Mundane Village Life in Cidri

[ColinK]

While a farm village may have relative self-sufficiency and even surplus of grains production, fruits production, meat production and vegetables production, there's always something more interesting if you ask around.

Maybe a local coal seam provides a part-time cash resource for sale to regional alchemists and smiths. Maybe a seacoast fishing village also has oysters and some of those have pearls. Same goes for mussels and freshwater pearls in some rivers. Maybe the lovely white sand of the ocean beach has five or ten percent titanium oxide in it like a certain place in New Zealand. What do you suppose the dwarven smith is doing with that?

Of course, Cidri also has ruins, whether they are known and mapped, known and hidden or unknown and awaiting discovery.

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Please don't concentrate all your efforts on the most mundane and conventional part of Cidri.

Considering the extraordinary and unusual aspects of life on Cidri are so well fleshed-out and defined in TFT:ITL, and this aspect is not, why not?

JK

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

Considering the extraordinary and unusual aspects of life on Cidri are so well fleshed-out and defined in TFT:ITL, and this aspect is not, why not?

That's a false premise. The exotic lands of Cidri are not fleshed out or defined in In the Labyrinth.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

That's a false premise. The exotic lands of Cidri are not fleshed out or defined in In the Labyrinth.

I thought that Jim's comment was meant to be ironic.

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I thought that Jim's comment was meant to be ironic.

No, not at all Chris. The main thing which seems to not be included in TFT:ITL is all the detailed information on the common world outside, how it functions as a symbiosis, and what everything/everyone else is doing (who isn't an adventurer), because to me, all that *mundane detailed stuff* and how it interacts is the supporting cast and background scenery that makes the fantastic parts so fantastic when your character crosses between the mundane surface world and down into the phantasmagorical underworld; as already described in TFT:ITL.

Or, consider it this way: the more detailed information you have on Peter Parker, the more amazing Spiderman becomes by contrast.

JK

[zot]

Why does it have to be one of the other?

Fleshing out mundane aspects is important because players need to know what "usual" means on Cidri.

Fleshing out exotic aspects is important so they know what it's like to get away from "the usual".

TFT doesn't have much material at all for either of these and it can do with more of both.

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by zot

Why does it have to be one of the other? Fleshing out mundane aspects is important because players need to know what "usual" means on Cidri.

Exactly; and that is precisely why I found the comment: "Please don't concentrate all your efforts on the most mundane and conventional part of Cidri." by Agemegos so perplexing, that I had to ask: "Why not?".

JK

[The Wyzard]

Because if I wanted to read Life in a Medieval Village I've already got that book.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by zot

Fleshing out mundane aspects is important because players need to know what "usual" means on Cidri.

Cidri is a gigantic world with vast tropical regions and polar regions and everything in between. It has at least 48 continents, five of them bigger than Eurasia. It is populated and influenced by the cultures of 371 alternative Earths. It is noted as having thousands of ecologies. It has infinite adventure, infinite variety.¹ You don't have to be so lavish with your premise to get yet another fantasy setting that is just like eastern England and northern France in the fourteenth century.

For there to be a "usual" culture that encompasses all of that seems to me to be implausible, a waste of opportunity, and a rejection of the premise. Earth never had a usual like that, why start with something a dozen times bigger and several hundred times more diverse if your goal is to end up more uniform and with less variety? To start out with the Mnoren Empire and end up with mediaeval Huntingdonshire seems to be grossly implausible and terribly disappointing. Like The Wizard, I've already got half a shelf of books about daily life in Mediaeval Europe, and RPG settings modelled on it are a dime a dozen. Cidri is big enough to several areas as large and diverse as Europe in that mould for those who want that, without covering the landscape from pole to equator with stock-fantasy blancmange.
___________

¹ In The Labyrinth, p.4

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by The Wyzard

Because if I wanted to read Life in a Medieval Village I've already got that book.

Who says Cidri is a mediaeval village? There are all sorts of things that could dramatically affect ways of life - magical technology; knowledge like the germ theory of disease left over from Mnoren days; stress of interaction with non-humans; etc.

It would be nice to have some typical settlements: a peaceful village that benefits from magic to some extent but isn't really involved in it; a city with industrialised magic; a pocket of humans in a sea of hymenopterans (or their replacement) where the village itself is reasonably safe but there's always trouble at the periphery; a city from which people have been driven; etc.

But most of these can go into setting description books. I wouldn't expect to see a lot of this in the rules.