Just a quick post to report on how things are going here.
We’re all in lockdown, with my son the only one who’s still leaving the house for work each day. He works at a small factory that supports the food-delivery industry; as you can imagine, they’re doing an absolutely booming business right now. He’s earning lots of overtime, and he and I joke that he’s the only one in the family that’s really “essential” at the moment. At least my job is secure for when things start getting back to normal, and I’m still getting paid in full for the duration. We have plenty of savings in any case, so as long as money remains good in the first place, we should be able to weather the storm.
The psychological toll seems more acute. I have plenty to do, and my son has his work and his online friends. On the other hand, my wife misses her classes and social contacts, and I think my daughter is going slowly mad, stuck in the house without her usual busy school schedule.
For my part, I’ve been having the usual upper-respiratory issues that always hit me, when the dogwood and maple trees do their thing every spring. I’ve been watching my symptoms like a hawk, and taking my temperature regularly, but so far I haven’t seen any reason to push the panic button. All that means is that I’m in a constant state of low-level apprehension rather than mortal terror, but if that’s the worst I have to live with over the next few months, I count myself blessed. A lot of people are having it far worse.
As for the creative work which is the normal reason for this blog, I’ve been nicely productive ever since I came home. I’ve been working on a more extended system for designing Iron Age villages, an expansion of the “extended character” work I’ve posted about recently. That, in turn, is helping me to visualize the social setting of The Curse of Steel much more completely. If and when I start the second-draft rewrite – which may now be a matter of days – I think I’ll have a much better picture to draw upon.
Meanwhile, I’m also working on the first draft for the EIDOLON “core book,” the basic character-description rule set that I’ll be self-publishing as a basis for releasing world-building material for the game market. I’m also working on the Tremara “culture book” that’s likely to be the first major release for the EIDOLON system. There’s still plenty of work to do on both items, but there’s real progress.
I think April may be the first month that my Patreon campaign gets started again; I’ll have enough new material that patrons might find interesting or useful. If you’re interested in signing up as my patron, please have a visit to my creator page and drop a pledge. Thanks!
My employer has sent me home for what may be the next couple of months, since I’m in a “high-risk” category for COVID-19 (over 50 and with a chronic health condition that might complicate if I come down with the disease). So here’s a great opportunity to work on EIDOLON and some of the world-building for The Curse of Steel. I may be posting a lot more frequently for a while . . .
For today, here are some notes I’ve put together over the past few days. Here I’m starting to puzzle out how the EIDOLON “extended character” will work in practice. I’m working with the home society for The Curse of Steel here – the Tremara or “Mighty Folk,” a tribal Iron Age culture somewhat reminiscent of pre-Roman Celts. These notes aren’t polished rules material, but if you refer to last week’s post you may get some insight into what I’m working on here.
In Tremara society, the smallest monetary unit is the copper
penny (cp). A copper penny is roughly the value of a pound of barley.
As a practical matter, most Tremara tribes don’t coin copper
pennies. Most transactions at that level are handled through barter or exchange
of favors. The most common coin in circulation is the silver penny (sp),
which is worth 12 cp. Very wealthy Tremara sometimes use gold coins for big
transactions; these are either obtained in foreign trade or minted by the richest
tribes. The gold piece (gp) is worth 20 sp or 240 cp.
Tremara agriculture is based largely upon barley. A bushel
of barley weighs about 48 pounds, and so is worth about 4 sp.
Assume an average person requires 600 pounds of barley per year. This constitutes a subsistence diet, without much variety or luxury, but enough to support a healthy life. This comes to 600 cp per year or 50 cp per month. Assume another 10 cp per month for other expenses (clothing, tools, maintenance of housing, and so on). Hence the bare minimum for subsistence living will be 60 cp (5 sp) per month, or 720 cp (60 sp) per year.
Proposed rule for Social Standing in EIDOLON:
In any EIDOLON setting, the benchmark figure for Social Standing is a cost-of-living equal to the bare minimum for subsistence living in that setting. Social Standing for any individual equals log-2 of (his personal cost-of-living expenses, divided by the benchmark figure), rounded to the nearest integer.
