Sunday, April 17, 2016

The Seven Deadly Sins (Review, sort of)


While this will start as a review, there are some insights that I think can directly apply to roleplaying games, in particular with adapting someone else's work (a module, for instance?) for your (gaming) purposes.  One of the reasons I enjoy both anime and manga (in the action/fantasy genres) are often more about the world in which these stories happen than the stories or characters.  That makes them excellent foundations for thinking about designing your own world (or adapting someone else's).



The Seven Deadly Sins is an anime, published by Kodansha, based on a manga currently serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump, one of the premier manga magazines in Japan.  What that boils down to is that the story Seven Deadly Sins is one of the most popular ones in Japan (at least, for this age bracket and set of genres) to the point where Kodansha felt it reasonable to adapt it for the television.



For those who are not habitual consumers of Japanese popular culture, anime and manga have a very strange relationship.  Usually, a mangaka (manga author) will see their work serialized in a weekly or monthly manga periodical, and each periodical has a very specific demographic.  At the back of each periodical is a review sheet whereby readers pick their favorite stories each issue.  If your work fails to garner enough approval ratings, it is dropped for someone else's work.  This creates intense pressure to keep building and mounting tensions within the story - while a couple chapters of your characters at rest, featuring character development or laying the groundwork for a later plot arc might serve your overall narrative and help you tell a better story, it will prove hellish for your ratings and so most authors don't do it.  What that means is that the storytelling in a manga is, usually, broken up into very distinct dramatic arcs with very little page time in between, but in-story time is compressed and expanded at will to heighten the drama (sound familiar?).  In order for something interesting to happen every chapter, a lot of spurious gags and inconsistencies will clog up most manga, especially if it is one that has been running for a while.  Also, because a manga can be cancelled at any time, mangakas have little control over how their story unfolds - if they start with a single epic story arc, they may have the opportunity to finish it the way they would like, they may need to compress it into three chapters (I can provide examples.  It's rough.), or they may need to suddenly find a new one when they finish telling it and must then produce more chapters.



What it also means is that exposition necessary to understand who new characters are or why a conflict was resolved in a specific way (manga and anime both love their Deus ex Machina) is saved until the last possible moment, when it is delivered with a flashback that transports the viewer completely out of the context of the very real, engaging conflict to some other point in the narrative, delivers the crucial information, and then returns to the fight.  Naruto, with one of the most popular manga and anime series' is especially prone to this.  In the manga format, because of the need to keep high ratings publishing after publishing, I can understand this strategy - as a reader, even if I'm less engaged with the flashback, I am invested enough in the outcome of the larger framing conflict to not downvote it until afterwards, at which point a new conflict or form of intrigue has begun that keeps me engaged.



That is not to say that all manga suffers from these problems - several series (I am especially thinking of Fullmetal Alchemist) are able to lay the exposition in small tidbits throughout the work, requiring very awkward, late-stage reveals, and are willing to end their story when it is over, instead of endlessly dragging it out. 



An anime adaptation of a manga (and not all anime are manga adaptations) is a different matter entirely.  Anime are purchased in approximately 12-episode chunks, which comprise a single season on Japanese television (many series opt for a 24-episode 'long season').  Unlike American television shows, where poor ratings can kill a new show before it really begins, the anime is bought and paid for and will show all of its episodes.  One of the complications of an anime adaptation is that it is supposed to tell the same story as the manga, embellishing the comic form with voice acting and animation, but it can't just retell the story the same way as the manga - the anime and manga will have roughly the same audience, and anime watchers are likely to be familiar with how the manga handled things.  Thus, at once the anime must both recreate the key moments from the manga yet also be distinct enough to garner fans who are not familiar with the manga.



Now, this contradictory function combined with the very different format means that anime adaptations vary widely in their faithfulness to the original product - the Fruits Basket anime features a much stronger supernatural element and includes the ancillary characters far more than the anime and the Escaflowne anime, mangas, and films are dissimilar enough that one wouldn't know they are telling the same story except that the titles and character names are the same (mostly), but the Naruto manga and anime are virtually identical, shot-for-shot.



What I think the best anime adaptations do is they use the advantages of the 24-episode format to massage the clunky exposition of their manga forebear and actually craft a story (as opposed to haphazardly slopping one together as mangakas typically do).







