Markdoc

Re: FRPG Ideas from D&D that ain't necessarily so Also, Chivalry and Sorcery, where mages got heavily penalised on adventuring experience, but picked up big points for things like "Distilling essence of Mercury". cheers, Mark

Re: Glorantha Hero Not only that, but continuity is pretty squishy in Glorantha, anyway - you can have two cultures with different legends of the same event, both of whom can point to solid physical evidence of their claim. It must be a bit like living in the Marvel universe. cheers, Mark

Re: The Price of Land Well, the short answer is that there is no accurate answer. Because much of the land was not freely transferrable and because it was often given for services instead of actual money, prices fluctuated wildly. Also, land prices could go down as well as up - in the English famine of 1315-17 land was being sold to buy food and pay debts, but the price of land fell dramatically: no-one wanted to buy unproductive land and speculators were few and far between. Also there were laws governing sale of land. Have you ever wondered why we call property "real estate"? It's because English law (from which US law is derived) differentiated between your estate (ie: your stuff - your dogs, your horses, your clothes, your CD collection, etc) and your "real estate" - your land and property. This was true from the 13th century when the laws started to firm up until the 19th century. The plot of several of Jane Austen's novels is driven by the fact that beloved daughters face poverty when their father dies because he cannot just will them his estate - the law dictated that it go to a more distant - but male - relative. But (you knew I was going say that, didn't you?) I can give some hints. We do have land prices recorded, for example through lawsuits, heriots (death taxes) sales and "feet of fines" - that's fake lawsuits designed to generate a legal document proving who actually owned land, to the rest of us. I'll use numbers from England, because those are what I am most familiar with, but they are not actually typical: England in the high medieval period had an unusually stable economy (compared to most of its neighbours) and also an unusually diversified economy - meaning more land transfers, since people could move, earn money in different ways, etc. In Scandinavia of the same era, for example, there were far fewer sales of land (and less than 5% of land sales were outside the family) even though inheritance laws were less restrictive. High-medieval England however, is more like most fantasy realms, so that'll work. Having said that, information is relatively light. To give some examples, around 1250 there were several sales of good agricultural land by debtors, or by jews forced to sell land (they could not legally own it) the prices ranged by about 50% but are close to 1 mark per acre (that's about 13 shillings 4 pence or 160 pence - or copper pieces if you prefer - per acre). That's actually pretty cheap - a knight/heavy cavalryman serving for pay at the time would expect about 8d a day, so that's wages for 20 days, or half his annual service. A bushel of wheat, by comparison was 3-4d so you could buy enough food for a couple of people a year for the price of an acre. Or - maybe more useful for a GM - it's about the same price as a mail shirt at the time. Finally, it is estimated that a "knight's fee" - ie: the amount of land to provide a knight with enough money to buy his arms, his horses and provide for him, his family and a few servants was about 6 hides or 720 acres - ie worth about 720 marks, or 115200 copper pieces Take all these numbers with a grain of salt: there were very few fixed prices back then - to take one example, I've averaged the estimates of a typical knight's fee at 6 hides but it's commonly estimated at 2-10 and could be as many as 27. Still, it gives you some rough figures to play with, which are not completely unreliable. Hope that helps. cheers, Mark

Re: How long does tech last after The End? No, it's going to depend on smarts. That, and muscle. . So? There's enough magnets and copper lying around in abandoned engines to make as many as you want. Maybe - but my dad made a small hydro generator (we used it to pump creek water up to water the garden during periods of hosepipe restrictions) using concrete, found materials and standard auto workshop tools. Mind you, my dad was awesome - he did it because he thought it was cool rather than to lack of electricity. Given the existence both of books, tools and vast stores of salvageable material, I expect people would do better than that. In developing countries people make all kinds of stuff (yes, including windpowered electricity generators) out of what is basically trash and maintain heavily-used motor vehicles for 40 or 50 years with simple handtools. People are more adaptable than we give them credit for. Of course those who can't or won't adapt, die cheers, Mark

Re: 10 Most Fascinating Tombs in the World

Re: New to Fantasy Hero

Re: PA water supply

Re: Monkey Grip Precisely. Monkey Grip as a talent would simply be costed as though it included "OIF: 2-handed weapon of opportunity"

