Which Profession Can't Be Risked?

[Greentongue]

Medieval Demographics Made Easy (http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm)

What do you think is the most critical profession for your village?
The one that you would NOT risk on adventures unless there were no others.
:confused:
=

[King Faticus]

aww what? I wanted to see the SV for clockmakers D:

[Sandra Linkletter]

What a marvelous webpage! Thank you for sharing that link. :)

[tyjenks]

Well, I had started a post based on the value of different professions, but since it is total guess work at this point, my answer is.....Depends.

Cool link, though. :)

[bitobah]

Great website! The source texts are a bit dated and the demographic numbers have changed, but it was cool to see real history translated into fantasy gaming.

I would say the social value of a wizard in real life would be HUGE. Being able to bend the laws of nature and physics is a pretty awesome power, unless we are talking low-magic here.

[Azeem]

The "Village Idiot"! :eek: Much too important to lose. Otherwise, there will be no one left to throw the spoiled tomatoes at.

[Sleet]

Aye, great website.
Beer-Seller of course!
;)

[soldyne]

BOOKMARKED! thanks for the link.

I think the point of the article is that it depends on how big your city is. I would think the illuminators are fairly pointless in small hinterland village. not to say that if a village had one that he would be treated as ogre fodder (or maybe...)

[King Faticus]

the thing that stood out the most for me was the statement that frontier towns tended to be large walled communities (safety in numbers) with very little to no developed areas outside for miles

they would import most of their food through caravans

doesn't Hinterland take place in these wild fringes?


the core of a kingdom every inch of arable land is being farmed and there are many hundreds of small villages... they tend to have no walls unless there in a risk of raiding

the only large cities were located along trade routes ect

[Greentongue]

I believe that a decision has to be made about the feeling of threat where the village is located.
It may be that the first thing constructed is a palisade with huts or tents inside it. Then the homes are upgraded from there.

==
Another point is, how much historical knowledge does the target audience have?
And, can they suspend disbelief enough to enjoy the game?

Majesty had a town around a fortification where a town INSIDE a fortification was far more likely.

Maybe instead of Hinterland it should be call Heartland. ;)
=

[alh_p]

I think you're looking at the question the opposite way to which it was & is handled in real life.

Generaly, a civil population avoids fighting if it can. Those who did/do fight often join for the extra money earned in miltary service. The vast majority of soldiers in historical armies (and modern armed forces) were not skilled artisans but peasants (or their "bottom of the heap" social equivalent).

Also, farming and 'peasant skills' were generally not in high demand (compared to blacksmiths or merchants) so a population could better cope with casualties to such members of it's society.

So, I'd expect most of the village's soldiers to be part-time soldier/farmers.

That of course is subject to the eventual experience & economic models of Hinterland as well as various real-life situations -such as when a city would be attacked, and everyone would join in the defense.

[master0p]

Amazing website..

To bad in hinterland there will be only 1 village( i suspect so).
Hopefully there would be more Example AI heroes that have villages as well to compete or trade/ally with u.

[Sandra Linkletter]

Obviously, Pastrycook is vital. When the adventuring party of muscular farmers dies, as my people starve I will have to say "Let them eat cake!" and I can hardly do that without a Pastrycook. :eek::D

[Khanon]

I found it interesting that some of the numbers there are way out of kilter with historical evidence.

The author said the numbers were based largely on the 1292 census of Paris...? That's hardly an exemplary representation of rural communities. Except during times of civil war, that was a fairly safe community with larger established businesses even then so one larger shop in the city would do the job of a half-dozen sprinkled about the outlying villages. The same would hold true doing a census of circa 1350-1400 London... Or Berlin...

Two of the most glaring "errors" would be a general ("merchantile") store and the blacksmith. No matter the small size of a rural community anywhere from 500ad (or even earlier) to the early 20th century... If there was a settlement, there was a blacksmith. Period. The work was hard, and the travel long. If your draft horse threw a shoe, if your plough broke, if the town's water collection barrel had a pipe sieze, the blacksmith repaired it. The blacksmith crafted nails and hammers, files, screwdrivers, carving tools, etc. If it was a piece of metal, he made it for the townspeople. Larger towns (small cities) and up started torquing the numbers are more people bought these goods from merchantile and "hardware" stores of varying type instead of the blacksmith. But the small towns...even the ones with only 50-100 people (can be seen in small towns across the U.S. from the first days of settling the country)... the blacksmith was almost the cornerstone of the town....Them, and the general store or the merchantile. Traditionally, no matter how small a town was, it had 3 things...and a fourth as it grew. In order of importance, the blacksmith, the general store, the schoolhouse/church/townhall/meeting hall, and eventually the pub/tavern, which often grew to be an inn if the travelers that came through warranted.

At any rate... I find the numbers listed on that page dubious, and less than accurate for use with a fantasy game especially where small towns are concerned.

*shrugs* perhaps that's just me...

