Home Ownership

My players have bought a house in the city. Bamboo makes houses inexpensive, and they are tired of needing to pay for an inn each night. This makes me happy as a Facilitator - my players are literally investing in the city, investing in the setting. Their buying a house is a sign that I am doing something right.

This does invite a new and interesting question. Given my framework of blocks and neighborhoods, how do I make rules for owning and managing a household?

The first thing I want to address is how the neighborhood affects the price of the house. The number in my price list is for the construction itself, not fitting it into an existing urban space. It seems reasonable to multiply the house price by the number of blocks within a given neighborhood, a reflection of how scarce space is within the area. Furthermore, not all types of buildings are available in all neighborhoods.

Now, to make this choice more interesting, what advantages does owning a home in a neighborhood provide? There is first an important distinction between having a home in a neighborhood versus having a home in a specific block. Each block is a space made up of not only streets and buildings but also of people, people who have known each other a long time. Adventurers are not likely to become members of a block, but their home's nearness to them should confer some sort of mechanical benefit.

Establishing a home requires more than simply purchasing a building. After moving in, the inhabitants must spend a week meeting and greeting their neighbors to unlock the benefits of their chosen location. This involves a lot of eating and drinking and costs double the daily rate. If the party waits more than a month after purchasing the home, the neighbors' first impression is negative and the benefits will be lost.

Assuming the players spend the week, they may access all blocks within their neighborhood at half-price. This benefit lasts a full year. By spending a month socializing (spending double the daily rate), this benefit can be renewed and extended another full year. This benefit is conferred per character, not per household - each principal character (excluding hirelings, followers, and henchfolk) must either directly participate in the socializing or have one of their henchfolk represent them.

In the city, it is customary to have two people tending the house. This ensures that someone is always present in the building even if errands must be run. The two will ensure that food is purchased and ready to eat when the house's other inhabitants return.

This will do for now, but I'll return to this in the future with rules describing how decorating the house can provide benefits for those who live there.

Paying per Day

Now that I have players wanting to spend time doing stuff in the city, I needed to price out the price of activities in the city. Most of my prices revolve around the cost to physically manufacture a good, but services by their nature aren't products. Their value requires a different pricing logic.

The markets reference in a city reflects the amount of monetary exchange happening within the city environment. We can use it to reflect how affluent the city is.

market references * value/reference gives us the money that trades hands in one year of the city

Dividing that value by the number of days in the year and the number of citizens gives us the amount of money an average citizen spends per day. Thus, if the player is out doing stuff in the city, they ought to spend at least that amount, and so this daily rate is the fee to access city services like arenas, casinos, etc. 

Trade Equations

I have, potentially, my first game on Monday.  It's at a local gaming store, but since it's during the weekday, it should be relatively quiet.  Because of this, I have been frantically working at the trade tables to get them into a useable state - it also keeps me distracted from the schoolwork that needs to be done this weekend as well.

I was completing the second step in the process, aggregating all of my world's references into thematic groups with some rudimentary determination of goods that require no processing, when I ran into two problems.

Before I get into this, if you are not familiar with Alexis' trade tables, I suggest you fix that - the following discussion will make no sense if you don't.

The first problem was with the valuation of gold.  This is the first calculation on the sheet, and it's important because it determines the price, in copper pieces, of 1 reference's worth of goods.  For the sake of simplicity, I am calling that quantity a crop.  Right now, a resource's crop size is determined by dividing the global production of that resource by all of the references for it (on a global scale).

It struck me as a little odd that the gold crop had no direct bearing on the local value of gold.  Then I started digging a little further and it appeared that the price of gold would only fluctuate based upon .002*local/global, where local is the number of local references of gold and global is the total number of gold references.  This seemed strange to me, but I continued forward.

What convinced me that this was a problem, though, was the double-conversion to coinage seen whenever the price of a good was to be generated.  The formula for an arbitrary good looked something like this,

Where refVal is the value in copper pieces of 1 reference, calculated as above and production is the global quantity of a good produced.

This simplifies to

Which means that the local amount of a reference has no significant bearing upon its price.  Additionally, since refVal has already converted from oz. gold to copper coins, the additional coin conversion at the end of the equation is extraneous.

