Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 zombiegleemax Jul 10, 2003 4:34:46	Instead of makeing than total conversion of OD&D to new D&D why not just upgrade it alittle to keep the old favor. First I belive that the Stronghold rules need to be change and upgrade I have all 4 edition of C&S which have a bettor fief system than OD&D.
#2 zombiegleemax Jul 12, 2003 3:50:17	They first mistake was figureing population as how many family /hex instead of per squre miles. I use this methord to detimen the square miles of x size hex. Take 3/4 of the diameter time itself. Than 8 miles hex is 36 square miles. Useing C&S population densities: farming culture table: level: Heavily settled 100/sq mile + 1/2 sqmiles unsettle land ratio 1: 1/2 = total area 1.5 populateion/sq mile of 67.67. So than 8 miles heavily settled hex can about 2436 peoples. It you take the average size of than familty as 6 it would support 406 households. Any Comment!
#3 zombiegleemax Jul 27, 2003 12:49:07	1) The traditional Mystaran/OD&D average family size is 5; I'd go with that. 2) I'd also recommend rounding, so in a densely populated 8-mile hex you would get 2,500 persons and 500 families.
#4 zombiegleemax Aug 10, 2003 12:12:16	While looking through the old boards for something else (not found yet), I saw this. SophietheGreen wrote: I donot believe that Alphatia paid full cost for their airship's. The cost was most use to figuer out how long it will take to enchant and built it. The wizard is working for government mostly likely isnot getting full pay for casting these spells. That might be possible for other countries, but that's not what Alphatia is like. In Alphatia, per DotE the non-spellcasters are coerced to serve (the spellcasters), but the government has a hard time getting the wizards to help them with anything. If you're looking for a place with a strong sense of civic duty where things are done efficiently like that, you're not looking at Alphatia - those would be attributes of Thyatis. Alphatia is supposed to be inefficient, disorganized, full of chaotic individualists who are doing their own thing - not dedicating themselves to serving the Alphatian Empire at a personal sacrifice. I don't blame you for having this misimpression though; a lot of people claim to be fans of Alphatia, but then eliminate the cultural traits that made Alphatia what it was and expropriate those of others - so Alphatia becomes the place where a fighter (Broderic, say) can get ahead and lead wizards, "Alphatian citizenship" (non-existant in DotE) is invoked, the Alphatian Imperial Guard posesses the Retibius Air Fleet (not Thyatis), their armies combine wizardy, clerical power, with effective fighters (an attribute DotE says is one of Thyatis, but *not* of Alphatia), everyone is working on behalf of the Empire out of a sense of duty, and doing so efficiently, where Imperial Law limits what can be done to slaves, rather than demanding that any who touch a weapon be executed on the spot (thus, again, swapping attributes) limiting arbitrary rule (rather than whim being law - p.2, DMSB, DotE), &tc. It turned out that most people who claim to be fans of Alphatia really don't like the Alphatian society, so they dump it and expropriate the cultural traits of its counterpart; the only thing they *do* like is power - so they drop all the things that made Alphatia weaker than it might otherwise be, and expropriate the attributes from Thyatis that made the latter empire an Imperial competitor with Alphatia. And Alphtia becomes a pleasant place for non-spellcasters, a happy, benign place sans opression, while Thyatis becomes the place where there is no citizenship to bring people together and it is Alphatia where equality of status throughout the Empire unites it (p. 15, Player's Guide to Thyatis) and encourages people to sacrifice on its behalf, making it strong and united and able to perform up to its potential if not more (pp.12-13, Player's Guide to Alphatia, DotE). All these transmogrifications, I expect, will be cemented in the "Hacklopedia Mystarica", though. Because it turned out that Alphatia as described in DotE had no sincere fans, and no one whose input counts for anything ever stuck up for Thyatis, thus the transformation proceeded apace. But that's the way it goes La Resistance Lives On!
