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(TFT) Goblin work
Been talking about Mr. Gilmore more and more...
Between that, and other corospondance I'm gonna take a break to post this.
I'm trying to sketch out what I'm doing with Goblin right now.
If anybody has any suggestions I'd like to hear 'em but it's still together in a rough enough form that I can run it as a group of secenarios w/o griping, and everybody shows up...
More or less anyway.
LOL
Population control is actually pretty simple.
First you've got to feed them.
I tied the food stuff to Goblin for now.
The goblins are hunter-gather feeders (night cycle), and the humans are agrarian (day cycle).
The goblins cycle is strongly dependent on the deer population of the area, the herds of which use moon cycles for
migratory timings.
As there is a peak/trought cycle involved in natural deer populations, and the goblin pop. has only been in the mountains
steadaly for a few generations, the increased dependance upon the deer population via hunting has caused the cycles highs
and lows to both vary more greatly in deer numbers and to increase the frequency between them.
In a choice between slow starvation and rading the human setelments..., the King has to consider carefully as a
disastorious raid could spell slow death for the whole tribe.
(actually it IS slow death for the whole tribe just via agrareian vs. hunter/gatherer growth rates, but well
planed/executed raids should keep the humans down for many generations)
The humans are concerned about crop ratios, partly a condition of the overall climate and partly of the humans state of
overall knowledge of agraculture and associated technology like astronomy.
I have the yeald stuff up already but in general these medieval guys are needing 1:3, praying for 1:4, and hurting badly at
1:2.
The Count (assuming he's a PC) is concerned with generating a profit via the economey he can develop, almost compleatly
centered around grain (wheat) at first, but the map can be improved.
I've got the county having to import it's iron from the Barron for example.
Uhhh
"1. Medieval horseshoes usually required six nails and weighed 10-15 oz. Modern horseshoes, which are recognized to be of
much higher quality and are perhaps a bit heavier than those used during the Middle Ages, last 200 to 250 mi. With these
figures in mind, it is rather simple to calculate some rather mundane details. For example, when William the Conqueror was
encamped at Dives-surMer for a month during August and early September 1066, he had the command responsibility to assure
that from two to three thousand horses were properly shod. (See below, n. 34.) Since each horse would be required to train
a bare minimum of 75 mi. per week (see below, n. 32), at least one set of shoes, by conservative estimate, was required for
each animal while at Dives. Thus a total of 8,000-12,000 shoes were needed for this month alone, and somewhere in the
neighborhood of 50,000-75,000 horseshoe nails at about 1/2 oz. each, a total on average of at least 8 tons of iron that had
been forged by skilled workers into shoes and nails. Assuming that an equal number of horses needed shoeing each day,
William's herd required the services of no fewer than ten blacksmiths, each working a ten hour day every day. If we
consider also the vast amount of wood or charcoal required for the forges, the hours of woodcutter-labor, the carts needed
to transport the wood, and so on through the work-process, we can begin to form some idea of the great complications
intrinsic to a major military operation. The systematic integration of all these elements in order to avoid a fatal "snafu"
was no small task. Concerning horseshoes, see Germain Carnat, Le fer a cheval a travers l'histoire et l'archeologie (Paris,
1951), pp. 64-65, who weighs used shoes. G. Tylden, Horses and Saddlery (London, 1965), tends to be more useful."
Saltpetr Martha
Pins John
Goblins seem to be doing most of the digging/mineing while the humans seem to be more concerned with the top of the map,
building and roads and fields.
Of course, PC's might wanna go prospecting up in the mountains, and depending where on the earth I drop this map some of
the hills may have a little mineral content.
The politics is basicly Nomic, but the charter for the humans and goblins are awfully diffrent with one a republic and the
other a tyranay.
The humans charter their irregular (not everyday training) Units through the village they originate from.
Professional Units charter directly from the noble that supports them.
I'm thinking of a goblin Shaman posistion to bother the King.
As per Goblin, Units only Move/Action with a Figure with the Leadership Talent, and this is the Talents new definition.
I've had good effect with a series of battles based off of WWI where the players were in a particular Unit (a chit on the
county map) and a particulary weak Leader was moving them around.
I have a Downtime list of what's going on each month as far as the planting and harvest go.
I've babbled about fame/fortune/happiness a lot, but I use it for the happiness equation which is the overall populations
equivalant of moral and a Figures version of alignment for Reaction purposes.
Consider a gladiator.
The experience system is built on combat, ergo a combat character can't help but be in it's eleament.
However, with a f/f/h formula, I can asign a kind of motivation to the Figure that is fairly straight forward as exp awards
are weighted via the ratios.
So a gladiator with a high fame would make the most exp when being watched by larger and larger crowds (colosseum a
practical limit w/o optical assistance (opera glasses, etc.))
A gladiator with a high fortune would make the biggest exp awards for the biggest purse.
A gladiator with a high happiness (combat) is most rewarded for fighting.
Now I mean alignment because a Figure with a high happiness (combat) in a society that has a happiness (peaceful) is gonna
have a rougher time getting exp than other Figures.
