Issues with population dynamics - Palladium World (1st ed.)

[Titletatle]

Greetings!

Has anyone else found population data provided by Palladium 1st edition source material problematic to work with and if so, how have you addressed the problem?

I have just started planning a campaign for 1st edition Palladium Fantasy RPG and bought Old Ones, Yin-Sloth and High Seas for source material. I personally have found it a bit difficult to use these as the information about city sizes and population is too wildly off from the real-world historical setting. One can let it go and it's fantasy of course, but I'd like to have a little more plausible background.

As an example the Islands of Bizantium has a population of 653 000 humans according to PB3 (High Seas). The war fleet contains 245 ships and just two Noble houses possess a total merchant fleet of 1000 ships (it is mentioned that the other Noble houses possess ships too, but no figures are given). Based on the list of ships at the end of the book it looks like the crew sizes vary, but for this exercise I estimated that warships would have a crew of about 100 (sailors and marines) and merchant ships about 50 on average. This would mean that the ships explicitly mentioned in the book would have a crew of about 75 000 in total.

A population of 653 000 would consist of children, adults and eldelry people... so let's say there are about 450 000 adults available, about half of them males (proportion of males to females would probably be lower than 50 % in a feudal style seafaring society, but anyway...). This would mean that only the ships mentioned would require 30 % of the adult male population as crew, which is not even remotely realistic in a historical feudal society (90 % of the population would work in agriculture; it is also stated that the Bizantium Islands are self-sufficient in this regard). It's not even remotely realistic in relation to most navalized historical societies of Europe (Ancient Greeks, renaissance-baroque Netherlands and later British Isles).

One could simply add a zero to the population (6 530 000) to make the numbers more sensible, but the land area of the islands is not sufficient to support this kind of number. By my rough measurements (90 000 km2) the islands are slightly smaller than Ireland, which currently has a population of about five million - Ireland's population was probably less than one million during the middle ages, which would actually go pretty nicely with the given population of Bizantium. Or one could reduce the number of ships possessed by the navy and mercant families, but then the societal structure described in the book would not seem sensible. There are similar issues with city sizes all over etc., this is just an example.

My solution is that I will use the setting as an inspiration and for general information, but I think I'll just have to drop the more specific stuff out.

[Hotrod]

As Shakespeare wrote, "All the world's a stage."

You're quite right, of course. Applying math and higher reasoning to the Palladium Fantasy world, it won't make much sense, and the population numbers are all over the place. I could take an apologist approach and point out that many citizens live in the Shadow Colonies with might not be part of that 653k population, not all ships are going to be manned and at sea at any given time, and population numbers might be under-reported for the purposes of the nobles evading taxes. It's entirely possible that only 15% of the population would be serving at any given time, which seems somewhat more reasonable. This is a seafaring culture, after all.

However, such explanations fail to address the underlying issue: you're trying to apply information outside its original intent. This isn't a Civilization computer game; the setting is a backdrop for adventures that get played at the small group level. Actual national population figures aren't important to players in an adventure. With that in mind, go ahead and make any adjustments you like.

I'm rather curious about why this bothers you .

[Whiskeyjack]

Like Hotrod, I haven't found a time in game where the percentage of a kingdom that is employed at a certain trade has had any effect on the characters actions. The only time it might is if you are playing a campaign that involves full out war between nations, and that's only really important to the GM. I don't think any fantasy setting really makes sense when you look at them from the real world.

[kiralon]

I'm rather curious about why this bothers you .

I don't know about OP but some of the errors bug me, because they help break the believability of the setting.
But in saying that I'd prefer to have wrong information then no information.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

A population of 653 000 would consist of children, adults and eldelry people... so let's say there are about 450 000 adults available, about half of them males (proportion of males to females would probably be lower than 50 % in a feudal style seafaring society, but anyway...). This would mean that only the ships mentioned would require 30 % of the adult male population as crew, which is not even remotely realistic in a historical feudal society (90 % of the population would work in agriculture; it is also stated that the Bizantium Islands are self-sufficient in this regard). It's not even remotely realistic in relation to most navalized historical societies of Europe (Ancient Greeks, renaissance-baroque Netherlands and later British Isles).

... i have no idea where you got that idea from. Thats not even remotely true (if we're talking about the middle ages and later, which is what Palladium Fantasy is roughly based around). Earlier than that, it could get that high, but it really depends on what other resources are available. Particularly since they can fish (fishermen feed a LOT more people than farmers do) they wouldn't have to have near that number of people farming.

However, Palladium and populations and reality have never been anywhere in the same ballpark. Hell, not even the same timezone. (Such as.... Splynncryth alone has enough Kydians to lose 2:1 (or even 3:1), and wipe out every single Demon and Deevil in both dimensions... and still have billions of Kydians left).

[Hotrod]

I'm rather curious about why this bothers you .

I don't know about OP but some of the errors bug me, because they help break the believability of the setting.
But in saying that I'd prefer to have wrong information then no information.

Fair enough; I was wondering why this particular issue was so troubling.

[Titletatle]

Thanks for the replies!

I'm rather curious about why this bothers you .

It's mostly to due with believability, as "kiralon" wrote. I would've been content with the very basic world information of the basic rulebook, but it is kind of annoying when the more detailed world information in the sourcebooks seems a bit silly. If it were more sensible, I'd use it. But I can't, as it feels too far from the real world stuff. OTOH it's kind of official so it does not feel right to make my own stuff to replace it (double work, I paid for it etc.). But it's really not that bad, I'll probably just use the basic info.

90% of the population worked in agriculture...

... i have no idea where you got that idea from. Thats not even remotely true (if we're talking about the middle ages and later, which is what Palladium Fantasy is roughly based around). Earlier than that, it could get that high, but it really depends on what other resources are available. Particularly since they can fish (fishermen feed a LOT more people than farmers do) they wouldn't have to have near that number of people farming.

I got the idea from several books and articles I've read. Estimates about the proportion of agricultural workers in the population vary a lot and there's also the overlapping urbanization problem. E.g.

Table 1 on page 16 includes a summary about estimates of rural and urban population in England during the Middle ages:
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics ... ation7.pdf

This (scientific) article discusses about labour productivity and includes a calculation, based on arable farmland in England, that in the year 1300 between 57-78% of males in England had to be farming for 300 days per year to provide enough food for the population. If they worked less than that, which is considered likely by the writer, more males would've been required. There is also discussion about urbanization rate (5-20% depending on classification) etc. (pages 11-12).
http://www.helsinki.fi/iehc2006/papers3/Clark122.pdf

Open article dealing with urbanization and troubles in calculations of Dyer etc. https://www.academia.edu/3523611/Urban_ ... al_England

Some more popular stuff that gives different figures:
80-90%: https://fee.org/articles/lords-and-serf ... al-europe/
85 %: https://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/artic ... rural-life

I also read some text that listed different estimates between 70-98% depending on period or area, but can't locate it now. One article also stated that almost all figures before the 1800's are estimates (I can dig it if necessary). It might be that the 90% is better estimation of the percentage of the rural population than the percentage of actual farmers, but the number in most estimates listed above is not that different from my statement.

