[GURPS Basic] Why no farming mechanic?

[SRoach]

Originally Posted by trooper6

Interesting. This just made me think.

People often complain that magic, specifically plant and agri-mages, would destroy medieval economies so that the world wouldn't look medieval anymore because the yields would be too good.

One response is to make Mages more rare.

But another response based on your wonderful post is that that fantasy world may be so difficult to plant and grow things in, that your need plant and agri-mages just to achieve the yields that people had in our middle ages.

Nice!

So, it's either a desert world or a poison one. Hunter-gatherers have all died off around the time magic started, then, as food became scarce in the wild. Only societies that could adapt, and quickly, to the changed need for magic in agriculture, survived. If magic was always present, the lack of food would have prevented society from developing.
Remember, we grow food by exploiting the very things that make weeds grow without our help, starting with the sun and rain.

Another tack you can take is to restrict any spells which would aid the harvest. Modern mechanized farming relies heavily on labor-saving devices. The combine harvester being one of the most obvious of these, alongside tractors that can be operated by a single individual, and which are capable of tilling dozens of acres of land in an hour, as opposed to, I think, an acre a day per man. If you keep farming, ..personal, it may not matter if one acre creates a cornucopia of wheat, sufficient to feed a village for a year, if you still need a dozen laborers to mow, reap, and thresh.
Perhaps magic can be used to improve the yield, but will spoil the crop if you try to use it to aid the harvest.

[SRoach]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Leprechauns are fairly obscure and out of the way creatures. There's no reason why they can't exist only in Ireland. Maybe they are all under a spell. Maybe Leprechaun is just a name for a given tribe of fay-like American is a name for a tribe of mortal. Maybe Leprechauns just like living in Ireland.

I've heard of things which, to me, sound a bit like brownies described for North America, Hawaii, and, I think the Caucasus mountains. Granted, that last was from a video game, (TSW).

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by SRoach

So, it's either a desert world or a poison one. Hunter-gatherers have all died off around the time magic started, then, as food became scarce in the wild. Only societies that could adapt, and quickly, to the changed need for magic in agriculture, survived. If magic was always present, the lack of food would have prevented society from developing.
Remember, we grow food by exploiting the very things that make weeds grow without our help, starting with the sun and rain.
....

You could have the past be one of lost magic creating the global eco-disaster that resulted in modern times where mankind can't survive without farming magic.
That could also lead to a culture that gets VERY suspicious when magic users don't stick to straightforward farming spells.

Originally Posted by SRoach

I've heard of things which, to me, sound a bit like brownies described for North America, Hawaii, and, I think the Caucasus mountains. Granted, that last was from a video game, (TSW).

But magical little people aren't quite leprechauns any more than human sized primates are Englishmen.

[SRoach]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

You could have the past be one of lost magic creating the global eco-disaster that resulted in modern times where mankind can't survive without farming magic.
That could also lead to a culture that gets VERY suspicious when magic users don't stick to straightforward farming spells.



But magical little people aren't quite leprechauns any more than human sized primates are Englishmen.

No, but a helpful household spirit is a helpful household spirit regardless of whether or not the name pinned to it is brownie, kobold, domovoi, whatever, and the Menehune, (which I was thinking was the Hawaiian equivalent,) does seem pretty similar to a leprechaun.

[dcarson]

Unless the place is a desolate wasteland plants do OK without magic or with just natural magic. What you would need the rituals for is farming. So people could live as hunter-gathers but developing farming is even slower then in our world. Now what makes the difference between natural growing and farming needs to be figured out. Is it the fact that all the plants are the same? The tilling of the soil?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by trooper6

Interesting. This just made me think.

People often complain that magic, specifically plant and agri-mages, would destroy medieval economies so that the world wouldn't look medieval anymore because the yields would be too good.

One response is to make Mages more rare.

But another response based on your wonderful post is that that fantasy world may be so difficult to plant and grow things in, that your need plant and agri-mages just to achieve the yields that people had in our middle ages.

Nice!

There's a third response of course. Which is to say "Yes! Land is really productive! So what? Does that mean you don't need lords, knights and fortifications to protect the land? The more so because the land in question is surrounded by monster-infested wilderness?"

[(E)]

There is always magic grants huge improvements to agriculture but it is unsustainable. Mana is suddenly depleted and overpopulation equals dark age. (Possibly a historic reason for no magic in agriculture right there)

Or magic in agriculture makes everything it touches a attractive to rampaging monsters.

Or too much magic will open up the pathways to the long sealed realm of extreme naughtiness.

Or once upon a time mages turned the world into a garden. Then they became arrogant and decided to stop the moon in the sky. Now the remaining mages rule a world of dust and ashes. (I actually ran this world for a while, magocracy with crystallized mana for currency)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

There's a third response of course. Which is to say "Yes! Land is really productive! So what? Does that mean you don't need lords, knights and fortifications to protect the land? The more so because the land in question is surrounded by monster-infested wilderness?"

It's not that. It's that medieval societies have 90% or so of the population working the land. They can spare peasant levies for a month or two a year, and they can maintain one knight, a squire, and a couple of footsoldiers in a prosperous village. That limits their armies, in size, skill, and duration of campaigns. It also limits their development of industries, because so few people can be spared to tinker with gears and wheels.

Make agriculture five times as productive, and you free up a lot of manpowers. Suddenly your production possibility frontier is way out there. Not to mention your destruction possibility frontier, if all that extra labor goes into mass armies or something.

[(E)]

Sieges would be very different with a mage with food and healing spells. . .

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by (E)

Sieges would be very different with a mage with food and healing spells. . .

In most cases, he would be busy countering the decay and pestilence opposing mage ...