Pyramid #3/52: Low-Tech II

[Kromm]

Guarding caravans
Marching with arms and armor
Wish I'd stayed at home

— Some hack

The great thing about history is that while the events are long past, our knowledge of the details is always growing. Remember Pyramid #3/33: Low-Tech? Well, e23 recently dug deeper and found Pyramid #3/52: Low-Tech II. After carefully dusting off the artifacts, here's what turned up:

• GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics went into detail on how a farmer could afford to feed his family – but what if your PCs tend toward the higher end of the economic spectrum? As Lord of the Manor, you need to know how many farms and serfs it'll take to support the lifestyle to which you are accustomed, and no one knows that better than Matt Riggsby.
  
  
• Warriors want to be protected at all times, but there are some places you simply cannot go in full plate armor. That's why Dan Howard brings you detailed rules for Concealed Armor, complete with statistics for several historical examples. If Abraham Lincoln had worn "Judge Bradshaw's Hat" to the theater, history might have gone a different way!
  
  
• David Pulver loves to tinker with systems, and Low-Tech Armor Design is no exception. In this month's Eidetic Memory, he offers a way to design custom armor based on the surface area it protects. And don't let the name fool you – as the tables show, these rules work as well for modern Kevlar as they do for old-school mail.
  
  
• One of the more interesting early gunpowder weapons was The Puckle Gun. While GURPS Low-Tech covers this briefly on pp. 92-93, there's much speculation about what bores and configurations it came in. With plenty of backstory and historical information – and four different takes on the same weapon – this "fast-firing" miracle gun is begging for a supporting role in your next game!
  
  
• GURPS offers many ways to lower your opponents' defenses: Deceptive Attack, Feint, and so on. But if you want Delayed Gratification, try the Setup Attack. Based on realistic fighting techniques, this new combat option gives you a way to launch an offensive that may cost your opponent his Hit Points and his defenses.
  
  
• For many of us, our first GURPS adventure was Caravan to Ein Arris. Dan Howard helps us Return to Ein Arris with a detailed look at caravanserais, popular travel stops along trade routes through the desert. This culminates in the Prophet's Rest, a ready-to-use caravanserai, complete with supporting cast, map, and adventure seeds.
  
  
• And even the lowest-tech issue wouldn't be complete without the usual features, including a Random Thought Table that aims to undercut your expectations, an Odds and Ends to help you reverse technological advances, and a Murphy's Rules that may make you rethink becoming a leatherworker.

— PK & Kromm

[Ulzgoroth]

Love the Lord of the Manor stuff but I'm a bit troubled by the way poultry farming blows comparable cash crops out of the water. No setup, tiny land requirement, highest revenue, no drawbacks listed.

[trooper6]

We had poultry back when I lived in the mountains...and one of the drawbacks I recall was coyotes. They think poultry are tasty. I imagine other predators work as well. And illness.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by trooper6

We had poultry back when I lived in the mountains...and one of the drawbacks I recall was coyotes. They think poultry are tasty. I imagine other predators work as well. And illness.

I lived on the Umatilla reservation for a while, and our chickens were plagued by feral dogs.... one "*******" rooster was gang killed by angry hens though... literally hen pecked to death.

[joncarryer]

Also, I would think that, as farming poultry IS so easy, in a mediaeval setting every farm is going to farm enough poultry to feed themselves in addition to whatever else they do, so any lord of the manor who tries to make his fortune by doing JUST poultry is going to find himself with a serious lack of a market. Specialised poultry farming works in the modern era because there are enough consumers doing no farming at all to provide a sufficient demand. This is alluded to in the "Distribution of Labour" box.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Love the Lord of the Manor stuff but I'm a bit troubled by the way poultry farming blows comparable cash crops out of the water.

That's pretty much reality . . . crowded places with poor people have more chickens than anything else. The "hard" drawbacks are diseases that wipe out all your chooks in one go and predators, neither of which is universal. (Source: A very good friend whose dad runs a poultry farm.) The "soft" downside is that people get damned tired of eating poultry for every meal; this is a problem for any high-production food item, which is why economies that lean even vaguely toward sumptuary laws tend to place a high value on harder-to-raise food, and why a noble who tried to get rich on chickens would lose face.

[Flyndaran]

Tired of chicken!? Blasphemy! Fried, grilled, seasoned, soup, shredded... the list is endless. Cultural insanity, I say.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Kromm

That's pretty much reality . . . crowded places with poor people have more chickens than anything else. The "hard" drawbacks are diseases that wipe out all your chooks in one go and predators, neither of which is universal. (Source: A very good friend whose dad runs a poultry farm.)

My mother's childhood at least matches, and locally there's a not-insignificant movement to get permission to have hens in suburbia again. Chickens are just that good a producer. To a lesser extent, I understand most well-domesticated small animals do better on efficiency than mid sized animals, and mid sized animals do better than large ones.

What large ones bring to the table are animal traction, and "secondary" products like large sections of bone, tendon, and hide (and heavier duty bone, tendon and hide) that you just can't get off a chicken.

Originally Posted by Kromm

The "soft" downside is that people get damned tired of eating poultry for every meal.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Tired of chicken!? Blasphemy! Fried, grilled, seasoned, soup, shredded... the list is endless. Cultural insanity, I say.

I'm with Flyn, and also point out eggs eggs eggs; the secondary products revolution was a revolution for a reason, people!

Joking aside, I do understand the problem. Something people with more tastebuds than I have to suffer with, I hear. Put more spices in! Problem solved! :D

[DemiBenson]

I liked this issue. The first three all had direct relevance to a setting I'm building. I expect they'll be quite useful.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Bruno

What large ones bring to the table are animal traction, and "secondary" products like large sections of bone, tendon, and hide (and heavier duty bone, tendon and hide) that you just can't get off a chicken.

And with the march of time, those secondaries from large animals matter less and less relative to food. Back in the day, though, they were a huge incentive to raise cattle in particular.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I'm with Flyn, and also point out eggs eggs eggs; the secondary products revolution was a revolution for a reason, people!

Joking aside, I do understand the problem. Something people with more tastebuds than I have to suffer with, I hear. Put more spices in! Problem solved! :D

Sure! I was speaking mostly as someone who cannot stomach eggs (almost literally . . . I have to watch 'em or I hurl) and who has a very sensitive palate (my wife constantly being surprised that I can taste things like the one allspice berry that slipped in with the peppercorns in four litres of curry). So I'm an outlier with my chicken indifference.