#5 zombiegleemax Aug 11, 2003 3:16:42	Originally posted by Porphyrogenitus While looking through the old boards for something else (not found yet), I saw this. SophietheGreen wrote:That might be possible for other countries, but that's not what Alphatia is like. In Alphatia, per DotE the non-spellcasters are coerced to serve (the spellcasters), but the government has a hard time getting the wizards to help them with anything. If you're looking for a place with a strong sense of civic duty where things are done efficiently like that, you're not looking at Alphatia - those would be attributes of Thyatis. Alphatia is supposed to be inefficient, disorganized, full of chaotic individualists who are doing their own thing - not dedicating themselves to serving the Alphatian Empire at a personal sacrifice. I don't blame you for having this misimpression though; a lot of people claim to be fans of Alphatia, but then eliminate the cultural traits that made Alphatia what it was and expropriate those of others - so Alphatia becomes the place where a fighter (Broderic, say) can get ahead and lead wizards, "Alphatian citizenship" (non-existant in DotE) is invoked, the Alphatian Imperial Guard posesses the Retibius Air Fleet (not Thyatis), their armies combine wizardy, clerical power, with effective fighters (an attribute DotE says is one of Thyatis, but *not* of Alphatia), everyone is working on behalf of the Empire out of a sense of duty, and doing so efficiently, where Imperial Law limits what can be done to slaves, rather than demanding that any who touch a weapon be executed on the spot (thus, again, swapping attributes) limiting arbitrary rule (rather than whim being law - p.2, DMSB, DotE), &tc. It turned out that most people who claim to be fans of Alphatia really don't like the Alphatian society, so they dump it and expropriate the cultural traits of its counterpart; the only thing they *do* like is power - so they drop all the things that made Alphatia weaker than it might otherwise be, and expropriate the attributes from Thyatis that made the latter empire an Imperial competitor with Alphatia. And Alphtia becomes a pleasant place for non-spellcasters, a happy, benign place sans opression, while Thyatis becomes the place where there is no citizenship to bring people together and it is Alphatia where equality of status throughout the Empire unites it (p. 15, Player's Guide to Thyatis) and encourages people to sacrifice on its behalf, making it strong and united and able to perform up to its potential if not more (pp.12-13, Player's Guide to Alphatia, DotE). All these transmogrifications, I expect, will be cemented in the "Hacklopedia Mystarica", though. Because it turned out that Alphatia as described in DotE had no sincere fans, and no one whose input counts for anything ever stuck up for Thyatis, thus the transformation proceeded apace. But that's the way it goes La Resistance Lives On! You are misquoteing me first than magic user working for the government and drawing than salary is getting pay to use his spellcasting to built airship for the government so the cost of casting the spells is use to detimer how long it will take to built. Also some hight level wizard might also help the government by giveing of their time and power as spellcaster.
#6 zombiegleemax Aug 11, 2003 9:18:18	Originally posted by Sophiathegreen You are misquoteing me first than magic user working for the government and drawing than salary is getting pay to use his spellcasting to built airship for the government so the cost of casting the spells is use to detimer how long it will take to built. 1) I didn't misquote you - I cut and pasted from the original quotation, at the bottom of the last post in this thread. 2) The "cost of the spells" - the enchanting cost, is fixed and has nothing to do with salaries, it has to do with the expense of enchanting the materiels and cannot be avoided as you describe. 3) Pay for the wizard to enchant the item - the salary - is above and beyond the enchanting cost (see Champions of Mystara). The enchanting costs do *not* include the cost to hire the spellcaster(s). 3) Spellcaster salaries are listed in the PWAs; Alphatian spellcasters demand more, not less, pay - four times as much as identically skilled Glantrian wizards. See here for some ship-by-ship breakdowns of what it actually costs the Alphatians to build some skyship types, going by the rules set out in Champions of Mystara. The interesting thing about the differential in pay expectations is that though Glantri has only 10% of the population of Alphatia it could theoretically afford a fourth as many skyships and Thyatis, with ~half the population of Alphatia, could theoretically afford at least as many skyships as Alphatia now that they have learned how to build them, though by and large the Thyatians have more efficient ways of spending their money and won't devote as much to skyships (except to enhance the strategic mobility of the RAF and a few other forces). Also some hight level wizard might also help the government by giveing of their time and power as spellcaster. That might be possible for other