DShomshak

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

Re: Elves and half-breed "races": I don't think it's intrinsically a bad idea for That Fantasy RPG to provide many varieties of elves, if they are presented as options to help you customize your world. After all, elves have been presented many different ways in Fantasy fiction, as they have been in folklore. Do you want your elves to be elusive forest-folk? Haughty lords of magic? Sinister twilight folk? Here's a variety of elf. But trying to fit all of them in one setting risks feeling cluttered. D&D 5th ed. does a good thing in calling out some PC races as options not every DM might want, but it could do better at stressing that all the variations form a toolkit from which DMs pick what they want. As for halfbreeds, I too saw this as a can of worms I didn't want to open. If half-elves and half-orcs, why not half-dwarves? Half-halflings? Could somebody be half elf, half dwarf? So I let my players know there are no half--anythings. The Five Peoples (humans, dwarves, elves, halflings, orcs) are all interfertile to some degree (though offspring might be sterile mules), but in game terms they use one template or the other. Dean Shomshak

Re: Informal poll. Lkikewise, it depends where you set the boundaries of Fantasy. If you leave out Dr. Seuss, I read the Oz books, Dr. Doolittle, and a fair bit of Edward Eager while still in grade school and unaware of categories such as "Fantasy." Assorted fairy tales, a kid-suitable adaptation of tales from the Arabian Nights, Greek mythology. An LP of The Sorcerer's Apprentice -- one side just Dukas' music, the other side with narration. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings came in junior high. In high school I ripped through Leiber, Moorcock, Norton, and a lot more. The Gormenghast Trilogy. Not so much Fantasy in the last 20 years as so much seems, hm, very much of a muchness. Dean Shomshak

Wow, someone else who's read Pile! <Offers the secret handshake of the initiated> Dean Shomshak

Wow, someone else who's read Pile! <Offers the secret handshake of the initiated> Dean Shomshak

Thalassene is a large city by pre-modern standards: 200,000 people, comparable to the largest Medieval cities such as Paris or Constantinople. So even crafts for luxury or semi-luxury goods, such as embroidery, can pretty sizeable if they are also labor intensive. One of the neighborhoods is named Broider for its chief industry -- though a lot of the work is for trade or to supply the hinterlands. Wand- and rod-makers are a definite possibility. Wizards would go to a jeweler for orbs or crystals, or a wood-carver for a staff, but wands and rods tend to be flashier and look like they could involve multiple crafts. (Even assuming the manufacture is purely mundane, on which I have not yet decided.) Good call. (And I'm not a fan of "spell component puches," but there too, in a large community it would make sense to pay someone to gather all the whatnots instead of scrounding around oneself.) Other good thoughts, too. Dean Shomshak

Beaders already operate in another neighborhood, as they are actually a somewhat important part of this trade city. Excerpted from the player's guide I wrote for Thalassene: ------------ Not everything in Old Town is wretched. Some neighborhoods are poverty-proud, the houses and tenements kept tidy and the streets patrolled by volunteer guards. Prinks, the neighborhood of milliners and ribbon-makers, and Gauds, the neighborhood where cheap ornaments, beads and trinkets are made, are quite nice. Their inhabitants see themselves as the gentry of Old Town. ------------------ BOX: Trade Beads A branch of the Vitrio (glazers’ guild) in Gauds produces trade beads of multicolored glass. As the name suggests, these beads are widely traded to primitive cultures for their local commodities. Thalassene manufactures more trade beads than any other city in the Empire, and of the highest quality and demand in distant lands. It’s a point of pride in the Vitrio that some countries use Thalassene trade beads for money. Other countries buy trade beads just to trade with their own neighbors, giving the Plenary Empire a presence in lands where its name is unknown. Lorusa Beader, owner of the largest trade-bead factory, is the leading citizen in Gauds. ------------- Years back when I researched primitive money and ancient commerce for an Exalted writing job, I learned a bit about trade beads from a book on early money. Multicolored trade beads were once widely used as proto-money in Africa. The book said a curious aspect of their use is that glass can't be dated. (At least it couldn't at the time the book was written. Might be possible now.) So if you found a trade bead somewhere in the hinterlands of Africa, it might be 2 years old, made in, say, England... or 2,000 years old, made in Rome. The practice is that old, and the beads never wear out. This is why Fantasy GMs should do research. It's not to "get it right," a shifty concept for an imaginary world. It's because you'll find bits of truth that really are stranger than fiction. Dean Shomshak

Speaking of worlds on turtles... I've enjoyed many of the Diskworld novels. Often funny, often pointed in its satire. But for me at least, hardly ever immersive. No matter how much I enjoy the story, I am fully aware this world "exists" to comment on other stories or aspects of RL. It's never a world that feels like it could exist in its own right. Again, at least not for me. Dean Shomshak

