Guilds

For those of you who don't know, the time period referred to as 'medieval' stretches a rather huge swathe of time, beginning in the 5th century and ending in the 15th (thanks, Wikipedia!).  Lasting over a thousand years means that there are some rather significant differences between the early Middle Ages and the late Middle Ages in both technology and infrastructure.  For example, the Catholic Church did not dominate all of Europe until after Charlemagne's campaigns united Europe in the late 8th and early 9th centuries, and Luther's 99 Theses were nailed to the church door in the early 1500s.

On an economic level, over the Middle Ages, we see the rise of the guild system, which is essentially the beginning of the idea of a middle class.  In pure feudalism, there are two classes of people - the leader/protector class and the peasant/serf class.  As feudalism developed, the tiers expanded: the leader tier gained additional lower-status ranks (King to Duke to Marquess to Earl to Viscount to Baron in the English system), while the peasant group grew upwardly with the rise of towns and the increasing need for dedicated craftspeople.

The urban framework was one of the most important developments of this period (as opposed to the castle-town system wherein a central point of defense was surrounded by a few necessary industries (metalworkers, etc.) and enough fields to support the community), and I'm defining it as a densely populated geographical location where the primary occupation of the majority of its denizens is not agriculture in some form or another - that is, townspeople make their living through activities other than farming/food production.  Usually, this alternative occupation was a craft or trade of some kind where the individual bartered their particular skillset for coin (and then for food) - joiners built furniture, coopers barrels, masons foundations, etc.  Obviously, furniture, barrels, and foundations were made long before these dedicated craftspeople came along - most folks had enough know-how to cobble together what they needed.  What these artisans offered was an easier and (theoretically) higher-quality product allowing these noncrafters more time to devote to their primary trade.  We see the ramifications of this today when most of us have trouble repairing the utilities that enable our way of living (fixing a microwave oven, toilet, etc.) without calling an 'expert'.  The trades of plumber, electrician, and so on are the descendants of this artisan tradition.  Cooking is the most recent trade to be appropriated by craftspeople - many people still know how to cook, but that number is decreasing.

Returning to the Middle Ages, these artisans formed organizations to fix prices, control the market, and disadvantage competing groups (a fusion of union and CEO).  Due to this, guilds gained rather considerable economic power very quickly, enough to influence the rising judicial system to pass laws favorable to the guilds (such as laws requiring a guild license in order to practice the guild trade).  Guilds created monopolies on most trade goods and eventually gained enough power to upset the feudal system and take over political, economic, and social control of European society (extending from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment and into today).

The foundations of this guild takeover were laid during the Middle Ages with the rise of urban centers.  So, guilds deserve a rather important place in any historically-influenced fantasy setting referring to this time period.  Any cities existing outside the normative feudal framework were probably founded by wealthy guilds seeking a place to ply their trades without paying the hefty taxes levied by their noble overlords.  Within an urban center, guilds have as much or more influence as the local noble.

As the number of guilds grows in your setting and guilds splinter into more specialized organizations, friction will develop between groups as they compete for resources and markets - a brewer knows enough to make a passable wine, potentially undercutting the Vintner's Guild set price, which would destabilize the Vintner's Guild and garner power for the Brewer's Guild.  If the Vintner's Guild discovered what was happening, they might expand into the brewing of ales and beers or (more likely) hire some bruisers to smash up the guilty brewer's brewery.  The Brewer's Guild would retaliate, and all of a sudden we've a city-wide conflict between two wealthy, powerful groups each looking to hire men and women with a penchant for violence.  Starting to see why guilds are a useful component for your world?

The purpose of this post, however, was to look at how we might use combine guilds with Alexis' economic system.  As I understand it, Alexis' encyclopedic approach gives him references for goods, both raw and manufactured.  Since I don't have such a phenomenal resource for my made-up world, I need to improvise.  I have 2 choices: make it up - create a list of all the goods I wish to be available and then arbitrarily decide how many references each location has - or use these guilds - decide, based upon resource availability and synergy which guilds are in ascendance in each of my major population centers using my 0-3 scale for raw resource production, and use that as my reference or each affiliated trade good.

In case you hadn't guessed it, I'm going to go for the second approach.  This means that I need a list of guilds wherein each guild is broad enough to encompass the wide range of goods necessary for me to run my game yet specific enough that by choosing my guilds carefully I can start to give each city a unique flavor (having a metalsmithing guild, woodcrafting guild, stoneworking guild, and randomcrap guild would not be discerning enough, but having a tinsmith, coppersmith, zincsmith, bronzesmith, coppersmith, ironsmith, steelsmith, goldsmith, silversmith, pewtersmith, etc. is too specific).  I have my list and am in the process of implementing it.  We'll see how it works.