looks up at you, almost visibly changing mental gears.”

I don’t know about you, but if I heard that as a player, I would expect that the Holmsian figure was about to say something, potentially profound, possibly whimsical. Instead of a call to action / interaction, there is a foreshadowing of such, which is what creates that impression. Notice also that the sequence of items has changed so that the action elements – hand calling for silence, finger tracing lines of text – follow details of the static environment

Training

The final point to make here is that if you make a habit of always (and deliberately) making your final phrase the call to action / interaction, your players will learn to recognize that, and generally get into the habit of waiting until they hear one. Sometimes, eagerness will get the better of them, but any improvement in this areas is a good thing!

This is a habit that you have to get into; it will very rarely happen of its own accord. Similarly, listening for such a cue won’t happen overnight; but that is less important than the effects that a call to action / interaction will have simply by virtue of their nature.

The Wall

Some GMs use a Screen (some of the most popular posts ever, here at Campaign Mastery, have been on the subject)..

I use a laptop for the same effect, plus I get to turn it around to show images to the players (a single image can replace whole tracts of text – 1000 words is a lot, but even a saving of 100 words of description is a LOT. See A Picture Should Be Worth 1,000 Words for more on that.)

One of the benefits of such devices is that the GM can hide behind them, presenting a disembodied voice for the players to interact with – but that rarely seems to get mentioned. All the attention is on hiding game content and die rolls from those ‘on the outside’, and the benefits of putting tables and reference material at hand.

Creating a Wall between players and GM makes it easier to separate message from messenger. There are other benefits, and there are liabilities as well; this just adds another to the list.

Mechanical Narrative

Another habit that I’ve been trying consciously to get into is the use of a specific format when it comes to player interactions with game mechanics.

1. Recapitulate what the character is trying to do, or if this has been articulated sufficiently clearly and is a straightforward maneuver, describe the beginning of the movement. Use verbs – ‘action words’ – as much as possible and try very hard to make the moment described ‘live in the now’.
2. Ex-cathedra, specify any game mechanics needed to advance the description of events further, and – if necessary – who is to perform those game mechanics.
3. Perform any game mechanics and privately interpret the results. Avoid telegraphing with simple statements like “You hit” that suck away any trace of the atmosphere, if you can – that’s the part I’m having the most trouble with.
4. In a single statement, still living in the ‘now’, advance the attempted action, bearing in mind the admonition in (3). If there are no more game mechanics interactions needed, exit the process and move on to the next character to act.
5. There will often be a need for further game mechanics interaction before the action can be resolved. Specify it, as per (2).
6. Resolve these mechanics as per (3). If more game mechanics interactions are potentially needed, go back to step (4).
7. In a single statement, still living in the ‘now’, advance the attempted action to a conclusion, whatever it may be, bearing in mind the admonition in (3).

Note that I use the same process for NPCs that a PC can see / sense.

Let’s break that down at bit with a simple attack sequence with a weapon that mandates a saving roll of some kind on a successful hit.

Attack Example Step 0:

There are game mechanics which determine the sequence in which characters act. I work this as an ‘out-of-game moment’ – padding the event with gossip and rumor and news from real life. Nothing a player says gets interpreted in-game. Once this is done, the results are never mentioned to the players in game mechanics terms if I can avoid it.

Sometimes, prior events will mandate a specific action on the part of the character, for example if he was knocked prone, the character can either act while prone or get up in some fashion. This can trigger responses or give the character an attempt at a further action, depending on how they go about it – but sometimes this takes an action that is normally automatic and imposes a die roll requirement for success.

I will introduce the action by stating any such situation, if I can; if not, I will use more general action: “Next, [Character Name] makes a decision on how to respond to the situation,” or whatever (from now on in this example, I will use ‘Blaine’ as the Character Name, and John as the player’s name).

I try (frequently unsuccessfully) never to say ‘Next, it’s Blaine’s turn to act”, or worse still, something along the lines of “It’s John’s Turn”!

Attack Example Step 1

If I know what John has said Blaine is trying to do, I proceed from there. If not, I ask: “John, what is Blaine trying to do [this round]?” – if a player specifies an action that will take multiple rounds, I tell them that, giving them the chance to change their minds; once they commit to a multi-round action series, they may or may not be able to readily abandon the sequence.

In a multi-round action, if it can be abandoned, I will use language such as “John, Blair is about to continue {doing X] unless you change your mind or interrupt it to do something else.” This invites the player to interact with the game system as the character, placing the mechanics at arm’s length, and helping the GM fade into the background.

In this example, we’ll assume that John has indicated that he is going to attack Enemy #1 with a (roll of mental dice) Dwarven Battleaxe (which probably means that Blaine is a Dwarf, who knew?) – so I will announce, “Blaine twists to get his axe into position to strike,” or .something similar.

Attack Example Step 2

“John, make your attack roll. You are at -1 because of the slippery conditions and dim lighting.”

There is a hard divide between character and player, and all the game mechanics belong on the player’s side of that line. I try (and again, frequently fail) to avoid saying “Blaine is at -1 because…” or anything like that. It’s not always possible. Sometimes, i will omit such things when it’s an NPC acting, but sometimes I’ll throw them in just to show that the mechanics are even handed and affect NPCs as much as they do PCs – and are being taken into account.

Attack Example Step 3

John rolls a 14, which is enough to hit the target. He announces “I roll a 14. That should hit.” Note the implied assumption that if it doesn’t hit, either I’m cheating or there’s something he doesn’t know, which is perfectly fair – he thinks he knows what is going on, and is telling me this fact. My mental analysis shows that John is quite correct, and not just because these targets are easier to hit than might be expected, because they move sluggishly.

Attack Example Step 4

“The axe head flies toward the target’s chest, who attempts to block it with his shield but fails.” In other words, I tell John that he is correct, and Blaine has hit the target, and hint at the sluggish nature that I mentioned. This calls for a second round of game mechanics focused on the damage done.

Attack Example Step 5

“Roll your damage. Don’t forget the Strength bonus.”

Attack Example Step 6

John selects dice and rolls them. “12 plus 3 is 15 points.”

Unknown to John, a successful hit is not as good a thing as he thought. Having failed to kill the enemy outright, there is now a consequence. So I go back to step 4.

Attack Example Step 4 (#2)

“Blaine’s axe bites deeply into the creature animated by the lightning that runs through its veins and arteries like blood.” (Uh-oh).

Attack Example Step 5 (#2)

“You can’t bring the weapon back for another strike, your muscles have locked up. You will need to make a Strength roll at -4 for Blaine to let go of the weapon. Until he does so, he will take 2d6 damage every round. Next round, the penalty will be -6, then -8, and so on. You can’t talk, your lips and tongue are no longer under control, but you can emit a painful half-scream.” (Swearing from the other side of the table indicates surprise) “Oh, and if you’re wondering, the hilt bindings are insulating you, otherwise it would be 4d6 or more.”

This explains the game mechanics that he needs to know to the player.

Attack Example Step 6 (#2)

John attempts his Strength check, as required, while I roll the damage. His roll would have succeeded if not for the penalty, he announces, considerably deflated. I have rolled a 9.

Attack Example Step 7

“Blaine jerks and his mustache begins to smolder as his muscles lock in place. He can try again to release his painfully tight grip next round.”

I note down that Blaine will be at -6 on next round’s strength check while John records the damage done.

From there, it’s on to the next Round 0 introduction. It’s probably worth the effort to reread that example, skipping the explanations and my descriptions of events. Like this:

GM: “Blaine moves up to the attack, as eager for battle as ever. He twists to get his axe into position to strike.”

GM: “John, make your attack roll. You are at -1 because of the slippery conditions and dim lighting.” [John rolls].

