DShomshak

Ting is, I've learned that the first idea is often not the best idea, and sometimes the best worldbuilding strategy is just to throw things out and see what connections develop on their own. Let me give an example: As part of my Mystic World playtest campaign, I ran a story arc set on my Jack Vance "Dying Earth" homage, the world of Loezen. I'd already decided that saving Loezen would involve time travel: The PCs would need to go back in time to obtain the lost artifact they needed. (Lost, in Vancian irony, because they stole it.) So I dashed off a list of fruity-sounding past ages for Loezen: Before the modern age (not yet named because it's still happening) was the Age of the Road Builder. Before that, the Age of the Cloud Lords. Before that, the horrible Age of Red Shadows. And before that, a mishmash of Ages that were often nothing but names: the Arcuate Age, when people wrote in characters made of short, curving lines; the Age of Towers, inferred from certain massive ruins; the Anaglyphic Age, for the picture-writing carved on buildings; the Trilunar Age, when Loezen apparently had three moons (it presently has two); and the one that mattered for the plot, the Age of Six Sovereigns, when six immortal and ultra-powerful wizard-tyrants contended for rule of the world. Okay, so one of the PCs already had a time travel spel... with a control roll. Which the player blew. Badly. Instead of 8,000 years into the past, they went 8 million! No problem, I'm good at improvising. The players enjoyed an hour seeing the very strange world Loezen had been before its sun began dying. They obtained help from the;;; mages?... of that time. Not wanting to trust another time-jump, they sought other ways of reaching the Age of Six Sovereigns. I had one of their new allies suggest placing them in suspended animation, packing them into a ball and launching them into orbit, to descend and wake up at the proper time. (IIRC I'd recently read one of Cordwainer Smith's stories that had a person who'd awakened in the future this way.) The PCs agreed. Then one player's eyes widened. ""It's us," he exclaimed. "We're causing the Trilunar Age." And they all wondered how I'd set it up. Well, either my unconscious mind is a genius, and possibly precognitive... or I just got lucky, because the PCs did something that could tie into the blither I tossed out before. And the more of these fragments of information you provide, the greater the odds that something will later become useful in ways you never expected. Dean Shomshak

I'm in favor of Finland as global hegemon, personally. When have you ever heard anything bad about Finland? It's the land of Linux and Moomins. Dean Shomshak

Here's one more oddmonger: flint-knapper. This craft was once one of the most widely practiced in the world... at the dawn of humanity, 250 million years ago, and a few times since then. But the technology of chipped flint and obsidian still has a few specialized uses on Old Earth. Religion would be an easy one. Religions are often conservative, and some cults might insist on an obsidian blade for sacrificing a victim. But I don't want to play the Cult Kookiness card too many times. No, IIRC some people even IRL still have uses for an obsidian blade. The edge is much sharper than glass... and this world has skilled surgeons (as Rome did -- Galen did cataract surgery.) So there's a guy in Oddmonger who makes obsidian scalpels. A small, specialized but steady market. Dean Shomshak

Interesting speculation on the Nagas, LL. Back when I created the Nagas and the Dragon for my own campaign, I had a secret origin for the Nagas. Fortunately, I realized it was blithering idiocy before the PCs ever got a chance to learn it. From then on, I decided to keep the Nagas' origin a mystery unknown even to myself, and kept that approach in The Mystic World. Leave it open for GMs to decide on their own, if they thought an origin was necessary. Dean Shomshak

Given the incompetence of some of the debate moderators, it might play well with me. Depending on the idiocy or "gotcha" quality of the question just asked. Dean Shomshak

I have read the claim that pretending to be stupid is a very good way to win, in politics and other places. Granted, this came from someone who called him/herself The Mitanni, as key to success in EVE Online... but The Mitanni said he/she learned this from family -- Southern aristocracy, who know it can pay to be dismissed as Bahbul-thumpin' dumb hicks despite Ivy League educations, while they work to keep themselves in power. Though <cough> I do not entirely believe someone who hides behind a pseudonym, even if they add citations to academic works on Southern genealogy. I think I could pull out the link if anyone wants to read the Twitter thread and judge for themselves. More apt, perhaps, might be the adage about the fox who knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one thing very well. Trump is a hedgehog. Unfortunately, what he knows very well is bullying, exploiting white grievances, and conning loans out of Deutche Bank (3 times, 3 bankruptcies!) Dean Shomshak

