Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

[hal]

People of the Village of Larwedin. Your lord arrives within a fortnight. Make haste to prepare his manorial home, that it be cleanly swept, water fresh, and linen dried for when he and his family - such as they may be, arrives. As there are no grooms at the stable, as Village Reeve, I impress to the duty of cleaning the stable, Miles and Aiden. The rest of you will tend to your fields and await the arrival of the new lord. In the meantime, the priest has asked me to remind you, that you owe tithe to the church, if you can't pay it in coin, then you must pay it in labor on the Priest's Glebe. I do not need to remind you, that failure to pay your tithe is ill advised.

You, Kile, go fetch Calivin - we have accounts to go over and stock taken of those who practice magic, the Lord will want a full accounting of who are trained spell casters, and what spells they may know. As for the rest of you, stop burning daylight, attend to your fields. I will swing buy to inspect your work. Any slackers I find will find themselves brought before the village moot and fined for shoddy work! Let's make it so our new lord is pleased with us all, people.

We have our first village in movement folks. Soon, I will be giving one person in particular, the details that he will need for his village, and he can begin to not only deal with decision making as Lord of his village, but also request information on the spells he'd like for his mageborn to have.

The spells that are chosen for his roughly 7 mageborn - assuming that they are all alive at the time of his arrival (some may have died at the age of 4, prior to the lord's arrival - will form the basis of the foundation of spells that village mageborn will know. Likewise, each member of the Lord's family have a 2% chance of having the Mageborn trait themselves. Instructions for the building of characters to represent the Lord are to build the character on 175 points, but to avoid paying for the cost of wealth as an advantage, and social status as an advantage. This is largely because the income gained from the manor itself is not based on the GURPS Methodology of income per month vs cost of living per month. Income will be measured in bushels of grains harvested, fleeces of sheep transported to the market, and yes, even the fruits from the trees in the orchards (if any are generated). Costs will be in terms of Pennies and shillings, with incomes in ranges of pounds sterling where sufficiently large in number.

Monthly incomes will be such that the GURPS analogy of $350 per month income (Struggling at TL 3) will be roughly approximate to 24 silver pennies per month, or 1 silver penny per day's work. A thatcher might make 2 silver pennies per day income, while a Knight with his steed might require some 4800 silver pennies per year in upkeep costs or roughly 400 silver pennies per month. With luck, the income from the manor itself will be in excess of what he needs for himself, his wife, his children (if any) and of course - other servants within the household itself.

The Village moot meets once per month to try cases as brought forth to the Lord's attention. The village elders will be the Lord's advisors as to the "Custom of the manor". They act as the repository of precedents in past cases, ruling against some peasants or perhaps ruling against the Lord himself. But always, with an eye towards what the effective laws were before the Lord's arrival.

Freemen who are tried in court, can either accept the Lord's judgement if their case involves his serfs, or they can pay for a writ to have their case heard at the King's court/moot (essentially a Hundred Moot as an administrative unit). They have the authority to judge the freemen whereas the Lord of the manor may not (ie capital cases, treason, etc).

The Church itself, will judge cases of blasphemy or other actions involving the church, and who decides your case can often determine how bad your goose is cooked. Secular first is better than going before a court that can impose harsh penalties. Often, you may find that a person may be fined, but in mercy, the fines are forgiven because the person fined has not the funds to pay it.

:)

[ericthered]

Looking ahead, what are the Lord's duty to his Lord? How much military service? Any money?

How common are disease, war, and famine?

The spells I wish known (well) are as follows:

• Shape Earth
• Earth to Stone
• Cure Disease
• Bless Plants
• Plant Growth
• Truthsayer

This is a tame list, but I want to see what I can do with just those six spells.

[hal]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Looking ahead, what are the Lord's duty to his Lord? How much military service? Any money?

How common are disease, war, and famine?

Possible events:

State occasion: Kingdom wide
Edict: Inquisition, Witch hunts, persecution, etc
Civil Unrest
Death/Illness of a personage (maybe not your knight!)
War/Raids
Terrorization (crime, predatory creature, etc)
Epidemic
Good Harvest (poor prices for crops)
Poor Harvest (good prices for crops)
Disaster (earthquakes, fire, flood, landslide, damage to mill/bridge/building
Freak Weaither
Multiple events
No special event

Since I've automated the NPC generation that indicates when an NPC is destined to die (outside of the events such as war, starvation, etc), a HT saving roll is made to see if it is Health related, if not, then it is an "Accident" or murder or what have you.

Will send out the full details of your manor (right down to the crops planted by percentage of available land, etc The "Treasury" that you start with will be something equal to 1 silver penny per acre held. That's left from the prior tenant or perhaps gifted to you by your liege.

Yield per acre is essentially dependent upon the land quality, weather, etc - but if for instance, your manor has double its yield for a given number of acres, the labor required for processing that extra yield will also go up by 20%. During harvest times, labor costs are doubled...

Generally speaking, one labor day is worth 1 silver penny.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by hal

Since I've automated the NPC generation that indicates when an NPC is destined to die (outside of the events such as war, starvation, etc), a HT saving roll is made to see if it is Health related, if not, then it is an "Accident" or murder or what have you.

Wouldn't it be more fitting to just use aging rules and handle freak accident deaths by random event? Like, if a mage summons a demon or goes to war, they're going to have a plausible chance of death, right? Not, "oh they have thirty years of life left according to fate, they're not going to die."

[hal]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Wouldn't it be more fitting to just use aging rules and handle freak accident deaths by random event? Like, if a mage summons a demon or goes to war, they're going to have a plausible chance of death, right? Not, "oh they have thirty years of life left according to fate, they're not going to die."