This, finally, brings me to my thoughts on Seven Deadly Sins.  I watched the series end-to-end after getting home from work Friday evening.  I finished around 5am.  For me, marathoning episodes like this helps emphasize whatever themes the work features (whether in character gags, writing choices, visual motifs, etc.) and prevents refrigerator logic from setting in and collapsing whatever trumped-up obstacles appear in the story to lengthen the overall conflict.



This was not enough for Seven Deadly Sins.  Normally, when I find an anime that is this poorly constructed (in editing, animation quality, and structure) I give up and find something better to watch.  The reason why I stuck with it is because the story, had it not been hindered by these problems, would have been very good.  The setting is excellent, albeit poorly explicated to the viewer.



It does not serve my purpose to go through the anime and point out where it went astray.  I do want to address a couple very common flaws the writing consistently exposed.



The first, and perhaps most egregious flaw of the series is that the world, as presented, is full of mysteries that are unexplained (good) and rendered, via the storytelling, completely unimportant.  The setting, familiar to most tabletop players, is a mythical Brittania before magic left the world (although geography is not a strong suit of anyone involved in this production), where there are multiple countries (indeterminately placed) whose strength comes from Holy Knights - martially-skilled individuals each with a unique magical power.  There are a number of different races - humans, fairies, demons, giants and goddess-somethings (which we find out later are somehow druids?).  Hundreds of years before, after the last demon invasion, the other races worked together to banish them from the world, which also led to the decline of the fairies and the practical extinction of the goddess-druid-things.  There are secret agendas, forbidden experiments with excavated demon corpses, more traditional magic, curses, and a band of quirky heroes who have been framed with treason and exiled.  In other words, a world very similar to the standard D&D setting with a couple of unique institutions (the various Holy Knight Orders), and plot hooks ready to go.  It is something that can be taken almost directly to your tabletop.



However, the mysteries of the world and of the characters (how did our chief hero gain the secret key no one knows about, who are our female lead's parents and why is she a princess, what happened to the druids/goddess people, why don't we get backstory on more than 1.5 characters, why does this character keep appearing to die and yet no one cares, etc.) are never answered.  What's more, despite their importance to the story, the narrative spends actually zero time discussing or considering any of them (also, for a group called the Seven Deadly Sins, Sin number 7 never appears in the story.  Ever.  The very last episode makes fun of it as the characters all realize that they've been talking about the Seven Deadly Sins the entire series, there have never been seven of them.).



What is perhaps more damning is that despite featuring very few reveals, only one of them is handled well - a well-placed flashback near the first climactic peak at the end of the story reveals a character, about whom we've received very mixed messages the entire time, has been secretly signaling our heroes that they are cursed.  It is one of the few mid-conflict breakaway sequences that I think has been worth it.  The others are delivered less well.  When enemy characters suddenly appear with powers that dwarf our heroes', the source of that power is revealed later in the same episode.  It is an anticlimactic reveal that, because our heroes are unaware of it, doesn't affect the story except to reiterate that the bad guys are, in fact, the bad guys.



In short, summarizing both of these problems together, the writers of this anime do not seem to understand how suspense works.  In my mind, and this is directly applicable to tabletop games, suspense (in a story context, not a dramatic ones), can work by presenting the audience/players with evidence that conflicts with how they understand the world - drawing an example from the anime, how does the pipsqueak one character knocked out with a single hit suddenly reappear and defeat the whole party?  The answer, this character drank demon blood and gained great power with a cost to be paid later, is then discovered, piecemeal as the players investigate.  In other words, the worldview of the players is shaken, creating cognitive dissonance and tension, and it is then resolved as the players learn new information and expand that worldview.



This became a great deal longer than I anticipated, so I'll call it for now.  I think what I'll do next is pull apart the story of Seven Sins and talk about how I might structure it as an anime (keeping the medium the same) and then taking the same story and translating it into a sequence of events happening in a tabletop world (I hesitate to call a linear narrative as a campaign because I run sandbox games.  But the events in this story can play out, and the action or inaction of my players would affect that.).  This is purely hypothetical, since the world presented in Seven Deadly Sins is very different from my world, but I think the exercise will do me some good at long-term structuring (something I definitely need to work on) and may prove useful to people running more standard D&D worlds.

Sunday, April 10, 2016

What is a Class?

