Regarding Towns

[Choinski, Burt]

A side note regarding my "town calculator" sheet (now available on
Wout's page).  From my long-past classes in social geography, and many
game supplements, cities arise as trading points at the center of
several smaller entities.  Since the Perilous lands does not have a
notation of "small or large" cities -- just "cities" -- I am using towns
to fill this void.  From what I have seen of the cultures so far, the
urban ration appears to range from .15 to .18 -- that is, urban
population is abut 15% to 18% of the total population.  This means that
the remaining 85% to 82% is involved in agriculture, herding or fishing.
I Figure towns to be about 1/2 services and 1/2 support, with villages
nearly 100% support.

How does this come into game play?  Well, when attempting to purchase
"city goods" at a town cut all availability by 50% (thus 80% becomes
30%).  The purchase of "city goods" in a village has availability cut by
80%.  Likewise, the purchase of "Town" goods in the city should be cut
by 25% and "village" goods by 50%.

What are "city goods"?  Basically, what the GM considers to be luxury
items or those items requiring a large selling base, like heavy metal
armors, ships larger than a small boat (unless a shipyard is nearby).
"Village" goods are those that are usually raw materials -- foodstuffs,
raw hides, ore, wood, etc.  "Town" goods are those that involve one step
of production above raw goods (i.e. Cloth, from raw wool or cotton,
leather goods, from raw hides, etc), or where the product is too large
for a single village (i.e. raising horses).

All of these levels are subject to GM use, of course.  If the players
stumble out of the wilderness with battered armor and attempt to find it
in the town of "Backwater", they may be out of luck unless they are
willing to settle for leather armor.
    -- Burton

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Burton Choinski, Peritus Software Services Inc.
bchoinski at peritus.com