I am in the midst of investing my soul into a homegrown campaign world for D&D, and I came upon this idea...Has anyone tried to develop some mechanic/commodity that drives the politics and economies of their world? Take for example oil in today's world, gold in the 15th century, or spice from Dune? One idea I am throwing around is magic...could it be controlled by a select few within a specific geography? Perhaps a race of dweebs inhabiting a mountainous region with active volcanoes that produce crystallized magic that is used to fuel spells or items, for example.
Thoughts/ideas/comments/experiences are welcome
Some of my suggestions:
Salt. Salt is essential to life (yes, really, it is) - if the oceans were not available for desalinization (due to some other inimical threat, such as a Red Tide or whatnot) and salt deposits were severely lacking, you could easily set up a monopoly.
Lumber. Perhaps there are very few actual trees of sufficient size to build structures with, let alone standard sailing ships. What do people make their homes with? Who is monopolizing the lumber, and what for? Do the denizens of the forest refuse to have their ancestor trees cut down, or is there...*dramatic pause* something else?
Water. Always a good one, particularly in desert and arid regions. While it may be a "duh, of course water," clean and reliable sources of water is still a problem even in this day and age. Maybe rainfall is rare in your homebrew, and many cisterns and windtraps are set to catch as much of it as you can.
Mana/Magic. A good choice. I've always considered toying with the idea of mana/magic as a life energy (as portrayed in Final Fantasy VII) but expanding upon that further. Are spellbooks and foci contained within this "materia" (to expand the FF VII analogy further), to further a connection to the life energy?
I would avoid items that are considered "luxury" - fine cloth (silks, etc) and gems come to mind. They are nice, but resource usually indicates a necessary object or item that is required for the life that we know. Resource could mean a variety of things to a variety of peoples - something to keep in mind for your homebrew. So could luxury for that matter. In your example above, spice is absolutely necessary for space travel in the Dune setting - but is it a luxury, or a resource? Gold is a valuable resource because, well, it just doesn't really do anything useful except be pretty, shiny, and sold. (I know it's used in electrical contacts and the like, but trying to keep it medieval here.) People will do a lot for pretty and shiny.
Anyway, I rambled at the end there...
Anyway, I rambled at the...
I figured (and hoped) you would weigh in, Lilith. Your world-building ideas are always great, and on a similar wavelength to me. Excellent suggestions, but I am still interested in the magic/mana. Has anyone tried to develop or had experience with a mechanic like this?
Actually, I have been doing a lot of work recently, trying to add detail and depth to elven culture in my world. One of the things I've thought about was how an 800 year lifespan would affect their economy. Coinage largely developed from a need to have a light wieght, portable source of trade material. When you live so long and life moves so slow, you don't necessarily need that. Instead, sticking around for a season to work off a debt, or taking the time to produce an item of your trade and then complete the transaction, seems a lot more logical and acceptable. Sorry, rambling a bit and not really to the point.
One thing I conceptualized was that the elves (having been descended from a race of star-dwelling celestial beings in my homebrew and continuing to be very reverent of the heavenly bodies) might use some type of "starstones" as their main method of trade. These rocks would contain a bit of the magical essence of the elves luminous heritage.
Unfortunately, that's about as far as it's come, so I can't really help you anymore here. However, considering the similar nature of our questions, any offered advice and thoughts will be appreciated by two people! :)
Wow - Tom, you were actually looking forward to a post by me? Neat!
Saern (and Tom), you may want to check out When the Sky Falls. It's got a couple of neat ideas concerning meteorite/star-related stuff that may be very inspirational. I'll see if I can't write up a review on it at some point so you can get some further details on it.
Okay, as far as magic as a controlled resource...lemmee think 'ere...