John: “I roll a 14. That should hit.”

GM: “The axe head flies toward the target’s chest, who attempts to block it with his shield but fails. Roll your damage. Don’t forget the Strength bonus.” [John rolls].

John: “12 plus 3 is 15 points.”

GM: “Blaine’s axe bites deeply into the creature animated by the lightning that runs through its veins and arteries like blood. You can’t bring the weapon back for another strike, your muscles have locked up. You will need to make a Strength roll at -4 for Blaine to let go of the weapon. Until he does so, he will take 2d6 damage every round. Next round, the penalty will be -6, then -8, and so on. You can’t talk, your lips and tongue are no longer under control, but you can emit a painful half-scream. Oh, and if you’re wondering, the hilt bindings are insulating you, otherwise it would be 4d6 or more.” {John attempts a strength check while I roll damage].

John: “I would have made it if not for the penalty.”

GM: “Blaine jerks and his mustache begins to smolder as his muscles lock in place. He can try again to release his painfully tight grip next round. Take 9 points.” {While John documents the damage, the GM notes that he will be at -6 on his STR check next round].

It’s really hard to stay immersed during combat and other game mechanics. The best that you can usually do is to touch base with it at regular intervals. It gets even harder if your games revolve around combat, because the language itself very quickly becomes repetitive.

Prep is the Sword

It’s a lot easier to Improv when you have good prep. Because I was writing it in advance of anyone reading it, I was able to revise and edit the “Drawing Room” example – some of what you have read is my third draft (about half of it isn’t).

You will notice that my preferred construction methodology for game narrative, bullet points, are deliberately reflected in the example. These make it so much easier to find any details that are relevant, or find where you were up to before being interrupted.

Prep is the weapon that the GM can bring to the quest to hide in shadows as much as possible.

Rather than a whole heap of relevant links, I’ve decided on just two:

• One word at a time: How I (usually) write a Blog Post
• Stealth Narrative – Imputed info in your game
• The series on Writer’s Block and the one on Stylish Narrative might also be helpful.

Experience is the Shield

All things are easier with practice. If Prep is the weapon, experience is the shield that tells you when to follow advice like that contained in this article, and when not to.

We get better at the things we do regularly, usually without even noticing it. Where it first shows up is an ability to cope with circumstances that would once have thrown us for a loop. I have enough experience behind the (metaphoric) GM’s screen that I can go into an RPG session with no prep at all, without even an idea, and run something on the fly that will at least be satisfying.

Add an idea to that, and it gets easier, permitting a greater focus on entertainment. Polish that idea with some forethought and running the game session becomes relatively easy.

The downside lies in documentation of events, and integrating them into a broader narrative than a one-off game session. Nuances are already being lost by the end of the game session. And improv game sessions can take a lot out of you – enough that you don’t have the energy left for any documentation that’s more substantial.

You don’t need prep to run a game, or even a campaign; but it makes an effective glue to bind one together over multiple game sessions. It might not be the magic fairy dust of RPGs, but it will do until something better comes along!

Welcome & General Introduction

Following a successful Dr Who adventure in which the player started to see how a number of plot threads intersected, my head is currently full of the strange environment in which the next adventure is to occur.

I mean, this is the homeworld of his current companion – a psionic sentient ball of ionized blue gas. What is the right environment to produce such an unlikely ‘creature’ (using the term loosely)? Fortunately, I think I have a handle on the answers, but my mind keeps adding in nuances and details regarding social structure and activities within the culture that derives from such a life-form.

Hint: there are more similarities (with nuanced unusual differences) than there are differences – but some of those differences are doozies.

Since I wanted to give that subject as much time to percolate through my gray matter as possible, I’ve delayed starting this article until the last minute. Hopefully, I’ll still get it finished in time.

— UPDATE: Well, I didn’t quite make target. But readers get an extra 3,000 words for their patience!

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.

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 means 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. Right now, I’m expecting there to be three parts – but it might be more or it might be less.

Today’s Article

The scope of today’s discussion is to look at the economics of Limited Monarchies (and if you don’t know what I mean by that term then you need to read part 1 before continuing), and then to talk about handling the in-game economics of most Fantasy Games.

I say ‘most’ because there are some that are fairly accurate in taking their frameworks from one or the other historical periods. The majority, like the world of the Forgotten Realms, are a loose compilation of elements from different eras with little regard for how they come together coherently.

The Economics of a Limited Monarchy

Choices made in search of security and convenience in an early medieval period, as detailed in part 1 of this series, inevitably bring about the transformation into a Limited Monarchy, which characterizes the late medieval period.

There is a general principle revealed in the process: Economic structures are far more heavily linked to social structures than most people realize. Sometimes, this is obvious, as when a particular technology like steam drives change in both spheres, but even without a technological engine driving the changes, the relationship is there – it’s just harder to see.

In particular, the principle of only claiming a balance owed and leaving the rest of a sum of money where it is brings so many benefits and advantages that it seems (in hindsight) an inevitable development – and that one change, more than any other, starts the dominoes falling.

Responsibility

Successfully accepting and handling responsibility for money leads to responsibility over other aspects of the individual’s life becoming plausible. Instead of a genuinely ignorant serf, what we have is a peasant who is capable of making reasonable choices, especially if the alternatives are spell out for him or confined to only those that are generally reasonable.

A peasant knows that he needs to produce a certain amount of food or goods for his dues to the nobility, a certain amount of his product for his own use, and a balance that can be traded to other peasants at a market for their product, diversifying his menu and enabling investment in his accommodations and lifestyle.

Sometimes, this can lead to hard choices – new clothes may make you look great, but better cookware will make you feel great. Of course, you are far less likely to invest in home improvements if the home belongs to a landlord – so the opportunity to purchase home and land from the noble (while preserving the obligation to pay mandated taxes) instead of paying rent on top of those taxes gives the nobles another way of extracting money from the grassroots, but ultimately benefit everyone.

Quite often, a hybrid model would arise – for every acre the peasant worked, he might have to spend so many hours a week working a common lot belonging to the whole village, and so many hours working one still owned by the noble. This simply taxes in units of time instead of cash; the principle is the same (and that also eventually leads to the concept of a pay rate equating money and time).

Rights

Responsibilities demand the opportunity to carry them out. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? Especially when those responsibilities are often thrust onto the individual whether they want them or not: “From [date] on, the state will no longer be responsible for [x]. Failure to correctly handle [this responsibility] will be a criminal offense, resulting in fines and/or prison”.

But the other side of the coin is that this gives rise to the concept of individual rights as a fundamental principle – especially the right of self-determination – because it gives individuals the right to choose. “If I’m to be held responsible for something, I demand control over it” – or the more-common corollary, “If I have no control over something, I cannot be held responsible for it”.

This is still a valid defensive argument except in circumstances where the individual is deemed to have control over something, in other words that society would expect the individual to have such control if they were conducting themselves professionally.

Common Law

If not centrally administered, every region will develop its own laws and system of penalties for infractions. This quickly leads to total confusion and anarchy, especially for those who travel from one domain to another.

Inevitably, responsibilities and rights will end up codified into a Common Law. It doesn’t matter how unfair or unbalanced this may be, at first – time will erode privilege, if necessary through protest, force, and disruption. That’s a good thing, because the people formulating and codifying this body of Law are one of the parties to it, and they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t shade things in their favor, given the opportunity.

Restrictions

From the grass-roots upwards, the principles of codified rights and responsibilities imposes obligations and responsibilities, both to themselves, upwards, and downwards.

