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Old 01-09-2016, 09:12 PM   #31
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: [GURPS Basic] Why no farming mechanic?

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Originally Posted by trooper6 View Post
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.
That's because spells designed according to the D&D esthetic doesn't care at all about world impact.
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Old 01-09-2016, 09:22 PM   #32
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Default Re: [GURPS Basic] Why no farming mechanic?

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That's because spells designed according to the D&D esthetic doesn't care at all about world impact.
Yes. It's not a worldbuilding game. The worlds are only a backdrop to exciting tactical encounters. Or, to my taste, to tactical encounters that would be more exciting if there were a nontrivial probability of the protagonists losing the fight, but that's a question of taste.
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Old 01-09-2016, 09:25 PM   #33
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Default Re: [GURPS Basic] Why no farming mechanic?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
This would result in people without adequate magic starving and the "medieval" quality being lost anyway as agriculture became a amgic or nothing activity.
In the real world, at least up through TL6, agriculture was a magical activity; farmers had rituals and taboos that guided their activity. Those rituals didn't necessarily have any magical efficacy, but they were there. So it might be hard to tell the difference. At least, until you forbade the villagers to make the standard pre-planting offering to St. Honuphrius, and the crops failed. . . .
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Old 01-10-2016, 02:25 AM   #34
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Default Re: [GURPS Basic] Why no farming mechanic?

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The problem with just going by economic history is that the end product will end up covering only that which was, and not that which could have been. Most likely it's be 99% feudalism and manorialism and thus ignore the systems and structures that came before that, and fail to provide mechanics for gradually transitioning from one kind of system to the other, with or against the will of the lord characters who own the land and/or the workers who toil on the land.
If they don't start from a thorough grounding in economic history, they will create rules which build worlds which could not be. I think that farming rules are most likely to be used in settings which are “like our world except for this one thing” rather than ones governed by the laws of narrative, like an Arthurian romance or Star Trek.

If you think that 99% of world economic history before the 19th century is feudalism and manorialism, or that medlevalists rely on either concept to understand economies, you might want to read up some people like Christopher Dyer or the Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World.
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Old 01-10-2016, 02:37 AM   #35
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Default Re: [GURPS Basic] Why no farming mechanic?

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In the real world, at least up through TL6, agriculture was a magical activity; farmers had rituals and taboos that guided their activity. Those rituals didn't necessarily have any magical efficacy, but they were there. So it might be hard to tell the difference. At least, until you forbade the villagers to make the standard pre-planting offering to St. Honuphrius, and the crops failed. . . .
Yes, there is the criticism that "wainscott fantasy" or "secret magic" does not make much sense, because in our world most people believe in active supernatural forces which respond to human rituals, life after death, and monsters unknown to biology. Game designers rarely do as much as they could to take these kinds of ideas and run with them.
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Old 01-10-2016, 10:09 AM   #36
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Default Re: [GURPS Basic] Why no farming mechanic?

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In the real world, at least up through TL6, agriculture was a magical activity; farmers had rituals and taboos that guided their activity. Those rituals didn't necessarily have any magical efficacy, but they were there. So it might be hard to tell the difference. At least, until you forbade the villagers to make the standard pre-planting offering to St. Honuphrius, and the crops failed. . . .
Right! And in that context, dedicated mages are probably not going spend their precious time doing agricultural rituals because the farmers are already doing them. Unless something terrible happens, in which case a team of adventurers with a Mage might be called in to investigate.
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Old 01-10-2016, 11:53 AM   #37
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Default Re: [GURPS Basic] Why no farming mechanic?

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Right! And in that context, dedicated mages are probably not going spend their precious time doing agricultural rituals because the farmers are already doing them. Unless something terrible happens, in which case a team of adventurers with a Mage might be called in to investigate.
In the terms of Path and Book Magic, it's "the path of the people" or "the folk path."
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Old 01-10-2016, 06:06 PM   #38
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Default Re: [GURPS Basic] Why no farming mechanic?

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I acknowledge that world-building is fun for some (perhaps most!) GMs who aren't me . . . but I find it tedious and too much like my day job. Instead, for each mundane pursuit, I assign an effective tech level which abstracts the density of wizards in the land, their predilections (especially the relative rewards of magical specialties, and what pursuits are rewarded or punished), the particular spells known and widely taught in the setting, and the laws of magic. This TL is simply a top-down declaration to produce the results I want; I have no actual formula for it.

Thus, in a fantasy setting with lots of well-regarded agri-wizards organized into prestigious guilds and working life-aspected or plant-aspected land, I might hand-wave "TL3, TL12 for agriculture." Then I would consult rules that peg food yields to TL. From there I would scale populations to yields and be done with it.
I do the exact same thing. Heh.

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Treating cities as magical arcologies separated by all the rest of the world, which kills people, is surprisingly fun for dungeon crawls.
Works great for non-dungeon crawl campaigns as well. As this is what I basically did for my last Fantasy Gamma World hex crawl campaign.

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Old 01-10-2016, 09:33 PM   #39
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Default Re: [GURPS Basic] Why no farming mechanic?

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Yes, there is the criticism that "wainscott fantasy" or "secret magic" does not make much sense, because in our world most people believe in active supernatural forces which respond to human rituals, life after death, and monsters unknown to biology. Game designers rarely do as much as they could to take these kinds of ideas and run with them.
It's that every group of humans has different mutually incompatible beliefs in the supernatural.
If Leprechauns exist, you have to explain why they exist only in Ireland.

Of course, there are a few myths humanity gravitates to everywhere, like primitive man-ape, or magical shapeshifting tricksters.
Though with Sasquatch and ilk you face the issue of never being able to display their bodies and other problems of their supposedly mundane mortality.
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Old 01-10-2016, 09:46 PM   #40
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Default Re: [GURPS Basic] Why no farming mechanic?

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It's that every group of humans has different mutually incompatible beliefs in the supernatural.
If Leprechauns exist, you have to explain why they exist only in Ireland.

Of course, there are a few myths humanity gravitates to everywhere, like primitive man-ape, or magical shapeshifting tricksters.
Though with Sasquatch and ilk you face the issue of never being able to display their bodies and other problems of their supposedly mundane mortality.
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.
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