Thus I'd be vary about stating "it's not even remotely true". You might have sources? Otoh it's really not that serious and I'm happy with 70-90 % of the population being farmers. It still does not help with my "issue"

[Reagren Wright]

The population of England, around 3.5 million or more in 1086. Its estimated to have grown to
somewhere between 3.7 million and 5–7 million near 14th century (facts before the plague).

Italy's population around 1300 has been variously estimated at between 10 and 13 million.

In 1328, France is believed to have supported between 13.4 million people.

Take a look at their boudarylines during these time periods and the estimations of these
population. I believe Palladium is "close" to our population estimates giving the size of the area.

I will say that I've been doing a close examination of the Great Northern Wilderness and will admit
that between various sourcebooks the population there is a tad bit off. Future supplements I will
attempt to fix these issues. I will also say that Kevin wanted me to reduce Lopan population of what
I originally had it at. Lots of peasant folks out there living on farms I can tell you that. Doing the
same for Timiro.

[kiralon]

GNW needs more farmland to feed those hungry doggo's, either that or the wolfen can live on a carrot a day.

Caer Itom has almost 2 million people living there. London didn't hit one million until the 18th century
roughly a person eats about 900kg per year, so that about 1.5 million tons of food per year, just for the capital.
in the 1930's 1 farmer fed 4 people (up to about 155 people per farmer by 2010) so that means they need half a million farmers roughly to feed just caer itom (this is assuming the farmers feed themselves too). That's a lot of farms.

[Hotrod]

GNW needs more farmland to feed those hungry doggo's, either that or the wolfen can live on a carrot a day.

Caer Itom has almost 2 million people living there. London didn't hit one million until the 18th century
roughly a person eats about 900kg per year, so that about 1.5 million tons of food per year, just for the capital.
in the 1930's 1 farmer fed 4 people (up to about 155 people per farmer by 2010) so that means they need half a million farmers roughly to feed just caer itom (this is assuming the farmers feed themselves too). That's a lot of farms.

Yes, but... magic.

[The Beast]

GNW needs more farmland to feed those hungry doggo's, either that or the wolfen can live on a carrot a day.

Caer Itom has almost 2 million people living there. London didn't hit one million until the 18th century
roughly a person eats about 900kg per year, so that about 1.5 million tons of food per year, just for the capital.
in the 1930's 1 farmer fed 4 people (up to about 155 people per farmer by 2010) so that means they need half a million farmers roughly to feed just caer itom (this is assuming the farmers feed themselves too). That's a lot of farms.

Yes, but... magic.

I was just about to suggest the same.

[kiralon]

I don't remember seeing much magic that helps with farming that would be done on a day to day business at 50000 farms. (if there is its not mentioned in the books that I have noticed, if you want to turn somebody into a candle no probs, cure leaf rot and increase crop output not so much). Druids help with knowledge in some place but on the whole the palladium farmer does it hard.

I agree magic should be there to do it, but just like a lot of other things, it shows palladium is only 3 days old with a created history. Evolution hasn't happened yet to bring those sorts of things to the masses that I have seen like it would have if the past 5000 years had actually passed.

Hell, if I remember correctly farmers in palladium don't even get plant farm lore

[Whiskeyjack]

The biggest help for farming would be warlocks. Creating ideal growing conditions would make for maximum yields.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

GNW needs more farmland to feed those hungry doggo's, either that or the wolfen can live on a carrot a day.

Caer Itom has almost 2 million people living there. London didn't hit one million until the 18th century
roughly a person eats about 900kg per year, so that about 1.5 million tons of food per year, just for the capital.
in the 1930's 1 farmer fed 4 people (up to about 155 people per farmer by 2010) so that means they need half a million farmers roughly to feed just caer itom (this is assuming the farmers feed themselves too). That's a lot of farms.

They also hunt, domesticate animals, and have commercial-scale fishing.

Fishing, in particular, feeds a LOT of people for the number of people involved.

Also... in the 1930s, American Farmers were WELL behind the technology curve because being so spread out made infrastructure to support them better extremely expensive or even impractical in its entirety to install. Irrigation is the big one. European countries, with their much more densely packed citizenry, didn't have as big of an issue with this.

Another thing about effective farming is preservation... In the "real world" a lot of food preservation techniques we use now are recent developments, but things like alchemy and magic make it quite a bit more likely that there is more advanced food preservation in the Palladium World than anything shy of actual electricity and refridgeration would give you in the real world. Particularly alchemy, which could make food preservation substances fairly easily, one imagines.

Also, magic doesn't just help grow crops - though it can certainly do that - it helps keep people healthy. Diseases can be cured, broken bones that might make someone a cripple in the real world can be magically mended by the local priest, shaman, wizard, or what have you. People remain productive, longer. Also remember that unlike reality, Palladium seems to have a basic understanding of a lot of scientific principles we didn't have in the real world until much later (sanitation, for instance).

Warlocks are huge production multipliers for farms. Need to get those fields ready for planting in the spring? No problem. One elemental can take care of that for you lickety split. Need water? Water elemental. Need to dig trenches? There's a cheap spell for that.

Dont knock it.

[kiralon]

Snip
Particularly alchemy, which could make food preservation substances fairly easily, one imagines.

Warlocks are huge production multipliers for farms. Need to get those fields ready for planting in the spring? No problem. One elemental can take care of that for you lickety split. Need water? Water elemental. Need to dig trenches? There's a cheap spell for that.

Dont knock it.

All sorts of magic could help, it's just not something that is mentioned in the books as they are based around adventuring. Permanent cold wards on transport wagons and that sort of thing is something I use, but just isn't canon. Magical healing is mostly for those who can pay so most poor people can't afford it. Palladium has some things to show that its been around for a long time (sanitation is a good example as that is what limits city sizes) but how many spells can you think of actually help day to day things, which you would think would have been developed but haven't seem to been. Where is the wizards big book of growing things. Where are the wards that can protect a house from evil spirits for more than 4 hrs at a time without requiring bits of a dragon. In fact as far as I can tell most ordinary people don't actually get to see magic happening, unless they get attacked by raiders and an adventuring party blasts the raiders with spells.

[Reagren Wright]

Most of Palladium is controlled by monarchies which means their are no independent farmers. You got feudalism in full swing. Peasants works on the fields controlled by some knight who is loyal to a
Royal House or the ruler himself/herself. Warlocks in Timiro, Bizantium, and Western Empire just show up and take care of the fields since your working for the kingdom and not yourself.

I definitely agree that there is a HUGE issue with the Wolfen's population. Their armies alone would eat ever single animal they ever moved too. Its essentially the same issue I had with Robert
Jordon's last book. How did these massive armies of tens of thousand functions without food and water. The spell Create Bread and Milk is a wizard spell so no help from the warlocks. I''m assuming
Canine races are omnivores.

[kiralon]

Tanis is a good example, it has a guild of warlocks that run the city, but never mentions them helping the general populace outside of the city, that is basically what I'm talking about. We can guess that it might happen (however magic users do tend to class themselves as better than peasants so I don't really think they would because "The peasants are doing it, have done it and will continue doing it" so why get involved in work under their social class. I'm not saying it never happens, but the lack of it being mentioned in the books tend to make it more likely that they don't help in general farming.

