Economics

In pursuing Prodigy as a 'gritty' setting, I've set out to create a macroeconomic system similar to Alexis' on his blog Tao of DnD (the system is detailed here).  Summarizing Alexis' ideas, there are four major steps to creating a functioning economic system within a fantasy world.

Step 1: Using your detailed map, determine the distance between each trading center.

Step 2: Determine what raw materials and manufactured goods you wish to track with the system.

Step 3: Decide what each region produces.

Step 4: Run a host of calculations (detailed in the above post) to find the price of each good in each city.

The key to this system is step 3, determining the references for each trade good based upon location.  A reference refers to the production of the associated trade good compared with all other goods manufactured in that region - i.e. an area renowned for wheat farming will probably have a higher reference value for wheat than oats, for example.  Since the number of references is directly used to determine pricing, having a large number of references is hugely important to stabilize the price (if I have 1 reference for gold and 2 for iron, adding a 3rd reference for iron means that the iron produced is 3 times more valuable than the gold produced - the jump from 2 to 3 is significantly more important than the jump from, say, 300 to 301 [think of the difference in the fractions 1/2 vs 1/3 and 1/300 vs 1/301]).  We'll return to this momentarily.

Now, Prodigy is a wholly made-up world.  I have conferred with geology friends about how the landmasses would likely have formed in my region and the materials likely found there, but I am responsible for populating it and creating peoples and cultures deep enough to support sandbox play.  I've cheated by making the effective history of my world fairly short, 130 years or so, but I still have a great deal to create.  To help me out, I used the Welsh Piper Demographics tool (found here) to get an estimate on the number of villages, towns, cities, and metropolises in each region of the world of Prodigy as well as the populations of each site.  This gave me 814 locations to plot on my map, discounting villages and smaller settlements.  That's 814*(814-1)=661,782 distinct calculations just to complete step 1 (accounting for my ability to ignore calculating the distance from each location to itself, which is of course 0).  It's an excellent goal, but I want to get it off the ground in at least a limited fashion within a year or two.  So, I chose to simplify the method: right now I am just mapping cities and metropolises within a single region of my world (the homes of some 300,000 people), which comes down to 19 cities at the moment (only 342 distance calculations).

Now, Alexis has the advantage of an encyclopedia from which to draw his trade data.  Since Prodigy is wholly made-up, I have to supply all of that information as realistically as I can manage.  So, after researching appropriate climates based upon the geography of the region and crops grown by regions with that climate, I have a list of resources produced at each location.

However, it is at this point we run into a problem with Step 4, the calculations.  Remember, this system requires a large number of references to keep pricing relatively stable.  This small region is a microcosm of the larger system-to-be, so I want some idea of the prices.  This means that I need to take my 19 locations and somehow come out with a larger number of references than I would normally generate.  Now, I could add the next tier of locations (113 towns), but this will significantly increase the complexity of my mapping (and as I'm currently using Hexographer, I don't have the space to easily add 113 icons without increasing hex size, which increases my map size to something even harder to use, since the program does not zoom very well... I'll probably switch to Publisher soon) and make it harder to appraise the system overall.

This brings me to the reason why I'm writing this post: a new way of thinking about references and production.  Essentially, references act as a rating of that location's production capacity/emphasis on the affiliated trade good.  Each city on my map has control/power over the surrounding area and represents the economic power of the entire region.  If the area does not produce the good, 0.  If the region can self-sustain, but no more, then 1.  If the region exports limited quantities, 2, and if the region is a major exporter of that good, 3.  This is further magnified by the economic power of each city - some cities represent larger or multiple areas; for example, the city of Khvoy encompasses both itself and the settlements around Lake Shmarn, while Degredado represents itself, Lake Israshar, and the entire Confederacy.  Degredado exports barley, but since it represents 3 areas, each of which produce barley, the barley reference for Degredado is 6.

This modification places a much larger emphasis on the urban centers of the world, since each location has fairly high numbers.  It's not a perfect solution - there will still be volatility as I add new locations, but it will be less than if the reference numbers were less.  And, when I get to the step of adding in the towns, I may keep this or return to Alexis' base model.  We'll see how the numbers play out.