Elven Artisan Economy

[Wiseman]

I never really understood why the DMG didn't basically stat up and contextualize a large town as an example of how DnD demographics work. I think people would play the game a lot differently if they knew that the local Warlord is probably 7th level and has 100 2nd levelWarriors.

That might turn it into the sort of game people don't want, though. It's much harder to go around feeling like a badass when you know exactly how many people nearby are more badass than you, and they know it too. For people who're playing an RPG as a power fantasy to get away from the real world where they're six steps down from the big boss, the one thing they absolutely don't want is to be in a fantasy world where they are literally six steps down from the big boss.

I know a lot of people reacted very badly to Vampire setting sourcebooks when they statted up a bunch of really powerful people and said "Look at this dude. He's awesome. You're not this awesome. You should do what he says or he'll steal your lunch money."

I've never run into the problem you describe here. It might be because I play with younger people who are used to having games where there are people higher level than you that you can't take 'yet' or perhaps it is because half of the people I play with hate having people concentrate on characters behaving based on meta knowledge and encourage the other half to not look at the game that way. In either case players (both people I've gamed with for years and players who I've been getting into the game) don't seem to have a problem with knowing that their are people who's asses they can't beat (right now) and I think the knowledge that they can someday BE that bad ass helps a lot. I think people are turned away only if there are bad asses about and they can never get to that level or don't think that they will anyway.

I must agree with you, there's nothing wrong with having NPC's who are significantly more powerful than the PC's, so long as you don't go all obsessive wank over them, or simply insist that there isn't anything the PCs can do them ever, (like the Lady of Pain). If your campaign has any sort of history to it, chances are that there's someone already at high levels.

[shadzar]

I've never been in that camp. I think it's because I'm from an older DnD generation who said, "if it has stats, it can be killed."

Look Eric, this has nothing to do with generations because Dave ran a different style of game than Gary and they were the SAME generation. The Dread Gazebo can't be killed.

you are just from a different playstyle, one that aligns with Gygax and Wyatt.

[Stubbazubba]

Re: Elven economies

I've always said that Elves live in small communities, reproduce slowly, and have extremely low demand for non-perishable goods. An Elven barrel-maker learns the art from his master, probably his grandfather, by watching him make a barrel, beginning at planting the seeds of the trees that you'll get the wood from. Once you have the uncannily-good wood (because you're an Elf and you raised that tree with love and magic potions), you make an uncannily-good barrel, even if you have to go through several iterations. Each barrel is named, it is a piece of art that depicts either by image or verse some tale, be it epic or mundane, that seemed relevant to the maker. These barrels last an uncannily-long time, so there's not a lot of need for more and more stuff. That frees up the craftsmen to make excellent stuff because they want to, not to meet a pressing demand.

Rates of production are generally low, because non-perishable things really don't perish. That may not be terribly realistic, and it might have a bunch of consequences I haven't thought through, but it made sense to me at one point, so I've kept it around.

[codeGlaze]

Quicj thought jot-down :
There are at least 4 (real life) distinguishable levels of skill development.

Novice/Trainee/Beginner : Just learning to undrstand the fundamentals. Like going from stick figure drawings to creating body type outlines.

Proficient : You are comfortabke with basic art forms and can produce basic things rather quickly but require plenty of time for new or advanced technique.

Skilled / Professional : You are proficient with your selected skill. You can produce quality at predictable speeds for a variety of techniques or difficulties.

Mastery : Thjs is wherr skilled professionals will diverge the most. This is where unique talents are really exposed. It may require an inherent knack/talent/understanding to really get to this point.
Mastery is like the caricature artist ( i forget his name ) that could draw coherent caricatures of broadway actors IN HIS POCKET while watching the play.

[brized]

...I've always found it odd that most fantasy games end up portraying entirely different sentient species as being less alien than many human cultures that actually existed.

It's possible that elves would shy away in horror from the notion of specialised labour. It's possible that they would shy away from the notion of innovation. It's possible that they would have social groups hardcapped at their version of Dunbar's Number, or would regard this world as a meaningless illusion which distracts us from our true natures, or believe that if another person uses a tool that you created then he can steal your soul. These are all things that actual humans actually believed at one time or another...

