Game world economy

Broadly this essay extends ideas presented in Populating a game world, q.v.

Primary producers

Herdsfolk

Herdsfolk are nomadic; it’s reasonable to think they’ll bring their herds to market, rather than selling at lots of tiny markets. So in the spring, shepherds will visit specific towns at the edge of open land, to hold a shearing festival/carnevale; and that both shepherds and cattle herders will visit towns on the edge of open land to sell fatstock in the autumn.

Miners

Miners mine. They’re settled, but they’re settled usually in specialist settlements at the location where the ore body is accessible, usually in mountenous territory. They’ll consume a lot of food, so there will be a local market for foodstuffs encouraging local farming. Different mines obviously mine different ores, but, for example, lead and silver are frequently found together.

Foresters

Foresters are more or less settled at the edge of forests, at locations from which timber can be moved by navigable water; again in specialist settlements. In addition to timber, foresters hunt and produce both meat and furs, so have less need for other food producers locally.

Farmers

Farmers are settled. Farmers occupy standard runrig plots, but because they don’t employ journeymen or apprentices, and don’t have workshops, the plots are mostly open with little building. Most farmers are ‘mixed farmers’, producing cereals, meat, eggs and milk. Some will be more specialist. Farm produce, taken broadly to include orchardsfolk, include:

• meat
• milk and milk products
• hides
• eggs
• cereals
• root vegetables, onions, etc
• peas and beans
• leaf vegetables
• fruits
• fibres: linen, hemp and silk (from silk-moths in mulberry orchards)
• possibly other stuff I’ve forgotten.

Farmers are all primarily subsistence farmers, farming first to feed their own household and selling only surplus in the market.

Crafts

Crafts generally process primary goods into secondary goods — whether intermediate stages or final consumer items. Some elite ‘crafts’ deal with abstract primary goods like law and knowledge, and they may be seen as somewhat separate.

A master craftsperson may occupy a standard runrig plot, much like a farmer’s plot. Like a farmer, a poor master crafter household will cultivate part of the plot to produce food for the house — at least grow vegetables and keep hens. However, as the crafter takes on apprentices and journeymen — and gets richer — more buildings will be required as accommodation, workshop space and materials stores.

Also, Tchahua is much more a gold-rush town than an organic, grew over hundreds of years sort of town, so it is not ex-runrig; and additionally the original settlement was probably along the river bank, land which has now been redeveloped as warehouses and as rich merchant residences. Generally, town house plots are small from the get go.

Hans’hua is again an exception from normal organic development, as it has no agricultural land close to the city at all.

Generally, primary goods aren’t transported over land — because overland transport is expensive, by the time they’ve been transported they’re no longer low cost goods. So often the craftspeople who process primary produce into at least commodity intermediate forms will live close to the source of the primary goods.

So, for example, the town(s) where the shepherds hold their shearing fairs will tend to have a lot of weavers. While around mines there will be smelters producing ingots and bar stock to be marketed to smiths all over the place, there will also be smiths close to the mines producing commodity tools and weapons.

See the tables in Populating a game world.