Huh. I never thought to check if "Voldemort" actually translated as something. I just assumed it was meant to sound deathly and Dark Lord-y. Thank you. Do other names in the series have meanings? Checking a French/English dictionary, the closest to "Malfoy" seems to be mal foi, "bad/evil faith," which seems appropriate for some of Lord Voldemort's dedicated disciples. Though there's also mal foie, "bad liver." And the Malfoys sure show the anger ande bitterness associated with the liver's product, bile. A "baby names" book says Hermione means "Of the earth," a suitable name for the series' most prominent Mudblood. (Though Robert Graves' The Greek Myths translates it as "Pillar Queen.") Dean Shomshak

EDIT: Darn double posting....

In case it's useful and of interest, here's a small, b/w map of the part of Thalassene that includes Oddmonger. I hope it's not too small to be legible.

Ooh. Excellent thought, Duke. Especially since one thing I already established about Thalassene is that a treaty with the local merfolk has long been an important part of the city's economy and culture. I thought in terms of merfolk trading nacre, pearls and coral for land-made tools, cloth and the like. Also, the treaty enjoins local merfolk to assist the crews of wrecked or sinking ships. But now that you've suggested them, these sorts of ship services seem virtually inevitable. Thank you! (How much are merfolk part of city life? Well, since the city's legendary founding there's been the yearly ritual call;ed "the Marriage to the Sea." Merfolk call it "the Marriage to the Land." And one consequence is that some humans and some merfolk can effectively Multiform into the other race.) Dean Shomshak

Getting away from the presidential campaign (though perhaps returning obliquely, we'll see), yesterday I heard something surprising on the program Marketplace. I find the program interesting because it's a business/finance program, which pulls it one way, but it's public radio, which pulls it another. Anyway, yesterday host Kai Ryssdahl (I hope I'm spelling that right) interviewed a Mr. Siroca, the director of the port of Los Angeles. Siroca avowed that coronavirus fears were hurting the port's business, but weren't the first trouble: The port was already hurting from Donald Trump's trade wars, which he condemned as stupid and crazy, bad for American business in general and the port in particular. Not his exact words, but more or less the sentiment. This surprised me because while Mr Ryssdahl has interviewed many business people who told how Trump tariffs and trade policies made business more difficult. I don't recall hearing anyone call them out so bluntly. (And Ryssdahl, as a good journalist, sticks to objective facts such as reminding us that, contrary to what Trump says, other countries don't pay the tariffs, Americans do, and that the promised stampede of blue collar manufacturing jobs back to the US has not happened yet.) And a thought occurred to me, which I haven't heard suggested before, though maybe some of you have encountered it already. See, businesses can apply for waivers from the tariffs. The administration's process for deciding whether to grant waivers is apparently, hm, opaque. So business owners and managers can't know whether an application was denied for some greater economic strategy or... other reasons. It occurs to me that while the tariffs have been a lousy way to protect and promote American manufacturing, they might be an excellent hammer to hold over the heads of business people who might be tempted to complain about Trump's policies. Keep quiet, and maybe you get your waiver. Say in public that business, trade and economics don't work the way Trump says and his policies are counterproductive at best, and you could see your costs going way up. Oh, and one of Mr Ryssdahl''s occasional interviewees is a soybean farmer who admits that China's retaliation has hurt his business. He's holding on because of federal payments to make up for his losses. He admits he'd rather be selling soybeans than receiving government money, but he avers he remains supportive of Trump and his policies. Well, naturally. He too has a strong financial incentive not to condemn Trump. But another thought: Isn't that the long-time accusations conservatives have made against Democrats? That they create and nurture a class of people dependent on government handouts and so will keep voting for the party that provides them? Dean Shomshak

