Re: (TFT) football stuff

["Jay Carlisle" <Maou_Tsaou@charter.net>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John"
> "Razeing the fields means something . . ."
>
> Indeed it does!
> It means hunger and poverty.  Enough means deprivation, migration, and 
> death.
> It means the cost of food goes up, and the impact of the social contract 
> goes down, absent a strong organizing force.
> It may also lead to an aid mission for a party of adventurers.  Either 
> official, or personal, to help friends and family.
> That's the bit that I care about in my game, not so much the number of 
> crates of apples lost, though YMMV of course.

YMMV.... your meliu may vary? :-)

I also care about the dynamics of the overall gameworld.

The way razeing works in my game is pretty simple.

Because I draw my hexes on graph paper, it's pretty simple for me to take a 
Section Township Range map and draw out hexes on the square mile grid. Each 
hex comes in at 16 square miles. Cities like NY propper come in at around 
600+ square miles or about 40 hexes which is half a battle-map or half a 
page. Each square is "worked" by the city population after the manner of 
Civilization. I dont force Civ's "fat cross" but rather limit workable 
squares by travel times. Rivers, roads, gate spells, etc. extend the 
workable area of the city. Buildings in the city can allow diffrent primary 
production resources to be worked, like a 'saw mill' allows timber to be 
harvested from forrested squares. New technologies can also allow new 
resources, like 'Iron Working' allows iron mineing. Working those resources 
puts the requiste Jobs on the Jobs Table in the city. It dosen't matter what 
resources are available within working distance of town if there isn't the 
population to work them, although cities in the same "kingdom" with 
unemployed population might loose some of them to the underpopulated city.

"Industrial" cities become intresting productions. Say the kingdom has 
discovered Iron Working this generation. Suddenly those mountains to the 
west aint just a travel barrier anymore. (prospecting makes for intresting 
adventure) A mineing town in the mountians isn't likely to have enough 
airable squares to feed itself and is probably gonna need caravans of food 
and other goods which require guards and the traffic will probably require 
road building, which is more population to fill the Jobs and those guys 
gotta eat too which means more caravans... and of course, back in the 
'frontier days' of the kingdom all the natives/monsters were driven from the 
airable land into these very hills, where the lack of airable land causes 
even a small population growth among the monsters to bring on famine, a fair 
enough reason for them to raid fields and caravans. Of course, they arn't 
doing the Roman sow salt in the earth so nothing will grow there again type 
razeing...

A group of people that spends turns for a specific purpose (no matter how 
silly) is a Unit. Units can be either formal or informal. A formal Unit has 
a Charter extended from the kingdom (it's a card in the kingdoms power 
structure) and often gets income/support from the state as well. A Units 
Charter describes it's duties (Actions it performs) and benifits (pay, 
etc.). I basicly use the idea that the city production interface from Civ is 
how the citys Charter is set. Access to those Actions is through the Nomic 
rules of the government. A despot king might have little or no opposition 
(votes opposite from the king in Nomic) against his Actions, while a king 
over a long and established nobility may be king only as long as he can 
maintain the support of the majority of the nobility reguardless of what 
he'd like to do. Bobby Bruce in Braveheart springs to mind...

Nomic is how I handel politics and law. The Nomic rules describe who 
participates in governmet Actions and how. Nomic players Actions involve 
making law, like no magic, and policy, such as how to spend tax revenue or 
at what rate to tax the population. In very democratic socities just about 
every action in Civ requires some kind of Nomic vote.

Razeing, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes... I use Conways Life on the 
squares for land that isn't worked due to stuff like the plague or a war 
that drains away a large segment of the population.

Take care of your population and keep them happy and you'll have a strong 
base to draw from. Instead of researching mass-fireball for your Unit of 
wizards why not research plumbing so you can build bath houses in town and 
increase your populations halflife.

As to those apples.

I use a combination of Transport Tycoon and Space Trader for building 
caravans and developing trade for merchant type Figures. Transport Tycoon is 
the model for actual road/train/gates routes building. The quicker the 
communication/transportation system, the quicker a Unit/group of PC's can 
respond to razeing say. Focusing on an ambitious transportation project can 
provide many adventure opps. "da camptown ladies sing this song... doo dah! 
doo dah!" I use some of the Space Trader algorythems for generating teratary 
production widgets. Widgets are what I call trade goods that are of value 
but of no real application as a tool or item of utility. The vast majority 
of these items are luxury goods. There's no accounting for taste, so I use 
the Space Trader stuff to generate these type of goods. Things like a style 
of pottery decoration or a particular kind of cloak pin that becomes the 
next "hot" item. Owning a caravan or ship, etc. and travelling a trade 
triangle can be quite the adventure, especally running an acre of apples up 
to irontown. The hill goblins have been restless lately you hear tell.
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"