Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Needing to trade more than other races means the dwarves end up being the ones that practice diplomacy the most. Makes for a nice change from the gruff, standoffish usual.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Molluscs and other marine creatures need food.

Lichen needs light for the algae to photosynthesise.


The average solar energy flux is about 340 W per square metre (average over the Earth's surface, day and night). The average geothermal energy flux is 0.085 W per square metre. Of course it is rather higher in some places, as you can tell because lava is hotter than sun-warmed basalt. But those places are difficult to tunnel in, to say the least.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Nitpick:

Men to grasslands. The elves will dominate forested plains, and trolls the snowy ones.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

You could maybe have dwarves native to coal mines, chemical energy is needed but it doesn't have to be renewable.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Are the dwarves supposed to be eating the coal? Or are there supposed to be lifeforms that grow on it, using its energy to nourish themselves?

Bill Stoddard

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I hope you remember some remarks with which I once confused a thread about Tolkien's elves, in which I pointed out that for a race that can make acorns, beechnuts, etc. palatable, an established forest can easily produce a half or a third as much food per square kilometre per year as a grain crop, and with vastly less labour. Acorns, filberts, beechnuts, hazels etc. are just as easy to transport as grain is, or more, and they will store for about a year. Crucially, forests need a little management by people, but they don't need to be tilled and harrowed, which means no food diverted to feed draught animals. That means that elves living on nuts and game can support population densities as high as humans on farmland, with much less agricultural labour. Elven cities in forests, and no elvish peasants. I see these elves in silk and buckskin, with furs of the squirrels and beaver that they destroy as pests.

On grasslands the most nutritious and storable crops are annual grasses, while the best grazing is mostly on perennials (and herds destroy the life-cycle of annual grasses). So your humans are likely to be divided between farmers clad in linen and cotton and graziers in leather and wool; on seasonal grasslands you will probably get nomads. Irrigation is likely an important issue.

Mountainous areas in the mid-to-high latitudes have the curious property (from my point of view in the sub-tropics of Earth's flattest continent) of having areas within a few days (or even hours!) hike of one another that have quite different sets of seasons. This encourages transhumance, in which the high meadows in summer are used to make cheese and butter and fatten livestock, while the valleys grow hay and other fodder crops for the winter store, and there is a slaughter festival in autumn. Wool, sheepskin, and kid leather seem likely, also perhaps linen.

Amid the snow and ice we expect to see hunters and perhaps nomads with semi-domesticated caribou, clad in deerskins and seal, the brothers of the bear and wolf. Note that coniferous forests, generally producing fewer large seeds than the deciduous broadleafs, do not support such large silvicultural populations. Are the taigas inhabited by elvish hunters or by trolls?

Reefs, beaches, mangrove swamps, and lagoons often produce a lot of protein food for gatherers and fisherfolk, besides waterfowl and their eggs. But if your selkie-folk are to exploit the true bounty of the sea they will need fishing boats and ships: even if you can swim the Atlantic it is hard to bring in a harvest of herring as you do so. Fishing and whaling probably draw ship-owners into long-distance commerce. Perhaps this divides the selkies into one culture of dwellers on the shores and in the lagoons, and another whose villages are great galleons and caravelles. The latter need timber from the forests for their hulls, and from the fjordlands for masts and spars, besides canvas, cordage, turpentine, pitch, and tar.

I don't think I see a wide niche for your halfings. I would expect them to be out-competed by selkies coming up the rivers and by elves and humans on the banks. If not, I think their best bet is growing rice in freshwater marshes: in swamps I think they would face stiff opposition from elves, especially if they wanted to clear the trees to plant rice. They also fish the rivers, I suppose, and hunt waterfowl and raid their nests. Unlike elves they probably favour beavers.

I am professionally biased to favour trade, especially where I see specialisation; therefore (perhaps) I like the image of dwarves who are considerably specialised in mining, masonry, and metallurgy, dependent on trade for their food. They have homelands where the ores and rich and the tunnelling easy, but likely also expatriate enclaves where they dwell as smiths, engineers, builders, and masons for other people.

My ideas of the ghoul way of life pretty much stop at cheap knock-offs of bedouins and berbers and the poor, poor hunter-gatherers of the Australian inland. And even those actually lived on the arid grasslands, only travelling through the stretches of bare rock and sand.

One question. Who grows olive trees, vines, and seasonal tree fruit on chaparralled slopes where the climate is mediterranean?

Is that helpful at all?

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

All of it is tremendously helpful, more than I can do justice to in the quick comment I have time for now. I shall have to come back to it, and likely save a copy to a worldbuilding folder.

* I didn't remember the details of your analysis of elves, but the general idea is very much what I had in mind.

* I envisioned taiga as elven territory, but it could easily have troll intruders, especially male trolls, a more footlose sort than female. Your point about low productivity is worth closer examination.

* The key to halfling culture is that river valleys were the place where grain agriculture seems to have first gotten started. Halflings would have settled villages early, and even towns, because rivers are also optimal for travel. The halflings are going to be the world's first traders, first capitalists, even first bourgeoisie (not in the Marxist sense!). Though they may hire men as soldiers—and that won't always work out so well.

* Ghouls are going to be something of a scavenger culture, pickers-up of unconsidered trifles. They'll also be comparatively r-selected, able to multiply fast in good times and recover quickly from dieback.

* As to the Mediterranean climate, I was using the GURPS system, which doesn't recognize such a thing! I think it may be somewhat mixed, though. I expect elves (dryads) in the scrub forests; halflings on the rivers; ghouls lurking in the drier fringes. But I need to examine the matter more closely. I was thinking of a conventional temperate setting, but it might be interesting to use a Mediterranean one instead, with intermingled races.

Bill Stoddard

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Either. There's no straightforward means by which plants or animals can eat coal, but it does have perfectly adequate energy content, so if you toss some magic into the mix (possibly fire-linked), it can work out. Dwarves are traditionally associated with forges, so it might be that the forge is actually a means of converting coal into fuel, and the metalworking and all is just a side effect.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Both ideas sounds cool to me.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Man, the Master of Horses!