Wolfen are omnivorous, there is actually a tribe of farmer wolfen, but there aren't anywhere near enough unless they have more towards modern day farming techniques (incuding trucks for transporting said food), and If the deer and the like population density was the same as north Americas was they would eat all the huntable game over a period of 3 - 4 months (more proof of palladium being only 3 days old with a constructed history)

[Braden Campbell]

is Caer Itomas the biggest city in the world, then?

[kiralon]

As far as I can tell for aboveground cities that don't include demon/devil cities in the land of the damned.
And by a fairly large margin.
Llorn is about 250k (Eastern Territories)
Credia is about 15-200k (Timiro)
Caer Itom is about 1.8million (Western Empire)
I think the biggest wolfen tribe is just over 1 mill

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Bunch of good points here.

All sorts of magic could help, it's just not something that is mentioned in the books as they are based around adventuring.

Exactly. There are lots of things that can be done that aren't listed. Because they dont pertain the actual gaming environment. Are there probably wizard spells that grow crops, etc? Assuredly. Are they stat-ed out in the books? No, why waste the space? They dont add anything to the actual game, so they'd just be superflous.

Permanent cold wards on transport wagons and that sort of thing is something I use, but just isn't canon. Magical healing is mostly for those who can pay so most poor people can't afford it.

Ehh... sorta? I was actually just reading through Dragons & Gods the last few nights as bedtime reading. Almost all of the religions will heal people for free if they show up to the pews on holy days. The few that wont dont charge much. Its all about putting butts in seats, or, in this case, prayers into the ether to power up your god.

There are a couple of gods that also provide free help to farmers as long as you offer prayers regularly (one of the Spider gods even has a service that isnt super expensive where the Priests come out and summon a horde of spiders to act as living insecticide and protect your crops.

Palladium has some things to show that its been around for a long time (sanitation is a good example as that is what limits city sizes) but how many spells can you think of actually help day to day things, which you would think would have been developed but haven't seem to been. Where is the wizards big book of growing things. Where are the wards that can protect a house from evil spirits for more than 4 hrs at a time without requiring bits of a dragon. In fact as far as I can tell most ordinary people don't actually get to see magic happening, unless they get attacked by raiders and an adventuring party blasts the raiders with spells.

A lot of those things just wouldn't be in an RPG book because they are useless for the RPG itself. They dont provide interesting game mechanics or rules, really, so they get left out. A good example is that a lot of those types of spells weren't ever listed in D&D until well into AD&D 2nd Edition for exactly that reason (and eventually showed up as spells for certain specialty priests and druids in later books).

And quite a few spells could be useful for day to day usage. Globe of Daylight to light city streets, for instance. A warlock that can purify water can help with sanitation and drinking water. (Im not 100% if that is a warlock spell, not super up on warlocks). Wether or not such items get around much is an entirely different story. I'd agree that the average farmer probably doesn't see magic too much - but i'd also say that they probably HAVE seen it, if the text in D&G is to be believed. The local priest has probably used at least some magic in front of people often enough for them to be exposed to it.

And as for paying warlocks to come help you - as someone else mentioned, most of the societies are feudal. Meaning, the local earth warlock, who lives high on the hog and on the local lords' dime, comes out a couple times a year and helps. Because that way he gets to live a life of luxury and little work outside of that (if he wants).

There are also churches who have mages and warlocks at their disposal to do these things for the faithful for low prices.

Im not saying magic is everywhere and every field is tended by a warlock or something - merely that this is a society where magic is relatively common (if you can buy magic items on the open market, even if they are expensive, magic isnt rare) and that is a pastiche of historical societies that is at once more advanced in a lot of ways (sanitation and medical theory, actual alchemy) than an equivalent historical society and sometimes less advanced (because magic or something else took the place of a technological innovation).

So its hard to just compare to a historical culture and call it a day.

[kiralon]

From vague memory in Timiro there is one mages guild in a town that mentions that they help with the local industry and non of the others really do except maybe tanis I think, which is the place run by warlocks. If you check the items of the people in the towns with stats they tend to have very few magic items, if any.
Timiro doesn't really seem feudal, it seems to be more of a money based market economy, for example the merchants set the prices of their goods rather than the lord of the fief. Bartering isn't really used as there is cash. The guilds do seem separate and a Lord would have to pay a wizard to do something just like he would have to pay a blacksmith or a cook, rather than those people actually working directly for the lord.

Just curios, which churches haves mages and warlocks at their disposal, because those 2 especially tend to have guilds, and the guilds seem to be more in friendly competition with the churches than work for them. Priests can do wizard magic to a point.

I can buys guns on the open market, but the only place I see them these days is on a policeman, so guns, especially powerful guns are rare as, but they are still on the open market.
If magic items were sold in general stores rather than rare specialised magic item vendors I'd say magic was common. On the whole magic tends to be rarer in palladium.
In palladium, what % of people would have a magic item on their person in the street if you interviewed them. My guess would be less than %1.

The churches are a funny one too, but they average a weeks wages for a soldier for 1 healing touch.

[Soldier of Od]

is Caer Itomas the biggest city in the world, then?

There's one bigger - Khemennu, the City of the Eighteen Cosmic Gods. According to Dragon & Gods it is where "the faithful number over two million".

See Rifters #77 & #78 for unofficial details on that city!

[kiralon]

is Caer Itomas the biggest city in the world, then?

There's one bigger - Khemennu, the City of the Eighteen Cosmic Gods. According to Dragon & Gods it is where "the faithful number over two million".

See Rifters #77 & #78 for unofficial details on that city!

Isn't Khemennu in Ma'at, Khemennu is a holy place, I doesn't say its in palladium (or ma'at for that matter) but you would think the biggest city in the world would be mentioned elsewhere and be on a map ?
Ma'at certainly makes more sense, but if it is on palladium that would be the best proof palladium is 3 days old.
Heres a city, its er somewhere, it has more people than a country, and nothing to support it because its somewhere. The 3 places it can really only be is eastern territories, timiro or the western empire. In ET it would end the wolfen threat (hey we just got 1/2 a million priests). It would double timiro's population and change where the power comes from(priests not generals) and the western empire already has its city full of zealots, not to mention it not on a map. Sekti Abtu could potentially be in lopan but khemennu pretty much has to be elsewhere (doesn't make much sense to be in lotsw or phi and maps shows that its not anywhere else.

Gotta love the 2 line blurbs that make massive changes to the world (My other current favourite is in the wolfen adventures book I think, where it tells you timiro is actually run by generals and not the king. You think that would be in either of the books about timiro). I wonder if that line would make it into another book now?

[Starveined]

I understand that these are all good points, however I don't try to apply real life to anything that has magical and psionic's within it. Mostly because I am busy planning a game, and if something doesn't fit right to me. I use my might ability to change it to suit me. Which is exactly what you should do if you simply feel it doesn't fit. I have a fully developed world of my own and I use Palladium as my base for it. To me its just another place in a Megaverse of places, so if the world doesn't fit. Fix it or make your own.

