Re: (TFT) Hirst Arts Melee/Wizard Arena

["maou_tsaou1@netzero.net" <maou_tsaou1@netzero.net>]

The following is from Pirates!, a interesting dead offering from the gamelords at MPS
The manual was FANTASTIC! and I used it as the basis for my Campaign.
Here's the article that pushed the thing from what I understand.


ANOTHER AGE

Around 1500, when Spain discovered the Caribbean basin, Europe was
just emerging from the Middle Ages. Most people were peasants, farmers
scratching out a bare living form the soil, ruled by a small but
powerful class of aristocratic landlords. Some people lived in the
towns and cities founded in the Middle Ages, but townspeople remained
a small percentage of the population.  Their trade and industry only
made a marginal impact on the lives of the vast majority. A rare few
made their living "on the road" as peddlers, beggars, sailors and
thieves. To the majority they were a source of tales, or warnings for
children ("Be nice or Black Bart the highwayman will eat you for
dinner!")

The period from 1550 to 1650 is sometimes termed "the Iron Century"
because ordinary people's lives became so harsh. Europe's population
had been growing rapidly since the early 1400s. Around 1500 the number
of people began to exceed the amount of available farmland. Trade and
manufacture had developed sufficiently so some peasants with little or
no land could do part-time weaving (the source of much clothes in
Europe), or move to towns and cities to seek employment in business
centered there.

These enterprises could absorb only some of the surplus population.
So, some young men found employment in mercenary armies that served
competing causes in the growing Catholic-Protestant conflict.
Unfortunately this employment did more damage than good, for armies
then were not as polite as today. Soldiers lived off the land, ruining
the farms and livelihoods of the peasants. This destroyed the economic
substructure upon which all depended.  The intense religious hatreds
added an extra measure of ferocity to the struggles, international or
civil, causing devastation and death wherever war occurred.

As the 16th Century came to an end, overpopulation, war, and the
growing taxes brought unprecedented poverty to most areas of Europe.
Villages were torn between the lucky few who had enough land to
support their families, and the insecure majority whose survival
depended on a fortunate growing season and sufficient extra work.
Swarms of paupers huddled in slum quarters of towns, while beggars and
brigands infested the countryside. Vagabonds, the rootless poor,
became an unmanageable problem, straining Europe's charitable
institutions and swamping its courts.

Brigands were beggars who stole instead of asking. They often fared
better as a result. They were just one group of many criminal elements
who found in lawlessness an escape from grinding poverty. In towns
they practiced burglary and larceny; in the countryside they worked as
highwaymen and thieves; and at sea they operated as pirates. Thieves
worked alone or in small bands, brigands in moderates sized bands,
while pirates operated in larger groups because they needed to crew a
sizable ship. Sometimes pirates even worked in fleets of several
ships.

The Mediterranean had long known pirates, who went so far as to
organize mini-kingdoms on the Barbary coast of North Africa. The New
World opened new opportunities for piracy. But whether they operated
as thieves, brigands, or pirates, all these men struggled to survive
in a harsh and unfeeling world by preying on others. They
redistributed wealth from those who had it but could not protect it,
to those who didn't have it but had the power to seize it.

A brigand or pirate might begin his career in order to survive, but he
often continued it to prosper. In a society torn by religious hatred
and war, with governments still weak and uncertain, success bred
success and power respected power. A brigand band could join an army
as a group of mercenaries. A pirate might well drift in and out of
service of a government. Governments found it expedient to use pirates
against their enemies, while pirates found it profitable to ply their
trade with a royal seal of approval, a privateer's Letter of Marque.
Perversely, a pirate might find himself fighting alongside a Count or
an Earl, championing the cause of a king about whose goals and needs
he knew little and cared less. However, notable service could bring
notable rewards: wealth, land, legitimacy, and perhaps a title of
nobility! A man who began as a poverty-stricken nobody might rise to
rub elbows with the old aristocratic families who had led the realm
for generations.