Okay. Planar touchstones. (Feel free to change the name - I was coming up with it on the fly.) Each of these touchstones is a fragment of a plane that allows access to a particular school/subschool of magic. (Examples: necromancy spells tied to Negative Energy Plane, spells with the fire descriptor tied to the Plane of Fire, enchantment spells to Arborea, etc.) These planar touchstones are a mana battery for spellcasters of all kinds - without them, they aren't able to focus their energies to do anything beyond the simplest of cantrips (0-level).
The reason they're controlled/restricted: raw touchstones are dangerous in the extreme (I would treat them like sickstone and give a spellcaster automagic - er, automatic wild surges when using a touchstone). Refining methods, as well as particular gemstone cuts, attune the touchstones to a particular plane. Obviously, not just anybody's going to have access to this particular information. >:D And what if a gemcutter decides to cut a gemstone in a way that hasn't been cut before, opening up an attunement to the Far Plane, or the Plane of Mirrors, or the Dream Plane?
Da crunch: Do away with arcane foci and non-expensive material components (kinda like the Eschew Material Components). The touchstones recharge with 8 hours of non-use (like sleeping). For simplification sake, I would say that every time a spellcaster gains access to a new spell level, it needs to be turned into the Guild for "re-attunement" to access these higher levels of power.
I dunno about the material needing to be even sort of mundane. A lot of historical trade has been driven by exotica, from the right kind of stone for axes in the European Neolithic, to gold (especially with the Inka), amber from the Baltic, wine from the Meidterranean up into the Celtic La Tene cultures, wool from the British Isles, etc.
Magic seems more like a service unless you quatify it somehow.
How about a magocracy that uses it's magical muscle to secure access to all those essential components. Just an example: guano is more than just fertilizer in D&D, it's ordinance. A country that depended on its fireball wielding wizards, sorcerers and warmages might go to great lengths to get ahold of those caves in the mountains with the huge bat colonies.
Over in Saern's paladin thread we have touched on how important gems can get. Necromancers want access to black onyx. People who don't like undead want to deny access to the same. Rich people want to insure the flow of diamonds. Diamonds mean you can come back from the dead. How far will someone go to bring a loved back? themself?
I figured out how to change my profile name. I am so techie!!!
More fantastic ideas. I am interested in having the resource of magic (whatever that may turn out to be) something that is desired by many. Sure, you can live without it, like we can live without petroleum, but life is so much more pleasant with it. That is why I came around to magic. The rich nations (the ones with trade/resource advantages) can afford to have more magic, so their society becomes more 'comfortable' and dependant on that resource. Now, lets say that the control of the supply of that resource is in the hands of a select few, or a rogue state (going with the oil metaphor here). That makes for an interesting set of dynamics politically/economically/socially. I see it making an extremely interesting world that the players will understand and feel comfortable with, drawing them further into the dynamics of the world. Keep the ideas coming!!!
Trade in components works well for what you are going for ther, oh great AllFather. He who has the material components casts the spells. Also, power components can be an important trade. I'm not sure where all sources on this may be- I know there's a thread on these boards in the archives, dragon probably has several articles, and they are mentioned in the Eberron Campaign Setting and Book of Vile Darkness, if you care to do any research in those areas. He who has the power components casts their spells better than anyone else and can dominate. And yes, gemstones are a common component, so the trade of such items extends well beyond simple luxury and would be well-regulated in many lands, and many would also go to war for those resources.
Oh, and to the price fixing thing on gems touched on in the paladin thread- why do human ideals have to drive world economy? I've always seen the dwarves as being very good with handling and regulating trade and money, possibly even having taught humans the finer arts of the mercantile trades. The dwarves are also extremely slow to change, using the same conventions and laws for centuries. Regardless of the other roles dwarves play in your games, they can easily be set up to act as the enforcers and balancers that keep international trade flowing smooth.