[Greentongue]

At any rate... I find the numbers listed on that page dubious, and less than accurate for use with a fantasy game especially where small towns are concerned.

*shrugs* perhaps that's just me...
Might you be able to point to a better resource? One that you did agree with?
=

[King Faticus]

wikiped..... lol sorry I couldn't help myself :D :rolleyes:

[alh_p]

At any rate... I find the numbers listed on that page dubious, and less than accurate for use with a fantasy game especially where small towns are concerned.

*shrugs* perhaps that's just me...

The period you compare the site's figures with is at least 7 to 5 centuries later. By the 1700s and 1800s, blacksmithing was a common & affordable skill. In the Middle ages, it was the pinnacle of high technology and therefore much more rare. To illustrate my point, there isn't an airport in every town/village nowadays.

[sakasiru]

First of all: I find it hard to make any reliable statement about how towns were in a span of 1500 years in all of the then-known world.

I think the numbers based on 1300 Paris are okay for a larger city (larger at this time period), but can´t say much about smaller towns. F.e. there were often towns consisting of some farm houses/ fisher huts/ whatever the place gave for a living with no shops at all. Basically, in the middle ages every household made most of their wares themselves, baking bread, carving needles from bones, spinning flax and so on, while travelling merchants occasionally stopped by, selling tools and pots and everything the households couldn´t make themselves.

Life in small towns was largely different from life in citys, so I don´t think you can compare the numbers at all.

I´m not sure about the distribution of blacksmiths at that time, but I would assume there were some at every stronghold and in cities, while the smaller towns were supplied by travelling merchants. Khanon´s assumptions may be true for the time and place the settlers spread in northern America, but middle age Europe had a very different landscape, history and density of population and therefore very different structures. There was a church in every town, but a schoolhouse?! Whats that? The only people than could read were monks and maybe nobles, all of them teached by members of their own class at the monasteries or courts.

Inns were distributed along main roads, some inside towns (if they lay at that road), some standing alone. Often the local mill, located a little bit outside of town, served as a shelter for travelling journeymen or merchants, hence the "beautiful daughter of the miller" was often sung of in travelling songs ;) .

I won´t start on what life was around 500, because it was entirely different *again*.

So, the first thing the designers have to decide, is on what place and time period their "fantasy" is derived from. Or if they want it similar to any at all, since the presence of magic and monsters would have altered the structures a lot.

[Khanon]

There was a church in every town, but a schoolhouse?! Whats that? The only people than could read were monks and maybe nobles, all of them teached by members of their own class at the monasteries or courts.

As a point of order, you'll notice I used / to divide up the uses of the "multi-purpose town gathering building". Depending on the time period, or the "sophistication" of the town, it was used for various things unless the town grew in size enough to create single-use buildings. Hence, one town may only use it for a church and meeting hall, another only a meeting hall, another may use it for a church, town hall, AND school. And in the time period covered in my example of early American settlement, even most rural places had school, though many of them only went to the rough current equivalent of the 4th, 5th, or 6th grade where the children went for only a few hours a day and learned the basics of "the three r's" and little else.

Again, even as posted by those who followed, my reference was to population numbers and using the 1300 paris census as the "reference card" for all communities. In paris at that time, again for example, the blacksmith was usually a massive place with multiple smiths serving many more people. In the smaller locales, there was still a smith that may have had 1 smith and 1-2 apprentices and served far fewer people, but was still present. One other person's reference to smalol towns that had a fishing hut or two, maybe a seamstress, and a few farmers wouldn't even really be considered a "village" or a "hamlet", which is the rough town size reference I was using, and the site's numbers don't jibe with such a settlement from an historical perspective. Indeed, smaller settlements that had no established "city/town center" did rely on traveling tinkerers... Those that had an established town center of some sort, a smith was usually one of the first things that went up.

Thanks for the reference regarding the miller's daughter stories. I'd forgotten where that came from.

As to a source that I would trust more for an all-in-one "get your numbers here" resource? I couldn't give you that. No one can, really. it was never a hard and fast rule. Life isn't like that. My point was, using the census records for circa 1300 Paris isn't goin g to be anywhere near accurate for a rural setting, even in their very own time period. City numbers varied from rural numbers for a variety of reasons, one of the chief ones being population density and service sizes. In a town of, say, 2000 people, do you have one large smith or 4 small ones? If you find one large one (as was generally the case) in a large city, does that mean if a rural settlement only had ~500 people in the outlying areas and town proper, that they had NO blacksmith?! No. It just meant a smaller smithy, as the demand was there, but not as great.

Interesting how it parallels real life, that real life back then... Nowadays, you have one grocery store for roughly 50,000 people in your average town. Does that mean if you have a town of only 10,000 people, you have no store?! Hardly. You just have a smaller store that isn't geared to provide for 50,000 people.

That was the general point I was trying to make, and why I wouldn't use such a reference based upon the core reference for numbers.