A peasant’s Rights are all about what services he can expect from the Noble who commands his property, how that Noble is required to treat the peasant, and what choices he can make of his own accord. His responsibilities are to behave civilly, to accept a summons to arms if one comes, to pay his taxes, and otherwise be a credit to the community of which he is a member.

The Noble is responsible for providing the services and goods expected by the peasant, being fair-minded and just and honorable, for collecting his due from the peasants who work on his behalf, and for discharging his obligations to the crown and/or any superior Nobleman, which includes raising troops on his behalf. Outside of the common law, he has the right to decide legal questions, dispense justice, the right to command troops, and the right to collect what he or his superior Nobles are owed. Beyond the edicts of the throne (and any superior Noble above him), and the mandates of common law, he is pretty much a completely independent entity.

And this progression continues up the Noble hierarchy all the way to the throne. That’s what makes a Monarchy Limited, and not an Absolute Monarchy. Restrictions on Crown powers are the defining trait of this type of monarchy.

These trends and changes can be resisted, in the manner of King Canute and the rising tide, but historical trends are hard to buck, as King John (I think it was) discovered when the Magna Carta was imposed upon the English Nobility.

Sidebar: an extremely abbreviated tale of King Canute

Canute was actually a very wise King who knew his limitations. This is directly contrary to the expectations generated by the legend which has created his fame.

When he came to power, his Court began making all sorts of demands of him, asking him to do this or that, sometimes with good reason offered, more commonly with the ,em>appearance of a good reason, and sometimes with no reason offered at all. Most of these were way beyond reasonable in one way or another; the Court was trying to take advantage of his youth and perceived naivety.

Canute responded to them by pointing out (heavily paraphrased) that he could go down to the water’s edge and order that the tide stop rising, but it wouldn’t make the least bit of difference; he could not command nature to his bidding, and wishing it otherwise would not make it so. Similarly, while the Court might think that he could do many things, he could not change reality to suit, and most of the things they asked for would not have the results claimed – or any results at all.

“King Canute ordering the tide to stop” is actually a story about knowing one’s limitations. But it’s been misrepresented so often that most people think it’s about opposition to the inevitable being foolish, and attribute foolishness therefore to the King in question.

The Magna Carta

The basis for the Common Law in England, which in turn is the basis of law virtually everywhere that has ever been part of the British Empire (including the USA) is the Magna Carta.

It was drafted by Stephen Langton, the then-current Archbishop of Canterbury, in order to “make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons”, ending the English Civil War.

The Magna Carta “promised the protection of church rights, protection for the Barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, [all] to be implemented through a council of 25 Barons. Neither side stood behind their commitments, and the charter was [later] annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to another war.

“After John’s death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause.

“At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name ‘Magna Carta’, to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest which was issued at the same time.”

It was rewritten and reissued a couple more times in the years that followed. It was the 1297 reissue that was most significant as it also confirmed it as part of England’s statute law, leading to it becoming an ongoing part of English political life.

— quotes from Wikipedia.

I can’t let this section end without referencing the Magna Carta in one final way – it was so pivotal an event that I made it the point of divergent history that led to the game world named “Earth Regency” in my superhero campaign. At least half the time, this is the home base for the superhero team at the heart of the campaign.

You can read the divergent history – well, the relevant part of it – in The Imperial History of Earth-Regency, Part I: The Middle Ages – 1189-1220, part of a very long series that details that history through to 1998. More than half of that article tells the tale of ‘real’ British History, and places a lot of context on the above brief retelling of the story.

Legalities

One of the critical pieces of the Magna Carta dispensed with the notion of High Justice except for crimes directly against the Crown. In practice, this simply recognized, and forced the Crown to accept, a reality that was already in place to some extent.

Circuit ‘judges’ traveled from community to community dispensing justice, often through a jury of the accused’s neighbors. Sometimes, a local mayor heard more petty cases in a similar fashion, but for anything important, they had to wait on a suitable jurist’s availability.

This was the beginning of the distinctions between misdemeanors and felonies that remains part of our legal system throughout the western world to this day. Much of our legal framework orients around the concept of stratification of offense, with different legal rules to ensure fairness at each level.

The risk to the Judiciary

Someone traveling from place to place to hear cases and dispense punishments for some (and not for others) is going to make enemies. Furthermore, they are someone for whom a ransom can readily be demanded from someone with the capacity to pay it. These traveling judges were always under threat.

Bodyguards were expensive, and could be unreliable, and could easily be outnumbered. But such judges generally only heard the petty crimes and the equivalent of small claims – disputes between neighbors and the like; the worst offenders were handled higher up the legal food chain. In part, this was to help protect those traveling judges.

Nevertheless, it was a dangerous occupation at times.

Regional Nobles as jurists.

Any passing Noble with rights over the land could be called upon to dispense justice. If warranted, he could order an offender remanded to another noble’s court, especially if he was not directly responsible for the lives or livelihoods of the peasants concerned.

Some made it a practice to tour their lands, ostensibly for other reasons, but part of the justification was to keep an ear to the ground and pick up on any grievances (like traveling judges who were possibly being bribed) before they became major issues. This also gave them an opportunity to hear any of the more serious cases without disrupting the lives of those who were to give evidence (and who were supposed to be earning him money) too much.

With the formal stratification of offenses under the law came the formal stratification of judicial responsibility. If a case was serious enough, either the Noble had to make a special trip (having been summoned for the purpose) or had to send guards to remove the prisoner and witnesses and bring them to him (or her), wherever he or she was, if other responsibilities precluded a local hearing.

There is a natural trend that results – the inconvenience involved acts to push criminal acts of lesser severity to the lower courts, and sparing the “Judge” the inconvenience by entering an acceptable plea bargain was obviously going to be well-regarded.

Only when severity overcomes the inconvenience will a type of crime remain in the higher bracket, a Felony; at all other times, the trend will be to place a crime in a lower strata. Stratification of offense, once established, becomes self-sorting; it can simply take a while for rare and obscure offenses to be tested.

Centralized Justice

Prison time was a serious sentence; not only was the noble obligated to feed and ‘care’ for the prisoner, and pay the costs of restraining him and sheltering him, it removed him from the ranks of citizens earning wealth on the Noble’s behalf. Inevitably, a legal structure relating seriousness of offense to severity of punishment comes into effect simply by restricting the authority of punishments that can be handed down by lesser courts (i.e. traveling Judges).

Centralized prisons have two big advantages that tip the balance in their favor: they could be made more secure, and they could be made more efficient.

• Let’s say it costs $X per prisoner confined to pay for that confinement, not counting any lost productivity.
• That means that it will cost $100X per 100 prisoners confined. If X is, say, $20 a year, that’s $2000 a year for 100 prisoners.
• Obviously, there will be a tendency to want to get people out of prison as quickly as possible, if it’s possible at all (given the offense), and a tendency to push for capital punishment if someone can’t be safely released.
• Of the $100X, Y% of it will be spent on security. Again, let’s use X=20 as a simple example; for a single prisoner, that means you have Y% of $20 a head to keep them locked up. If Y is 10%, that would be $2, which won’t buy you very much in the way of a prison. If you are housing 100 prisoners, though, you have $200 a year to spend, and that buys a lot more prison for your buck.
• A% spent on administration and B% on actual prisoner care make up the balance – so A + B + Y = 100.
• Centralized records might reduce A by 5%, say. That’s 5% that can either be spent elsewhere within the prisons system or simply withheld from the budget by the ruling Noble, effectively giving him a pay raise (guess which one is more often chosen?)
• But the bigger savings come from B. Caring for 100 prisoners doesn’t cost 100BX – it might only be 90BX. Caring for 50 prisoners might cost 95BX. Doing both could save $300 of that $2000, each and every year.