What I was looking for with the elven economy was something slightly different. The elves descended from the stars in my world, so I was thinking that the starstone would remind them of their home and carry a bit of that celestial realm's power. However, not every elf is a spellcaster, and making trade in a power component as a mainstay of a racial economy isn't what I'm going for either. I was more thinking of something that every elf in a kingdom could use. I've considered leaving their stats undefined and just using them as magical batteries or fuel, like our gasoline or dragonshards in Eberron, but I'd like to have a bit more clue of what they can do beyond that, and I'm not coming up with much. Also, I'm looking at elves as living in what might be described as a socialistic monarchy, if that helps any.
Saern, I've posted a review of When the Sky Falls, if you're interested.
Feel free to post a link, but from what I saw at the store, nothing's grabbing me at the moment.
There was an article on power components a couple of years ago in Dragon. Mostly monster organs and such, as I recall. Kind of like trading in powdered rhino horn and dried tiger penises today (well, Chinese medicine does share some similarities to the DnD magic system, no offense if anyone out there is a TCM practitioner or enthusiast.)
Other possible substances of significance:
ginseng or something similar (life-prolonging herb, available only in certain kinds of forests. Might animate conflict between humans who harvest it and elves who are trying to protect the forest ecosystem, etc.)
mercury and cinnabar (mercury ore)--an important alchemical substance, used to extract precious metals from ore, also believed (in Chinese tradition) to be an important ingredient in the fabled Elixir of Immortality. (Several emperors exhibited symptoms of mercury poisoning and died prematurely as a result).
salt, iron, and water are definitely critical commodities in agricultural societies--the Chinese imperial government derived considerable revenue from monopolies on the first two, and its functions in flood-control and irrigation were very important and helped it to retain power.
native American tribes used a particular kind of shell (dentalium, IIRC) as a medium of trade--it was available only on the west coast of Vancouver Island, but has been found as far east as the Great Lakes. (In my homebrew, elves no longer mint coinage, but use strings of a kind of opalescent, tooth-shaped seashell, along beads of lapis lazuli and a kind of white volcanic glass as currency.)
how about tea, coffee, yerba mate, cacao, or some other caffeinated substance. Or sugar. Addictive (but relatively benign) substances are lucrative and have historically been the source of elites' power (think Caribbean/Brazilian slave owners, tea plantations in Ceylon, or the use of cacao/chocolate as a marker of eliteness in both Aztec and European society).
Some of the above could be given some sort of magical significance quite easily. Perhaps wizards have to drink an infusion of ginseng daily or they cannot muster the magical energy to cast spells. Tea brewed from a certain kind of herb is what gives monks their ki, etc.
bat guano. LOL--but good idea, given its potential military significance. The Magocracy probably has an entire ministry devoted to raising bats for guano production. What's the component for protection from energy?
yep; resources are very important for your world; I suggest you read up on cultural and physical geography as these two topics will help immensly to determine what resource is on what area and what is likely to be nearby and how readily available it is and how much effort it will take to harvest it. Physical inpediments like mountains or oceans make items harder ie more expensive to come by; in our own world read up on the spice trail from Asia to Europe; there were two basic routes; each filled with specific dangers and everyone was trying to find another route; one trip could make your wealth for a lifetime or leave you dead in a ditch or drowned. Did you know that during the Enlightment Period; pepper sold for its weight ounce for ounce in gold? And what about gold; why is it so valuable; sure it is shiney and makes jewelery; there is not much of it and at one time a great deal of the worlds gold was once held in Greece; a country that has no gold naturally.
Try to determine what will be the cause of your worlds wealth; is it goods (raw materials or manufactured goods); services; manpower both skilled and unskilled. how is this wealth protected and what wants it who does not have it; who is trying to stop others from getting it and trying to keep a monopoly; did you know that Monarchy was a political mistake and abboration that was brought on as an emergency messure to protect Europe from the raids of the Northmen? The Northmen stopped raiding but the tough guys that were hired to fend them off were so entrenched in arms and power that it took another 500+ years to get rid of them.
The 1st Edition DMG has a nice section on political systems and some good world building stuff; am not sure if the 3.5 one has it or not as if it did I just skipped it as my world was already generated.