Re: U.N. Armament Well it's nice of you to say so, but that actually is my attitude. It's a job. Somebody's got to do it, and I only spend about 3-4 months a year in developing countries. The ones who really make sacrifices are the people who do this (and more) full time. Visiting (say) a Sudanese refugee camp in Gambella and giving recommendations on how to set up disease surveillance or where to site a clinic is one thing: I'm there for 2-4 days tops. I can't imagine living and working there for six months or more (actually I can - I just can't imagine me doing it). I also avoid actual warzones: there are people who work them though: again, that's real sacrifice. The longest I've been in a developing country at one stretch was 2 months (in Ethiopia) and I was desperate to get out, at the end. It's not the risk: which really is not that great, if you are careful. I think in 8 years of doing this, I have feared for my life exactly twice (once in Dakar, from gangsters, once in the Great Rift valley, from a accident that left me with two broken ribs). It's the boredom. I've spent an evening reading a three year old Der Speigel (and my German is crap) because there was no television, no books, no internet, no radio and no beer - and after three days I was tired of drinking coffee and looking at the hills opposite my house. When I can, I often work 16 hours a day while in Africa, partly because there's so much to do, but also simply because once I stop working, there's nothing else to do. It leads to interesting contrasts though: I'm leaving for the airport in about 2 hours, heading for South Africa, where I'll be for two weeks. The first few days are a meeting of the clinical team, the last few days are a big scientific conference on delivering affordable healthcare in developing countries. Those meetings are at the Cullinan - a luxury hotel on the waterfront in Capetown. The hotel was chosen, and all my expenses paid, by Bill Gates, so I'm going to wallow in guilt free luxury for a week. In between, I'm going upcountry where we'll be sleeping in 5 dollar a night hotels and eating what we can find locally. If I have a bedroom with a mosquito screen without holes and a bathroom that doesn't stink of old pee, I'll be happy. If I don't get really sick, I'll be ecstatic. If nothing else, it's an interesting life cheers, Mark

Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations

Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations Heh. I thought they were OK, too, but Dylan calls them "the most horrible thing I've ever written" and wishes everyone would forget them. That said, they certainly fit the genre. Most of the books I would mention have already been listed, so I'll just add Gene Wolfe's books Free Live Free, Castleview and There are Doors: with the caveat that Gene Wolfe is something of an acquired taste. cheers, Mark

Re: U.N. Armament Dude, if I was in the drug trade, I'd hire guards who could afford H&Ks. It's what all the local gangstas aspire to! In answer to the OP, part of my work includes delivering healthcare in developing countries. Many of the places I go, I have a driver (who's often armed, but usually only with a handgun against the occasional robber). Other places require a bit more. Last year, in Uganda we went to an area where we are seeing a lot of Malaria deaths in a region that have never had malaria before. That was right on the border with Rwanda and Congo - and involved an 8 hour trip on foot through the jungle. There we had 3 armed scouts who went out ahead of us, plus 3 with our group: the leader with an AK74, the others with the carbine version of the ol' AK47. The reason is that foreign tourists in that area have either been abducted and held for ransom or simply robbed/raped/killed. It's not as bad as it used to be: the government has killed or driven away the Hutu militia who used to be based there, but the area is still unsettled. Next week I'm going to Kayalitsha - a township in South Africa: there again we'll have several armed guards (and based on past experience they'll be armed with AK's). Again, the reason is simply safety: Kayalitsha is dirt poor and robbery and murder are endemic. 3 or 4 guards with prominently displayed AK's send a "don't hassle us" message. A couple of years back I traveled to the edge of the Ogaden (things were a bit quieter there, back then). The guys who provided our guards actually sent us a "technical" - a pickup truck with twin-pintle mounted .30 cals with boxes of ammo in the back, plus the usual 3 or 4 guys with AKs - which was a bit of overkill, I think. I suspect they did it to boost the price charged. In addition to travel, our projects build clinics and most of them also require armed guards. Not so much for safety (we don't generally build in dangerous areas) as to protect against theft. A sad story about that - two months ago, one of our guards surprised someone breaking into a house attached to one of our clinics. It was at night and when the guard challenged the guy, he saw the guy was holding a long, metal object, so he shot and killed him. It turned out that the robber was a kid (13 years old) was unarmed (the long metal object was a prybar) and worst of all - was one of his cousins, from the same clan. He was ostracised by the clan and killed himself a few weeks after. That sort of thing is sadly common - many developing countries are awash in weapons, and the vast bulk of people who own them have little or no training:meaning they are very dangerous to even be around. The fact that guns are readily available makes everyone a bit jumpy, because you never know when (or what) people are carrying or when gunfire will break out. As they say, "an armed society is an impolite society" and petty arguments ending in violent death are distressingly common. Even in "safe" cities, you often have to go through an airport-style metal detector to get into decent bars and restaurants: I've eaten in plenty of places where you check your AK in at the door and fetch it on the way out. cheers, Mark