[kiralon]

I play politics in my games, and often the pc's will make an enemy of someone powerful and then they decide to try to destabilise his empire/lands/army etc (or murder him in his sleep, which ever comes first). So having a realistic amount of resources/people to deal with is very handy. If a place doesn't have a food supply, how can you interrupt it. How can you do a peasant uprising when there are only 20 peasants supplying 2 million people. Why the hell are there 2 million people in a city without a fresh water supply anyway. So I poison all 3 wells in the city and it dies ?
Some ridiculous things just shouldn't make it into the books.

I know I can write it up myself, but I prefer to use the things out of the book, when they make sense.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

I don't remember seeing much magic that helps with farming that would be done on a day to day business at 50000 farms. (if there is its not mentioned in the books that I have noticed, if you want to turn somebody into a candle no probs, cure leaf rot and increase crop output not so much). Druids help with knowledge in some place but on the whole the palladium farmer does it hard.

I agree magic should be there to do it, but just like a lot of other things, it shows palladium is only 3 days old with a created history. Evolution hasn't happened yet to bring those sorts of things to the masses that I have seen like it would have if the past 5000 years had actually passed.

Hell, if I remember correctly farmers in palladium don't even get plant farm lore

Well, like i said before, its just not stuff that is bothered to be mentioned in books about heroic adventure. Its a waste of printed space, honestly. Not that i dont share some of your frustration at it there not at least being throwaway lines about it.

Also, Peasant/Farmer/Vagabond gets:
Animal Husbandry
Cook
Wilderness Survival
and six "Other" skills with "Any" Access to lore and technical skills.

Seems fine to me.

GNW needs more farmland to feed those hungry doggo's, either that or the wolfen can live on a carrot a day.

Caer Itom has almost 2 million people living there. London didn't hit one million until the 18th century
roughly a person eats about 900kg per year, so that about 1.5 million tons of food per year, just for the capital.
in the 1930's 1 farmer fed 4 people (up to about 155 people per farmer by 2010) so that means they need half a million farmers roughly to feed just caer itom (this is assuming the farmers feed themselves too). That's a lot of farms.

It isn't really as many farms as you think, honestly, and also completely rules out animal domestication and commercial-scale fishing, both of which the Wolfen Empire practices.

Fishing alone can generate hundreds of tons of edible fish in mere weeks. Pretty much in perpetuity for population sizes that small. Even back in those periods (and ironically the ship technology is another proof of the weird mish-mash of technology levels in Palladium as it is centuries ahead of the land-based technology) a fishing ship could bring in a hundred tons of fish a week (provided the ship was even that big). And fish is one the easier proteins to preserve, since it can be salted and air dried at the port and then stored for months or years depending on the method used.

From vague memory in Timiro there is one mages guild in a town that mentions that they help with the local industry and non of the others really do except maybe tanis I think, which is the place run by warlocks. If you check the items of the people in the towns with stats they tend to have very few magic items, if any.
Timiro doesn't really seem feudal,

But it is. Most of the land is owned by noblemen. Almost all of it, actually. The merchants simply move stuff around (which, to be fair, is a rocking business to be in in that kind of society, as it is difficult and necessary). And a lot of those merchants were backed by nobles to get their start. There's even a whole city that was built basically by merchants using investment from noblemen.

it seems to be more of a money based market economy, for example the merchants set the prices of their goods rather than the lord of the fief.

This was always the case. When the merchant class really began to rise in feudal europe, there were a lot of attempts by the local lords to suppress their power. They all failed, because the lords themselves couldn't transport goods efficiently or cheaply enough. Same with tradesmen.

Bartering isn't really used as there is cash.

Not really sure why you think feudal societies didn't use cash. They did. Extensively. The very poorest of the poor (serfs) didn't, and had to rely on barter and trade, but freemen often used cash. They weren't swimming in it and often times simply trading something was far easier, but they used cash.

The guilds do seem separate and a Lord would have to pay a wizard to do something just like he would have to pay a blacksmith or a cook, rather than those people actually working directly for the lord.

The rise in the power of guilds was one of the things that brought the power of the feudal lords up short in history. Here in Palladium it seems more synergistic to a point. And, if you read what i wrote, i said the local lord was paying for the warlock in my example - he lives at the Lords' manor, gets everything he wants, probably receives a decent paycheck, and gets the social status of being the local lords' trusted advisor/friend/henchman, basically allowing him free reign within reason to do anything he wants locally.

Just curios, which churches haves mages and warlocks at their disposal, because those 2 especially tend to have guilds, and the guilds seem to be more in friendly competition with the churches than work for them. Priests can do wizard magic to a point.

Off the top of my head, the Church of Light and Dark, Kirgi, Ruurga, the Northern Gods (particularly water and air warlocks) and that spider god whose name is escaping me. All are called out as having both wizards and warlocks as part of the clergy. Also, the Demons and Deevil worshiping cults have lots of magic users in their ranks (and some of them are major religions). Remember, you can be a warlock and still worship a god. You can be a "priest" without being the priest OCC. I think that is one thing that WAYYYYYYYY to many people playing Palladium get stuck on is the OCC system.

I can roll a Peasant OCC and still be a priest. All i have to do is tend to the spiritual needs of the followers of my god.

I can buys guns on the open market, but the only place I see them these days is on a policeman, so guns, especially powerful guns are rare as, but they are still on the open market.

Anecdotal evidence is not evidence. If we're going by that, then since my anecdotal evidence is contrary to yours (the part of the country i live in, ironicaly not too far from Palladium's headquarters, is exceedingly well-armed and i'd guess that least 25% of the people i see every day are carrying, if not more) - as a lot of the people i see are carrying, some openly, many not, and almost all of my friends carry depending on where they are going (particularly for business)... you cant be right and neither can I.

The fact is there are more guns in private hands than people in the US. And that doesn't even include weapons owned by the military. Canada isn't too far behind that statistic (they dont have more guns than people, but are awfully close to there being about as many guns as people, largely due to the rural areas, people own several guns a piece for practical necessity - like finding a bear on your porch in the morning).

If there are more guns than people, guns aren't rare.

If magic items were sold in general stores rather than rare specialised magic item vendors I'd say magic was common. On the whole magic tends to be rarer in palladium.
In palladium, what % of people would have a magic item on their person in the street if you interviewed them. My guess would be less than %1.

Sure, but that doesn't make magic "rare". Almost every town that is provided statistics has at least one shop selling magic items, even if they are just simple magic items and potions & alchemies. Some that have like 4000 people in them or less.

The churches are a funny one too, but they average a weeks wages for a soldier for 1 healing touch.

Dont even get me started on Palladium's pricing habits vs the wages of people in their settings. They never make sense. So, at least here, ill agree with you.

So far, from my sojourn through the books, all the places ive seen stated out have plenty of food available. (Thats Core Book, D&G, Old Ones and Adventures on the High Seas).

I play politics in my games, and often the pc's will make an enemy of someone powerful and then they decide to try to destabilise his empire/lands/army etc (or murder him in his sleep, which ever comes first). So having a realistic amount of resources/people to deal with is very handy. If a place doesn't have a food supply, how can you interrupt it. How can you do a peasant uprising when there are only 20 peasants supplying 2 million people.