Of course, you could put the gladiators in the army...
Anyway, I don't have to deal with a world population of 500mil til 1650, and it's still 200 years til a bil.
AD 1 is only 200mil and it's only a few generations till Teotihuacan, a top 5 city @ ~120,000 (old fig. I think I've seen
as high as 200,000 at the top end)
Rome at 500,000ish at the top?
Depending on location and tech, 70 to 90% of the pop are peasent farmers.
A lot more aborigionals too, though the biggest tribes practiced some form of agraculture.
I've tried to peg the scale off of the amount of land required to run the farms required to produce the bags of grain (not
gold) required to feed the population of the county as a whole.
In square hexes I've got 5120 hexes across, or 6656m across each hex.
They give a movement of 10 hexes per turn.
I run a fit walking speed of ~5km per hour, making 10 hexes a 13 and a half hour day w/o meals or camp setup/breakdown.
Moving them faster, not feeding them, bedding them poorly, etc. has effects on moral and overall fST, just like not useing
them in the manner they chartered (signd up) for.
Uhhhh,
The Squad level stuff is a visual thing for the maps. i.e. just a little more detailed tactical view, mainly for secenarios
dealing with player groups w/o Leadership.
I mean, at "~"10 farms a hex and a 3 field rotation, the location can end up being important.
I'll just scan and upload to the silly site.
It'll be LOADS easier than the thousand word thing.
At normal production levels, each field should produce 6500 thalers (widgets,whatevers) profit, on a ~65,000 lb. surplus of
flour, or 10 lbs. flour per thaler, bearing in mind that ~2 lbs. per person per day at daily min. req. via calories.
We'll talk inflation later.
I'm still messing with overall f/f/h for the county vs. the Barons tribute, and the Counts taxes vs. the towns f/f/h.
I'm thinking 4 Barons, each holding 4 Counties of around 15,000pop for 16 total Counties of about 250,000pop total for the
kingdom.
With each Baron suporting ~5000 profesional troops the kingdoms pro-army comes in around 20,000 outta 175,000 non-farmers
at best leaving just over 150,000 non-farmers.
There are going to be REAL problems with labor here.
As for CRTs' a lot of that depends on how weapons are described.
I've been useing that grid thing and moments of force along a 3rd class lever.
I'll point out that if I make the regions only iron foundary the province of the Baron, then I expect the county folk use a
lot of spears, quarterstaffs, etc. while the Count's pros may find equipment maintanance diffacult, at least the metal
stuff if they try and revolt.
Oy, that's a tight little strangle hold...
I'm not sure a player would even know about this unless the Count has a big red P on his forehead.
50 field hexes * 10 farms per field = 500 farms requiring about 2000 field animals.
4 mounted Units and 9 leaders is between 150 to 200 warhorses (?).
A minimum of 10 (unhappy probably) smiths and 8 tons of trafic per month just for the critters.
(are pesants also required to learn Driver as well as Farmer? If so then the fellas driving the crops outta the fields are
gonna be the best Drivers, but if you take the burden off the peasents then you list Driver on the Job Table (if
advertised) and it'll take at least 1000 non-peasents to run the carts at harvest...)
I've got average population/familys/homes for the village and town hexes, but it'd be more intresting to have individual
and unique maps for the various hexes.
Ergo Google Earth.
I've got the basic farm as a FarmUnit, and don't worry about colapsed scales until the players get there, but in a
secenario like Goblin I think you have to have all the unique stuff maped down scale from the start.
In a full-blown campaign I can burn a session or so in travel if they just head off into the wild blue yonder.
Food issues can stop a group from that option quick.
Even if they do, I usually can make the travel work well enough for what's left of the session that I can limp her down to
Downtime and spend some buildtime on the area they'er heading to/through.
I try to go a scale or two up to start with, but that dosen't always work if I start 'em "freeform" where they make choices
that describe their character.
I only start newbies that way though.
Kinda like the old Ultima trick with the card reading.
Not a bad game opener for its day.
Three coins in the fountain...
Flip a coin (yes or no/heads or tails).
Is ST involved?
Flip a coin.
Is DX involved?
Flip a coin.
Is IQ involved?
Assuming an average of ~10 per stat.
ST DX IQ
yes yes yes = ~10 + ~10 + ~10 = 30 / 3 (normal effort) = ~10 on 3d6
yes yes no = ~10 + ~10 = 20 / 3 = ~6 (~7 unless rnd down)
y n y
n y y
yes no no = ~10 / 3 = ~3
n y n
n n y
No No No = 0 / 3 = 0 (fumble (?))
Of course with a 8,8,8+8 build 16 / 3 = ~5 which stands better against 6 if one gets lucky and yeses the stacked stat
(1/512).
8 hurts though, rounded to 2 on 3d6.
Too gimped to succeed.
~34 + ~34 + ~34 = 102 / 10 = ~10
~34 + ~34 = 68 / 10 = ~6
~34 / 10 = ~3
With 35 being the average on 10d6.
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