Re: New to Fantasy Hero It's true. When I started GM'ing D&D, we only had the player's handbook - nothing else. So I made up everything else and though it was "recognisably D&D" as far as the rules went, as it turned out when we got the rest of the books, what we had been playing was nothing like D&D - it was more like "Conan in Prydain - the roleplaying game". None of the standard tropes - from armour as clothes through giant hoards of magic and loot to lots and lots of weird monsters actually featured. And I've been playing that way ever since cheers, Mark

Re: U.N. Armament I'm well aware of that - but the point remains that when peace has been established, if nothing further is done, violence breaks out again (The Dominican republic, Irian Jaya, Cote d'Ivoire, Eritrea all being being cases in point). I fully agree that the UN generally does not bring an end to the killing (except occasionally by negotiation): in point of fact, their failures are all cases where they attempted to do that. But by holding the line, they prevent the killing starting again. That *is* their current role. That's what the word "peacekeeping" implies, after all. And as you say, they've been very successful at that. Without the blue helmets, an awful lot of people currently living would be dead already - and a lot of tense regions would be war zones. I dunno - that sounds an awful lot like "stopping the killing" to me. Sure - I've said plenty of times that the European nations should have acted earlier in the Balkans. And certainly Kosovo is a sticky wicket - but there wouldn't be any need for peacekeepers if it wasn't. But again, it's hard to deny that since the UN stepped in, the low-grade ethnic cleaning that followed Nato's occupation has ceased and the KLA ceased its assassination campaign after UN peacekeepers started arresting the ringleaders. In other words, the peacekeepers seem to be doing a reasonable job of ... well, keeping the peace. But the rest of what you say is basically true: UN peacekeepers lack the force, the mandate and the support to tackle even a second rate military like the Serbs - the best will in the world doesn't help when the enemy has superior numbers, armour, heavy artillery and air support and you have side arms. On the other hand, the lack of military might lets the UN tread lightly in areas where a more overt military occupation quickly breeds resentment: Kosovo is a point in case, where the ostensibly "liberated" Kosovans quickly started to turn on NATO forces - who were more than happy to turn things over to the UN. Fighting a war and maintaining the peace are two different things - confusing them only leads to misery. Stopping the killing is happening *right now*. In Southern Sudan, we went through a dozen "truces" and "ceasefires" - all of which lasted a very short time before the killing flared up again. It wasn't until the peacekeepers deployed that we got a lasting truce - and that's simply because, while incapable of going up against the Sudanese military, they can - and do - prevent the little abuses that without some sort of intervention snowball into larger fighting. The rest of what you have written above is basically true, but it's more of the same. Peacekeeping forces turn up after the fighting to stop it starting up again. That's their job. Blaming them for not deploying warfighting forces they don't have and would never be allowed, is a little like blaming the NYPD for not attacking Afghanistan and arresting Mullah Omar. We both know the answer to this - you answer it below. I've already noted above - and now it seems like you agree - that they do a good job of stopping the killing from starting up again - and that a more "fair" and interventionist approach is neither possible, nor probably desirable. It's also true that the UN only intervenes when its member states (and primarily the bigger ones) decide to do so. But what did you expect? They are the people who provide the soldiers and the equipment. The UN has none of its own. Essentially this boils down to a complaint that the world isn't fair and that countries don't always act in a purely altruistic fashion. As noted, the UN's failures have pretty much all been where they attempted to enforce a peace. Failure in such an exercise is almost foreordained, given the way the force is structured. You write that "A few shining points a winning record does not make." I'd reply that a few failures (especially when the effective missions outnumber them roughly 10 to one) does not a pathetic record make. In fact, most countries with a record of overseas military interventions would be pretty happy with "only" winning 90% them. Criticism of the UN peacekeepers comes in fact, mostly from the kind of schizophrenic attitude that many people have towards the UN. They complain that it's trying to be some sort of world government (which it isn't) and then they complain that it doesn't act like a world government (which it can't). People (as here) complain that the peacekeepers lack the military muscle to tackle nation-states - but they'd reject in an instant any proposal to build an independant UN force that could tackle the militaries of nation states. So what's it gonna be? For my part, I see peacekeeping as a dirty, dangerous and difficult job that saves tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives annually. It's a job that no-one actually wants, for all the reasons you outline above. And the bulk of it is done by UN forces, who in return for this, get reviled as "pathetic" or "a joke". Like so many things, the current system is far from perfect. UN troops are, all too often, underarmed, under-trained, too few and poorly led. Equally often, they're all there is. Does anyone have a better suggestion? cheers, Mark