I really think this is hyperbolic in the extreme. I haven't seen any cities with large populations that aren't surrounded by farmland (and often have commercial fishing available as well) in the books ive read so far. Timiro, for instance, has both the new capital and old capital SURROUNDED by farmland for 50+ miles in every direction, and one is on a river and the other on a lake at the end of said river.

Why the hell are there 2 million people in a city without a fresh water supply anyway. So I poison all 3 wells in the city and it dies ?
Some ridiculous things just shouldn't make it into the books.

Rome would like a word. No sustainable fresh water supply. They imported. Wolfen = Rome. The idea of them using aqueducts isn't exactly out of the question. Though i haven't read the Wolfen Empire book yet - IS Caer Itom not near fresh water?

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Oh, and as a further "yes, governments employ large numbers of mages/spellcasters to help" - the Timiro navy sends out warlocks with EVERY SHIP. Just as example. To imply that they cant also send them out to do work in the fields, seems rather silly.

[kiralon]

Well, like i said before, its just not stuff that is bothered to be mentioned in books about heroic adventure. Its a waste of printed space, honestly. Not that i dont share some of your frustration at it there not at least being throwaway lines about it.

Also, Peasant/Farmer/Vagabond gets:
Animal Husbandry
Cook
Wilderness Survival
and six "Other" skills with "Any" Access to lore and technical skills.

Seems fine to me.

but don't know how to farm, that is an unusual farmer
Farming is under botany, a science skill which the farmer can't take.

It isn't really as many farms as you think, honestly, and also completely rules out animal domestication and commercial-scale fishing, both of which the Wolfen Empire practices.

Fishing alone can generate hundreds of tons of edible fish in mere weeks. Pretty much in perpetuity for population sizes that small. Even back in those periods (and ironically the ship technology is another proof of the weird mish-mash of technology levels in Palladium as it is centuries ahead of the land-based technology) a fishing ship could bring in a hundred tons of fish a week (provided the ship was even that big). And fish is one the easier proteins to preserve, since it can be salted and air dried at the port and then stored for months or years depending on the method used.

The wolfen have one tribe that does the farming, its mentioned in the books, the amount of food that the country goes through is staggering, like all the wild animals gone in 3-4 months huge. They don't have modern day farming skills. America in the 1930's had a farmer ratio of 1 farmer feeding 4 people, and that was less than a hundred years ago. Palladium isn't very advanced, a city of 2 mill would need half a million people farming to feed it, that's a lot of farms, and if they have huge fishing fleets it isn't mentioned. Remember Wolfen are quite a lot bigger than humans and would eat proportional more.

But it is. Most of the land is owned by noblemen. Almost all of it, actually. The merchants simply move stuff around (which, to be fair, is a rocking business to be in in that kind of society, as it is difficult and necessary). And a lot of those merchants were backed by nobles to get their start. There's even a whole city that was built basically by merchants using investment from noblemen.

This is a bit hard to say, the way it seems structured seems more modern, as I can't remember any blurbs about people saying they will ask their lord for permission to do things on the land, which would be required if it was feudal, not to mention they seem to own their buildings, (as in the description says they say such and such is the owner), not the lord is the owner which would be the case as they would be his monors.

This was always the case. When the merchant class really began to rise in feudal europe, there were a lot of attempts by the local lords to suppress their power. They all failed, because the lords themselves couldn't transport goods efficiently or cheaply enough. Same with tradesmen.

Hmm, that doesn't mesh with what I know of feudalism. From what I remember it was War, Disease and labour shortages that stopped feudalism. The Black plague killed a third of Europe, which made labour become a very valuable commodity and the peasants could go to different lands to get better conditions, not to mention the peasants were revolting which changed the political view too.
The reasons for the decline of Feudalism during the Medieval period of the Middle Ages included: The Crusades and travel during the Middle Ages opened new trade options to England. England started to move from land based economy to a money based economy.

Not really sure why you think feudal societies didn't use cash. They did. Extensively. The very poorest of the poor (serfs) didn't, and had to rely on barter and trade, but freemen often used cash. They weren't swimming in it and often times simply trading something was far easier, but they used cash.

Yet again not quite what I was taught
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
Basically covers it. There was money used but it was mostly barter. Services and Goods paid the tax to the lord, and working for free on church grounds paid the church tithe. A few years ago Sweden figured out the taxes from around the 1300's, and they released figures for it in silver weight and butter weight to show the weight of goods. This shows that goods were a real part of and a large part of feudal taxes.

The rise in the power of guilds was one of the things that brought the power of the feudal lords up short in history. Here in Palladium it seems more synergistic to a point. And, if you read what i wrote, i said the local lord was paying for the warlock in my example - he lives at the Lords' manor, gets everything he wants, probably receives a decent paycheck, and gets the social status of being the local lords' trusted advisor/friend/henchman, basically allowing him free reign within reason to do anything he wants locally.

And I was just saying the Wizards don't owe the Lord fealty like they would if they were his vassals under a feudal regime. Its more like England after the kings and queens lost power. Its sort of feudal but isn't really. There is at least one town in Timiro not run by a lord but its run by a guild of warlocks.

Off the top of my head, the Church of Light and Dark, Kirgi, Ruurga, the Northern Gods (particularly water and air warlocks) and that spider god whose name is escaping me. All are called out as having both wizards and warlocks as part of the clergy. Also, the Demons and Deevil worshiping cults have lots of magic users in their ranks (and some of them are major religions). Remember, you can be a warlock and still worship a god. You can be a "priest" without being the priest OCC. I think that is one thing that WAYYYYYYYY to many people playing Palladium get stuck on is the OCC system.
I can roll a Peasant OCC and still be a priest. All i have to do is tend to the spiritual needs of the followers of my god.

I don't remember reading that anywhere, not that means much. Do you remember which books mention wizards and warlocks being part of the clergy.
Also do you mean you can be a peasant OCC, be a priest and cast priestly magic, or be a peasant O.C.C and just be able to run around calling yourself a priest without any of the deific abilities.

Anecdotal evidence is not evidence. If we're going by that, then since my anecdotal evidence is contrary to yours (the part of the country i live in, ironicaly not too far from Palladium's headquarters, is exceedingly well-armed and i'd guess that least 25% of the people i see every day are carrying, if not more) - as a lot of the people i see are carrying, some openly, many not, and almost all of my friends carry depending on where they are going (particularly for business)... you cant be right and neither can I.

The fact is there are more guns in private hands than people in the US. And that doesn't even include weapons owned by the military. Canada isn't too far behind that statistic (they dont have more guns than people, but are awfully close to there being about as many guns as people, largely due to the rural areas, people own several guns a piece for practical necessity - like finding a bear on your porch in the morning).

If there are more guns than people, guns aren't rare.

If you looks through the books and the equipment people have, they have a lot more normal or well made stuff than magic items, that's what makes it rare.
I must say guns was probably a bad example for an American forum. Where I live I can go weeks without seeing a live gun.