Centralized Justice

If you have a centralized prison, it starts to make sense to hear the important cases somewhere nearby – but that requires the transportation of prisoners and witnesses to the court, with attendant costs and loss of productivity. Empowering someone to take sworn witness statements means that those statements can appear in court in place of the witness, who can thus continue to work for the Noble with minimal disruption

Once again, the costs involved mean that this would only be employed for the most serious of offenses, like stealing from the Noble, or worse. It can be suggested, rather cynically, that the primary motivation for making murder such a heinous offense was that it cost the Noble a productive worker – two, if you count the prisoner!

The answer: regional prisons, with regional Judges who stayed put, hearing cases regarding the second stratum of offense, those not against the Crown itself, and not attracting the death penalty. If jail time were a possibility, this is the court that handles it.

As you can see, there were a great many forces pulling the justice system this way and that, and the stratification of offense and of punishment was an inevitable outcome – hence the reality that was recognized officially in the Magna Carta.

Traveling Professionals

Judges weren’t the only professionals to travel around a circuit of regional markets. There might not be enough work in one village for a skilled blacksmith who specialized in locks or strongboxes, for example, but by dividing his time amongst four markets – staying in one for five days or so and then moving on – enough work might be sourced to support him.

On the sixth day, he would travel, and on the seventh, he would rest (anyone else see the beginnings of the concept of the “weekend’ here?)

Of those who were best-equipped to handle the new responsibilities, such professionals would clearly number amongst them, simply because they were being trained and educated by someone who already knew what they are doing.

Professional Establishments

If there was enough demand, these professionals didn’t have to travel, they could set up a permanent establishment. This not only enabled them to work on the Saturday (earning them more money), but it meant that mobility was no longer a restrictive factor, permitting greater investment in non-portable equipment like furnaces – and apprentices.

Once again, there is an inevitable consequence – multiple tiers of professionals, from the less-skilled itinerant who makes nails to the more-skilled itinerant who makes horseshoes (and is often a functional veterinarian to the animals that he shoes) to those who can make a living staying put and having customers come to him to the elite who provide personal services to the nobility.

When one of the lower-skilled workers stiffs a customer or does something else not up to the ethical standards of the upper-skilled toffee-noses, it reflects badly on the whole profession. Usually, it would be those in the middle who bore most of the brunt.

The equally-inevitable result is the establishment of Guilds to set standards, enforce them, license operators, provide resources and professional networking, represent the profession at the Royal Court, and collect fees to cover administrative costs (and potential future administrative costs) as “Guild Fees”.

Guild Responsibilities

Most of these services can be sold to potential members or to the Nobility on the grounds of Responsibility. The Guild will take certain obligations off the hands of the Nobles and promise a better yield of quality goods to fatten his bank account in exchange, but he also has to accept the Guild acting to protect it’s own reputation and the integrity of its membership, and back the Guild up by recognizing and being bound by the authority that they have given the Guild.

Some Guilds may well demand services from their members in addition to fees. Attending meetings, sitting on committees, and other such obligations, for example.

With a standardization of costs and expenses, comes a standardization of fees for service. This predictability – and always subject to negotiation – forms the basis of a professional subclass, comprised of the membership of Guilds in general. These are the wealthiest of the peasant class, soon so much so that they form an entirely distinct middle class.

New Opportunities

Even peasants benefit from these changes. They always had a level of leisure time, however limited; but the obligations imposed by the inefficiencies of an Absolute Monarchy meant that they frequently had to work in that leisure time just to try and make ends meet.

Now, they have a small amount of leisure time plus a pittance of personal wealth in their pockets – but there are a lot of them. In our history, it was many centuries before these factors reached levels where it mattered, but most Fantasy Games preempt this historical element.

Leisure time plus coins in the pocket creates a new opportunity for income generation (which leads to taxable incomes) – locally, inns and taverns; regionally, tourist attractions and sporting activities. Some of the Leisure time might be invested in relieving children from labor in order to educate them. This sort of social trend will bubble away under the surface until later in the Renaissance, but the early seeds were sewn in the Late Middle Ages.

Taxes and Tax collection

The big downside of giving people responsibility is that you have to make sure that they are discharging those responsibilities in a fair and accurate manner. Enforcement requires professionals, and there is still going to be some movement of cash necessary.

These tax collectors are part of a system of checks and balances that accompanies the new Rights and Freedoms, whether those subject to them like it or not. They are bookkeepers and accountants to the illiterate, at least at first; as time passes, they simply relieve those busy earning money with the responsibility of tracking this information.

Most people would be incompetent to file a formal tax returns, in this era. These days, they serve as audits on the fiduciary behavior of the individual, but in medieval times, that simply didn’t happen. They weren’t on the side of the public, they were the Crown and Nobility’s enforcers, there to make sure that they got the fair share owed to the peasant’s social superiors.

Actual reality of circumstance frequently vanished from their considerations because it was easier and simpler to assume that competence would yield a minimum outcome. Thus, each plot of land could be deemed to earn a certain amount in produce or coinage, and if it didn’t, it was a failure on the part of the peasant to live up to his end of the social contract, usually by spending more time looking after his personal plots than he should. The remedy was obvious and simple – demand the taxes due for the land use, whether the peasant earned enough to pay them or not. If they were short, they had to make up the difference from their personal production.

Persistent Inequities

This should make it clear that not all the old inequities had gone away; they were just better disguised, and often enforced by different social, legal, and political mechanisms.

The biggest differences were in the relationship between Nobles and Crown, in which absolute authority had been taken away from the Crown and redistributed.

The peasantry exchanged a life of hard certainties for a life of uncertainty – but the freedom to earn a better social position within that uncertainty. They would certainly have felt better off than under the previous regime, unless the Noble to which they were beholden was overly strict or greedy – but many of the latter were strict, and greedy, and authoritarian.

In the best cases, the relationship was a paternalistic one, in which the Noble cared for his peasants as children, sheltering them from the harms that they were ill-equipped to deal with on their own. But life was rarely perfect.

Centralization Vs Decentralization

This was the central debate of the age. In modern times, we’re used to using hard data to make such decisions; back then, this was a vigorous philosophic debate. Centralists looked to the Crown for protection and authority; decentralists assumed that they now had the power and acted accordingly, paying attention to the Crown only in matters of import to the nation as a whole.

The reality is that both positions are right (sometimes) and wrong (sometimes), depending on the particular aspect of society being discussed. Even the dispute between Henry VIII and the Catholic Church can be interpreted through the matrix of this debate; it persists to this day in discussions concerning “Small Government” and “Federal Overreach”.

In-Game Economics: Fantasy Games

That’s a good thing, because the historical foundations that underpin a fantasy campaign have to be interpreted by a modern-day player. Most of the time, unless you have an actual student of history amongst them, that is going to require some concessions of historical accuracy in favor of accessibility and ease of comprehension.

That’s a major source of the simplification that blends these two quite different eras together, with not regard for the resulting incompatibility.

In general, these can be summed up as a late middle-ages society with some later social development thrown in because the society is well-established, but with an absolute monarchy still in place.

There are a number of key questions that need answers before the incompatibilities can be resolved into a unified view of the society, and these tend to be sufficiently profound that they will impact on the PCs from word one.

What are adventurers?

This is one of the most important questions of all.

Are adventurers all (or generally) the lesser sons of Nobles (those with the leisure time to be reasonably well-educated)?

I’ve played in a Traveller campaign in which this was the presumption – it gave access to limited resources, but still offered a head-start on life, plus an imperative to make your own way in the world.

Are adventurers members of something akin to a professional Guild?