Re: U.N. Armament

Re: Divine Portfolios Help requested. And the usage actually comes from politics (specifically British-inspired politics) where traditionally the papers prepared for a minister would be delivered in .... a portfolio. Hence, if you were minister for Health, then all the health-related papers would be in your portfolio. The term quickly came to mean "things you were responsible for" in English english and rapidly spread beyond politics although it's slightly old-fashioned these days. D&D adopted it from there. cheers, Mark

Re: Pulling Authority & Other Genres

Re: 10 Most Amazing Temples in the World Ah - in that case, you're probably thinking of either the bone church in Sedlec, Poland or the Church of Bones in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic. They're not the only ossuaries in that part of the world, but they're both pretty famous. But like I said, there're plenty of "bone churches" in Europe: another famous one is the Capuchin Church of the Immaculate Conception in Rome (that's the only one I've ever visited). I just pointed to Jes' photos from Evora 'cause I had his site bookmarked They're pretty odd - but then a lot of priests and monks from that era were - shall we say - not praying from a full psalmbook. cheers, Mark

Re: 10 Most Amazing Temples in the World There's a bunch of them, actually. Check out http://lifegallery.dk/photography/travel/portugal/evora/evorastartpage.html which has a bunch of photos taken by a friend of mine of the mortuary at Evora in Portugal. It's built mostly out of bones. cheers, Mark

Re: Luck Options This has come up in the past in our games. The base rule we established was that luck can alter probabilities, but it cannot alter past events. In other words, the player can always use his luck to alter a roll that has not happened yet, but once it is made, it is made. He can't alter that without time travel. This greatly reduces the effect of the power, while still making it useful: you can always decide to drop ±3 or ±4 on the crucial attack roll or dive for cover roll, before it's made and that's usually a big deal. And the player, as described, could do that 10 times in a typical fight, which is a really major effect, even if he can't pick and choose which rolls to affect after the case. And if the player chooses to use it more sparingly, he can more or less guarantee success or failure on 3 or 4 rolls. That's pretty damn powerful, given that he's essentially gaining a whole stack of overall levels with limited usage. cheers, Mark

Re: 10 Most Amazing Temples in the World The list of churches is a bit dubious, though. I'd remove some of the fairly pedestrian modern churches and Notre Dame, and add in: Bete Medhane Alem in Lalibela: a church carved entirely out of rock (windows, sculpture, furniture, the lot: all one piece of stone) Sainte Chapelle in Paris - the Gothic church to end all Gothic churches: it makes Notre Dame look like a cave. and the Mezquita in Cordoba - a mosque converted to a church: it's just goddamn amazing. cheers, Mark

Re: U.N. Armament It's not so weird - after the collapse of Saddam's army, the US ended up with hundreds of thousand of AK's, still in packing cases in armouries and billions of rounds of ammo. The Iraqi military is familiar with the AK and it's dead easy to strip and maintain - plus the Iraqis are used to it. Giving the AKs away made better sense at every level than shipping M16s to Iraq and then having to retrain the cops and soldiers to use it. cheers, Mark

Re: U.N. Armament Yeah, what he said. The actual number of M16 variants manufactured is higher than that: they were also manufactured under licence in several countries (in fact, the Belgians re-engineered and improved the M16 and then sold their design back to the US). However, the total number of M16 variants manufactured is probably not above 12 million all told (maybe as low as 10 million) - and of those, about 75% are thought to be still around: hence the 8-9 million figure I quoted. The AK, on the other hand is manufactured everywhere: it's not only soviet or chinese clients who use them. The Finns, for example used a modified AK for years, as did the Israelis (the Galil). Non-communist client nations in Africa also use them (like South Africa - AK's are everywhere there from home defence weapons to to the police to - I kid you not - big game shooting. In South Africa the AK is nicknamed "the King of Rifles"). An AK variant is also India's standard issue, etc, etc. cheers, Mark

Re: U.N. Armament It has a lot to do with style. An old fashioned AK74 (with the wood grip) will go for about 100 bucks, while the later version with the black graphite stock, which is functionally identical will sell for about 50% more: in the same price range as the cheapest M16s. I think, as a whole M16s are better thought of than AKs but the real reason the AK is so cheap is because they are everywhere, in huge numbers. cheers, Mark

Re: U.N. Armament