Sure, but that doesn't make magic "rare". Almost every town that is provided statistics has at least one shop selling magic items, even if they are just simple magic items and potions & alchemies. Some that have like 4000 people in them or less.

People mostly not having magic items them makes it rare in my book. If magic was common farmers would have magical ploughs of botany (to give them the farming skill), when its used by the common man it isn't rare anymore.

Dont even get me started on Palladium's pricing habits vs the wages of people in their settings. They never make sense. So, at least here, ill agree with you.
So far, from my sojourn through the books, all the places ive seen stated out have plenty of food available. (Thats Core Book, D&G, Old Ones and Adventures on the High Seas).

Use *cough* DnD pricing *cough*. If I remember correctly gold isn't worth enough to be gold.

I really think this is hyperbolic in the extreme. I haven't seen any cities with large populations that aren't surrounded by farmland (and often have commercial fishing available as well) in the books ive read so far. Timiro, for instance, has both the new capital and old capital SURROUNDED by farmland for 50+ miles in every direction, and one is on a river and the other on a lake at the end of said river.

When I was talking about 2 million people I was talking about the khemennu blurb in dragons and gods. There is an unmarked city in palladium that has 2 million light and dark faithful . . somewhere. That will more than double the population of most of the countries it could be in.

Rome would like a word. No sustainable fresh water supply. They imported. Wolfen = Rome. The idea of them using aqueducts isn't exactly out of the question. Though i haven't read the Wolfen Empire book yet - IS Caer Itom not near fresh water?

Doesn't seem to. Credia has a magical freshwater lake for water for the populace that isn't fed by a river, but I was talking about Khemennu. I guess water distribution is a big business.
There are a few wolfen books. Wolfen empire, adventures and further adventures and northern hinterlands pings a bit too.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Well, like i said before, its just not stuff that is bothered to be mentioned in books about heroic adventure. Its a waste of printed space, honestly. Not that i dont share some of your frustration at it there not at least being throwaway lines about it.

Also, Peasant/Farmer/Vagabond gets:
Animal Husbandry
Cook
Wilderness Survival
and six "Other" skills with "Any" Access to lore and technical skills.

Seems fine to me.

but don't know how to farm, that is an unusual farmer
Farming is under botany, a science skill which the farmer can't take.

Trust me when i say, farming is not botany. My mother has a masters degree in horticulture. My mother knows 100x what any farmer does. While people who study botany in Palladium ALSO know how to farm, the skill even in PF is FAR more than farming.

I'd go with - there is no farming skill. Because it isn't that complicated and doesn't require one.

It isn't really as many farms as you think, honestly, and also completely rules out animal domestication and commercial-scale fishing, both of which the Wolfen Empire practices.

Fishing alone can generate hundreds of tons of edible fish in mere weeks. Pretty much in perpetuity for population sizes that small. Even back in those periods (and ironically the ship technology is another proof of the weird mish-mash of technology levels in Palladium as it is centuries ahead of the land-based technology) a fishing ship could bring in a hundred tons of fish a week (provided the ship was even that big). And fish is one the easier proteins to preserve, since it can be salted and air dried at the port and then stored for months or years depending on the method used.

The wolfen have one tribe that does the farming, its mentioned in the books, the amount of food that the country goes through is staggering, like all the wild animals gone in 3-4 months huge. They don't have modern day farming skills. America in the 1930's had a farmer ratio of 1 farmer feeding 4 people,

I covered this. America in the 1930s was almost 30 years behind the technological curve, or more, because being spread out meant that innovations that had taken hold in Europe decades prior were infeasible in the US because of the cost of installing the infrastructure over such large distances made it impractical. The US didn't catch up until pumped, piped irrigation became a thing.

and that was less than a hundred years ago. Palladium isn't very advanced, a city of 2 mill would need half a million people farming to feed it, that's a lot of farms, and if they have huge fishing fleets it isn't mentioned.

Uh... wat? The wolfen have a HUGE fleet that is mentioned in Adventures on the High Seas. It simply isn't as advanced as the fleets of Timiro (the best in the world) and the Eastern Territories or Byzantium, so they tend to avoid naval warfare because they are outclassed. But they have an extensive fleet. To try to imagine that somehow, none of that is devoted to commercial fishing is absurd on its face.

Remember Wolfen are quite a lot bigger than humans and would eat proportional more.

One does not necessarily follow the other. Even then... okay, half a million farmers. Not that i agree with your theory in any way, given that there were times where, with lower technology, societies produced far more food than 4 people per farmer - again, ancient Rome would like a word. Irrigation is a huge deal. The urban area of Rome itself had about half a million people (roughly 450,000 at its height) and was served by -significantly- less than the 112,000 or so farmers your math would provide. More like.. half that. Now, a decent portion of that is because as a commercial seaport, it also had a LOT of seafood coming in.

But it is. Most of the land is owned by noblemen. Almost all of it, actually. The merchants simply move stuff around (which, to be fair, is a rocking business to be in in that kind of society, as it is difficult and necessary). And a lot of those merchants were backed by nobles to get their start. There's even a whole city that was built basically by merchants using investment from noblemen.

This is a bit hard to say, the way it seems structured seems more modern, as I can't remember any blurbs about people saying they will ask their lord for permission to do things on the land, which would be required if it was feudal, not to mention they seem to own their buildings, (as in the description says they say such and such is the owner), not the lord is the owner which would be the case as they would be his monors.

Depends on what era of feudalism we're talking about. Feudalism didn't end until well into the 1600-1700s depending on the nation (and still hasn't in some places; we have functional absolute monarchies right now in the modern day). Freemen would "rent" their land from the local lord, unlike a serf, who was (effectively) a slave to the land. As long as a freeman could pay his rents, he was relatively free to do whatever he liked to the land within reason. He couldn't build a castle or anything (because that would give the Lord the impression that a rebellion might be incoming) but if he wanted to add outbuildings and the like, he was free to do so. Cities are also different in feudal times because in a lot of cases, they -AREN'T- owned by a particular lord/baron/count/duke/nobleman; many cities were considered property of the crown itself, and the crown frequently sold off portions of land to freemen to raise capital (particularly in England and France). And there are weird free-city arrangements (Check out the real history of the City of London - no, not "London" as a whole, but the actual legal entity that is the City of London - CGP Grey did a series of videos on Youtube about it that are amazing and worth watching) And, a nobleman could do the same - he could "sell" the rights to the property to the freemen in his fief; however it was also still "his" land - its part of his fief, which means he's the law, etc. Again, this was often done to raise capital, particularly when it came time to raise levies for war. Just like no matter who "owned" the land, until much later (the time of English civil war), it was ALL still the King's land. If he decided to seize your land, he did. Period. Full stop. That was, in fact, one of the things that STARTED the English Civil War, and after the restoration of the monarchy, property ownership was codified into law and the Crown couldn't just seize your land whenever it wanted. As an example. Also indirectly part of the start of the American Revolution, as none of those rights applied to the colonists. King George, by law, COULD just seize their land. You should look up one of the maps he made for how he planned to divide up the territory after the revolution was put down. Pretty eye-opening.