countries, but that's not what Alphatia is like. In Alphatia, per DotE the non-spellcasters are coerced to serve (the spellcasters), but the government has a hard time getting the wizards to help them with anything. If you're looking for a place with a strong sense of civic duty where things are done efficiently like that, you're not looking at Alphatia - those would be attributes of Thyatis. Alphatia is supposed to be inefficient, disorganized, full of chaotic individualists who are doing their own thing - not dedicating themselves to serving the Alphatian Empire at a personal sacrifice. I don't blame you for having this misimpression though; a lot of people claim to be fans of Alphatia, but then eliminate the cultural traits that made Alphatia what it was and expropriate those of others - so Alphatia becomes the place where a fighter (Broderic, say) can get ahead and lead wizards, "Alphatian citizenship" (non-existant in DotE) is invoked, the Alphatian Imperial Guard posesses the Retibius Air Fleet (not Thyatis), their armies combine wizardy, clerical power, with effective fighters (an attribute DotE says is one of Thyatis, but *not* of Alphatia), everyone is working on behalf of the Empire out of a sense of duty, and doing so efficiently, where Imperial Law limits what can be done to slaves, rather than demanding that any who touch a weapon be executed on the spot (thus, again, swapping attributes) limiting arbitrary rule (rather than whim being law - p.2, DMSB, DotE), &tc. It turned out that most people who claim to be fans of Alphatia really don't like the Alphatian society, so they dump it and expropriate the cultural traits of its counterpart; the only thing they *do* like is power - so they drop all the things that made Alphatia weaker than it might otherwise be, and expropriate the attributes from Thyatis that made the latter empire an Imperial competitor with Alphatia. And Alphtia becomes a pleasant place for non-spellcasters, a happy, benign place sans opression, while Thyatis becomes the place where there is no citizenship to bring people together and it is Alphatia where equality of status throughout the Empire unites it (p. 15, Player's Guide to Thyatis) and encourages people to sacrifice on its behalf, making it strong and united and able to perform up to its potential if not more (pp.12-13, Player's Guide to Alphatia, DotE). All these transmogrifications, I expect, will be cemented in the "Hacklopedia Mystarica", though. Because it turned out that Alphatia as described in DotE had no sincere fans, and no one whose input counts for anything ever stuck up for Thyatis, thus the transformation proceeded apace. !But that's the way it goes La Resistance Lives On!
#7 zombiegleemax Aug 11, 2003 20:10:36	Originally posted by Porphyrogenitus 1) I didn't misquote you - I cut and pasted from the original quotation, at the bottom of the last post in this thread. 2) The "cost of the spells" - the enchanting cost, is fixed and has nothing to do with salaries, it has to do with the expense of enchanting the materiels and cannot be avoided as you describe. 3) Pay for the wizard to enchant the item - the salary - is above and beyond the enchanting cost (see Champions of Mystara). The enchanting costs do *not* include the cost to hire the spellcaster(s). 3) Spellcaster salaries are listed in the PWAs; Alphatian spellcasters demand more, not less, pay - four times as much as identically skilled Glantrian wizards. See here for some ship-by-ship breakdowns of what it actually costs the Alphatians to build some skyship types, going by the rules set out in Champions of Mystara. The interesting thing about the differential in pay expectations is that though Glantri has only 10% of the population of Alphatia it could theoretically afford a fourth as many skyships and Thyatis, with ~half the population of Alphatia, could theoretically afford at least as many skyships as Alphatia now that they have learned how to build them, though by and large the Thyatians have more efficient ways of spending their money and won't devote as much to skyships (except to enhance the strategic mobility of the RAF and a few other forces). That might be possible for other countries, but that's not what Alphatia is like. In Alphatia, per DotE the non-spellcasters are coerced to serve (the spellcasters), but the government has a hard time getting the wizards to help them with anything. If you're looking for a place with a strong sense of civic duty where things are done efficiently like that, you're not looking at Alphatia - those would be attributes of Thyatis. Alphatia is supposed to be inefficient, disorganized, full of chaotic individualists who are doing their own thing - not dedicating themselves to serving the Alphatian Empire at a personal sacrifice. I don't blame you for having this misimpression though; a lot of people claim to be fans of Alphatia, but then eliminate the cultural traits that made Alphatia what it was and expropriate those of others - so Alphatia becomes the place where a fighter (Broderic, say) can get ahead and lead wizards, "Alphatian citizenship" (non-existant in DotE) is invoked, the