Which means that I needed a new way to value gold and a new way to assign a coin value to 1 unit of a resource.  I called in my roommate and we spent half the night yesterday/this morning fighting through this to find a solution.  And find one we did.

The challenge of this problem is that there are so few actual variables that depend upon location - every meaningful combination of them resulted in their cancellation, which defeated the purpose of the proposed improvement.  We eventually hit upon the idea of incorporating a new variable: the power of the market in question, determined by the sum of all the local references (i.e. all the references in the world altered by their distance from the market in question).  With this in hand, we returned to the problem.

For gold, we have

I'll walk you through this equation.  The product/global term gives us the crop size - how many units of a good are worth 1 reference.  We then multiply our crop size by the power of our market which tells us how many oz. of gold our economy is worth (since 1 reference is equal in value to any other reference, we have product/global*power value in our system as a whole).  We divide this number by how many references of gold we actually possess, local, and this gives us a ratio of the total value of our system in gold by how many references for gold we actually have.  We convert this to copper coins and are done.

Now to tackle valuing goods.  Working this morning, I constructed the following expression:

The first term calculates the value of the goods on hand in copper pieces.  The second term scales that price by how powerful our market is and how abundant the resource is - a resource with fewer references will have a higher price than one with many, and a more powerful market (drawing more things from more places) will command lower prices overall.

Alexis' explanations of his own steps are as good, if not better than mine.  But the units of all of these expressions work out, and now each good's price is influenced by the market's power and the global and local reference values, increasing site-specific prices.

Of course, due to the probabilistic process through which I generated my references, I may have some correcting to do (I needed to add a bunch of iron references, for example), and that may necessitate either adding more references or modifying the production totals in order for the economy to work in the way that I need, but I am much happier with these expressions.

Also, as a side note, VLOOKUP is a godsend in this work.  No more hunting for appropriate references!

Refining the Trade System

I'm hard at work with classes as well as implementing Alexis' trade system right now and I wanted to document some of the ways I've needed to change the process in order to create the outcome I want.

The trade system depends upon references of goods bound to specific commercial locations (markets) where goods of that type are either produced or gathered from nearby, noncommercial areas (outlying farms, smaller towns, shipped downriver, etc.).  Following Alexis' suggestions, I plotted out regions of influence for each city, ranging in size from 4ish hexes for the smaller cities to 15 or 20 for the larger ones.  I initially used Welshpiper's medieval settlements calculator to determine how many cities I ought to have in regions of a given size and population density, which lead to more cities than I had reasonable room to place.  I did what I could - and I think the map has benefited from the density of locations in both the Southern Kingdoms and Confederacy (I scaled back the city counts intentionally for Arein because of its relatively young age (60 years)).  Obviously, the more closely packed the cities are, the fewer hexes each controls within a given area.

Each hex controlled by a market might produce resources, based upon its hydrology, elevation, and level of civilization.  While I haven't implemented Alexis' idea of infrastructure numbers yet, it is a future project.  As a rule of thumb, I decided that any hex more than two hexes away from the closest city was undeveloped and thus (for my two heavily-treed areas) still jungle/forest.  Hexes only 40 miles (2 hexes) from the closest city were also undeveloped, but if there was another city within 2 hexes from the are in question, the hex is settled instead.

It may be helpful to take a gander at the map I uploaded recently.

One of the early difficulties I encountered with the random determination is that Alexis' regions are based upon the kinds of terrain found in, say, Hexographer, rather than rooted in any kind of elevation or topological scheme, which is how I built my world.  While I absolutely understand the desire to be accessible, I had a little bit of work to do to adjust it.  My first approach was to classify any hex adjacent to another hex with an elevation difference of 400 or more counted as a hill (which graduated to mountain as soon as the hex's height breached 2000' above sea level).  This gave me no hills because the elevation change was smoother than I had anticipated.  My second approach banded hexes by color: hexes over 500' but under 2000' were hills, hexes over 2000' were mountains, and hexes between sea level and 500' were flat, either plains or scrublands (hexes between -50' and 0', found only at the coast, became marshes).  Alexis' plains designation really applies to land used for large-scale farming, whereas scrubland does not.  Thus, hexes 1 hex or closer to a city are plains, while those that I've ruled undeveloped are either scrub or forest/jungle.  Now, deciding between the two choices was tricky.  They are entirely different vegetation systems, and it was important that I get the resources from both.  I still don't have a satisfactory answer, but the answer I used had to do with distance from the forest's center, something for which I had a rough location.