The mounting cycles of war and poverty climaxed in 1618 with the
outbreak of the Thirty Years War. What began as a religious strive in
Germany became a constitutional struggle as the Habsburgs tried to
consolidate their hold on that land. Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and
ultimately France intervened to help the German Protestants frustrate
this plan. The international melee turned vast areas of Germany into
wasteland. Entrepreneurs stepped in where kings and emperors were
weak. They created huge mercenary armies that swarmed across the
countryside like a plague of locusts. This was the heyday of the
mercenary and the freebooter, as soldiers and captains sold their
services to the highest bidder and switched sides when the time seemed
ripe.

But even the greatest of the mercenaries was defeated in battle by a
well- organized national army (that of King Gustavus Adolphus of
Sweden), recruited through national conscription and supported by
national taxes. The French also used a national army fashioned after
the Swedish, and the English Civil War, which raged separately on that
tormented isle, was won by Cromwell's "New Model Army" formed on the
same principles. As the 17th Century approached its midpoint, the age
of the mercenary and pirate was waning in Europe. Within a few decades
this new national power and organization would extend into the
Caribbean, driving out the buccaneers and pirates.

The rise of national governments brought new taxes, oppressive new
central administrations, and government bureaucrats whose powers
rivaled that of the old nobility. A series of revolutions in Spain,
Portugal, Italy, and France, and near-revolutionary constitutional
conflicts elsewhere showed how the lower classes and local nobles
resisted the new order. But the powerful national governments emerged
victorious. No longer would the state tolerate independent agents
using the techniques of war. Armies were firmly under royal control,
disciplined and supplied from depots. Navies were directed to put down
piracy as well as to fight with other countries. The France of Louis
XIV, the Sun King, epitomized this new order.

Meanwhile, the colonies around the Caribbean were no longer serving as
silver mines for the Spanish Empire. Instead, the new English and
French colonies, the "Sugar Island", formed the cornerstone of a
triangular trade network involving Europe and Africa. This was the
most important of many economic developments that helped Europe
sustain its growing population in the later part of the 17 and 18th
Centuries. Conditions were still hard for many, but prosperity grew as
the economy found new forms and new energies.

This wealth was little endangered by pirates, for long before it
reached its peak the naval vessels and royal courts of the various
European kingdoms had all but eliminated piracy from the high seas.
The age of the freebooter was gone. The age of the bureaucrat had
begun.

- Edward Bever, PhD (History)



Well if it was good enough to inspire the MPS boys I figured it was good enough to inspire me.
Besides, the time period is spot on to what SJ describes for Cidri tech.

Anybody wanna talk about boats?

And poop.

They are inextricably linked.

Like so;
By the late 1700's the Mechanicians were messing with steam. 
By the late 1800's (about 5 generation's) steamships had nearly replaced sailing ships.
Nearly.
A steamship depends upon coaling depots, and the west coast of South America has few available.
The west coast of South America did have large areas where vast flocks of seagulls and other birds pooped for generations.
The Packets and Clippers found service well into the 1900's on the Cape Nitrate run.
(Preussen 1902)
WWI burnt up what was left of those deposits.
WWII burnt up the rest of these natural poop deposits in Oceania.
(Gazetteer of the World (1936) British dependencies in Oceania. Nauru, or Pleasant Island. Formerly German, now administered by Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Small coral island; has valuable deposits of phosphates.
Not no more.
A World War takes a lot of poop.
The U.S. used up most of our richer grade iron ore for that one, (difference twixt hematite and magnetite).

Anyway, Putting the thing on a lot of islands creates separate little "micro" economies that mimic some of the stuff that goes down in Traveler.
As a matter of fact, I use an old text management game called Star Trader to generate my starting lists for goods.
Many Buildings function to manipulate Primary goods into manufactured goods or similar production functions.
Each nation has a limited number of ships.
New ships can be produced, but build times are LONG and there are no shipyards out here in the islands either.
Doesn't mean you can't build a boat.

Anyway, this might give a clue as to what I'm trying to do economically.
Start 'em with Cogs and Carracks and drop new designs at a fairly steady basis, faster during wartime.

the Mechanicians ain't got around to watches yet...


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