Advice on Campaign

[Aigol]

Hi, I have been reading and thinking of making a campaign set in a more realistic fantasy world with low/rare magic. along with the running of a game I have to say I like getting down in the numbers and seeing if things really work out in a reasonable manner.

I have been using this site for some of the numbers
http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/

I was curious if what it gives seems reasonable

In addition I was trying to get some idea of other things about medieval type settings.

What sort of ratio would I be looking at between regular people and 'nobles'/landed knights?

For armed forces of a kingdom what would I be looking at as a standing force and what can be called upon in times of war ?

What would be a way of going about figuring out some outline of a kingdoms economic output and relate that to wealth of nobles/how much the kingdom can afford to spend on major projects?

I have been become interested in these details after reading the first half or so of Game of Thrones and was wondering which may work better to model Kingdoms as a whole or to model each Lords holdings as a small kingdom and work from there to work out the sum total of the overall kingdom




Anything that could answer these questions or if someone could point me to a GURPS book that may cover such things It would be appreciated. I end up with ideas like this but can never really figure out how to translate it to a game or work up numbers as for whatever reason I am not particularly fond of just pulling out random numbers. I like digging down into things and seeing how/why they work that way.


Anyway thank you for even taking the time to read this

[Blind Mapmaker]

A lot depends on how feudal and how warlike you like your setting. Polish nobility exceeded 10% of the population, because they had to fight the Teutonic Order and others a lot of the time. This makes for some rather poor nobles, though. For most European countries 1-2% are more reasonable.

If you're trying to model counties like the early modern Holy Roman Empire then it would make more sense to work your way up from middling-sized lordly holdings (which will have vassals and spread-out estates). This goes also for most medieval "countries". An exception would be Norman England, which was pretty centralized for the time frame. The question is, how detailed you want to be for your campaign. In a non-dungeon campaign politics is probably going to be rather important as a major source for combat adventures, but designing multiple lords' holdings might get boring fast. You might want to think about using Europe or something very much like it as a basis or at least as a source of ideas.

As for GURPS books, Low-Tech and Low Tech Companions I and III will probably be useful for you. Together they go a long way of helping your design decisions. They do not provide a complete kingdom building kit, though. Fantasy will also be useful for more general campaign decisions and thoughts about how to integrate rare magic.

Edit: Re-tried the Domesday Book. The general demographics for a kingdom look okay, but this is really hard to check. The town demographics seem a bit strange at times (Chicken Butchers and Butchers as a useful distinction?). Priest are way too low while clergy looks only a bit on the lowish side. There are always less maids than noble households. The essential midwives are missing. Not really out of whack generally, but some things seem off. It looks very good for things like tailors, shoemakers, inns and taverns.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

(Chicken Butchers and Butchers as a useful distinction?).

At a guess, a social distinction based on skill. Chickens are a lot easier to kill than cattle or pigs, and can probably be sold whole. Bigger animals have to be cut up and sold in pieces, and keeping your stock from spoiling is harder. So a general butcher needs more skill and facilities than a chicken butcher, and might well object to being classed with his "inferior".

[Blind Mapmaker]

I can see where the distinction Butcher/Chicken Butcher is coming from, I would just question the usefulness in an RPG setting (and really in anything that is not a full-blown scientific treatment of medieval economics). Input-Output-wise the difference between the two is even more marginal than between other related professions. There is, for example, no difference between a regular blacksmith, a ferrier and a weaponsmith. Given that even the production of swords was differentiated into different professions that seems more important than the kind of animals one butchers.

I'd better stop now; this was only a really minor point, anyway. I guess I have the argumentative quirk ^^;

[Dunadin777]

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

I can see where the distinction Butcher/Chicken Butcher is coming from, I would just question the usefulness in an RPG setting (and really in anything that is not a full-blown scientific treatment of medieval economics). Input-Output-wise the difference between the two is even more marginal than between other related professions. There is, for example, no difference between a regular blacksmith, a ferrier and a weaponsmith. Given that even the production of swords was differentiated into different professions that seems more important than the kind of animals one butchers.