This was always the case. When the merchant class really began to rise in feudal europe, there were a lot of attempts by the local lords to suppress their power. They all failed, because the lords themselves couldn't transport goods efficiently or cheaply enough. Same with tradesmen.

Hmm, that doesn't mesh with what I know of feudalism. From what I remember it was War, Disease and labour shortages that stopped feudalism.

Since feudalism lasted WELL past the Black Plague.... not sure what you're going on here.

The Black plague killed a third of Europe, which made labour become a very valuable commodity and the peasants could go to different lands to get better conditions,

Actually, right-of-travel was not a given in most feudal societies. Meaning, if you wanted to leave your local lords' land, you had to get his permission (otherwise you were breaking your oath of fealty and the lord whose land you moved to wouldn't accept you, and would likely ship you back). And if you were a serf, you absolutely couldn't leave. You belonged to the land. right-of-travel wasn't a thing im most feudal countries until well into the 1400s, and was typically something that the *monarchs* did to suppress the power of the nobles. Thats also why a lot of guilds (like the Masons) were royally chartered - not locally. That way the monarch had another twist on his vassals - if one lord was too much of an ass, his peasants could and would pick up and move, and the tradesmen had to be negotiated with, not ordered around.. but again, those were MUCH later into feudal times.

not to mention the peasants were revolting which changed the political view too.
The reasons for the decline of Feudalism during the Medieval period of the Middle Ages included: The Crusades and travel during the Middle Ages opened new trade options to England. England started to move from land based economy to a money based economy.

Not really sure why you think feudal societies didn't use cash. They did. Extensively. The very poorest of the poor (serfs) didn't, and had to rely on barter and trade, but freemen often used cash. They weren't swimming in it and often times simply trading something was far easier, but they used cash.

Yet again not quite what I was taught

I -really- hate to play the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy... but i have a degree in this. Literally a history degree in medieval history with a focus on arms and armor (focusing on about 800-1400s)

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
Basically covers it. There was money used but it was mostly barter. Services and Goods paid the tax to the lord, and working for free on church grounds paid the church tithe. A few years ago Sweden figured out the taxes from around the 1300's, and they released figures for it in silver weight and butter weight to show the weight of goods. This shows that goods were a real part of and a large part of feudal taxes.

I dont recall saying they weren't. I said that peasants ALSO used currency. Serfs.. no way. And up until the ~1350s or so, a LOT of the population of any given fief were serfs, not freemen. (Also depends on the country involved; Sweden and the Germanic States had some weird free cities, more sufferage, etc). It wasn't until later that the practice of serfdom became... considered unseemly and was gradually abolished.

The rise in the power of guilds was one of the things that brought the power of the feudal lords up short in history. Here in Palladium it seems more synergistic to a point. And, if you read what i wrote, i said the local lord was paying for the warlock in my example - he lives at the Lords' manor, gets everything he wants, probably receives a decent paycheck, and gets the social status of being the local lords' trusted advisor/friend/henchman, basically allowing him free reign within reason to do anything he wants locally.

And I was just saying the Wizards don't owe the Lord fealty like they would if they were his vassals under a feudal regime. Its more like England after the kings and queens lost power. Its sort of feudal but isn't really. There is at least one town in Timiro not run by a lord but its run by a guild of warlocks.

Which doesn't make it not feudal. If the warlocks swore fealty to the King in order to gain power over the town, that's still feudalism. They still rule by his say so. He could, at any time, decide they are out, and that's that. They might try to fight it, but hell win every time via bigger-army-diplomacy. Germany (and the Holy Roman Empire) had free cities that were ruled almost democratically, but they still owed fealty to the Holy Roman Emperor (HRE). There's also a town in Timiro that is run entirely by dwarves and is mostly under-ground. The King lets them operate how they want as long as they keep things working and obey his laws. That's still feudalism.

Off the top of my head, the Church of Light and Dark, Kirgi, Ruurga, the Northern Gods (particularly water and air warlocks) and that spider god whose name is escaping me. All are called out as having both wizards and warlocks as part of the clergy. Also, the Demons and Deevil worshiping cults have lots of magic users in their ranks (and some of them are major religions). Remember, you can be a warlock and still worship a god. You can be a "priest" without being the priest OCC. I think that is one thing that WAYYYYYYYY to many people playing Palladium get stuck on is the OCC system.
I can roll a Peasant OCC and still be a priest. All i have to do is tend to the spiritual needs of the followers of my god.

I don't remember reading that anywhere, not that means much. Do you remember which books mention wizards and warlocks being part of the clergy.

Dragons & Gods.

Also do you mean you can be a peasant OCC, be a priest and cast priestly magic, or be a peasant O.C.C and just be able to run around calling yourself a priest without any of the deific abilities.

I mean that you can be the peasant OCC, and still be a "priest". You may not have magic powers, but if you are tending to the spiritual needs of your fellow believers, you fit the definition of a priest.
Not to harken back to D&D too much, but, for example, in the Forgotten Realms setting (at least before it was brutally shredded by 4th Ed), most "clergy" of any given god's church were just lay-clergy and had no magical powers and not one single level of Cleric/Priest. Only the upper echelons of any church were actual classed characters with levels in Cleric or Priest.

A lot of times people who primarily play Palladium get too caught up in what the OCC at the top of the sheet says. Similarly, say, in Rifts, in the New West, most people i've played with post late-90s early 00s cant wrap their head around a character who is the sheriff of the local town but whose OCC is not sheriff. As if having the OCC grants some magical ability to be a sheriff that you dont have if you dont have that OCC. (There are even a few canon examples of non-Classed sheriffs in the New West book, ffs).

Same thing with a priest. The vast majority of the (larger) organized religions, like the Church of Light and Dark, for instance, the functionaries and minor priests that make up the "working" force of the clergy are probably NOT the magic-using Priest OCC. Theyre just guys, doing jobs for the church, and occasionally leading prayer study and helping out the other followers.

Anecdotal evidence is not evidence. If we're going by that, then since my anecdotal evidence is contrary to yours (the part of the country i live in, ironicaly not too far from Palladium's headquarters, is exceedingly well-armed and i'd guess that least 25% of the people i see every day are carrying, if not more) - as a lot of the people i see are carrying, some openly, many not, and almost all of my friends carry depending on where they are going (particularly for business)... you cant be right and neither can I.

The fact is there are more guns in private hands than people in the US. And that doesn't even include weapons owned by the military. Canada isn't too far behind that statistic (they dont have more guns than people, but are awfully close to there being about as many guns as people, largely due to the rural areas, people own several guns a piece for practical necessity - like finding a bear on your porch in the morning).

If there are more guns than people, guns aren't rare.

If you looks through the books and the equipment people have, they have a lot more normal or well made stuff than magic items, that's what makes it rare.

Well, at least in the books ive read so far, almost all of the stated NPCs that aren't generic dudes have magic items. Hell, in the Old Ones adventure in the Old Ones book ... ALL of the named NPCs that arent just given quick stats have magic weapons, magic armor, and 3 have rune weapons. The guards themselves dont at the Place of Magic, but the guard captains do... and the guard captains are all spellcasters!

I must say guns was probably a bad example for an American forum. Where I live I can go weeks without seeing a live gun.

