Goblin Squad Member
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Settlements that aspire to become major powers in the river kingdoms will be competing to attract harvesting / refining / crafting focused companies. The big settlements will have “inhouse” crafters, but convincing a neutral group of skilled crafters to affiliate with your settlement will greatly increase your military and economic power. Buildings will get completed faster, equipment will be better quality and less expensive, and possibly the DI of the settlement will be improved.
Some settlement affiliations will be chosen because of RP reasons, or personal relationships, but imagine a handful of players that want to form a crafting company, with no real RP restrictions, they just want to build the best stuff, get rich, maybe dabble in harvesting or retail, but don’t have the numbers or organization to start a settlement of their own.
What would this neutral crafting group look for in a settlement?
-Safety for their members, they don’t want to get attacked or assassinated all the time.
-Access to raw materials needed for crafting, inexpensive sources and stable sources are a bonus.
-Markets for their goods, some companies will want stable markets, others will prefer the opportunities for profit that fluctuating prices levels will bring.
-Access to the training buildings and crafting buildings that their professions require.
-Low taxes and few demands on their time and resources made by the settlement.
Lets imagine some hypothetical settlements, how effectively could they attract these crucial affiliated companies?
Lawful Good – the “nice guys”
Pros: controlled hexes likely to be relatively safe and patrolled. Likely to have friendly relationships with neighboring hexes, and to establish secure trade routes. Likely to have a high DI allowing them to build adequate training and crafting facilities. Likely to have stable access to raw materials and markets. Likely to have a ready pool of trustworthy caravan guards and merchants.
Cons: May need to have high taxes to afford the protections and maintain the settlement. May forbid some alignments from entering the settlement, which would reduce potential market size. Likely to have multiple crafting groups, increasing competition and reducing profit margins.
Lawful Evil – the “despots”
Pros: controlled hexes likely to be highly regulated and protected from banditry. Likely to grant a monopoly to favored companies and aggressively protect them. Able to call on a skilled military to force access to raw materials.
Cons: likely to be NBSI, which will reduce access to markets and raw materials. Less likely to have cordial relationships with neighbors. Raw materials not able to be gathered in controlled hexes will be expensive. Laws, regulations and taxes likely to change with little notice. State-enforced monopolies are great if you hold the monopoly, but terrible if you are the new guy trying to join.
Chaotic Good – “freedom”
Pros: low regulation provides opportunity for large profits, easy for the new company to compete with established groups. Likely to have access to a wide range of potential markets, as the groups that can’t access the lawful settlements will come here to trade. Likely to have low taxes.
Cons: Less stability, could easily see wild market fluctuations. Controlled hexes are less likely to be safe, protection of the crafters will be their own responsibility instead of the settlements. Relationships with neighbors and status of trade routes likely to change abruptly. May not have enough DI for the best buildings.
Neutral Evil – the “black market”
Pros: potential for great profit, could get cheap raw materials that are stolen instead of gathered. Tolerance for use of undead and slaves to aid crafting. Prices for finished goods likely to be high, as residents can’t access other markets.
Cons: controlled hexes likely to be unsafe. Settlement encourages banditry, cost of protection high. Access to raw materials often sporadic, especially if the settlement is unable to establish trade routes or is the target of a merchant boycott.
I’m not going to consider Chaotic Evil, as I don’t think any of them will make it to the top tier of powerful settlements, they will be minor players on the outskirts of the wilderness.
Conclusion:
I think the Lawful settlements are the most attractive for a crafting group. The Lawful Evils likely establish one official crafting group and give them a monopoly. To me, the Lawful Good looks like the best choice for a crafting company to use as their home base. They can stay nice and secure, get steady access to raw materials, and make occasional well-protected trips to the CG or NE settlements looking for good deals or to unload finished products at high prices, or let the more daring merchant companies do it for them.
Could difficulty in recruiting affiliated crafting companies be a significant drawback to a CG or NE settlement?