Would be glad to answer any specific questions or give you little gems about specific peoples and events; heeh; in Europe; beans have been the crop of soldiers for centuries; you control the beans; you control the army. Some people dread the fruitcake; but the fruitcake was the combat ration of the crusades; good for you; traveled well; full of protien and nutrition; didnt spoil; had lots of booze and grain and fruit. Didnt require soaking or long cooking times.
Have you played the board game or computer game (any) called Civilization? that is a great resource for thinking about world creation and political systems.
The Unearth Arcana, am pretty sure it is the one, has a good suggestion on components for magical spells, and items that might be a nice resource to keep in mind for weath and need of magical goods and devices.
Well, besides bat guano, there's nightsoil. In China, the nightsoil collectors were an important and wealthy guild in just about every major city. (Well, I suppose the guys who owned the honey-carts were the guild members and made the money selling the stuff to farmers--the guys mucking out the privvies were probably poor just like people everywhere who have crap jobs.)
Well, besides bat guano, there's nightsoil. In China, the nightsoil collectors were an important and wealthy guild in just about every major city. (Well, I suppose the guys who owned the honey-carts were the guild members and made the money selling the stuff to farmers--the guys mucking out the privvies were probably poor just like people everywhere who have crap jobs.)
Nightsoil is great for fertilizing fields. In fact, the farms nearest Shang hai get decreasingly green the further you get from the city.
But, in addition to being great fertilizer, arcane spell casters become mobile artillery with a smidge of guano. D&D magic makes strange things valuable and makes things valuable for strange reasons.
Well, here is what I am thinking. All of your comments have been great, and I think I will incorporate a bit of all of them. Economics will play a very important part of my world, so all of these ideas will help.
With magic, what I am thinking is to have a new kind of crystal as described above. These crystals are kind of like batteries...you need them in addition to the regular components to cast magic. The crystal is the source of the energy that drives the magic...the components, gestures and incantation are the conduits that release the energy. When you buy a crystal, it is fully charged, so you have a 0% chance of the crystal failing following the release of the magical energy from it. With each successive use, there is a culmulative chance (likely 1% per use, haven't decided if higher level spells will use more energy or not) that the crystal will 'burn out' (become unusuable) with the expenditure of that spell. The user then needs to purchase another crystal to fuel his spells.
Since they are cotrolled by a relative few, the ability to purchase these crystals and the value at which they are traded will depend on your (or your nationalities) relationship with the crystal supply controllers (I'll call them the dweebs for now). If a country is on good terms with the dweebs, the supply of crystals is consistant, so the prices remain relatively cheap. If a country is on poor terms with the dweebs, the supply is low or inconsistant, so the price is substantially higher.
If you mix that in with certain groups controlling components (guano, diamonds, pearls, etc as has been suggested - thanks, guys!) to try and keep their fingers on the magic economy, you have a rather dynamic set of circumstances and an economy around magic that can have significant impacts on the economies/well being/power of various nations. Different locations of the world will be high magic (good access to crystals AND components) and low magic (poor access to either), giving very different flavors between regions, based upon a completely new fantasy economy. This will make for different role playing experiences (and DMing flavor) in different regions of the world. Also, think of the prospecting adventure opportunities looking for new sources of crystals or components!
Thoughts, comments, queries? Your advice has been immeasurable!
Do they use the crystals for ALL magic? For bards (hexblades, etc.) too? Or only for spells that have a material component? How is it used - do you have to have it in hand like a material component or does it just have to be on you? How about for spells with just a focus component? How does this work with the Eschew Component feat?
Can you use the shatter spell on the crystals? How about the increased utility of shout and greater shout, in that case?
If ALL arcane magic requires these crystals, it's SOP to strip search spell casters and toss their crystals.
Are there "superior" varieties? Can you recharge the crystals?
My first thought when I read the post is "holy symbols that corrode."