In traditional Dungeons and Dragons, the first physical step of character creation is to roll some dice to determine your new character's ability scores (there is often a step 0 before this which is envisioning the type of character you might want, but I'm omitting it for now).  The second step, depending upon the game's edition, is to choose their race, and the third is to choose their class.  For a number of people, this is really the same step - the benefits and disadvantages for the different races are often self-selected to match the strengths and weaknesses of the chosen class, so that the character can more strongly excel in their areas of specialization (making sure that Fighters have high Strength and Constitution scores or Wizards have a high Intelligence score, for example).

Choosing the class is, from a mechanical standpoint, the most impactful decision made during character creation, to the point where it is the defining descriptor for that character: "Oh, I'm playing an assassin this time."

EDIT: OD&D had the fighter, mage, and cleric.  Thieves were added in the Greyhawk expansion somewhat later.

In OD&D, there were three classes (I'm using the more modern terminology): fighter, mage, and thief.  They are intentionally generic and comprise a huge variety of stereotypes and associations.  The cleric was the fourth addition to the mix, and it brought with it a huge shift in perception - the cleric's signature abilities, its spells, are drawn from the list of miracles associated with Christian theology - curative powers, blessing the faithful, providing food and water from nothing, raising the dead, etc.

Now, the cleric is billed as a holy leader for any of the different faiths one might encounter within a fantasy world, but a cleric's powers are quite different than one might expect from a Shinto priest or medicine woman.  Using the class to model such a person is whitewashing the game world.  This begs the question: should there be a Shinto priest and medicine person class, then?  If the existing class doesn't work, and we have people with these compelling and very different abilities, shouldn't they have a class?

In other words, should the setting dictate the classes that are available?

The Ferocia have a tradition of spies and insurgents that operate as part of their larger military force, the Custos.  Their skillset is quite similar to that of a thief, with an emphasis on infiltration, assassination, and forgery.  Should there be a Custos class and should I restrict all Ferocia from being thieves, in favor of this more specialized class?  Should I allow other races to become Custos?  Should this class be available for players to use?

The Sohei are a loosely-organized group of wandering warrior-monks dedicated to spreading peace by beating violence out of would-be miscreants.  Through their devotion to peace, they are able to suppress violence in others, but they can fall back upon their considerable martial training if this ability fails them.  Should there be a Sohei class, as Sohei possess a very distinct skillset combining aspects of the fighter and medium (the class of peace-bringers).

I don't know if there is a good answer to these questions.  I know how I used to answer it, but I am not sure how much I still like it.

I believe that a setting must influence the classes.  In the three scenarios I put together for my Sunday players to help determine in which world we will play, one of the biggest ways I introduced the setting to them was by explaining the different classes and their abilities - there was always a fighter and thief-type class, but the supernatural horror setting had both holy figures (luminaries) and diabolic ones (witches and warlocks), and the Shardpunk setting had believers in the old faiths (Adherents).

I also don't believe that a setting should unduly limit choice - I don't support creating a Custos class because that limits the options of Ferocia characters - they can be thieves who are part of the Custos organization, but I do support the idea of a Sohei class as its abilities are unique from any other class available.

My philosophy up until this point has been that if a class would have a unique set of abilities, things that would make modelling it within the existing class framework challenging or impossible, then it should be its own class.  I also, by default, decided that if a class existed then players who had experience with the world could choose it when they made a new character (brand-new players to my world can choose to play either a fighter or thief).

The problem I find is that I now have 14 different classes, most of which cover a very specific, but culturally-important niche within one of the societies in my world.  I contrast this with the fighter and thief, which are these broad, expansive constructs.  If I look ahead, to 2nd edition, I see the cleric, druid, fighter, paladin, ranger, mage, illusionist, thief, assassin, monk and bard (drawing from Alexis again).  Looking further ahead, to 3rd and 3.5, I find the base classes include the bard, barbarian, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, and wizard.  These classes, ignoring the cleric and paladin, are setting-neutral.  They are generic types that can be found in a variety of environments.

I think there are two things at play between how I have designed my classes and how TSR and Wizards of the Coast have designed their classes.  The first is that the standard D&D classes do not provide social status.  Because they are independent of the setting, they gain no cultural or social power within it - being a member of the Tarluskani Military garners significant benefits, but not all fighters who are Tarluskani are members of the Tarluskani Military.  Likewise, being a Ferocia who is a thief (or rogue) does not make one a Custos.