Alphatian Imperial Guard posesses the Retibius Air Fleet (not Thyatis), their armies combine wizardy, clerical power, with effective fighters (an attribute DotE says is one of Thyatis, but *not* of Alphatia), everyone is working on behalf of the Empire out of a sense of duty, and doing so efficiently, where Imperial Law limits what can be done to slaves, rather than demanding that any who touch a weapon be executed on the spot (thus, again, swapping attributes) limiting arbitrary rule (rather than whim being law - p.2, DMSB, DotE), &tc. It turned out that most people who claim to be fans of Alphatia really don't like the Alphatian society, so they dump it and expropriate the cultural traits of its counterpart; the only thing they *do* like is power - so they drop all the things that made Alphatia weaker than it might otherwise be, and expropriate the attributes from Thyatis that made the latter empire an Imperial competitor with Alphatia. And Alphtia becomes a pleasant place for non-spellcasters, a happy, benign place sans opression, while Thyatis becomes the place where there is no citizenship to bring people together and it is Alphatia where equality of status throughout the Empire unites it (p. 15, Player's Guide to Thyatis) and encourages people to sacrifice on its behalf, making it strong and united and able to perform up to its potential if not more (pp.12-13, Player's Guide to Alphatia, DotE). All these transmogrifications, I expect, will be cemented in the "Hacklopedia Mystarica", though. Because it turned out that Alphatia as described in DotE had no sincere fans, and no one whose input counts for anything ever stuck up for Thyatis, thus the transformation proceeded apace. !But that's the way it goes La Resistance Lives On! I will not listern to you and your worthless idears. Good bye idiot.
#8 zombiegleemax Aug 11, 2003 21:41:45	Originally posted by Sophiathegreen I will not listern to you and your worthless idears. Good bye idiot. What an intelligent and thoughtful response that deals with the points I made on their merits rather than engaging in ad-hominem attacks and insults.
#9 zombiegleemax Aug 22, 2003 13:31:12	Originally posted by Sophiathegreen They first mistake was figureing population as how many family /hex instead of per squre miles. I use this methord to detimen the square miles of x size hex. Take 3/4 of the diameter time itself. Than 8 miles hex is 36 square miles. Useing C&S population densities: farming culture table: level: Heavily settled 100/sq mile + 1/2 sqmiles unsettle land ratio 1: 1/2 = total area 1.5 populateion/sq mile of 67.67. So than 8 miles heavily settled hex can about 2436 peoples. It you take the average size of than familty as 6 it would support 406 households. Any Comment! Um, I come up with about 55.4 square miles: Hex is 8 miles across. Each angle of a hex is 120 degrees. We need to calculate the length of the sides to calculate the are ... we will call this length "C". A hex can be divided into a square and two triangles. The area of the square =8*C. Since the square has 90 deg coners, the two triangles have 2 30deg and 1 120 deg corners. To calculate the area of the triangle, we will bisect the 120 deg corner and draw a line to the midpoint, yielding a triangle with a segment length =8/2 (aka, 4), opposite a 60 deg angle on a 30-60-90 triangle. A^2+B^2=C^2. In a 30-60-90 triangle, A=C/2; B=C*sqrt(3)/2. B=4, therefore C=8/sqrt(3). C=about4.61; A = about 2.3 The area of the square is about 36.85. The area of each triangle is about 9.2 (18.48 for both). The total area is about 55.4 square miles. Now then, 1 square mile per 100 population is "improved" lands (fields, village, roads, commons), while the extra 1/2 mile of "unsettled" land (woods, swamp, rough, free grazing, etc) is also necessary for building materials, extra grazing land, etc. [figure, 1 square mile = 640 acres; if 1 family needs 32 acres this yields 40 families per 2 sqaure miles (200-240 people); This is about 24 acres of improved land and 8 acres unsettled per family.] The average villages were 1-2 miles apart in heavily settled lands. 55.4/2*200 = 5540 Population density for that hex ... 100 per square mile. Average medieval population densities were much lower than this (IIRC France hit near 50? and England near 25?, but England raised a lot of sheep at that time whereas France was primarily grain (to feed Paris, etc)). Terrain features (forests, hills, mountains, rivers, lakes, etc) tend to lower the maximum potential and cities tend to raise it a little (with 90%+ of population rural cities raised it less than you would think). Speaking of maximum population: Villages could reach as many as 150 people per square mile, but then every spare acre was tilled (reduce unsettled to near zero) as was done in France near Paris, but good soil, weather, etc, is needed to reach this point and then certain items must be imported that wer otherwise local (building materials). This is why villages tend to be under 300 population (averaging about 100-150) and towns, where many people are engaged in activities not directly agriculture, are usually over 300 population.
