What’s Normal?

There used to be a series of articles, I think they were in more than one magazine, called Joe Genaro.  No, Joe wasn’t Holly Genaro’s brother from Die Hard, instead he was the “generic” character.  He was the average man - literally.  If a character’s attributes were from 3-18 with 9-12 being average, Joe had all of his stats at 10.5.  It was actually pretty funny to see what would happen to an average person in a superhero game’s rules.  In some games Joe could jump 13’ high and run at 40mph, etc. 

Well, if we want to do a fantasy economy and figure out what it costs to live in a fantasy world, we need to know what normal is too.  Normal salaries cannot lead to the person living in a box in an alley.  Normal foods cannot lead to a person starving to death, nor can they lead to a person eating feasts.  So what are we going to define as “normal”?

Even in a high fantasy world, the most common profession is going to be a farmer.  While sociologists tell us that 90% of the people were farmers “back in the day”, we don’t have to believe that for worlds where magic exists and can be quantified.  But even assuming that our fantasy world doesn’t match Earth’s history, we can still expect that there are more farmers than anything else, and probably more farmers than everything else put together.  In fact, we’re going to assume that barring some very special places, anywhere from 60-85% of the people in a “kingdom” will be farmers.

So what’s a farmer?  A farmer is anyone engaged in agriculture, and by this we mean (generally) anyone who makes the majority of their living by growing plants or ranching animals.  Notice we didn’t say growing food.  Growing hemp, linen, indigo, cotton, tobacco, cork, etc., they’re all farmers too.  Forgive us Texas, but the cowboys are included as well, along with chicken farmers and hog breeders.

OK, that’s a pretty huge category of people!  Are they all average?  Holy smokes NO!  Averages are misleading.  We got into this in Grain Into Gold, but the problem with statistics is they can easily be used to distort the facts.  Case in point:  You have heard people say things like “The average person in the 1400s died in their 30s.”  This might be true, but did the average person die between the ages of 30-39?  No!  There was a high percentage of child deaths (could easily have been 20-50% - see All About Women in Role-Playing).  Use math to average the children dying before turning five with the folks living to be old.  Factor in the people who died in battle (at some fairly young ages we can guess), and the average skews down even farther.  So while the average age at death may have been 30-39, anyone who didn’t die before their fifth birthday or get cut down in war, probably lived well past 40!  Probably easily into their 60s.

Seems like we lost our track, but this is important stuff when you are using the word “average”.  Average is something we have to use, but it is fraught with misinterpretations.  Please remember that when some mindless talking head gives you some statistics on the “news”.  They can “prove” anything with statistics.

So there are valid and invalid averages here.  If 60%+ of the people are farmers, then our average person is a farmer.  Despite our average person being a farmer, our average person probably does not have an average strength.  Why?  Because farming is hard work!  The typical (see we can use different words) farmer is going to be in very good shape, probably stronger than what would pass for normal in an urban environment.  So if we added all the Strength attributes in the world and averaged them out, they would probably be higher than what might be considered average for the race.  But that’s OK!

OK, we’ve probably already lost half of you, so sorry about that.  We’re going to keep going for anyone who might actually still be with us.

What matters here?  Think of your fantasy world.  Think of the average human.  Did you picture a farmer in reasonably good shape?  Maybe not, but that’s OK.

What’s normal or average about him?  Well, we say reasonably good shape, because not only do we believe him to be fit, but we believe he probably consumes food in a healthy manner.  The farmer is getting most of his foods directly off his own farm.  The urbanite probably never sees fresh produce, and therefore is eating far less healthy.  How much milk do you think they are drinking in the cities?  The answer is nearly zero.  Without refrigeration and speedy transport, milk cannot make it to the city.  So as we go through things, our average farmer might be healthy (certainly healthier than our urbanite), but this might not be the “average”.

Here are your take-aways:  An average person in a fantasy setting lives by agriculture, meaning they live on some land outside of the city.  They do physical labor (farming or ranching), and they eat foods that for the most part, they produce.  This actually matters, because talking about food, meals and nutrition we need to have some kind of standards.

In case you’re wondering why we need standard, it’s because of our latest book All About Agriculture and Famine.  The standards allowed us to get into how much food someone needs to eat, what the penalties are for not doing that, and what an adventurer’s rations might look like.  If you’re interested, click here for the FREE World Walker edition.