This is the Fumanor Solution, explained at greater length in other posts here at Campaign Mastery. Specifically,

• Ask The GMs: Some Arcane Assembly Required – Pt 2: Sourcing Parts – this article asks the extremely profound question, “How Industrialized Is Adventuring In Your Game World?”, which seems innocuous but has the potential to tear game worlds apart. After an overview of some of the consequences, I provide a concrete example from the Fumanor campaign, providing some background information that I don’t think has appeared anywhere else. This isn’t the main thrust of the article or the series, it’s delivered along the way as an offshoot of the primary discussion. And,
• Inventing and Reinventing Races in DnD: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 2, which presents – in its first few sections – more detail on the “Last Deity” Fumanor campaign.

I’ll demonstrate why this question is so economically important a little later.

Who’s In Charge Of What?

Counts, Barons, Dukes, Earls, Kings & Queens – and other ranks? Something every GM should do is sit down and list the hierarchy of noble ranks in their game world, what each rank is in charge of, and where they get their money from – all in general terms, of course.

An example might be:

• Counts – command cities and large towns. Sometimes awarded by the Crown for direct services to the Throne.
• Barons – command regional estates or significant defensive outposts. Several Counts usually report to a single Baron.
• Earls – awarded to those who distinguish themselves in senior positions in Court, or to successful Battlefield commanders of merit. Usually accompanied by a reward and a pension. Nominally between Counts and Barons in rank, but the authority and wealth that derives from their positions elevate them, and an Earl can give commands to a Baron in relation to military matters.
• Dukes – command a number of regions, with a special responsibility for roads, waterways, trade, and diplomacy. Several Barons and a dozen or more Counts usually report to a Duke. A Duke can tell an Earl what to do but not how to do it.
• King & Queen – the pinnacle of command and responsibility, everything happens in the name of the reigning Monarch and that Monarch exercises responsibility over the conduct of the other Nobles. Can ratify treaties and trade deals at a national scale, but the details are usually negotiated by Dukes. May or may not command troops in the field on a regular basis.

– though this example doesn’t go into the economics. Additional ranks might be mentioned such as Peasants and Freemen.

The Magic Factor

Equally profound, and also dealt with in the above references is the impact of Magic on the economy, so it doesn’t bear more than a brief mention here.

If Magic makes value faster than it incurs costs, the impact is as profound as the industrial revolution. If it makes value slower, it’s economically unviable and needs to be subsidized by patronages, guilds, or others. So the key to a sustainable economy is to ensure that costs are reasonably commensurate with the wealth generated; in which case practitioners can be treated as just another skilled profession, perhaps with their own Guild, or perhaps as a specialized membership within other Guilds.

The Religious Element

I’ve written a number of articles about Religion in fantasy worlds. In our world,. religious authority bypasses the secular and commands all levels of society – or tries to. In practice, it was often regarded as a secondary secular hierarchy, but all that changes when priests can literally work miracles on demand.

In particular, the economic relationship between secular authority and the Church needs close scrutiny. If the church is largely parasitic, taking in more than it provides its membership in capacity for greater productivity, it is a drain on the coffers of society, and eventual conflict with those secular authorities is certain. If the Church is a positive benefit, it is another factor comparable to the industrial revolution. As with mages, if the benefits and the drains are roughly equivalent, the situation is relatively stable.

Assessing this question requires the GM to think about the economic losses due to sickness, disease, and rampant monstrosity. Finding hard numbers on which to make such a determination is really hard, but it would not surprise me to learn that it was on the order of 60% in our real history – which means that for every day’s work, a person would only achieve about 40% of the production of which they would otherwise be capable.

Once you have a number in mind, assume that society compensates by throwing more manpower at the problem – then take most of the problem away. Social and economic disruption are the inevitable consequence – but that can play into the answer to the first question. When there are too many farmers for the available land, you either get Kings using them as an army (ultimately, correcting the problem, one way or another) or you divert them into a new social band – adventurers. Or you end up with a massive unemployment problem – which, if the churches are charitably inclined, can alter the entire question back into balance.

They are all viable answers, and some can even coexist in stable configurations – but the economy and society will be affected profoundly by the answer.

A fixed economy

With wealth keyed to some commodity, a gold standard if you will, the economy is relatively fixed and stable. It will take a downturn in hard times following a war, and an even steeper downturn if that war is lost; at other times, it will be prosperous but not excessively so.

There is just so much money to go around – so if there are more demands on the royal purse, the only way to fund the increase is to add more resources to the income. So long as the increase is not excessively more than the demands, prices will remain relatively fixed and stable – and that means that the prices quoted in the rulebooks can be used fairly reliably.

Ensure that you take into account supply issues, however – most things still need to be transported from one place to another in order to be available. Some need to be taken to an intermediary point and refined, first. Such transportation should add to the cost of anything containing the resource in question.

Bartering

While I’m in the vicinity of the subject, you can either rule bartering to be permitted or not. If it’s permitted, you have to accept the principle that there are limits to how far a bargain can deviate from the rulebook-quoted prices, even if its for superior workmanship, and that the average (over multiple customers) will float around the vicinity of the book price.

If a merchant was talked into a generous deal with someone for a large order, they will need to be greedy with a great many smaller customers to break even. Any other course risks putting them out of business. On the other hand, if they gouge the seemingly-wealthy, this can subsidize generosity when dealing with those who are not as well-off. Social expectations can thus be that wealthy customers are expected to pay 10% or 20% more than quoted – and failure to do so should have social consequences.

If bartering is not permitted, it actually makes for a colder, harsher world. The merchant has to tell the peasant, “Sorry, that’s the price of that pot. I can’t discount it for you just because you need it.” Do that a dozen times, and you will get at least one attempt to steal a pot – not necessarily from that source. Replicate this for a hundred other goods and commodities, and crime rates will explode. It’s open season on Tax-men and Judges as a result, and security demands quickly eat up available workforces. This mild dystopia suits murder hobo campaigns.

A broken economy?

Let’s say there are ten Adventuring parties in the Kingdom, bringing in goods from outside the economy at a rate proportionate to their character level – a year’s worth of income every four weeks on average.

This immediately grows the economy by the amount of their expenditure, including taxes, gifts, guild fees, dues, and the like. Which is a win for everybody, right?

The economy grows, and expenditure rises to equal the new prosperity. Sounds wonderful! But there are a finite number of dungeons out there to be looted, and one day, the last one will be gone – then what? The economic disaster would be akin to the Great Depression, or even worse.

But income is more generally relatable to character levels squared. At low levels, this doesn’t make much of a difference – at high levels, it makes Adventurers one of (if not THE) dominant economic factor in the existence of a realm, with income equal or greater to that of the Crown or the entire Kingdom.

There are those who suggest that the discovery of higher-level magic items and the ‘discarding’ of old items (read ‘resale’) mean that the correct value is the cube of character level.

In order to separate an adventurer from his wealth, prices inflate – rapidly. Beyond the reach of non-adventurers. If such an economy isn’t broken already, it soon will be.

Every GM needs to confront this problem and devise a solution within their campaign worlds. One answer is for all earnings from adventuring to be paid directly into the Royal accounts – by confiscation, if necessary – in return for Adventurers to be pampered like prize race-horses.

If you want a stable economy, the returns from adventuring should be commensurate with the costs. But you can’t inflate the costs – fixed economy, remember? – so the only solution is to limit the proceeds from adventuring. But this flies in the face of most game system fundamentals.

Hobbiton’s economy only survived Bilbo’s return with his chest of gold because he had been declared dead and had to spend most of it getting his possessions back.

Think about that for a while – long and hard.

Who has authority over adventurers?