#10 zombiegleemax Aug 22, 2003 13:42:18	Oh, btw, I believe C&S and myself both used the same information, but translated it differently: Medieval villages were 1-2 miles apart on average (in heavily populated areas). They averaged it by making 1 square mile areas and adding in an extra 1/2 mile unsettled (fitting in with the standard ratio between tilled and untilled). I went with the idea of "hexes", offset squares, etc (in other words, if the range is 1-2 miles, then an approximation of maximum density would be 2 miles between horizontal neighbors and 1 mile between vertical neighbors. This leads to each village "controlling" 2 square miles of territory rather than 1.5 ) Hope that helps/clarifies things some.
#11 zombiegleemax Aug 22, 2003 14:07:07	Originally posted by theDwarf Oh, btw, I believe C&S and myself both used the same information, but translated it differently: Medieval villages were 1-2 miles apart on average (in heavily populated areas). They averaged it by making 1 square mile areas and adding in an extra 1/2 mile unsettled (fitting in with the standard ratio between tilled and untilled). I went with the idea of "hexes", offset squares, etc (in other words, if the range is 1-2 miles, then an approximation of maximum density would be 2 miles between horizontal neighbors and 1 mile between vertical neighbors. This leads to each village "controlling" 2 square miles of territory rather than 1.5 ) Hope that helps/clarifies things some. If you're interested, here's a highly detailed medieval demographics site.
#12 zombiegleemax Aug 23, 2003 9:52:10	Originally posted by theDwarf Um, I come up with about 55.4 square miles: Hex is 8 miles across. Each angle of a hex is 120 degrees. We need to calculate the length of the sides to calculate the are ... we will call this length "C". A hex can be divided into a square and two triangles. The area of the square =8*C. Since the square has 90 deg coners, the two triangles have 2 30deg and 1 120 deg corners. To calculate the area of the triangle, we will bisect the 120 deg corner and draw a line to the midpoint, yielding a triangle with a segment length =8/2 (aka, 4), opposite a 60 deg angle on a 30-60-90 triangle. A^2+B^2=C^2. In a 30-60-90 triangle, A=C/2; B=C*sqrt(3)/2. B=4, therefore C=8/sqrt(3). C=about4.61; A = about 2.3 The area of the square is about 36.85. The area of each triangle is about 9.2 (18.48 for both). The total area is about 55.4 square miles. Now then, 1 square mile per 100 population is "improved" lands (fields, village, roads, commons), while the extra 1/2 mile of "unsettled" land (woods, swamp, rough, free grazing, etc) is also necessary for building materials, extra grazing land, etc. [figure, 1 square mile = 640 acres; if 1 family needs 32 acres this yields 40 families per 2 sqaure miles (200-240 people); This is about 24 acres of improved land and 8 acres unsettled per family.] The average villages were 1-2 miles apart in heavily settled lands. 55.4/2*200 = 5540 Population density for that hex ... 100 per square mile. Average medieval population densities were much lower than this (IIRC France hit near 50? and England near 25?, but England raised a lot of sheep at that time whereas France was primarily grain (to feed Paris, etc)). Terrain features (forests, hills, mountains, rivers, lakes, etc) tend to lower the maximum potential and cities tend to raise it a little (with 90%+ of population rural cities raised it less than you would think). Speaking of maximum population: Villages could reach as many as 150 people per square mile, but then every spare acre was tilled (reduce unsettled to near zero) as was done in France near Paris, but good soil, weather, etc, is needed to reach this point and then certain items must be imported that wer otherwise local (building materials). This is why villages tend to be under 300 population (averaging about 100-150) and towns, where many people are engaged in activities not directly agriculture, are usually over 300 population. I was useing C&S quick way of figuring how many square miles in a hex. I like to use square when make maps. Hex only was use in some wargame as faceing of some units where inportence, but makeing large scale map for other need square are easier to work with.