Am I wrong in the assumption that settlements will be competing to attract the crafters and merchants?
Do you think there are more advantages to basing a crafting company out of a NE settlement that I overlooked?
What could a non-LG settlement offer that would make them attractive home bases for crafting companies?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Am I wrong in the assumption that settlements will be competing to attract the crafters and merchants?
Do you think there are more advantages to basing a crafting company out of a NE settlement that I overlooked?
What could a non-LG settlement offer that would make them attractive home bases for crafting companies?
1) In the beginning yes, there will be more crafters/gatherers
2 and 3)Safety - the LG settlements will be filled with more (no not all) of the people that think PVP is bad, shun away from it, or only for defense. NE will have more PVPers, if the crafters/gatherers are part of the settlement they will be safe.
NBSI is not a con.
Also, LG is likely to not have a high DI... It will be difficult to be LG.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Settlements that aspire to become major powers in the river kingdoms will be competing to attract harvesting / refining / crafting focused companies. The big settlements will have “inhouse” crafters, but convincing a neutral group of skilled crafters to affiliate with your settlement will greatly increase your military and economic power.
The Seventh Veil is actively discussing how best to attract independent Companies to relocate to our Settlement. In general, we're very interested in ensuring these Companies retain their autonomy, so that they maintain their dignity and their own unique sense of purpose, while at the same time encouraging them to take an ownership stake in our Settlement. We are very interested in trying to inspire a sense of loyalty to the Settlement itself rather than to The Seventh Veil.
True Neutral - "Real Freedom":
Pros: low taxes; low regulation; maximized market opportunities.
Cons: *winks*
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the Lawful settlements are the most attractive for a crafting group. The Lawful Evils likely establish one official crafting group and give them a monopoly. To me, the Lawful Good looks like the best choice for a crafting company to use as their home base.
I'd think that LG might seem more attractive to a lot of crafters. Which might mean that there are better opportunities if you can find a LN or NG settlement. It depends on how the settlement alignment rules finalize, but the side alignments might have more potential than the corner alignments.
LE will have their crafters, and those crafters might be quite busy. My guess is that most LE settlements won't be that despotic and will treat their crafters pretty much like a LN community would. It's not like they'll be grabbing crafters' children for ritual sacrifice, I don't think. I think that that pretty much applies to all the evil alignments. They'll call themselves evil in order to gain perceived advantages, but I expect brutality against useful citizens to be pretty minimal.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't like your assumption that a NE city will let bandits attack anyone associated with them. While my company will be involved in banditry around the map we arn't about to "s##% where we eat." NE hexes may be the safest places to be.
I have to agree with this statement. Evil is not a synonym for stupid. If anything I'd imagine evil likely to be MORE harsh on anyone who upset's their supply chain. Not only would I imagine an evil company not robbing the people delivering them resources or crafting them items. I'd imagine them hunting down and dealing a massively disproportionate level of revenge against anyone who does.
Oh so Joe bloe down in settlement Y killed 2 of our merchants costing us 300 GP worth of supplies.
Well... we'll give settlement Y an option. Toss Joe bloe onto the street for us to hunt and kill until we capture 500GP worth of supplies, or we raid everything not bolted to the ground in settlement Y.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think anyone equates evil with stupid. I do think most people equate evil with lawlessness, which is where the conundrum comes in. Lawful Evil can be a difficult concept to grasp. Most of us see individuals acting evil and they are pigeon-holed as CE. Usually that would be accurate were that person acting alone and without regard to any set of rules.
LE communities will be the groups like the Mafia or any organized crime group, cities with evil leaders but with harsh rules, priests who command respect and/or fear of the population. There are many examples of LE communities. They have crafters, many are free but many more may be slaves, or may receive little or no pay. There may be some very well off crafting companies if they have struck a deal in advance to supply the city/settlement with all the needed goods.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually, I think law is easiest to see without the influence of good. Asmodeus, the god of contracts and LE...is pure law without the temper of compassion. Any company that likes order will do well in LE, just don't expect your neighbors to help if you need it.