These are important status issues in the right campaign. A Chicken Butcher is probably a Status -1 or 0 butcher, whereas a traditional butcher would be Status 0-3(maybe), depending on the quality of his meat and his patrons. Similarly, a blacksmith is going to be lower status and more common than a ferrier or weaponsmith. In the right setting, a Ferrier might be particularly honored for his key contribution to a nation's chivalry. In my Myth setting, ferrier is a particularly ignoble profession, since the central kingdom refuses to ride horses as a matter of patriotism.

Back to the OP. I used the Medieval Demographics (the basis of the site you linked) for fleshing out the Myth world. It's very handy, but it will yield a setting with little in the way of 'wild' lands unless you specifically set them aside. If you're shooting for something like the GoT setting, that should be excellent.

Noble:Commoner ratios might be anywhere from 1:20 to 1:100, but remember that includes the children and infeoded nobles as well. Important nobles should taper to a dynamic, manageable number--unless you want chaos. Game of Thrones only has a handful of truly important houses, which is a bit of dramatic license. In my Myth campaign, I wanted the feudal kingdom to have a more chaotic political geography, so I made more than 20 noble houses. Even then, these are only the major houses, and there are probably three or four minor houses beneath each one.

For the size of armies, a medieval standing army probably shouldn't exceed 5% of the population and would max out around 10-15% in times of war. However, in medieval times, raising an army involved a lot of force of personality too, so marshalling an army might involve diplomacy rolls or entire encounters with the lesser nobles as the king tries to rally his subjects to his banner--the political cause is paramount in this case. Think of Theoden trying to marshal the Rohirrim in The Return of the King but make it more bitter, with lesser nobles wanting to hold back their forces in case of total disaster. Or in hopes of it ;)

If you want some specific numbers on Kingdom outputs, I can share the specifics of my own approach. But for now here's my general approach. Using GURPS City Stats as inspiration, I took the population of the region or kingdom, and then multiplied this by the average wealth of that populace--for this scale I used half-values of the GURPS wealth levels, so there's a step halfway between average and struggling, average and comfortable, etc. I then assumed some arbitary tax level (5-60%, from CR0 hippies to CR6 autocrats), modified by corruption, and there you have a rough level of the wealth of that kingdom.

[trooper6]

Speaking of that website...

I put in 250km/2 as a land area (about the size of the UK) and gave the place abundance arable land...and had them making castles for 500 years.

I only villages...no towns, no cities....and also no castles. But the UK did have cities and did have castles...so any thoughts on this?

[Dunadin777]

Originally Posted by trooper6

Speaking of that website...

I put in 250km/2 as a land area (about the size of the UK) and gave the place abundance arable land...and had them making castles for 500 years.

I only villages...no towns, no cities....and also no castles. But the UK did have cities and did have castles...so any thoughts on this?

The UK is more like 250,000 square kilometers--is that what you put into the website field? Or did you really put 250--which is the size of a good size city?

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Dunadin777

The UK is more like 250,000 square kilometers--is that what you put into the website field? Or did you really put 250--which is the size of a good size city?

Ha! I meant 250k...but only but in 250. That fixed it. Thanks Dunadin777

[Aigol]

Thanks for the help so far

[Blind Mapmaker]

Originally Posted by Dunadin777

These are important status issues in the right campaign. A Chicken Butcher is probably a Status -1 or 0 butcher, whereas a traditional butcher would be Status 0-3(maybe), depending on the quality of his meat and his patrons. Similarly, a blacksmith is going to be lower status and more common than a ferrier or weaponsmith. In the right setting, a Ferrier might be particularly honored for his key contribution to a nation's chivalry. In my Myth setting, ferrier is a particularly ignoble profession, since the central kingdom refuses to ride horses as a matter of patriotism.

I guess there would be a status increase from chicken butcher to butcher. I am not so sure it would be measurable in GURPS; a difference of a whole status level seems like a lot. The point I was trying to make with ferrier, blacksmith and weaponsmith was that this application in question does not differentiate at all between these functionally and socially very different professions. And yet it does have the chicken butcher. That did seem a bit strange to me.