The second, and I think more fundamental difference, is that a class in the standard D&D sense is a game construct - a grouping of abilities that 'make sense' together.  Bards, as supremely skilled artists (chiefly musicians), have a bevvy of music-related abilities.  Rangers, as skilled survivalists, are well-suited to interfacing with the natural world.  My classes, however, have arisen as diagetic constructs - a grouping of abilities based upon the needs of an in-game culture or group.

The challenging thing about this difference is that there isn't an objective answer to this: diagetic classes promote player immersion with the world - a class rooted within an in-game tradition automatically binds the character (and therefore the player) to the world through that institution.  However, a diagetic class lacks the freedom of expression that a class built around a central theme, independent of the world, can provide players - as a Ferocia thief, I can be a member of the Custos, reject them and their methodology, or take no stance for or against them, whereas if I am a Custos, defined by that identity, then I perceive but one of those three choices (as a DM, I would happily support any of the three even for a class named after the in-game group, but I've seen players with similar nontraditional ideas self-steer to a similar class instead).  Names are powerful determinants.

I think an answer might be found in something Pathfinder did, one of their changes to 3.5 that I embraced wholeheartedly - the idea of class archetypes.  Essentially, Paizo defined a group of class ideas (they use the 3.5 list I provide above as their foundation).  Each class has a default ability set but can choose alternate ones providing a specialization around one facet of their class.  Some archetypes were restricted to members of specific races and cultures while others to members of specific organizations.

I want to encourage player choice when it comes to their characters without compromising the immersion that a diagetic class offers.  So having classes represent as expansive categories as possible with culture-specific and group-specific immersive options seems like an excellent way to take the best of both.

I'll have to do some more research and see how I might implement this - at first blush, LotFP resists this kind of complication of base classes, but I am confident that there is a good solution here.

Now, there is one last question that I did not address.  Should all classes within the world be available to players?

No.  I don't think so.  Certainly not at first.  I very strongly believe that beginning players should only be allowed to play classes that are very broad in scope - fighters and thieves.  Once they establish a positive relationship with a member of the class of interest (or a group with a significant population of people with this class), then I'd allow new characters to take on these classes.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

List of Magical Herbs

This will probably be the first post that will be useful to someone not playing in my world.  I've been fascinated by the magic powers attributed to herbs just about forever, and since I now have a number of players in my world who are playing nature-affiliated characters, it was time to apply all of my research into something gameable.

This is a list of 100 (that happened by accident) herbs listed alphabetically along with their associated magical effects.  I don't have mechanics for each of the effects, but most of them are fairly self-evident.

Now, whenever my players forage for herbs, I'll have them roll to see what they discover.  The herbalism skill will then grant them access to both more effects for each herb as well as having each effect be more potent.

EDIT: I've removed the original (essentially unreadable) table in favor of this picture instead, which should be much more legible.


Placing References


Alexis recently finished a series of posts detailing (mostly) his world's economic system.  I've been salivating over it for years, and I immediately set to establishing it in my world.

I immediately ran into some problems specific to my world.  The problems begin in that my world (at least, the parts that I have designed right now) take place on the equator - Sahargeen, the magical rainforest, is on the equator and therefore the Southern Kingdoms, which lie directly south of it, are in a tropical climate.  This means that the Southern Kingdoms have been carved out of this rainforest, (and the land is mostly hilly, I'll get to that later), rendering it less suited for a standard D&D economy - horses do very poorly in jungle, as does grain.

To place resources, I decided to type each hex in two ways: its topography and vegetation, since the two can be independent.  Here, the vegetation is all jungle or jungle and swamp (for the hexes featuring rivers), and the topography is almost entirely hilly (since I started with elevations for each hex instead of a terrain type, I had to come up with some rules to apply a topographic type to each hex.  My rule of thumb is that if there is an elevation change of more than 500', then both hexes will be hilly, and mountains are determined by either hills over 5000' or a difference of more than 2000').