That might work for a non-playable race, particularly the kind that Frank describes as getting their asses conquered. I'm not sure about a PC race though, because PCs have to work together. All the cultures you described got curbstomped out of existence after exposure to cultures more industrious and in tune with reality. If a PC of a race/culture that believes utterly insane shit joins a party of PCs that don't, then something's gotta give. Giving the race actual powers that justify the beliefs may help, but go too far and you'll still end up with a situation that destroys PC cooperation.

[Laertes]

...I've always found it odd that most fantasy games end up portraying entirely different sentient species as being less alien than many human cultures that actually existed.

It's possible that elves would shy away in horror from the notion of specialised labour. It's possible that they would shy away from the notion of innovation. It's possible that they would have social groups hardcapped at their version of Dunbar's Number, or would regard this world as a meaningless illusion which distracts us from our true natures, or believe that if another person uses a tool that you created then he can steal your soul. These are all things that actual humans actually believed at one time or another...

That might work for a non-playable race, particularly the kind that Frank describes as getting their asses conquered. I'm not sure about a PC race though, because PCs have to work together. All the cultures you described got curbstomped out of existence after exposure to cultures more industrious and in tune with reality. If a PC of a race/culture that believes utterly insane shit joins a party of PCs that don't, then something's gotta give. Giving the race actual powers that justify the beliefs may help, but go too far and you'll still end up with a situation that destroys PC cooperation.

Isn't "member of a noble but declining race who no longer have a place in the world" one of the most popular PC tropes? Hell, that one goes back to Tolkien.

[brized]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but RPGs don't have you playing races on a decline for an ingrained philosophy that's incompatible with being an adventurer at all, or for rigid adherence to any other superstitious shit contradicted by their world's reality.

[erik]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but RPGs don't have you playing races on a decline for an ingrained philosophy that's incompatible with being an adventurer at all, or for rigid adherence to any other superstitious shit contradicted by their world's reality.

Okay, you're wrong. Just because a race may have those proclivities does not preclude an adventurer being something of an outcast/black sheep who goes against their society's nature in order to become an adventurer.

That's a freakin huge trope with legs.

[shadzar]

Correct me if I'm wrong here,

You are wrong. RPGs have whatever the players want them to have. so if elves are in decline or even humans and someone wants to play that and the group agrees, then that is what happens. the RPG should just be a toolset to let you create the type of game you want to play.

[brized]

Okay, you're wrong. Just because a race may have those proclivities does not preclude an adventurer being something of an outcast/black sheep who goes against their society's nature in order to become an adventurer.

That's a freakin huge trope with legs.

I might be misinterpreting Laertes, but his entire assertion is about PCs playing a member of a race that doesn't fit that bill.

When he says this...

...I've always found it odd that most fantasy games end up portraying entirely different sentient species as being less alien than many human cultures that actually existed.

It's possible that elves would shy away in horror from the notion of specialised labour. It's possible that they would shy away from the notion of innovation. It's possible that they would have social groups hardcapped at their version of Dunbar's Number, or would regard this world as a meaningless illusion which distracts us from our true natures, or believe that if another person uses a tool that you created then he can steal your soul. These are all things that actual humans actually believed at one time or another.

Making elves be nothing but europeans with pointy ears and long lifespans seems to lose the chance of creating something genuinely interesting and memorable.

It goes against his point to take a hypothetical member of a race like that and then play it with a more mainstream worldview; you might as well have a variation on "Europeans with pointy ears" to begin with.

[erik]

I don't see how you are getting that from what he wrote. Not even a little. He's saying non-human races should have less human cultures. That in no way contradicts becoming adventurers. I don't even



Examples of characters breaking ranks from their kind and going on to adventure:

Mani, last of his tribe goes off to Europe to adventure with his friend Gregoire to stop an evil cult and hunt a deadly beast. Despite not agreeing with European social norms, he doesn't become a European in mocasins.

Frodo leaves his bucolic homeland to adventure with some of his buddies and destroy an evil artifact.

Thomas Anderson leaves his boring pointless office life to join a cult of super powered anarchists bent on destroying the natural order of things and beating up super powered agents.

[brized]

I don't see how you are getting that from what he wrote. Not even a little. He's saying non-human races should have less human cultures. That in no way contradicts becoming adventurers. I don't even

It's really weird, then, that when he had the chance to clarify along the lines you just did, he instead defended the declining race trope.