Similarly, don't expect social benefits or unified goals.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To the OP: why did you leave out LN, NN, and NG settlement alignments from your analysis?
I hope it isn't that thoughtless meme that would assert neutrality is flavorless, tepid, and uninteresting. Neutrality is actively interested in balance and against extremism.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm having difficulties understanding your example of lawful evil. Establishing monopolies is something that any settlement would do. Having competition fuels growth. If anything your version of lawful evil more represents communism than the stated alignment. Lawful evil in my eyes is more intent on seeing any charter companies under it suceed by any means necessary. I suppose instead of alignment you should reference which economic model that settlement intends to setin place. Another slightly confusing thing I see, is thar do you expect settlements to treat players and npcs the samd way? I doubt anyone will purposefully stagnate their economy by trying to "enslave" their players. NpCs on the other hand....
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Goblin Squad Member
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I appreciate the responses, going to lump together some more of my thoughts on questions that have been raised:
I picked 4 alignments that I thought would have distinct approaches in how they appeal to crafting companies. I think LG, LN and NG will be very similar in their economic strategies, and NN is just too hard to define :)
Why do I think LE will lend itself to granting monopolies: Lets say a LG and a LE settlement are trying to attract the same crafting company. They can both offer protection from bandits and advanced crafting buildings. However one big difference will be how they handle competition for resources and markets. The LE settlement can offer to send its military out to evict other companies from resource nodes, while the LG settlement is more likely to have some complicated philosophy about sharing, taking turns, or first come, first served.
I think granting a state-enforced monopoly on resources or markets is a fundamentally LE course of action, and likely to be a big selling point for LE settlements in their negoiations with crafting companies. LG settlements will not be able to offer that sort of aggressive enforcement of "mining rights".
Why do I think NE controlled hexes will be rife with banditry? Because if you are actively stamping out bandits or granting safe passage to your favored trading partners, you aren't NE, you are LE. Once bandits start having to check lists of "which merchant can I attack, is this guy protected or not.. etc" they become privateers, not just bandits. And if the settlement is enforcing those rules to attract crafters or merchants, they become indistinguishable from Lawful Evil.
One of the ideas I really want to explore is the difference between what alignments people perceive themselves as playing, and the actions they actually plan to carry out.
For example, I see a number of groups stating they want to set up a NE or CN settlement or company, but once they explain what that would look like in terms of organization or in-game actions, they describe something that looks a lot more like LE.
Could someone describe economic policies of a NE or CN settlement? How would they be different from LE?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Establishing monopolies is something that any settlement would do. Having competition fuels growth.Are those contradictory? Aren't most monopolies intended to keep out competition?
Urman, I started to make the same point, but it seemed so incongruous that I stepped back and pondered it until I realized that Deacon Wulf was not saying "all Settlements would want to grant monopolies", which was the way I originally read it. Rather, he was (I think) saying "it's not just LE Settlements that might grant monopolies".
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Goblin Squad Member
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I just wanted to chime in here. Not to discuss what individually aligned Settlements will or won't do, but to say that they will likely meta game as much as possible, despite their alignment.
What I see as best for a VC to do, is hook up with the closest compatible alignment as possible, (if that is necessary because of game mechanics), but most importantly to get the best deal that they can. Your agreement will last longer and be far more profitable if it is very clearly laid out, well written, and mutually beneficial to ALL parties involved.
Seek a Settlement that is practiced at the above. That offers everything that you might want as a negotiable term. If you seek a monopoly in your specialty, and you have the people to actually maximize that area, there is no reason that a Settlement or Kingdom level group couldn't or shouldn't have that on the table for discussion. Include terms for backing out or time periods for re negotiation.
All of the above is offered by Pax Aeternum. I admit that it is a hefty read. We are working on that. Really though, an organized and well defined agreement is Key to success.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It think it's awful hard to have a well defined NE settlement which someone can't look at and call LE. The very fact that there's a settlement means that at least some order is being maintained. However, I could see NE settlements as part of a larger LE nation, with the individual settlement not as strictly enforcing laws and instead being strongly purposed toward evil acts (the main spawning pits for an evil army's undead, for example).