Each topographic and vegetative option has a distinct set of references that might be found there:
Type
Hills; Jungle
Hills; Jungle Swamp
Plain
Plain; JS
Mountain; J
Coast
1
Empty
Empty
Empty
Empty
Empty
Empty
2
Empty
Empty
Empty
Empty
Empty
Roll twice
3
Roll twice
Roll twice
Roll twice
Roll twice
Roll twice
Salt
4
Ore
Ore
Cattle
Cattle
Gold
Fish
5
Bricks
Bricks
Grain
Grain
Ore
Clay
6
Sheep
Clay
Fruit
Fruit
Bricks

7
Clay
Fruit
Horses
Horses


8
Fruit
Empty
Bricks
Bricks


9
Empty
Fruit

Empty


10
Fruit
Spices

Fruit


11
Spices
Timber

Spices


12
Timber
Fish

Fish


13
Gold
Gold





Coasts are (obviously) the hexes that border the sea.  Since I rolled randomly on the table you see above for each hex, I had to essentialize my list to make sure that each area was producing the kinds of things I wanted it to produce - I want coasts to produce primarily salt and fish, and so I ignore whatever vegetation might be there in favor of the opportunities provided by the topography.  Similarly, since having a lot of gold references is important to standardize pricing, I wanted mountains to predominantly offer gold and ore, so I ignore vegetation there, as well.

You'll also notice that I do not have any grapes references as mentioned in Alexis' original setup.  This is because grapes require a hot, dry climate to thrive, but in the tropics, bananas, coconuts, and pineapples serve the same purpose (the brewing of wine).

The table worked fairly well for this area, and once I finish the Southern Kingdoms up, I'm interested in expanding this method to work with my other regions (which are much more vegetatively diverse).  I will probably make them produce fewer resources, as well.

Part of the reason I have for a much higher chance of producing references than not is that the Southern Kingdoms are the player's entry point into my world - it is my Fallow, to draw from Alexis' How to Run.  The culture is based on a European religio-feudal model despite being on the edge of a tropical jungle (they are immigrants), and I want this area, therefore, to be incredibly resource-rich.  The randomization, as you will soon see, still makes relative scarcity occur, but most of the reference types are well-represented, so one can purchase most goods for a reasonable price (the exceptions being horses, cattle, and grain).

Hex
-16
-15
-14
-13
-12
-11
-10
-9
-8
-7
-6
-5
-4
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
7
?
Hills; J
?
?
?
?
Hills; J
?
?
?
Hills; JS
?
Hills; J
?
Hills; J
?
Hills; J
?
?
?
Hills; J
?
Hills; J
?
Hills; J
6
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
5
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Mountain; J
Mountain; J
Mountain; J
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
4
Hills; J
Hills; J
Mountain; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Mountain; J
Hills; JS
Mountain; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
3
Hills; J
Hills; J
Mountain; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Mountain; J
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Plain; JS
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Plain
Plain; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
2
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Plain; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; J
Plain; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
1
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Plain; JS
Hills; J
Coast
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; J
Plain; JS
Plain; JS
Coast
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Plain; JS
Plain; JS
Hills; JS
Coast
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Mountain; J
0
Coast
Hills; J
Coast
Plain
Coast
Coast
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; J
Coast
Sea
Coast
Coast
Plain
Coast
Coast
Sea
Coast
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
-1
Plain
Coast
Plain
Coast
Sea
Sea
Coast
Plain
Coast
Coast
Sea
Sea
Sea
Coast
Sea
Coast
Sea
Coast
Plain; JS
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
Mountain; JS
-2
Coast
Plain
Coast
Sea


Sea
Coast
Coast
Sea



Sea

Sea
Sea
Coast
Hills; J
Hills; J
Hills; JS
Plain
Hills; JS
Hills; J
Mountain; J
-3
Sea
Coast
Sea




Sea
Sea








Sea
Coast
Hills; J
Coast; JS
Plain; JS
Plain
Hills; JS
Hills; JS
-4

Sea
















Sea
Coast
Sea
Coast
Coast
Hills; JS
Hills; J
-5



















Sea

Sea
Sea
Hills; J
Hills; JS
-6






















Sea
Coast
Hills; JS

This table lists all of the hexes that I consider within the boundaries of the Southern Kingdoms.  Each 20-mile hex has its own box, and (once I get back to my more powerful computer) I'll assign each hex to a market.  The question marks are areas for which either I couldn't read the elevation or I haven't mapped yet, but they are too far from the Southern Kingdoms to provide references.

This area spans about 100,000 square miles and has 26 markets, concentrated within about 80 miles of the coast.