Getting away from the presidential campaign (though perhaps returning obliquely, we'll see), yesterday I heard something surprising on the program Marketplace. I find the program interesting because it's a business/finance program, which pulls it one way, but it's public radio, which pulls it another. Anyway, yesterday host Kai Ryssdahl (I hope I'm spelling that right) interviewed a Mr. Siroca, the director of the port of Los Angeles. Siroca avowed that coronavirus fears were hurting the port's business, but weren't the first trouble: The port was already hurting from Donald Trump's trade wars, which he condemned as stupid and crazy, bad for American business in general and the port in particular. Not his exact words, but more or less the sentiment. This surprised me because while Mr Ryssdahl has interviewed many business people who told how Trump tariffs and trade policies made business more difficult. I don't recall hearing anyone call them out so bluntly. (And Ryssdahl, as a good journalist, sticks to objective facts such as reminding us that, contrary to what Trump says, other countries don't pay the tariffs, Americans do, and that the promised stampede of blue collar manufacturing jobs back to the US has not happened yet.) And a thought occurred to me, which I haven't heard suggested before, though maybe some of you have encountered it already. See, businesses can apply for waivers from the tariffs. The administration's process for deciding whether to grant waivers is apparently, hm, opaque. So business owners and managers can't know whether an application was denied for some greater economic strategy or... other reasons. It occurs to me that while the tariffs have been a lousy way to protect and promote American manufacturing, they might be an excellent hammer to hold over the heads of business people who might be tempted to complain about Trump's policies. Keep quiet, and maybe you get your waiver. Say in public that business, trade and economics don't work the way Trump says and his policies are counterproductive at best, and you could see your costs going way up. Oh, and one of Mr Ryssdahl''s occasional interviewees is a soybean farmer who admits that China's retaliation has hurt his business. He's holding on because of federal payments to make up for his losses. He admits he'd rather be selling soybeans than receiving government money, but he avers he remains supportive of Trump and his policies. Well, naturally. He too has a strong financial incentive not to condemn Trump. But another thought: Isn't that the long-time accusations conservatives have made against Democrats? That they create and nurture a class of people dependent on government handouts and so will keep voting for the party that provides them? Dean Shomshak

"Medieval Demographics Made Easy" mentions glove makers. Using the ratio given, there'd be 83 in Thalassene -- not an insignificant guild. Good bit of "local color" for the associated "Pure Gatherers," though. (Huh. Somebody's right in the "Immersion" thread: Fantasy verisimilitude requires poo.) 😁 Actually, the whole list from MDME may be of interest, so here it is with explanatory text: ----------------- Each type of business is given a Support Value (SV). This is the number of people it takes to support a single business of that sort. For instance, the SV for shoemakers (by far the most common trade in towns) is 150. This means that there will be one shoemaker for every 150 people in an area. These numbers can vary by up to 60% in either direction, but provide a useful baseline for GMs. Think about the nature of the town or city to decide if the numbers need to be changed. A port, for instance, will have more fishmongers than the table indicates. To find the number of, say, inns in a city, divide the population of the city by the SV value for inns (2,000). For a village of 400 people, this reveals only 20% of an inn! This means that there is a 20% chance of there being one at all. And even if there is one, it will be smaller and less impressive than an urban inn. The SV for taverns is 400, so there will be a single tavern. Business SV Shoemakers 150 Furriers 250 Maidservants 250 Tailors 250 Barbers 350 Jewelers 400 Taverns/Restaurants 400 Old-Clothes 400 Pastry-cooks 500 Masons 500 Carpenters 550 Weavers 600 Chandlers 700 Mercers 700 Coopers 700 Bakers 800 Watercarriers 850 Scabbardmakers 850 Wine-Sellers 900 Hatmakers 950 Saddlers 1,000 Chicken Butchers 1,000 Pursemakers 1,100 Butchers 1,200 Fishmongers 1,200 Beer-Sellers 1,400 Buckle Makers 1,400 Plasterers 1,400 Spice Merchants 1,400 Blacksmiths 1,500 Painters 1,500 Doctors 1,700* Roofers 1,800 Bathers 1,900 Locksmiths 1,900 Ropemakers 1,900 Copyists 2,000 Harness-Makers 2,000 Inns 2,000 Rugmakers 2,000 Sculptors 2,000 Tanners 2,000 Bleachers 2,100 Cutlers 2,300 Hay Merchants 2,300 Glovemakers 2,400 Woodsellers 2,400 Woodcarvers 2,400 Bookbinders 3,000 Illuminators 3,900 Booksellers 6,300 *These are licensed doctors. Total doctor SV is 350. Some other figures: There will be one noble household per 200 population, one lawyer ("Advocate") per 650, one clergymaqn per 40, and and one priest per 25-30 clergy. ---------------------- These can of course be adjusted to suit campaign needs. For instance, Thalassene probably has more booksellers, since this setting has the printing press. Dean Shomshak