The way I would see a CN settlement working and creating a healthy economy is with a strong central ruler or group of rulers. When they agree on terms with a crafting or trading company, they'd either have to have the goods delivered to somewhere outside their bandits' sphere of influence and make a trade in other (probably unclaimed) territory, or else broadcast that they're taking in merchants who should be unharmed and send out a guard to escort them. This would allow the individual bandits to continue acting lawless, and at the same time allow the settlement to trade. Because such a setup couldn't have the same number of traders as a more open market, the individual traders will probably be able to gouge to their hearts' content, and both sides are happy.
I think such a system could be economically viable because instead of having a lot of guards on the payroll, they have just a few, and the remaining people who would be guards in a lawful settlement are instead plundering other settlements and returning home with loot. This would of course mean such a settlement is more vulnerable, but that's the price that's paid for a settlement dedicated to personal freedoms.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This s just a guess, but:
LG settlements will likely be hard to maintain as a pure LG city...but those companies that support an LG ideology will gladly take the negatives to support their cause. It's just how the LG mindset works. Most of those companies will be affiliated in some way to the larger LG effort that the settlement sponsors.
CG and NG will have crafting groups that are generally good and support good causes, are not as concerned with generating a profit as they are supporting a good cause, but don't want the restrictions an LG settlement brings with it. Many find LG groups stifling and oppressive, in some ways as oppressive as an evil group, especially if you have tried adventuring with one or more insufferably pompous paladins. Don't get me wrong, I have played paladins for years and love to play them, but some people play them a bit overboard and it can grate.
Neutral settlements - these will be where milk is made into cheese, hops into beer, wheat into bread, grapes into wine, and ....yeah, all that good stuff. I think neutrals will have it both ways, being able to remain flexible enough to gather whatever is needed and make what is required. There will be problems though due to the neutral nature of the cities. Since they will have fewer restrictions on who can come and go the towns will be quite rowdy and crime will be fairly high since they will be a target rich environment. These communities should have a far greater number of city guards and "Enforcers" on their payroll than the other settlement types.
LE - If you want to run the big bad temple, operate the assassins guild, run a numbers racket or any other organized crime gang, this is where you will go. Crafters will thrive, but I don't think they will have the same assortment of goods available. I might be wrong there but I see a lot more RP in the good settlements so any craft that supports an RP play style won't be as strong here. Think tailors, decorative crafters, housing decorations, musical instruments, that sort of thing.
CE and NE - yes, crafters will be here, but I just don't know if it would be a profitable enterprise. I am thinking some trades will thrive, but the costs will be much higher than in a more stable community. Lots of exterminators, rat catchers, penicillin vendors, undertakers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I could see NE settlements as part of a larger LE nation, with the individual settlement not as strictly enforcing laws and instead being strongly purposed toward evil acts (the main spawning pits for an evil army's undead, for example).
I see NE locations as outbuildings of Points of Interest (Inn that steals goods, Tavern that gets patrons drunk and rolls them, bandits operating in the clear for intel). They would be nuts to not affiliate with a larger settlement and work at the behest of the larger settlement for protection and financial gain. You can bet the more lawless areas will be rife with these locations. (I use the term lawless in the sense, not complying with the norm. There will be rules, but they are not the type discussed at town council meetings.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I get there will be better measures of "What settlements will be most attractive to crafting companies" besides alignment. Specifically:
- the amount of autonomy the settlement owners allow the CC
- tax rates
- training options
- dedication to building and upgrading crafting facilities
- availability of government representation
- stability
- safety
- resource availability
Of these, I can see rationales for most alignments to use either extreme. Therefore, while the idea of considering alignment is an amusing endeavor, I think it will be second to mechanics and settlement leadership decisions (not based on alignment).