This situation brings up a related issue – who can tell an Adventurer what to do, and how do they enforce those commands? Is there a guild leadership? Is there a particular Noble? Is it the Crown? Can adventurers buy their way up the social ladder?

The Inheritance Problem

But, back to the main problem. There’s one solution, and that’s to make something in the society a massive parasite. And the most readily-available candidate is the Church – in the form of pious people leaving their lands and Estates to the church in their wills.

While some of this legacy will be converted into cash, most of it will be kept as income generating property – which isn’t a problem unless churches are Tax Exempt, as in most of our world. In which case, the Kingdom is effectively shrinking, and the excess wealth is going into ever more elaborate displays of ostentatious wealth.

If you then factor in the charitable support of the lower classes, you can actually get an economy back to stable – if you don’t have too many adventurers in the world and too many magic giveaways.

Wars – Social, Economic, Political, Theological, and Arcane

But, let’s say that you don’t and the overall wealth of the Kingdom rockets up 500-fold – with no corresponding increase in population numbers and hence in military might. One of two things will happen – either the King will expend a chunk of money on mercenaries and pull a Genghis Khan, or one of this neighboring Kingdoms will look at this poorly-defended treasure-trove and say, “Mine.”

Others may try subversion and corruption. Some religious groups will see this as a ‘god-given opportunity”.

Get the economy wrong in respect of Adventurers and a perpetual state of war is the certain outcome.

Simulation

Okay, so here’s the bottom line: the economy should be, in any RPG, this shadowy force that never intrudes. Its consequences, those should intrude. The plot opportunities that it generates, those should intrude. The resulting society, and in particular, it’s flaws – those should intrude. But the economy itself? No way.

Keeping the economy itself under wraps reflects the fact that nobles are under no obligation to make their accounts and balances public. So far as the public is concerned, the King is made of money.

Ultimately, your choice is a simple one: you can have the world of the PCs overwhelmed by one of the many pitfalls described, or you can come up with some way of balancing the books. It’s not an impossible task, but your chosen methodology will reshape the society and the campaign world, and that change should be noticeable by the players.

Even in this relatively primitive economy, you can see some of the trends and practices evolving that we take for granted in the modern era, but the evolution of economic model in our history took a turn before those trends really manifested themselves, going from an Absolute Monarchy to a Limited Monarchy, and in the process sewing the seeds of both the Pre-industrial and Steam-age economies.

In part 1::

1. Introduction
2. General Concepts and A Model Economy
3. The Economics of an Absolute Monarchy

In this part:

4. The Economics of Limited Monarchies
5. In-Game Economics: Fantasy Games

Still to come:

6. Pre-Industrial Economies
7. Industrial Economies
8. Modern Economies
9. Inflation
10. In-game Economics: Gaslight-era
11. In-Game Economics: Pulp-era
12. In-Game Economics: Modern
13. In-Game Economics: Dystopian Futures
14. In-Game Economics: Utopian Futures

The plan is still for items 6 and 7 to be in Part 3, and 8 & 9 will either be in part 4 or broken into parts 4 and 5. The rest will follow in one or two concluding parts. But all is fluid conjecture and we’ll see what actually happens when I put hands to the keyboard.

I still haven’t decided whether or not to continue hard on this series without respite, or to break it up with some unrelated posts. One way or another, the decision will have to happen next week. While I found it a little hard to change gears for this post, as explained at the start, once I got started, everything flowed nicely. So the jury is still out – and it might come down to the quality of any alternative ideas that come to me in the meantime.

It may be noted that I still don’t have any entry for “In-Game Economics: Steampunk”. There are two reasons for this: first, there will probably be a lot of overlap between that and the Gaslight-Era entry, and second, I’ve never run a steampunk campaign nor delved into the genre too deeply, and don’t feel qualified to write such a section. If anyone would like to contribute a ‘guest section’ on the subject, get in touch!

I’ve been working on this article for several weeks now, on and off, and have come to the conclusion that it will be beneficial to the subject matter to break it into a series of related posts, dividing one concept from another.

It started out as an intention to simply explain “inflation” to RPG GMs and players, after seeing a huge amount of incorrect information on social media and through Quora, and that’s still going to be a major part of the content – I have a set of pretty pictures planned for when I get there. But that’s for a future part of the series.

This time around, I’m going to introduce the subject and then look at economics in one family of fantasy campaigns. I’ve touched on this a number of times in different contexts but never focused on it before.

This will join the many other articles on world-building that have been offered here through the years. These started way back when with

the Distilled Cultural Essence series

and A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs,

and run all the way through to the more recent (last week!)

A Tale Of Two Empires (and more)

— (the sections on Kingdoms inevitably becoming Empires through growth could almost be a primer for this article!)

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.

Oh, and maybe the stuff on

• Races,

too.

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 means 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. Right now, I’m expecting there to be three parts – but it might be more or it might be less.

An Economic Introduction

There are people out there who enjoy talking about, thinking about, even writing about, Economics. For most people, the subject is as boring as it’s possible for a subject to be. I want to start this article (and the subsequent ones) by acknowledging this and making it clear that I’m going to try not to be boring!

In fantasy games: a prelude

I’m going to preempt the intended structure of this series with this prelude, simply to stress that – for the most part – an economy should be completely invisible to the characters in a fantasy game.

That’s not to say that individual adventures / challenges can’t arise from specific parts of the economy – they can. Protecting a shipment / caravan from bandits is an RPG staple, for example. There are others.

The mechanisms of the economic engine may be buried beneath the surface most of the time, and discovered piecemeal, if at all, but in order to discover and utilize these opportunities, the GM should understand the parts of the iceberg that aren’t on show.

When something happens that will affect the economy, the GM has some concept (from that understanding) of the impacts and how they will manifest to the PCs.

There’s more on this subject to come, but that’s enough for now.

Economics is all about money, how much it is worth, where it comes from, and where it goes.

A fundamental model

Let’s start really simply. Imagine that you have a pile of 100 pennies that represents the wealth of the entire country at this specific moment in time – and that this is an entirely fictitious country, so it bears no resemblance to any reality.

Workers & Bosses

Every week, a person gets paid a penny by their boss, who also gets a penny for his troubles. So that’s two pennies out of the stack, leaving 98. In fact, let’s say there are 20 such bosses-and-workers pairings out there, so that’s 40 pennies out of the stack and 60 pennies left.

Each worker spends virtually all of their money, one way or another, and stockpiles whatever little remains for future spending. He also pays taxes.

Each boss spends some of their money, invests some of their money in the businesses of other bosses. He also pays taxes, at least in theory.

The government employs another 20 workers and 10 bosses, paying each of them a penny every week.

So that’s another 60 pennies, and the government is suddenly out of money.

Money in

What the government therefore needs is for the sum total of the money it is raising through taxes, and whatever else, to add up to 100 pennies a week, or more.

It will get some of it from taxes on workers – maybe 1/4 of a penny each. With a total of 40 workers, that’s 10 pennies a week.

It will get some of it in taxes from bosses – maybe 1/3 of a penny each. With a total of 30 bosses, that’s another 10 pennies each week.

The investments of the bosses also earn taxes on the profits, AND grow the economy (in theory) by the amount of the investment plus more. If the bosses are investing half a penny each week, that adds up to maybe 60% of a penny each week. 30 bosses x 60% = 18 pennies a week.

Every cent that workers or bosses spend goes to someone, who pays taxes on it, and who spends some or all of it, creating an economic daisy-chain with government taxes at every link in the chain. That’s 8/10ths of a penny from each worker, and maybe 1/5 from each boss. 8/10×40 + 1/5×30 = 32 + 6 = 38 pennies.

Adding all that up, and you get 10+10+18+38 = 76 pennies.