"Medieval Demographics Made Easy" mentions glove makers. Using the ratio given, there'd be 83 in Thalassene -- not an insignificant guild. Good bit of "local color" for the associated "Pure Gatherers," though. (Huh. Somebody's right in the "Immersion" thread: Fantasy verisimilitude requires poo.) 😁 Actually, the whole list from MDME may be of interest, so here it is with explanatory text: ----------------- Each type of business is given a Support Value (SV). This is the number of people it takes to support a single business of that sort. For instance, the SV for shoemakers (by far the most common trade in towns) is 150. This means that there will be one shoemaker for every 150 people in an area. These numbers can vary by up to 60% in either direction, but provide a useful baseline for GMs. Think about the nature of the town or city to decide if the numbers need to be changed. A port, for instance, will have more fishmongers than the table indicates. To find the number of, say, inns in a city, divide the population of the city by the SV value for inns (2,000). For a village of 400 people, this reveals only 20% of an inn! This means that there is a 20% chance of there being one at all. And even if there is one, it will be smaller and less impressive than an urban inn. The SV for taverns is 400, so there will be a single tavern. Business SV Shoemakers 150 Furriers 250 Maidservants 250 Tailors 250 Barbers 350 Jewelers 400 Taverns/Restaurants 400 Old-Clothes 400 Pastry-cooks 500 Masons 500 Carpenters 550 Weavers 600 Chandlers 700 Mercers 700 Coopers 700 Bakers 800 Watercarriers 850 Scabbardmakers 850 Wine-Sellers 900 Hatmakers 950 Saddlers 1,000 Chicken Butchers 1,000 Pursemakers 1,100 Butchers 1,200 Fishmongers 1,200 Beer-Sellers 1,400 Buckle Makers 1,400 Plasterers 1,400 Spice Merchants 1,400 Blacksmiths 1,500 Painters 1,500 Doctors 1,700* Roofers 1,800 Bathers 1,900 Locksmiths 1,900 Ropemakers 1,900 Copyists 2,000 Harness-Makers 2,000 Inns 2,000 Rugmakers 2,000 Sculptors 2,000 Tanners 2,000 Bleachers 2,100 Cutlers 2,300 Hay Merchants 2,300 Glovemakers 2,400 Woodsellers 2,400 Woodcarvers 2,400 Bookbinders 3,000 Illuminators 3,900 Booksellers 6,300 *These are licensed doctors. Total doctor SV is 350. Some other figures: There will be one noble household per 200 population, one lawyer ("Advocate") per 650, one clergymaqn per 40, and and one priest per 25-30 clergy. ---------------------- These can of course be adjusted to suit campaign needs. For instance, Thalassene probably has more booksellers, since this setting has the printing press. Dean Shomshak

I've heard plenty of people who claim to know what they're talking about argue that Dems won the House in 2018 thanks to moderate candidates who emphasized "kitchen table" issues such as the cost of health care, while staying away from Trump-bashing -- and so that's the playbook they should follow now. Dean Shomshak

Feb. 29, 2020 issue of The Economist has the cover headline, "American Nightmare" with a cartoon of giant Sanders and Trump -- looking very Tweedledum and Tweedledee -- bellowing identically at an Uncle Sam cowering in bed with a pillow over his head. Their headline editorial lays out their argument that Sanders would be nearly as disastrous a choice as Trump. I'd link it, but their website doesn't seem to show that issue. Suffice to say they raise some issues I haven't heard answered before -- and that he is "not a cuddly Scandinavian social democrat." Dean Shomshak

And I'm doing something with LL's egg painters. I'm just not sure what, except these won't be mere knicknacks. There's a purpose. Soul vessels? The painted scene is of the afterlife home intended for the deceased. Keep your egg handy in case of unexpected death. A very large egg might double as a crematory urn. Instead of a landscape, the egg is painted with the image of a protective spirit. It is believed to act like the Jewish Teraphim or Mesopotamian Papsukkal, calling a protective spirit to watch over the house. People who know the proper spells and rites can make a ward-egg that really works. Other? Dean Shomshak