The biggest change I needed to make was further differentiating the very generic labels of building stone, cereals, fruits (which replace grapes, since I'm in a tropical environment), gems, and vegetables.

My world's central distinguishing characteristic is the differences in both outlook and material culture between each of my societies.  Therefore, I need to be able to distinguish between the kinds of resources available to each people, as well as what specific foods is grown to determine diet and food culture.  I have a sedimentary ridge that separates the Confederacy and Southern Kingdoms, and so I used that to distinguish between the kinds of stone found: south of the ridge is sandstone, compressed sediment from the sea, while north of the ridge is limestone because of the karst topology (a choice I made to provide sinkholes to the area).  Across the Sea of Shadows to the south, I have granite mountains.

However, karst topology includes important things like dolomite and gypsum, which I wanted to produce as well, and this led me to the solution I employed for my other reference specifications.  I assigned probabilities to each type and rolled a die: 1 dolomite, 2 gypsum, 3-4 limestone.  The important thing is that I get different numbers for each resource, scattered throughout the regions.

I then specified different cereal categories, millet, rice, and wheat, fruit categories, bananas, coconuts, mangos, and pineapples, gem categories, ornamental, fancy, semiprecious, lesser precious, and greater precious, and vegetables, cassava, cotton, edibles (tubers and the like), jute, palm oil, and soybeans.  I determined these the same way, giving each a probability and then rolling for each individual reference - I tried applying a strict percentage on the overall reference to give me numbers, but the results were too clean.

The last way I've changed the references is adding a new one: warcraft, which governs the making of arms and armor for a given culture.  The Tarluskani use a khanda while the Southerners use a longsword.  While they are similar in many ways, the techniques to use it are different, as are the concerns and problems when forging it.  This also lets me price weapons and armor from different cultures like the exotic or commonplace items they are, even though the skills involved are the same.  I get my Warcraft value for each market from the sum of the leathercraft, metalcraft, and woodcraft references, since they are highly related industries.

My last change to the overall system was in using the reference numbers to populate information about the cities themselves.  It follows that cities with higher references are more economically powerful than those with a lower count -  they have more resources and can bring more to bear to any economic dispute.  So, since the urban population of the late Middle Ages was something like 25% of the total population, I have calculated the total population for each area based on population density (usually between 10-20 people per square mile), multiplied it by .25 and the multiplied it by the ratio of the market's reference total compared with the region's reference total to get the final population.

For example, Reyjadin is the capital city of the Southern Kingdoms.  Being a capital city, I've doubled its population because of that added importance.  The total population for the Southern Kingdoms is approximately 683,000 people.  Reyjadin controls 6 references while the Southern Kingdoms as a whole controls 291 references.  So, Reyjadin's popullation is 683,000*.25*2*(6/291)=7,041 people.  Population then defines a city's physical size (population/38850 square miles) and the strength of its guard (population/150 employed guards).  While obviously these latter two measures are adjustable, it gives me a systematic way to approach any city.

While there's a lot to refine about this process (like using the total local references rather than references controlled by the market), it's definitely progress.

Also, a helpful resource to intrepid worldbuilders.

Trade Tables

Week two of graduate school, and I already foresee my free time dwindling from what I had this summer.  However, I've still been working on my world - I finished calculating the distances between all 69 cities as well as calculating the references governed by each city.  With that step finished, I am now adapting Alexis' trade tables for my own purposes.  Because I am one of his Patreon backers, I have access to his most recent full table, which I am unabashedly plundering.

The process, which I have but barely begun, makes me aware of the massive size of the trade tables as well as the work that has gone into them.  I will be pleased to get my much reduced version off of the ground for my players to enjoy.

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.