Necessary Growth

That means that the government has to grow the economy by another 24 pennies every week just to stay afloat. It does that by spending money that it doesn’t have on things that it needs, in the expectation that these things will come back to it in taxes and economic growth. Like exploration for gold mines and oil wells. On top of that, all the mines and wells already found deliver a certain amount of wealth every week. So that 24 pennies is not too hard to find, especially in a fantasy world where lots of such things remain to be discovered.

It’s fair to expect that 90% of the required amount will come from exploiting existing resources and that the real economic growth needed is therefore about 2.4% a week.

Boom & Bust

If growth is more than that 2.4%, then you have a boom, and it’s more likely that the investments made by others will prosper, and by a bigger amount, so the government takes in more money in taxes on the profits. And next week, the economy might be 105 pennies in size.

If growth is less than the target – or worse yet, economic contraction – then the economy shrinks, there isn’t enough money to go around, so the bosses sack some of the workers (so that instead of 2 pennies in, one out, the business is paying 2 pennies in, 1/2 a penny out). So taxes go down from multiple revenue streams, and the economy is in recession. If a recession lasts for too long, it gets given a new name, because the effects begin to compound – it’s called a depression.

To get out of a recession, the government can take one of two paths – it can spend less, and wait it out, or it can spend more in a bid to stimulate economic growth and push the numbers back up.

Basic Model: complete

This is an oversimplified but fundamentally correct economic model (there’s no allowance for corporate R&D, for example), and it applies – more or less – to every type of economy out there. I’d estimate this explanation to be at about a 6th-grade level, for whatever that’s worth.

Serfs and Peasants

With the foundation established, let’s talk about peasants and serfs. Back when I was starting as a D&D GM there was not enough recognition of the difference. Heck, even in the 2000s, there wasn’t really enough appreciation of the difference. But it’s fundamental to the economics of every D&D world out there.

That’s because D&D economics is usually mish-mash of aspects of both early medieval and later medieval cultures, with the GM / author unaware of the differences. It doesn’t help that they are both aspects of the one social system, feudalism.

A serf doesn’t own the land, has no say in what happens to it, and is simply a cog in the production process. Peasants have at least partial ownership and some say in what happens to the land. Serfs can’t even choose not to work; peasants can do so (with consequences, of course).

These are distinguishing features of the two different economic systems They are a long way from being the only differences, but at least they are characteristic.

Terminology

Having identified the existence of two different economic models, we come back to the problem of terminology, which I blame for a lot of the confusion in this subject matter. Too many of the labels that could be used apply equally well to both systems, or are so abstruse that people won’t recognize them. After much thought, I have decided to use the terms Absolute, and Limited, Monarchy to describe the two systems. You’ll see why, in just a moment.

The Economics of an Absolute Monarchy

The King owns everything, or – more properly – the crown or the throne owns everything, and the King of the moment simply controls it. He is responsible for the lives and welfare of everyone who works or lives on the land, and they all work for him, and at his direction.

Because the king can’t be everywhere at once, he appoints a peerage to manage things on his behalf. Since he gets most of his news and all of his military from the nobles within this peerage, such positions automatically confer power and authority.

Members of the peerage are responsible for paying whatever the land earns to the King, who gives each a budget to expend on the next period of production. But shipping wealth to the Crown and then getting some of it sent back is inefficient; it’s faster, safer, and far more convenient, for the noble to simply deduct from the revenues whatever amount he is entitled to and pass the rest on to the crown.

Corruption and Entitlement

It doesn’t take much of a shift of mindset on the part of those nobles to go from “I send the King everything but what I’m allowed to keep” to “I send the King everything he’s entitled to and keep the rest.” Most members of the peerage make that adjustment on day one of their reigns.

In theory, the Peerage is receiving their money from the throne in exchange for their loyalty to the throne and the ruler currently seated upon it. That loyalty is corroded by the shift in attitude, but not to point of destruction.

More commonly, the shift in attitude lets the Noble cut the allowances made for the serfs who work the land to the bone, increasing the amount that he or she gets to keep for their own purposes. Before that shift, any such excess simply increases the amount to be paid to the throne, so there is no incentive on the part of the peerage to stint.

Skilled Professions

Let’s talk Blacksmiths, as a typical example. Everything that the Smith has, from tools to forge to training to raw materials, is the King’s to dispense, though the administration is usually in the hands of the peerage. There’s just too much minutia involved in personally managing every detail for a ruler to do it all themselves, even with a trained staff to assist them.

Everything that the Blacksmith produces also belongs to the King. He hands it over to the Peer and in return, is entitled to food, and lodgings, and protection from raiders and criminals, and occasionally a pittance to spend on a luxury item. Again, in practice, he simply hands these goods over to whomever the peer directs – some of it will go to this village or that (horseshoes, for example); some will be claimed for use by the peer to outfit soldiers (some of whom may be called upon to fight on behalf of the crown, and usually led by the peer himself, for reasons that will become clear shortly), and some may go to the throne for direct use in outfitting a royal guard or supplementing the armament of less-prosperous domains that try to make up for the shortfall with enthusiastic support.

Distributed wealth

Of course, the same principle – easier, safer, and more convenient – applies at every step down the chain, so long as the person responsible is sufficiently numerate and responsible or can hire someone with those attributes. So Barons permit Counts to withhold ‘their share’ and simply pass on the rest. But there are limits – while this distributes wealth throughout the Kingdom to some extent, it never reaches the Peasants because they are never educated enough to handle any budget more rigorous than ‘how much do I have that I can spend?”

This provides an important security measure for the King. Since the bulk of his nominal wealth is secured and never in transit to anywhere, it can’t be stolen and can’t be destroyed or rendered inaccessible by natural disaster.

Furthermore, it creates an incentive for those Nobles occupying border estates to be vigilant and prepared for hostile acts by the neighbors. So, in theory, everybody winds from this practice.

Rewards For Service

Kings and higher Nobles will obviously value loyalty to themselves very highly, and other “Noble” attributes like bravery, or tactical acumen, just behind that one. It’s common for displays of such attributes to be rewarded with higher titles, more land, more power, and hence more wealth. These rewards are often taken from those who fail to display those attributes.

Court politics are the inevitable result. No matter what the ideals on which the Kingdom may have been founded, at the first hint of favoritism, envy and self-protection will ally to create politics and politics always creates opportunities for corruption and greed and malicious activity. Easing this transformation and lubricating it is the change in attitude mentioned earlier.

So, a sailor – probably a minor noble – discovers a new land that can be colonized by the King. Or a surveyor discovers a new mine, or whatever. Everything belongs to the King, and that includes this new discovery. So there is no incentive for expansion, and that inhibits economic growth.

The usual story is that the Crown issues a commission to fund the search for such resources, and rewards success with noble titles and more such commissions.

Economic Expansion

The discovery of new resources or more efficient technologies / crops, can only ever be a small part of the necessary economic expansion. There will be certain boom periods in which such new technologies make it possible to travel further than was possible before, in hopes of discovering and claiming new lands on behalf of the throne, but most of the time, that’s not possible, either. And such lands are rarely uninhabited, leading to colonialism and native uprisings and conquests (not always successful).

That leaves only two ways of fattening the national purse: trade and war.

Wars Of Conquest

Let’s tackle War first. This adds to the national treasury by taking someone else’s resources and making them your own – a simple enough equation. But it’s immediately complicated by the fact that the current owner will resist, and if he loses control of a territory, will try to take it back.

Preventing a loss as rapid as a possible conquest requires the expenditure of some of your resources in the form of an army. The more effective an enemy is, militarily, the larger the commitment and the cost, and the less profitable the conquest will be, because the value of the resources is a fixed number.

