Quote:
Originally Posted by RGTraynor
Yeah. Normally I'm down on this line of thinking, because GURPS magic rules just are not generous enough to provide. But with a thousand children there, you've got crazy scope for lending energy in ceremonial castings or to power items that aren't mage-only to operate.
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Assuming that you can keep a thousand poorly-supervised children focused on the task . . .
Quote:
Originally Posted by RGTraynor
If the latter, then there's a much better chance that they have useful skills such as pottery, smithing, fishing, baking and the like, and at least are likely inured to hard physical labor. If what you have, by contrast, are scribes, notaries, jewelers, orators and the idle rich, that's a problem.
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Scribes, etc. wouldn't be that common in a typical city. More likely, the upper middle and upper classes will be merchants, wealthy craftsmen, and their hangers-on. Some will be clerks, but many servant will have practical skills from before they were hired on as servants. There will be real social tensions when the servants realize, a) they've got a lot more freedom than they had before, b) they're far more economically valuable than their masters.
What virtually any suburban or semi-urban low tech person would have is a greater familiarity with animal handling and gardening. They wouldn't necessarily be useful as farmers, but they can at least keep chickens, keep a pig alive until slaughtering time, and grow vegetables on a small scale.
If you want historical examples of new colonies at about the right TL, take a look at how any of the cities in North America were founded, and how they fared. Some were colossal failures, some had massive struggles to survive, and a few had their act together from the start and developed without too many problems.