If you download this free PDF, you will see that the age/lifespan of the NPC is already taking into account statistical probability that the person will die at a given age. The nice thing about what this author did, was factor in when children are born, when is the woman's fertility period going to end, and so forth. In short, you can easily generate anything from when a person is born (by rolling current age now, then back tracking from current date) to when they will die, marry, etc.

The added refinement that I just had to include was the decimal aspect of the year. From this, you can determine what month the NPC will die, what day they will die, and even (if you want to) - what hour.

How? Multiply the decimal portion of the year by 365. the whole value that you gain from this is how many days into the year that person will die. Remove the whole number value from there, and that will give you what decimal portion of the day remains in their life.

The only thing this table doesn't do for you, is determine the cause of death (hence the comment about determining if it were disease by rolling vs HT or not. If the HT roll fails, it is disease. Anything else would be accidental death, or deliberate manslaughter - etc. The Health saving roll aspect lets the GM decide if the death is sudden and unexpected (Crit failure vs HT would suggest it) whereas a miss by 1 would indicate a slow death due to health issues.

Remember, not all "health related" deaths would be from disease itself. For instance, a person could have suffered an infection of the urinary tract, which in turn, results in the urinary bladder forming scarring tissue. Said scarring tissue would eventually close the urinary bladder shut until the person dies of urea poisoning. It could also be a genetic disorder that manifested itself...

In short? Although I have some tables for determining events on a manor in the early 800's to say, 1200's or 1300's overall, this one table in the PDF takes care a lot of things.

As noted earlier? If I had to hand roll all of this and record it on paper sheets, it might be too labor intensive. On the other hand, having the time to code this, and then use it at will, saves me that grief.

If I were running this as a GM for a player on say, Fantasy Grounds, I could easily set it up, knowing who will die when, and put into play "threads" that may well suggest the players engaging with the NPC and perhaps seeing signs of the pending death. Alternatively, I can simply have that particular NPC be on hand with the player characters and maybe save their lives at the cost of their own, or perhaps flee danger and be dragged down in front of the player characters, etc.

As a tool to add to the GM's bag of tricks, I think it is a nice thing.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by hal

Since I've automated the NPC generation that indicates when an NPC is destined to die (outside of the events such as war, starvation, etc), a HT saving roll is made to see if it is Health related, if not, then it is an "Accident" or murder or what have you.

Originally Posted by TGLS

Wouldn't it be more fitting to just use aging rules and handle freak accident deaths by random event? Like, if a mage summons a demon or goes to war, they're going to have a plausible chance of death, right? Not, "oh they have thirty years of life left according to fate, they're not going to die."

As I read it, its not that they will die only when fate tells them to, its that they will die at that time, unless something stops it. So if the mage goes to war and dies, they're dead. The "fated" death only matters if they make it that far.

of course, one thing I'll want to do is try and prolong the lives of some of these folks. Hal, do you have a way to reroll fated time of death if a mage stops the infection that would have killed someone?


can events like epidemic can kill before the fated death?

[hal]

Originally Posted by ericthered

As I read it, its not that they will die only when fate tells them to, its that they will die at that time, unless something stops it. So if the mage goes to war and dies, they're dead. The "fated" death only matters if they make it that far.

of course, one thing I'll want to do is try and prolong the lives of some of these folks. Hal, do you have a way to reroll fated time of death if a mage stops the infection that would have killed someone?


can events like epidemic can kill before the fated death?

When dealing with player characters and DICE - nothing is ever set in stone as the saying goes. I had one NPC who was fated to die because his brother (a player character) had the fate of becoming heir to his father's holding. The brother was first born heir to the estate. But, during the battle scene in which the NPC Brother was fated to die, another player charactere used his healing capabilities to try and save the brother. I told him, only if you can roll an automatic success or better on 3d6 can you get to the brother in time to save the death aspected brother.

Darned if he didn't roll a 4.

The PDF I pointed out, has a section in there saying that if there is a famine or war - that one can always try to deal with it with a roll for the NPCs as a one time chance to have a fair number die off together.

As for disease rolls etc - if the fated death looks to be disease related, then yes. If it is a critical failure, chances are, it is something like a brain aneurism that can drop a person on the spot. Laura Branigan died in just that fashion.

But, if you grow attached to your npcs - I won't give you a hard time (especailly if it is a mageborn).

[hal]

As am afterthought? If the person survives past their fated death day, I simply have the app reroll the fated death date until it exceeds a given death year. I'd have to go back and update the app to do it, but part of the generation rules I was following, did have it possible for a death date to be earlier than the current age (a no no), so the app trapped for that and rerolled until the death year was further along the line than the current age.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by hal

As a tool to add to the GM's bag of tricks, I think it is a nice thing.

Oh, so the players don't see that table. OK, that makes a bit of sense. I was concerned it could lead to gamey things, like, "Chelci is going to live longer than Bell, trust me on this."

Also: what's that number after "Age at death"?

[Inky]

Hypothetically, if I were to join in, how does this work? I read through the thread but I'm somewhat confused.

The pre-determined life expectancies do seem odd, since one of the things that people often talk about mages being useful for in TL3 societies is improving the villagers' health and thus life expectancies (by securing a clean water supply, growing more food, or whatever), so it seems as if that would be a likely thing for people to try to do with their mages - and if the life expectancies are pre-determined, it seems as if nothing people do with their mages could make any difference to that. Is that the case, or not? You said how people could try to save individual characters that were about to die, once the danger became obvious, but no mention of in general.

What's the knight character sheet meant to be used for? If he's just going to be a figurehead to represent somebody IC planning the things that the player is actually planning, 175 points not including his Wealth and Status seems a lot just for that. Possibly that's not it.