Ultimately, this model of military conquest is usually a losing proposition. That’s where religion enters the picture.

Religion

Religion provides a motivation to conquer, in the guise of “converting the heathens” or proactively defending against them coming to convert you. It can also employ a much slower but much cheaper method of conquering a territory – that’s “converting the heathens” again.

But it also sucks money out of the economy, because it gets used in adorning the temples and personages of the Faith.

These two factors rarely balance exactly, and noblemen attempting to buy their way into heaven by spending on basilica and religious statuary and the like frequently tips the balance against religion (from the perspective of the throne).

Tipping it back is the fact that dogma that supports the right of the peerage to rule over the serfs becomes indoctrination that persuades many of them to willing privation and support of military ventures against which they would otherwise revolt. It makes populations more pliable, and that permits wars that would otherwise be untenable – and which (if successful) just happen to bolster the national wealth by more than the (reduced) cost of the conquering.

Trade

Peace between nations is often purchased through the intermarriage of noble houses. A web of familial ‘connections’ provides avenues for diplomacy (when attempted conquest is impractical or too expensive) and thus opens the door to trade.

Trading is founded on the principle that resource X is worth more over there than it is here. Every manner of goods and resources is a potential trading commodity. If you can take something worth 1% of your national economy to you and sell it to someone else for 3% of your national economy, or its equivalent in goods, then you have grown your economy by 2% less the cost of transporting it.

Paper Money

As soon as anyone with an ounce of greed hears that summary, they start thinking about ways to reduce the cost of carriage. Transportation in bulk is good, but leaves you more vulnerable to bandits and pirates. But some commodities are valuable in and of themselves – what if you didn’t have to transport those commodities, but just keep them safe and sold the right to claim them?

The promissory note becomes the banknote, i.e. paper money, very quickly. Transporting a piece of paper is so much cheaper and easier than transporting the goods to which the they entitle the bearer that the development is almost inevitable.

The questions that then arise are all related to who has possession of the ‘hard currency’, what security they have protecting it, and to what extent are they really protected or liable should that security fail?

Government holdings tend to be the most secure, because they can spend as much as necessary on security. Commercial operations, theoretically liable, often have ways of evading responsibility should the worst happen – declaring bankruptcy, for example, or seeking a government bailout so as to prevent the damage to the economy that their failure will entail.

Service Fees and Interest

It’s a short step from paper money (promissory notes can be considered paper money of no fixed denomination) to having intermediaries who handle the minutia, and another short step from that to them charging a fee to compensate them for the associated labor and risk.

Some institutions will respond by bringing these services in-house. It’s usually not long after that happens before the concept of lending money to reputable and reliable clients for a fee gets introduced, and not much longer before that fee becomes a percentage of the amount of the loan.

Flat rates of interest on loans soon give way to some schema in which the degree of risk involved raises or lowers the interest rate itself. Note that in this society, such services are only going to be available to those with noble titles, and are often going to be underwritten by deeds to land.

Savings, more fees, and more interest

At the same time, the concept of someone holding your wealth securely on your behalf gives rise to ‘savings accounts’ – in which people deposit their wealth in an institution and no longer carry as great a risk of losing it.

Since the institution only needs to carry enough cash on hand to pay out their expected withdrawals before the next shipment of currency arrives, they can put the rest to work as loans and investments, and profit from the deal. They usually charge a fee to cover the costs involved in the transaction and security, so this is all gravy from their point of view.

As soon as competing institutions start chasing the same customers, though, one will attempt to sweeten their position by offering a share of the money that they will make from these loans and investments, which is obviously going to be proportional to the amount deposited – and so savings start to earn interest.

Because some loans will always go bad and not be repaid, the interest rate for savings accounts will always be less than the interest rate on loans.

Relating reality to our simple model

The entire pile of pennies, no matter where they are, belong to the King, and everybody works for the King, though some part of the stack are held by the peerage. They, in turn, may have some of their holdings in institutions.

Between the concepts of trade and conquest / colonization, there is more than enough capacity to achieve any reasonable level of growth in the economy.

Running Out Of Money

Until the invention of banks and bank loans, if a noble runs out of money, their only escape from trouble is to beg the throne for more. Since the throne has already dispensed an amount they consider to be reasonable, they won’t be easy to persuade.

A more enlightened monarch might relent in the face of temporary adverse circumstances, especially if they are relatively localized, a more authoritarian monarch might refuse outright or demand some quid-pro-quo.

It was not uncommon for nobles to intentionally run their budgets ‘lean’ so as to force their peerage to beg such rescues while holding onto greater liquidity, but this is a dangerous strategy, directly opposing the sense of entitlement and authority described earlier. Nobles are already plotting against each other (it’s called ‘politics’); it’s a very small step for them to start plotting against the throne, too. Very, very carefully.

Budgetary Restraint

If a nobleman has run out of money, he has to do what you or I do at such times – we cut the necessary expenditures to the minimum, then raid the luxuries budget, and – at some point – start living beyond our means in hopes that things will come good, one day.

Loans and Gifts

That’s where the various networks that surround the Noble become vital. If demonstrably pious, the Church may persuade another, more prosperous, Pious Noble to loan the destitute Nobleman (some of) what he needs. Or it might be a family connection (through intermarriage) that is the magic window. Or the commercial properties fostered in better times. Or revised terms of trade with someone else. Or – most likely – some combination of all of the above.

Consequences

In the meantime, there’s less money for the serfs, there’s less money for their supervisors, there’s less money being spent by the Noble on goods, and everyone is just that bit (or a lot) more destitute.

It’s not common, but it’s also not unheard of for a Noble Title to be vacated on the grounds of economic mismanagement. It’s far more common (but still rare) for one to be vacated on the grounds of corruption. It’s more common, still, for a title to be vacated or reassigned on grounds of treason – because then, as now, desperation creates opportunities for enemies.

That, of course, is the real concern of the Throne, and the real reason why loans or gifts in cases of undeserved hardship will often be granted – with some surety to prevent the peerage going to the well too frequently.

Even in this relatively primitive economy, you can see some of the trends and practices evolving that we take for granted in the modern era, but the evolution of economic model in our history took a turn before those trends really manifested themselves, going from an Absolute Monarchy to a Limited Monarchy, and in the process sewing the seeds of both the Pre-industrial and Steam-age economies.

In this part:

1. Introduction
2. General Concepts and A Model Economy
3. The Economics of an Absolute Monarchy

Still to come:

4. The Economics of Limited Monarchies
5. In-Game Economics: Fantasy Games
6. Pre-Industrial Economies
7. Industrial Economies
8. Modern Economies
9. Inflation
10. In-game Economics: Gaslight-era
11. In-Game Economics: Pulp-era
12. In-Game Economics: Modern
13. In-Game Economics: Dystopian Futures
14. In-Game Economics: Utopian Futures

At the moment, I expect 4 & 5 to be in Part 2, 6 and 7 to be in Part 3, and 8 & 9 will either be in part 4 or broken into parts 4 and 5. The rest will follow in one or two concluding parts. But all is fluid conjecture and we’ll see what actually happens when I put hands to the keyboard.

What’s completely undecided at the moment is whether or not to focus on this series exclusively or intermix it with articles on other subjects. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. The decision will probably wait until I start to write next week’s article!

It may be noted that I don’t have any entry for “In-Game Economics: Steampunk”. There are two reasons for this: first, there will probably be a lot of overlap between that and the Gaslight-Era entry, and second, I’ve never run a steampunk campaign nor delved into the genre too deeply, and don’t feel qualified to write such a section. If anyone would like to contribute a ‘guest section’ on the subject, get in touch!