As for your examples...the degree in divergence from the rest of the adventuring group's culture is nowhere close to Laertes' historic examples. Even Mani's divergent beliefs were backed up by the narrative rather than being superstition. That's why he and Fronsac, a naturalist, were in harmony rather than conflict over them.

[Laertes]

So it appears that people are discussing what the correct interpretation of my words was. Can I play?

What I meant was this:

As a setting element, I find it to be disappointing when inhuman cultures are less alien than actual human cultures. If I'm playing a fantasy game, I want to see genuinely fantastic things. Part of playing a fantasy game, for me, is tourism; when I can't indulge in tourism because every place is just a reskinned medieval europe, I am sadface. I do not feel that I am alone in this either.

This point was not intended to reflect on PCs who are members of those races. They, after all, left their homes to become adventurers. In this they are automatically distinct from the vast majority of people, because the vast majority of people are not adventurers.

Therefore there is no contradiction in saying "Elves believe that it is wrong to break the earth to plant or to plow. They subsist soley on magically-created food which is crafted from mana wells by the power of the Six Songs Of Dawn and the secrets of the elder choirs. I, on the other hand, got bored of that stuff and decided to go off and see what the world was like." Indeed, that creates an interesting character because it's going to shape their outlook on lots of things.

[codeGlaze]

I am genuimely surprised that conversation happened.

[erik]

So it appears that people are discussing what the correct interpretation of my words was. Can I play?

Yes you may, but don't get full of yourself and think that just because you said the words that your opinion on them is special. You still only get 1 vote towards their meaning.

[radthemad4]

So it appears that people are discussing what the correct interpretation of my words was. Can I play?

Yes you may, but don't get full of yourself and think that just because you said the words that your opinion on them is special. You still only get 1 vote towards their meaning.

Indeed

[Laertes]

As an Umberto Eco fanboy, this pleases me.

[Username17]

Elves are usually portrayed as hunter-gatherers who sing and dance all day. This is not actually implausible. As an ancient race who is fiercely territorial, they may indeed have some of the nicest available land, and small tribes of hunter gatherers in rich surroundings can get by on incredibly small amounts of daily work. Elves could very plausibly be doing like 4 hours of real work in a day, and spending the rest of the time goofing off.

What they would also have is incredibly low GDPs. Elves produce almost nothing for the market, and indeed produce almost nothing. They do minimal work, which is enough to put food in their mouths (I would say "on their table," but most Elves probably do not own a table), but not enough to produce much of a trading surplus. Elven cloaks are enchanted deeply and slowly because Elves only own one cloak each for years at a time.

Elven lives are, by the standards of other races, grinding poverty. But since Elves can eat meat and seasonal fruit whenever they want and spend most of their days dancing and singing, they regard other races' concepts of wealth to be basically insane. And that is why it takes an adventurer class Elf a hundred years to save up 100 gold pieces worth of equipment.

-Username17

[codeGlaze]

Elves are usually portrayed as hunter-gatherers who sing and dance all day. This is not actually implausible. As an ancient race who is fiercely territorial, they may indeed have some of the nicest available land, and small tribes of hunter gatherers in rich surroundings can get by on incredibly small amounts of daily work. Elves could very plausibly be doing like 4 hours of real work in a day, and spending the rest of the time goofing off.

What they would also have is incredibly low GDPs. Elves produce almost nothing for the market, and indeed produce almost nothing. They do minimal work, which is enough to put food in their mouths (I would say "on their table," but most Elves probably do not own a table), but not enough to produce much of a trading surplus. Elven cloaks are enchanted deeply and slowly because Elves only own one cloak each for years at a time.

Elven lives are, by the standards of other races, grinding poverty. But since Elves can eat meat and seasonal fruit whenever they want and spend most of their days dancing and singing, they regard other races' concepts of wealth to be basically insane. And that is why it takes an adventurer class Elf a hundred years to save up 100 gold pieces worth of equipment.

-Username17

I don't want to leave the Congo, no no nonono no.