Background: In my current Fantasy campaign, most artisans in the city of Thalassene belong to guilds: the cobbler’s guild, the silk-weaver’s guild, the papermaker and printer’s guild, and so on. (There are also guilds for professions such as doctors, lawyers and bankers.) But some crafts are too small to have guilds. There just aren’t enough artisans to make it worthwhile. These are locally called “oddmongers.” And just as most of the big-time jewelers cluster around Gold Court and most undertakers are on Coffin Street, the oddmongers have a neighborhood of their own called, naturally, Oddmonger. This is where the PCs are based, so I’m developing the neighborhood more than the rest of the city. I have thought of many different oddmongers, but I could use more. Suggest away! Explain why a craft wouldn’t employ many practitioners, and why it wouldn’t be folded into some larger group of artisans. To illustrate, here’s what I already have: Parasol-Makers. Some lace, some cloth, some painted paper. A couple factories as well as freelance artisans, but I’s enough of a specialty/luxury item that the whole industry fits easily on one short street. Fanmakers. Likewise, and on the same street as the parasol-makers. Paper or cloth fans may be painted, so the business involves limners as well as artisans to glue the material to the frame of wood or ivory ribs. Lots of people own fans, but it doesn't take a lot of people to make them. Artificial Flower Makers. Paper, silk and one fellow who works in glass. The craft began with religion: flowers as a common offering at household shrines to show piety, but the cost mounts up for fresh flowers every few days. So, buy realistic fakes. (Though it eventually became something of an art form in its own right.) Wax Fruit Maker. A newly invented craft, for similar purposes as artificial flowers: Look like you can afford fresh fruit all the time, when you actually can’t. Featherworkers. Anything from little ornaments to shimmering feather cloaks. A foreign craft introduced by Furanian refugees. Picture-Scroll Printers. A sort of long comic book in scroll form. Outside the printer’s guild because halflings invented it and still dominate the craft. (Inspired by RL art form from old Japan, btw.) Sugar-Spinner. A gnome who is both a master alchemist and master tinker invented cotton candy. No one else has yet duplicated his two-story machine, which requires several strapping laborers to turn the cranks, pump the bellows and stoke the furnace. The confectioner’s guild would like to have him, but he insists that selling cotton candy is only to fund his further experiments to his ultimate goal: edible candy clothing! It’s genius, I tell you! Genius! Tattoo Artists. Complex, detailed body art, not the basic ink of a soldier, sailor or thug. Music-Box Maker. Another luxury item, too tinkery for the musical instrument makers, and too musical for the tinkers. Bonsai. Some gods are traditionally worshiped at sacred trees rather than temples. How to do this in a built-up city? Own a miniature, portable sacred tree. Toy Soldier Maker. More detailed than usual for the pewtersmiths; comparable to jewelers. But they are not jewelers. Lens Grinders. You can buy spyglasses or spectacles, but these precision items cost a lot. Denturists. Another precision craft, and costly enough that the market remains small. Paper Appliqué. Another foreign craft, recently introduced: patterns or pictures of colored cut paper applied to a wooden surface and coated with lacquer or varnish. Not quite a poor man’s enamel work, but not quite as expensive. China-Doll Makers. This requires specialized forms of multiple crafts: porcelain-workers to make the heads and other body parts, some tinkering to put them together, and seamstresses to make the miniature clothing. Hm. There might be enough artisans to form a Toymaker's Guild, but presently they're scattered: People who make wooden toys, for instance, in the woodworker's guild. Mask Makers. Several possible crafts (cloth, leather, wood, etc.), possibly in combination. For costume parties, some religious festivals, or the big Autocrat’s Ascension Day parade down in Mactown. Vellum Maker. Papyrus and true paper have largely supplanted parchment and vellum, but the lone business in town that still makes writing material from animal skins stubbornly resists absorption into the guild. Pearl Carver. Making stuff from nacre. Not quite a jeweler, and there’s a foreign aspect as many techniques and designs are copied from the merfolk. Alchemists have a small guild, but there is no magic guild. Dean Shomshak

My desk dictionary, published decades ago, defines "electrum" as "A natural pale-yellow alloy of gold and silver." Latin, from the Greek elektron, with a note about its connection to "Electric." Gygax didn't invent it. Dean Shomshak

My desk dictionary, published decades ago, defines "electrum" as "A natural pale-yellow alloy of gold and silver." Latin, from the Greek elektron, with a note about its connection to "Electric." Gygax didn't invent it. Dean Shomshak

I don't think "anachronism" is the right word for some of what Phil finds annoying. I'd suggest "anamythism" -- not from the wrong time, but from the wrong story. The genre boundaries of fantasy are very wide, but that doesn't mean every possible thing fits in every story. For instance, take railroads. They can fit perfectly well in some alternate-historical fantasies such as Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, in which the Industrial Revolution is happening at the same time as the English Civil War, and both are of interest to Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the Elves. There is an internal logic here, and it is also important to the theme of the story. Even in a setting with no explicit connection to Earth, railways are not unthinkable. The first RL railway was built, IIRC, in ancient Greece. It was short, powered by oxen pulling the cars, and not duplicated, but clearly the idea was possible. But... railways (whether powered by coal, oxen or dragons) aren't going to catch on unless there are certain political and economic conditions that don't apply in most bog-standard fantasy settings. They didn't even apply equally in RL Earth history -- development was much slower in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe. Railways say a lot about what kind of world it is, and what kind of story you're going to tell in it. Dean Shomshak