The first scenario I ran to introduce the PCs to Thalassene and each other involved a food cart and an angry scion of a patrician family. 😁 I've already noted a few scribes on the neighborhood map. The excellent online article, "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" by S. John Ross, says that in Paris of 1292 there was one copyist" per 2,000 people. I have a notary in the neighborhood, too. As a devotee of Maion, the god of justice and the dead, he particularly specializes in wills. There's also one fully credentialed attorney, who is an arrogant bastard and high on my list of victims if I ever run a murder mystery scenario. Dunno if there were food carts in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, but ancient Rome had lunch counters. So does Thalassene. One of the vendors in Oddmonger is a Vohinese halfling -- the equatorial ethnic group that introduced curry to port cities such as Thalassene. Dean Shomshak

EDIT: Triple post? Ye gods and little fishes. Dean Shomshak

\EDIT FOR DOUBLE POST: Also, the Feb. 22, 2020 issue of the Economist has an article about SET discussions at the recent Seattle meeting of the AAAS, that Cancer linked to above. Nifty stuff. Dean Shomshak

Scientific American continues to publish nifty space-related articles. February's was about "The First Molecule in the Universe." It wasn't anything I could ever have guessed. This particular molecule was speculated about for some time; it has now been detected. I don't see how you could use this particular bit of information in a game, but it's weird. March has an article about a crisis in cosmology. (Yes, another one.) It's about the Hubble constant (the speed of the universe's expansion, which, btw, appears not to be constant; I guess this is about the average value.) Astronomers have two ways of measuring the speed of expansion, both by plotting the distance of galaxies against their red shift-derived velocity. The first works back in time using a series of "standard candles" to measure greater and greater distances: parallax to find the distance to Cepheid variable stars, then Cepheid variables to calibrate a scale for Type 1a supernovae. The second I don't quite understand, but it involves using the variations in the cosmic microwave background to derive a "standard ruler." The problem is that these two methods give different values for the Hubble constant. At first this wasn't a big problem because the error bars of the two values overlapped. As both sets of measurements became more precise, though, they don't anymore. (As a further complication, an astronomer recently produced a third scale using red giant stars undergoing "helium flash" instead of Cepheid variables, producing a third value that doesn't overlap with either two.) Each side says the others must have some flaw in their methodology or measurements, but nobody can identify it. Annoying, but it may also be a clue to new physics. There's also an interview with Mike Brown, the Kuiper Belt specialist responsible for the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet, on his search for a new hypothetical Planet Nine that's disrupting the orbits of Sedna and other bodies in the outer Solar System. Dean Shomshak

EDIT FOR DOUBLE-POST ANNOYANCE: OTOH when I map out a castle or whatever, I include "necessities" such as garderobes and wells/water cisterns. In play, I try to slip in mentions of ordinary life such as the pushcart vendor on the street or the two guys in the tavern arguing about which chariot-racing team is ahead. It's not that I think my players' immersion will be interrupted if I leave these out, but I think it will be improved by little mentions of the everyday, to remind them that this world and its people "exist" even when their characters aren't around. Dean Shomshak

In 40+ years of gaming, not once has my suspension of disbelief been spoiled because I thought, "There's not enough attention to poop." Just sayin'. Dean Shomshak

I'm not the one who cited Talislanta. And in my previous post about Exalted, I left out the most important points: that these variant human races exist for well-defined, in-setting reasons, and the game supports them as potential PCs in a fairly parsimonious manner. They contribute to the inner logic of the world, rather than being arbitrary add-ons. Dean Shomshak

Exalted manages to sort of have it both ways. Humans are the dominant mortal intelligence of Creation. But humans vary widely. Especially since the Exalted lords of the First Age created variant humans to settle new environments or as specialized slaves; and the Lunar Exalted can breed animal-hubrid offspring, resulting in everything from halkmen to sharkmen; and the influence of Chaos leaking in from the edge of the world can produce damn near anything. But they are all theologically human, in having souls, meaning that their prayers supply supernatural power to whoever or whatever they pray to; and they can all Exalt. Humans are meant as the default PC option, but that's hardly limiting. (Exalted has elves and dwarves, sort of. The Fair Folk are soul-eating monsters from primal Chaos. Masks that pretend they have fades behind them. The Mountain Folk, a.k.a. the Jadeborn, are more difficult to explain. There are also the reincarnating reptilian Dragon Kings, who owe their inspiration more to Land of the Lost's sleestak than anything else. All technically playable, but the game chiefly supports humans -- notably, because only humans Exalt and the game is, after all, Exalted.) Dean Shomshak