Social Standing can be modified by conditions of legal or social privilege, although these modifiers will not normally amount to more than plus or minus 1.
Farming in the Iron Age
Tremara Agriculture
Tremara characters can own several Assets related to agriculture:
Crop Land (measured in acres) – cleared flat
land of good quality that can be used to raise barley. Only half of the Crop
Land is planted each year, the other half being left fallow.
Pasture (measured in acres) – cleared land
that doesn’t have to be flat or of the best quality, which is set aside for grazing.
Can also include land left forested for pigs to forage.
Horses
Cattle
Small Animals – some combination of sheep,
goats, and pigs.
These Assets are operated by three classes of Workers:
Farmers – a character serving as a Farmer
must have the Professional Skill Farmer at +2 or better.
Herdsmen – a character serving as a
Herdsman must have the Professional Skill Herdsman at +2 or better. Each
Herdsman is assumed to work with a pair of dogs trained for animal handling.
Farm Laborers – a character serving as a
Farm Laborer needs no specific Professional Skill, but must have Strength,
Dexterity, Vitality, and Intelligence at +0 or better. A Farm Laborer provides
unskilled labor, which is often seasonal in nature (grain harvest, shearing,
milking, herding pigs, and so on). Farm Laborers may be slaves.
Agricultural Assets must be supported as follows, or else
they can produce no profits:
One Farmer for every 24 acres of Crop Land
(round up)
One Farm Laborer for every 12 acres of Crop Land
(round up)
One Cattle for every 6 acres of Crop Land (round
up)
One Herdsman for every 80 Horses or Cattle, or for
every 120 Small Animals (combine fractions and then round up)
Farm animals must be supported by Pasture: 0.5 acres of
Pasture for every Small Animal, and 4 acres of Pasture for every Horse or
Cattle. Any animals not supported by Pasture are lost.
Each year, Agricultural Assets will produce profits:
Per acre of Crop Land: 210 cp (350 pounds of
barley, of which 140 pounds must be set aside for next year’s planting)
Per Horse: 150 cp (loan or sale of animals, possibly
stud fees)
Per Cattle: 100 cp (milk, leather, meat)
Per Small Animal: 20 cp (milk, wool, leather,
meat)
Each year, the farm workers must be paid:
Per Farmer: 2,700 cp
Per Herdsman: 1,800 cp
Per Farm Laborer: 900 cp
Example: A Prosperous Farmer
An independent Tremara land-holder maintains his own small
farming settlement:
48 acres of Crop Land
60 acres of Pasture
12 Cattle
24 Small Animals
The land-holder himself is a Farmer. His wife and eldest son serve as Farm Laborers, without needing to be paid (they are supported by his profits). He has also hired a second Farmer and a Herdsman as farm-hands, and he owns two slaves who serve as additional Farm Laborers. All his labor requirements are met. He has enough Cattle to support his Crop Land.
The land-holder’s farm produces 11,760 cp per year (10,080 cp in profit from the barley harvest, 1,200 cp from the Cattle, and 480 cp from the Small Animals). He must pay his labor 6,300 cp per year (2,700 cp for the Farmer, 1,800 cp for the Herdsman, and 1,800 cp for the two Farm Laborers). He makes a clear profit of 5,460 cp per year. Divided among himself and his four dependents (including his elderly mother and a daughter too young to work), this comes to 1,092 cp per year per person. His Social Standing rounds up to +1.
Example: A Chariot-Lord
A Tremara chariot-lord owns three small farming villages,
scattered across several miles of countryside. These amount to the following
Assets:
1,000 acres of Crop Land
1,400 acres of Pasture
40 Horses
260 Cattle
400 Small Animals
None of the chariot-lord’s personal Company (his household)
are working as Farmers, Herdsmen, or Farm Laborers. He needs 42 Farmers, 84
Farm Laborers, and 8 Herdsmen to maintain his lands. He has more than enough
Cattle to support his Crop Land.
