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Post by zoomfarg on Oct 8, 2016 23:33:39 GMT -8
Hey folks, more shenanigans regarding my upcoming campaign. The campaign will use verb/noun magic from thaumatology, and I want to make sure magic more or less fits in a feudal economy, instead of entirely disrupting it. I'm trying to figure out if mages are more effective at making grain than farmers. To begin, have to figure out how they make grain (either with simple castings or enchanted items). It's a pretty niche question, so I'll just post the link here, to the SJ Games forums.
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Post by greatwyrm on Oct 9, 2016 6:55:18 GMT -8
The other thing to consider is the labor economy. Assuming mages are less common than farmers, is that a good use for their time? To stop a famine, maybe. Otherwise, probably not. This would be like a police force sending all their SWAT team to write parking tickets or a hospital asking their brain surgeons to double as janitors.
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Post by uncommonman on Oct 9, 2016 8:13:35 GMT -8
The other thing to consider is the labor economy. Assuming mages are less common than farmers, is that a good use for their time? To stop a famine, maybe. Otherwise, probably not. This would be like a police force sending all their SWAT team to write parking tickets or a hospital asking their brain surgeons to double as janitors. Magic could be useful during some part of farming. Harvest is a very labour intensive period where magic could be used. Also magic can be useful for safeguarding seeds from pests. I can see a type of low powered mage traveling from farm to farm that is used like a tractor before tractors where on every farm.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 10, 2016 3:48:37 GMT -8
What separated medevil economies from modern ones is a lack of cheap materials. While today we try and limit the amount of labor that goes into a product (as that is often more expensive than the material), back then labor was the cheap component. Even if one mage could replace 100 workers, there are likely more workers to spare than mages.
Mages would likely fill positions as advisors, alchemists, doctors, etc.
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Oct 10, 2016 4:02:33 GMT -8
Need to keep in mind how fundamentally different a medeival economy is too - there isn't instant flow of information and nowhere near the mobility of labour we have now.
Their economies are wildly innefficient by modern standards and many assumptions we take for granted simply don't apply.
Sure, supply and demand is still a thing, but it's effects are more local and don't aggregate well across geographies. There are basic things we consider fairly fundamental to a working market that just aren't there.
Economies of scale, specialisation of labour, the very basis of money.....
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Post by zoomfarg on Oct 18, 2016 17:15:03 GMT -8
So after working on this problem for awhile, I think I figured out that I need to adjust the "weight affected" table in Thaumatology. Editing the table not only eliminates the economic concerns, it also prevents PC abuse.
With a single "create _______" working, a single mage can produce 50 billion lbs of material... even if that's not permanent, it's still pretty game-wrecky... I can imagine a PC conjuring 50 bil lbs of something to squish stuff.
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Oct 18, 2016 17:22:40 GMT -8
Even if the dirt only hangs out for a minute, it's done it's job... I don't remember which fantasy book series it was from (I'm thinking Sword of Truth), but in one of them they were up against a magic resistant army (I can't remember why they were magic resistant, an enemy wizard that cancelled all their magic spells maybe), and they wrecked them by grinding up a fuckton of glass by hand, and then just using some wind magic to pick it up and fucking blind everyone. Bleeding eyes everywhere. ☐ Not rekt ☐ Rekt ☑ Tyrannosaurus Rekt
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Post by zoomfarg on Oct 18, 2016 17:38:01 GMT -8
Bleeding eyes everywhere. ☐ Not rekt ☐ Rekt ☑ Tyrannosaurus Rekt Holy shit... yeah that'll wreck real fast. Also sorry for editing my post out from under you. I'm trying to wrap my head aroudn 50,000,000,000 lbs of stuff, so I'm trying to convert it to a water volume... I'll be back in a minute.
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Post by zoomfarg on Oct 18, 2016 17:43:51 GMT -8
So that much water would be a cube 300m^3. I think. Arithmetic is not my strong suit.
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Oct 18, 2016 19:07:55 GMT -8
Also sorry for editing my post out from under you. I'm trying to wrap my head aroudn 50,000,000,000 lbs of stuff, so I'm trying to convert it to a water volume... I'll be back in a minute. You'd have a better time if you convert to metric - which has some assumptions specifically around the weight and volume of water. IE: 1 milliliter of water takes up 1 cubic centimeter of volume.
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Post by uncommonman on Oct 18, 2016 19:59:52 GMT -8
Also sorry for editing my post out from under you. I'm trying to wrap my head aroudn 50,000,000,000 lbs of stuff, so I'm trying to convert it to a water volume... I'll be back in a minute. You'd have a better time if you convert to metric - which has some assumptions specifically around the weight and volume of water. IE: 1 milliliter of water takes up 1 cubic centimeter of volume. 100 cubic cm = 1 liter = 1 cubic dm (1dm = 10cm)= 1 kg
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Oct 18, 2016 20:18:09 GMT -8
You'd have a better time if you convert to metric - which has some assumptions specifically around the weight and volume of water. IE: 1 milliliter of water takes up 1 cubic centimeter of volume. 1000 cubic cm = 1 liter = 1 cubic dm (1dm = 10cm)= 1 kg It's.... It's beautiful.... **wipes away a manly tear**~but I think I just fixed it for you~
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Post by uncommonman on Oct 19, 2016 5:26:31 GMT -8
1000 cubic cm = 1 liter = 1 cubic dm (1dm = 10cm)= 1 kg It's.... It's beautiful.... **wipes away a manly tear**~but I think I just fixed it for you~ Yes you did. And: 10mm= 1cm, 100cm = 1m, 1000m = 1km
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Post by jonas on Oct 20, 2016 0:14:17 GMT -8
We Europeans usually describe the metric system as a wonderful symphony that transforms water into wine and hobos into gentlemen. It's scary... but in a beautiful way. :'-)
Regarding magic and farming, I usually go the Pratchett way to explain how magic effects mundane things like economy and politics; the only reason people study the arcane arts is to not having to do any real work and just stay indoors and grow fat from overeating. "I didn't study comparative rune methodology for seven years to grow wheat!"
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Post by chronovore on Apr 22, 2017 0:52:14 GMT -8
Hey folks, more shenanigans regarding my upcoming campaign. The campaign will use verb/noun magic from thaumatology, and I want to make sure magic more or less fits in a feudal economy, instead of entirely disrupting it. I'm trying to figure out if mages are more effective at making grain than farmers. To begin, have to figure out how they make grain (either with simple castings or enchanted items). It's a pretty niche question, so I'll just post the link here, to the SJ Games forums. LTTP, but oddly, this very topic was on my mind just a couple weeks ago, and I realized that most of these spells would break the basic agrarian economy common to faux-medieval fantasy settings. My current game has refocused on only small, mostly folklore-driven hedge-magic due to "arcane" magic being controversial after A Very Big Spell Went Really Wrong (/tvtropes) so I am keeping farmers and their role intact. Also, big shout-out to the dickhead in the SJG thread who called you out for using "Magic" in the thread subject because it's not related to the book. Pretty sure Magic as a resource offers different colleges of magic and ways to create new spells. I would have sworn I remembered a GURPS area spell that also enhanced land for farming, but I can't find it now.
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