After randomly determining my references via the process above, I come out with the following list.

Hex
-16
-15
-14
-13
-12
-11
-10
-9
-8
-7
-6
-5
-4
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
7
?
Clay
?
?
?
?
Empty
?
?
?
Empty
?
Timber
?
Clay
?
Empty
?
?
?
Spices
?
Ore
?
Empty
6
Bricks
Fruit
Spices
Spices
Empty
Ore
Fruit
Fruit
Spices
Spices
Fish
Fruit
Empty
Spices
Empty
Fruit
Fruit
Sheep
Empty
Bricks, Fruit
Gold
Fruit, Bricks
Empty
Spices
Spices
5
Ore
Bricks, Ore
Empty
Timber
Timber
Ore
Gold
Fruit
Spices
Timber
Bricks
Fruit
Timber
Ore
Gold
Bricks
Bricks
Empty
Fruit
Sheep
Fruit
Sheep, Fruit
Ore
Empty
Fruit
4
Empty
Gold
Timber, Spices
Ore
Fish
Horses
Ore
Fruit
Gold
Empty
Clay
Empty
Fruit
Bricks
Empty
Timber
Fruit
Ore, Fruit
Timber, Ore
Gold
Fruit
Fruit
Gold
Empty
Empty
3
Fruit
Fruit
Fruit
Bricks
Fish
Bricks
Empty
2 Gold
Fruit
Ore
Horses
Empty
Fruit
Gold
Gold
Empty
Cattle
Bricks, Gold
Empty
Clay
Gold
Fruit
Empty
Clay
Spices
2
Bricks
Ore
Fish, Fruit
Sheep
Gold
Fruit
Timber
Spices
Timber
Fruit, Spices
Bricks
Timber
Bricks
Ore
Clay
Spices, Timber
Spices
Empty
Clay
Timber
Fruit
Bricks
Timber
Empty
Empty
1
Timber
Bricks
Horses
2 Fruit
Salt
Spices, Fruit
Empty
Fruit
Spices
Bricks
Salt
Spices
Empty
Horses
Empty
Empty
Clay
Timber
Empty
Empty
Timber
Empty
Fruit
Timber
Gold
0
2 Salt
Empty
Fish
Empty
Salt, Fish
Salt
Fruit
Clay
Bricks
Fish
Sea
Clay
Salt
Empty
Salt, Fish
Salt
Sea
Empty
Fish
Fruit
Fruit
Spices
Bricks, Timber
Timber
Spices
-1
Bricks, Grain
Salt
Empty
Fish, Salt
Sea
Sea
Empty
Bricks
Empty
Fish
Sea
Sea
Sea
2 Clay
Sea
Clay
Sea
2 Fish
Fish
Bricks
Ore
Bricks
Ore
Fish
Gold
-2
Salt
Empty
Empty
Sea


Sea
2 Salt
Fish, Salt
Sea



Sea

Sea
Sea
Clay, Fish
Fruit
Spices
Fruit
Cattle
Spices
Clay
Empty
-3
Sea
Empty
Sea




Sea
Sea








Sea
Salt
Sheep, Timber
2 Clay
Fish
Bricks
Empty
Spices, Fruit
-4

Sea
















Sea
Salt, Fish
Sea
Empty
Salt, Clay
Clay
Gold
-5



















Sea

Sea
Sea
Fruit
Empty
-6






















Sea
Empty
Fish, Clay

My count of each reference is as follows:
Reference
Totals
Bricks
23
Cattle
2
Clay
19
Fish
21
Fruit
43
Gold
19
Grain
2
Horses
2
Ore
16
Salt
18
Sheep
5
Spices
18
Timber
21

Fruit, then, is the dominant foodstuff, and there's a fair amount of stone, fish, gold, salt, timber, and spices.  The relative scarcity of timber indicates that, although the rainforest is everywhere, most of the wood in the rainforest isn't useful for construction purposes (or the forest's guardians have killed enough would-be loggers that people have learned their lesson).

The lack of grain, however, will be problematic - grain forms a huge staple in most standard medieval diets (especially nonperishable rations, which are kind of important for roleplaying games).  To fix this, I'll go in as I'm assigning hexes to markets and change what references are produced by the plains in columns -6 and 0.

I can already see how this is going to change my game for the better, and I'm excited to implement everything.