The chariot-lord’s lands produce 250,000 cp per year (210,000 cp in the barley harvest, 6,000 cp from his Horses, 26,000 cp from his Cattle, and 8,000 cp from his Small Animals). He must pay 203,400 cp per year for labor (113,400 cp for his Farmers, 75,600 cp for his Farm Laborers, and 14,400 cp for his Herdsmen). His annual profits are 46,600 cp. Divided among himself and three dependents (wife and two children), this comes to 11,650 cp per year per person. This chariot-lord’s Social Standing rounds off to +4.
Some final comments:
So far, I’ve been working mostly on the left-hand side of the diagram in last week’s post: the income and profits generated by a character’s Assets and Workers. I haven’t done too much yet on the right-hand side: the hirelings and support staff that can make a wealthy character’s life better. I’ll need to develop both sides before I can lay out what a wealthy Tremara chariot-lord’s household really looks like! More on that as my enforced vacation continues.
As I mentioned in my last entry, I’ve been working on a way to not just model individual characters in the EIDOLON ruleset, but to model their social connections. The idea is to have a simple set of rules that I can use to describe the intricate web of relationships that any character will have, as a member of a complex society.
I think I may be getting close to what I want. Consider the following diagram:
A model for the extended character in EIDOLON
You’ll notice a certain confusion of vocabulary here; I’m not sure yet what words would be best to describe the various components of this model. Here’s the idea, though.
At the top, we have the extended character itself. Perhaps this is a single individual, perhaps it includes that person and some of her partners and dependents. Or perhaps it’s a group of unrelated characters who have agreed to throw in their fortunes together: an adventuring party, the officers of a mercenary band, the crew of a privately held starship, und so weiter. In any case, all the Members (or Household, or Company, or whatever term makes sense in the setting) will share their finances equally, sharing the same social standing score once the model is complete.
On the left, we have various forms of Income. Some of this may be External Income – simple pay for the professional occupations of the Members, say. On the other hand, the Members may also own certain Assets, pieces of wealth-producing property. Most likely these Assets will require some kind of labor to actually produce their own Income. A medieval lord will need peasants to farm his land, an ancient tycoon needs slaves to operate his mines, a starship captain needs crewmen to run his ship. These workers, employees, or vassals will be paid for their labor, but by working on the Assets they produce Income for the owners, in the form of profit.
Income is on the left, outgo on the right. The Members will probably spend some of their resources on simple consumption – food, clothing, housing, luxury goods, entertainment, all at whatever level they can afford. They may also have people hired to provide them with personal service: a wealthy woman’s impeccable butler, a warlord’s kept courtesan, a personal clerk or physician, whatever might be available and appropriate in the setting. These hirelings or henchmen are also paid, but they produce no Income or Profit, they simply work to improve the quality of life for the Members.
The Members have to make sure the books balance – they can’t spend more on luxuries and personal service than they bring in! Any given setting book written under EIDOLON would lay out various structures like this, with rules for various Assets and how they would have to be worked, and lists of available workers and henchmen.
Here’s one simple result of this system: the Social Standing score of all the Members depends solely on the amount spent on Consumption and Staff. I’m taking an almost Veblenist approach here, claiming that status in almost any society is strongly correlated to the level of conspicuous consumption. Not a bad assumption, I think, for most RPG worlds and fictional universes.
There’s one more neat feature of this model: it’s possible to nest it. The character(s) who make up one set of Members may be getting paid for their services by someone higher up. Likewise, each of the workers or henchmen that one character pays may be keeping her own Household at a lower level.
For example, I’ve started to work out the details here using features of Tremara society, the setting of The Curse of Steel. A given Tremara chariot-warrior will own many hundreds of acres of cleared land, with peasants to manage his herds of cattle and horses and raise an annual crop of barley. If we wanted to zoom in on those peasants, then each peasant household could be described at finer detail using this same model. Meanwhile, the spearmen, bards, and other specialists who live in the lord’s hall and provide service for him could also have families, dependents, or property of their own.
This is a model I think I can use extensively in worldbuilding work, in a variety of settings; it should make an interesting innovation for the EIDOLON ruleset. Progress!
