Neil,Hi. I'm going to take a breif detour here and then talk about some Ideas I got while reading your post. Welcome to the Geriatric Gamers Guild. Where the IQ runs high and the past never dies. I remeber in the late 80's learning to read a newsgroup for a while before posting to it. This way I could pick up the flavor of what they were realy talking about. I had made the mistake of responding to some minor comment as though it were the main thrust of the news-group. I see equal respect in your e-mail. As though you knew what you were going to talk about before you wrote it. A little more on e-mail for three sentences. I heard that e-mail was originally designed to allow university professors to send papers to each other, and to keep up with current research. Most e-mail now is everything but. Many public news-groups fire from the hip, and have no archives. The e-mail you have posted is about a campaign that has playtesting and clear thought.
Now back to some highlights of your post ?(TFT) Yet another old curmudgeon who plays with old things...? already in progress.
Well, I do use a 13 metal monetary system, and pretty
extensive rules for gems and jewelry. Gems have a base
price and size, and flaws with size and severity.
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that you can buy Fencing for any of the basic weapon Talents
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The Palace is cut into the southernmost mountain peak. Just south of that is the really high-class neighborhood where the nobles live, surrounded by a stone wall. No one owns any land there, though. The Thorsz grants (and revokes) leases on it. The next ring around that are the middle-class neighborhoods, surrounded by a log palisade. There's the cleaner lower-class neighborhood, and the Pitwash down by the docks where the seedier types hang out. These have earthworks around them. To the northwest is Soldier's Round, where the mercenary companies camp. The earthworks are patrolled constantly. There's a fair amount of theft and such, but not much violent crime. The Thorsz and his wizards came into the area (which was very wild then),tamed it, and founded the >city. That was 435 years ago (isn't Youth wonderful).
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Much more common are chemists and alchemists.
First of all my campaign was four hundred and something years old too, but I don?t remember the exact number. The chemists and alchemists are more common in my campaign too, but I just realized from reading about yours that I could try making their economics the dominant economic force. I break social status down by coinage. Anyone but a knight or higher is killed for using gold. There is a reward for bringing them in alive. They are used in the gambling arenas. That is the foible of my youthful campaign. I realize now that this kind of killing based economy is wrong. At the end of the summer there was a lot of posting on magical ingredients their value, and adventures to get them. What if I take it one step farther and make alchemy the power that is the backing to the power of gold. Chemist would be regular merchants. In my campaign wizards would only cooperate with alchemists. Never with chemist or mechanitions. Thus only alchemists would have gates. Or, gates that could be maintained for high volume trading. Thus the alchemists guild and the royal palace would be the same building. The same group. Consider it this way, a wizard who either a) waits for someone to have $500,000 to finance a 275 week enchantment, or b) sells countless +1 items, wouldn?t be available to monitor and repair any gate that started flickering (strength cost 10). Alchemist who were members of the guild, and who could acquire any potion through a gate, could probably afford to keep a wizard on retainer. Maybe more than one. Even the farmers would grow the things the alchemists told them to. Thanks for the post and the campaign outline. Its almost like the book ?how I did it? by Dr Frankenstein. Its giving me ideas . . . Oh, I caught great visuals from the setting description.
David Michael Grouchy II _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ===== Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body "unsubscribe tft"