In Defense of Grain Into Gold

It was a dozen years ago that we published Grain Into Gold, and it has been heavily discussed ever since.  Some of the criticism is valid, but certainly not all of it.  While we still believe the system works, and we use it in both the play-testing campaigns and our products, we didn’t always explain every little thing and why we did it that way.  So let’s hit a couple of points.

We had a critic argue both that we didn’t value silver in a historic fashion and that we shouldn’t disbelieve the gold: silver: copper 1:10:100 ratios.  OK, you don’t get to have it both ways!  We’ve gone through the whole thing in The Gold-Silver-Copper Conundrum so you can look there, but historically, this easy 1-10-100 ratio doesn’t make any sense.  Not only is it wrong, but the value of each of these commodities changes all the time.  BUT!!  This is a game and not a master’s thesis on commodity economics.  The only way to game master a world and not make it incredibly difficult (and probably boring) is to take some economic short cuts.  The easiest one is that gold is ten times more valuable than silver which is ten times more valuable than copper, and this stay the same.

Now on Earth, estimates are that 25 times as much silver has been mined than gold.  So if they are both generally the same difficulty to mine and smelt / refine, then gold based on its rarity should be worth 25 times what silver is, not x10.  So if we are going to say 1:10:100, then we have to say that these fantasy worlds have a different ratio of metal rarities than Earth.  So if the game World of Fletnern has a different ratio than Earth does, then at the same time criticism of wheat or bread costing too many grams of silver doesn’t work.  Roman comparisons don’t work.

But, that doesn’t mean that we can just pretend that everything works as it does because we say it does.  And that is the whole goal of Grain Into Gold!  We wanted to produce a fantasy economy that worked together.  Now if the number of grams of silver required to buy a loaf of bread doesn’t equal Greek or Roman times, that’s OK, as long as the grams of silver required to buy a loaf of bread works in the system, as compared to apples, beer, and armor and swords.  But let’s be a bit careful here too.  Armor and swords are based on steel, so the cost of iron/steel to silver has to be established, though it doesn’t have to match Earth.

One of the most thorough critical reviews we received brought up the idea of coal being used for heating.  The critic said that such a use of coal indoors would expose these people to incredibly dangerous gases and other risks.  He’s right.  Burning coal indoors does expose one’s family to the risks of various dangerous, even poisonous, gases.  We accept that to be true and considered it when we wrote it.  Far too often, these types of things happened - people doing dangerously bad things just to stay warm.  As we continue to expand Lifestyles of the Magical and the Mundane in our Small Bites editions, there are some folks who use coal, while others use coke.  We’re hoping to have rules for surviving your lifestyle soon, and coal will absolutely shorten your life, while coke and charcoal should be safer.  Not safe, but safer.

Another factor in the Earth based comparisons is that many of the Earth based governments were practicing all sorts of communism and welfare.  If you want to know what the value of wheat or bread is in a society, you have to compare apples to apples.  You cannot compare a fully free market system to the welfare that went on in Rome.  If the government is giving bread and flour away, then the price that people are paying in the markets isn’t real.  It isn’t being determined by the populace, but only those people who are buying their bread.  Now, I could argue that this would both raise and lower the costs, based on your opinions of the black market and how it works or possibly abuses the economy.  Let’s just agree that welfare, communism and/or a “palace economy” change the way commodities get priced.

We’ve also freely admitted, that if you really want to figure out a balanced economy, then a copper coin doesn’t work, at least not with the balance we’ve shown.  A pound of apples from an apple farmer would cost about 0.8 copper coins.  So what does one apple cost if it weighs half a pound or less?  How do you split the copper coin into smaller pieces?  While this seems important when you are trying to figure out how a poor person lives, it just doesn’t become that important in the life of an adventurer.  Honestly, knowing this, we still went ahead with the book as it is.  Knowing that this was an issue, we thought focusing on the lives of FRPG adventurers was what was important.  So admitting the priority and the focus, hopefully you give us a bit of leeway.

Some folks have questioned various labor requirements and labor costs that go into certain crafts.  So are we right or are they?  Well, both (probably).  It is impossible to compare to “the Middle Ages”.  First off, assuming you are comparing your fantasy world to a time on Earth, which time(s) and which regions?  The Arabian regions were advancing mathematics and other sciences during the Dark Ages.  The Chinese had gunpowder far earlier.  The American Indians were basically stone aged during a period of European firearms.  What period is the right one for fantasy?

Where technology is is exactly the point of labor costs.  The labor costs of weaving depend on whether or not they have the flying shuttle.  Many other manufacturing processes depend on whether you’re using animal power, water power, or wind power.  Where is the technology?  Someone might criticize what we went with, because we gave some easily missed detail about the use (or un-use) of a water mill.  If they are using a different style of tech, the labor costs will come out completely differently.

Again, our focus was to try and make everything comparable.  If the various levels of tech make sense in the different environments, then we tried to use that to set the prices.  We haven’t yet completed (and may never finish) our supplement about the cost of trade goods, which is going to take into account the various different costs / prices in the various different regions.  Trying to set prices consistently across the world pushed us to use averages for everything, and we made a really big deal about averages always being wrong.

We do want to defend our book, and we still feel it works for how it is supposed to work.  You don’t have to agree with us.  There are folks out there doing all sorts of things with their fantasy economies.  There is even an “economy” that only uses the following currencies:  silver coin, gold coin, bag of gold coins, etc.  Compared to that, ours is horribly complicated.  You need to make your best decisions for what works for your world.  We think our economy works, and more importantly works consistently.  We also think our economy gets you passed a huge number of these hard thought out reasonings, or perhaps rationalizations.  As always, it is up to you to use what you want, and make it your own.

