Re: (TFT) GM castle choices

[Pasha and or Rick Smith <pnrsmith@istar.ca>]

Hi Cas, everyone,
	In my campaign I LIKE castles so I've gone to 
some trouble to give them better defenses against PC's 
with magic items.  The point of my essay was to show 
that using the default rules castles stood on shaky
ground. 
	I was curious if any other GM's had PC's who
specialized in castle busting.  

	I have a very long running campaign (some 
of my players have been playing for 12 real years in 
will most have been playing the same characters for
6+ years).  The players have reached the stage where 
taking out the enemies castle or building a safe haven
are real concerns.

	
	Jay suggested (a quick summary here) that 
the prices vary widely and basically anytime a PC tries
to get a lot of some thing (metal plates, Universal 
Solvents) the price jumps sharply.  I am not happy
with that suggestion for two reasons:
	First my PC's are very mobile.  They have
gates, they have flying carpets, they have Long 
Distance Teleports.  (In my campaign I have put
real limitations on all three of these spells to make
travelling magically more difficult, and the PC's
have anted up the big bucks or made the effort
to get around most of these limitations.)  If they
need a lot of U. Solvent, they will simply go to all the
major cities in the Neutral Kingdoms, the Brennens,
the Allied Border States, to Caris as well as hitting
up Medagalin, a PC, who runs a town sized complex
of dozens of Chemical laboratories.

	Second, I have run campaigns where the
price of everything has to be negotiated all the 
time and my players and I are bored with it.  The 
price of things may vary (and do) but most of the
time the prices are something like, "...around here
items are price list +5% because the local lord, has
high taxes."  I feel the price list should be a good
average.   Since my players are creators and 
sellers as well as buyers, the prices have to be 
fair both ways.

	Cas was mentioning using Elementals with 
magic picks and the like to lower the price of 
construction.  Be careful what you wish for!  For a 
while I used such rules and the PC's were quick to 
take advantage.  Now such techniques are profitable
to use but not overwhelmingly so.  For that matter, I 
would rather my lords (who are peasant rich and 
cash poor) be better able to afford a nice castle than 
the PC's and wizards who happen to have the Invoke
Elemental spell, Open Tunnel spell, etc.  

	Economically, peasants have a rough enough
time as it is.  Do you really want to make their labor
even less valuable?

	Rick
	

>Thing is, Rick,
>a GM has 2 choices; either ditch castles in his 'world' a uneconomical or
>give make up some reason as to why they are valuable. e.g. not so expensive
>to build if you use giants building the walls and dwarves building the
>dungeons; magic maybe rare, so most marauders are still faced with a ruddy
>great wall and battlements; maybe a dragon would help carrying blocks on top
>of the battlements in trade for learning a spell or two (or a couple of
>dozen head of cattle) from a local wizard. etc.
>Also remember that earlier societies were VERY polarised with wealth, just
>think of the feasts the rich are said to have eaten 600 years ago, which
>indexed would cost a small fortune (considering masses of ingredients and
>where they came from) etc. So that the extravavagance is justified.
>
>A castle was also of psychological significance, standing tall an imposing
>above the
>landscape, so all the plebs would look at it in wonder, what else could
>replace this? Rulers have always built thingies like the pyramids, the
>parthenon , the eiffel tower, the Petronas Towers (just built in Kuala
>Lumpur, the world's tallest towers) as symbols of their power and prowess.
>
>
>I guess elves may have a set of giant fused multilevel banyan tree-type
>castle thingies, and dwarves would have great underground halls...both
>pretty mundane.....................
>Cas
>
>
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