[Mord]

Elves are usually portrayed as hunter-gatherers who sing and dance all day. This is not actually implausible. As an ancient race who is fiercely territorial, they may indeed have some of the nicest available land, and small tribes of hunter gatherers in rich surroundings can get by on incredibly small amounts of daily work. Elves could very plausibly be doing like 4 hours of real work in a day, and spending the rest of the time goofing off.

What they would also have is incredibly low GDPs. Elves produce almost nothing for the market, and indeed produce almost nothing. They do minimal work, which is enough to put food in their mouths (I would say "on their table," but most Elves probably do not own a table), but not enough to produce much of a trading surplus. Elven cloaks are enchanted deeply and slowly because Elves only own one cloak each for years at a time.

Elven lives are, by the standards of other races, grinding poverty. But since Elves can eat meat and seasonal fruit whenever they want and spend most of their days dancing and singing, they regard other races' concepts of wealth to be basically insane. And that is why it takes an adventurer class Elf a hundred years to save up 100 gold pieces worth of equipment.

-Username17

How did these Elves get so good at metalworking? Hunter-gatherers aren't typically known for their skill in the industrial arts.

[Whipstitch]

D&D crafting rules are already a mess and worth ignoring anyway, so you may as well declare that many rare magical materials are highly valued in part because they're actually super easy to work with. So at one point the elves grew a stockpile of ironleaf armor and lashed a bunch of star-metal to lengths of darkwood and now all that shit counts as masterwork and makes people from other territories super jealous. You could also run with high and wood elves just being a cultural distinction, with the former being more urbanized and associated with crafting.

[Laertes]

You would also have to separate out the extent to which magic is distinct from crafting and resource collection. In a magical world it's hard to imagine that any trade would forsake whatever magical assistance it could get. In Earthdawn terms, everyone would be an Adept.

[Username17]

You might also be seeing simple survivor bias. An Elven craftsman plies his trade for like 150 years. Now, he doesn't work very hard because no one in Elfia works very hard. And he doesn't have a lot of raw materials, because Elves have no coal mines or saw mills. But his career as an artisan lasts four times as long as that of a human craftsman. During that time, he's going to roll a lot of natural 20s.

In our world, we have a tendency to think of antiques as being of high quality. And indeed, things do tend to be high quality when you find things from bygone eras that are still in use. But it's important to remember that you aren't getting a fair sample from the past - lots of crap was made in each of those bygone eras and that crap got thrown out long ago. The march of time by itself acts as a quite effective quality filter - the longer an object survives in use the more awesome it must have been in the first place.

So all Elves need to do to have a reputation as master craftsmen is to never "take 10" and erect a simple quality filter that makes it so only shit with a high roll actually gets seen by foreigners. And time will do that naturally. If Elves have a rule where an item has to be used by the tribe for 10 years or 20 years or 50 years before it can be sold to outsiders, then every fucking thing that any foreigner ever gets from the Elves will be a masterwork of whatever the fuck it is. Because all the garbage they rolled up in the meantime will get scrapped long before it does its time as an Elf-only tool.

Because the bottom line is that the Elves don't really give a shit about your stuff and don't need to sell things to you at all. They live in a forest with a mild climate and literally eat low hanging fruit. You're lucky they have decided as a cultural affectation to wear pants, because there frankly isn't much reason for them to bother with clothing other than shoes from a personal protection standpoint. They are extremely "poor" because the cost of living where they live is nearly zero. They don't own furniture or flatware or fine china or whatever the fuck. They make bows to hunt wild game with because they like to supplement their diet with meat. But they don't even end that. They could get by for the next several hundred years of their natural lives by eating the fruit and nuts in arms' reach.

Now the downside of their situation is that the carrying capacity for the land is incredibly low. If their population doubled, they'd probably just have to send half the people away to go make a new Elfhome somewhere else. But they also breed really slowly, so they don't have a big problem with overpopulation.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

I could see it being tied into an elaborate form of gift-giving and hospitality etiquette rather than being barter in the modern sense. If elves are isolationists who don't really want anything from the outside, then most "trade" may be performed largely as a courtesy to people deemed Elf-friends. So if you're a random ass merchant who wanders into elf territory, odds are that you'll collect some arrowheads the painful way. But if you're in tight with the elves they only offer you the good stuff because that's just what elves do when someone under their protection says they're going to do something crazy like leave the forest.