Kings & Nobles - How does all that work?

The ultimate job of a nobleman is to produce heirs to carry on the blood line.  Nothing is more important to the family, and the family is the priority.  Whether it is arranged marriages or other matters, unmarried nobles will be under nearly constant assault from their parents and relatives.  To be clear, we’re really only talking about those nobles who are in the line of succession.  But because of the importance, an unmarried noble should expect to receive far more “help” and advice than they would have ever wanted.  This is a fantastic way for the GM to hound any player characters who take the Noble Birth advantage!

But let’s get into stuff that more directly affects campaigns.

It is the belief of the world builders of Fletnern that absolute monarchies do not work.  Often while GMing games within Fletnern, some PC will insist that due to the divine right of kings ______ is true.  There is no divine right of kings in Fletnern.  Most rulers are blessed by the major religious of their territory, but there is no divine right of kings.

Why not?  Well, first off, there is no centralized church.  Fletnern is not Earth and the Roman Catholic Church does not exist - never did.  So there is no global church.  Even in the case of religions that exist in multiple places, there are no established global authorities.  Heretics exist and if they stay quiet enough, they are never discovered by the rest of the church.  Further, while a local parish may accept the bishop at the main city’s cathedral as his superior, no bishops accept other bishops as their superiors.  So the High Priest of Rhum will not look to the High Priest in Helatia as a superior.  The High Priests in Helatia have been trying to make this work for a generation and they seem to only have driven their peers to greater defensiveness and annoyance.

So logically, if a noble ruler had the divine right of kings, which divine would they look to?  Clearly Manoto god of war would have a different chosen ruler for a city than Laenta goddess of home and marriage.  With many gods and even more religions, there cannot be a divinely chosen ruler.

But authoritative, hereditary rulers do and did exist.  But they simply do not have the type of awe and authority that say the King of England would have had prior to the Magna Carta.  Yes, a “king” would be able to sentence someone to death, but if he was seen to be doing so unfairly, he would likely have the beginnings of a revolt on his hands.  Of course, he still has the “bully pulpit” and would have every chance to appear before his citizens and explain how evil the executed man was, but he will need to tell a believable story.  So we do see the citizenry as holding the rulers in check.

Most of the governments that exist in Fletnern seem to make sense when based on the history of those places, at least we think they do.  Most of them we really have thought through.  The most common is what is called a Prince Governor.  Though each is slightly different, the Brinston model seems the more common style.

When the Prince Governor is either dying, retiring or has infuriated the noble houses, a new Prince Governor is to be chosen.  The noble families begin negotiating with each other almost from the time that the last Prince Governor was chosen.  The small number of very powerful families / houses have large numbers of smaller families that back them.  They back the big houses in order to be better friends with them in order to be allowed to do more trade deals with them and hopefully improve their wealth and power.  So while there are really only a small number of houses that make the final decision, they are able to do this because of the power brought not only by their own family but by all those smaller houses backing them.  The short answer is:  The noble houses choose who will be the next Prince Governor.

But it is nowhere near as simple as that, and that doesn’t feel very simple.  The people must be able to get behind the new Prince Governor.  He is not simply a figurehead, but he actually has some authority.  If the houses seem to be too even and likely to be unable to make a good decision, they will begin promoting their candidate(s) to the populace.  If the people are parading in the streets in support of one person and seem to dislike the other, then the nobles will likely be forced to install the one, no matter which house he is from.  The citizens like war heroes, and war heroes are most commonly the ones chosen for Prince Governor.

Only Rhum actually elects its mayor, and it is a difficult and arduous process.  In nearly every other country or city-state, the top guy(s) are chosen by a select group of people, most often the nobles and/or land owners.  With all of this going on behind the scenes, the ruler is held in check, if by no one other than the collected noble families.

Convention Season

We are well aware that it is convention season.  GENCON use to be the biggest weekend of Board Enterprises’ year, both in importance and cash flow, but also in fun.  There was a time when we were (at least in our own minds) convention royalty.  The other publishers knew us and even invited us to their parties.

We debuted Legend Quest at GENCON in 1991, and then again (in the soft bound edition that distributors were willing to work with) in 1992.  Pretty sure our last GENCON was 1996, so only the six consecutive years, but a lot of good times!  We did a bunch of others, not the least of which was Concentric which we were involved in.  But all of our convention going ended by the end of 1997.

We don’t do conventions any more.  Why not?  Well, originally, it was because those damn card games just sucked all the money out of the industry.  Now it is more that we don’t print the books.  Having not been there for a while I don’t know if there’s anyone out there selling thumb drives with their books on them, but that’s what we would have to do.  Seems a bit odd to me.

We’re smack dab in the middle of GENCON and Dragon Con, being about five hours from each, so they’re within reach, but we’ve avoided them.  There’s a bit of nostalgia about them.  We got into a conversation this month with a comic book artist we’re friendly with and were swapping stories about cons.  The problem is, just attending would be such a different experience, sort of like regressing back to our teens; it just doesn’t feel right.

So just wondering if you folks are attending cons, and which ones.  There’s a part of me that would like to return to a fairly major con, but probably as a Game Master and not as an exhibitor.  Not sure I’m ready to jump back in that deeply.  Also, I continue to wonder what’s best for Board Enterprises.

Just a bit of moping around and listening to what you folks might have to say.