Sure, but that doesn't make magic "rare". Almost every town that is provided statistics has at least one shop selling magic items, even if they are just simple magic items and potions & alchemies. Some that have like 4000 people in them or less.

People mostly not having magic items them makes it rare in my book. If magic was common farmers would have magical ploughs of botany (to give them the farming skill), when its used by the common man it isn't rare anymore.

Thats a novel definition of rarity that has nothing to do with the real definition of rarity. If you can go to a store in a small town and buy it, it isn't rare. It may not be "common", but there is a world of separation between "rare" and "common".

Dont even get me started on Palladium's pricing habits vs the wages of people in their settings. They never make sense. So, at least here, ill agree with you.
So far, from my sojourn through the books, all the places ive seen stated out have plenty of food available. (Thats Core Book, D&G, Old Ones and Adventures on the High Seas).

Use *cough* DnD pricing *cough*. If I remember correctly gold isn't worth enough to be gold.

depends on the Edition. But yeah.. D&D pricing was all out of whack too. It happens when you get books written by guys who dont really know the topic in the age before the Internet made fact checking yourself easier. And it still happens because in a lot of games (Pathfinder is just as whack) the developers simply aren't that worried about the minutae. And i can be OK with that - i dont expect perfect historical accuracy in my fantasy and sci-fi games... just "close enough". Problem is... and i think we agree here ... Palladium is often FAR from that standard. Pretty much EVERY fantasy games gets armor 100% wrong. Palladium, D&D, and Pathfinder (as an outgrowth of D&D) are TERRIBLE at armor. Not just presenting it rules wise (because, its really hard to make armor realistic and not make it broken-as-eff, because.. well, armor WORKED, thats why people wore it), but just.. in the types of armor, and how it covers, and moves, etc.

I really think this is hyperbolic in the extreme. I haven't seen any cities with large populations that aren't surrounded by farmland (and often have commercial fishing available as well) in the books ive read so far. Timiro, for instance, has both the new capital and old capital SURROUNDED by farmland for 50+ miles in every direction, and one is on a river and the other on a lake at the end of said river.

When I was talking about 2 million people I was talking about the khemennu blurb in dragons and gods. There is an unmarked city in palladium that has 2 million light and dark faithful . . somewhere. That will more than double the population of most of the countries it could be in.

Im almost 100% sure that city is not on the Palladium world, as it is mentioned in Dragons & Gods, and almost none of the cities described therein are actually on Palladium. They are almost all in a gods' Deific realm. Ill give it a check tonight to see if i can find the specific reference.

Im also not sure it would increase the populations of some of the countries that much. Ill have to check Western Empire but they could probably swallow it up pretty easily. Remember that the Palladium World is H-OO-J huge. JUST the Western Empire is the size of most of North America. Seriously, check out the scale in the base book. The presented land mass is about as big as all of earths habitable landmass when you DONT include the Land of the Damned.

Rome would like a word. No sustainable fresh water supply. They imported. Wolfen = Rome. The idea of them using aqueducts isn't exactly out of the question. Though i haven't read the Wolfen Empire book yet - IS Caer Itom not near fresh water?

Doesn't seem to. Credia has a magical freshwater lake for water for the populace that isn't fed by a river, but I was talking about Khemennu. I guess water distribution is a big business.
There are a few wolfen books. Wolfen empire, adventures and further adventures and northern hinterlands pings a bit too.

[/quote]

IIRC, the adventures and further adventures books were basically combined into the Wolfen Empire book - at least, the info about Wolfen in them was. Ill still read through them, though.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

And because im an idiot...

all of the books im reading are 2nd Edition, so they likely dont apply to this conversation at all. I do have three copies of the 1st edition core book sitting around (inherited them from gamers that stopped gaming) but thats the only 1st edition book i have. I dont even personally own anything else - i was never into Palladium Fantasy (AD&D 2nd Ed 4 Lyfe). Ive got a friend who buys Palladium books ... out of habit, i guess, and likes to read through them but doesn't actually play so i can often borrow his books relatively indefinitely if i want to read them.

I borrowed his PF books which are all 2nd Ed.

[glitterboy2098]

Greetings!

Has anyone else found population data provided by Palladium 1st edition source material problematic to work with and if so, how have you addressed the problem?

I have just started planning a campaign for 1st edition Palladium Fantasy RPG and bought Old Ones, Yin-Sloth and High Seas for source material. I personally have found it a bit difficult to use these as the information about city sizes and population is too wildly off from the real-world historical setting. One can let it go and it's fantasy of course, but I'd like to have a little more plausible background.

As an example the Islands of Bizantium has a population of 653 000 humans according to PB3 (High Seas). The war fleet contains 245 ships and just two Noble houses possess a total merchant fleet of 1000 ships (it is mentioned that the other Noble houses possess ships too, but no figures are given). Based on the list of ships at the end of the book it looks like the crew sizes vary, but for this exercise I estimated that warships would have a crew of about 100 (sailors and marines) and merchant ships about 50 on average. This would mean that the ships explicitly mentioned in the book would have a crew of about 75 000 in total.

A population of 653 000 would consist of children, adults and eldelry people... so let's say there are about 450 000 adults available, about half of them males (proportion of males to females would probably be lower than 50 % in a feudal style seafaring society, but anyway...). This would mean that only the ships mentioned would require 30 % of the adult male population as crew, which is not even remotely realistic in a historical feudal society (90 % of the population would work in agriculture; it is also stated that the Bizantium Islands are self-sufficient in this regard). It's not even remotely realistic in relation to most navalized historical societies of Europe (Ancient Greeks, renaissance-baroque Netherlands and later British Isles).

One could simply add a zero to the population (6 530 000) to make the numbers more sensible, but the land area of the islands is not sufficient to support this kind of number. By my rough measurements (90 000 km2) the islands are slightly smaller than Ireland, which currently has a population of about five million - Ireland's population was probably less than one million during the middle ages, which would actually go pretty nicely with the given population of Bizantium. Or one could reduce the number of ships possessed by the navy and mercant families, but then the societal structure described in the book would not seem sensible. There are similar issues with city sizes all over etc., this is just an example.

My solution is that I will use the setting as an inspiration and for general information, but I think I'll just have to drop the more specific stuff out.

another alternative would be to temporarily reduce the number of ships.. invoke a mothball fleet where a large part of those ships are in storage (probably pulled up on land) and being repaired, de-barnacles, etc at any given time, and the military and merchants just move their crews to another vessel. perhaps only about a third of those are in use at any one time, with another third being rebuilt and another third in storage at any given time, so that you have 1 crew for every 3 ships. ship status rotates over the course of several years. in times of war, when you need a massive fleet (both armed ships and transports for supplies and troops) they pull the stored ships out from mothballs and use the existing crews as cadre as you recruit heavily from the populace.

alternately you could invoke a Venetian Arsenal approach.. where they operate a smaller number and the rest actually exist as "kits" stored in shipyard warehouses, and can be reassembled rapidly in time of war or to replace a lost ship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal


that said, Venice, a city of at the time of the 1400's with a population of about 175,000 (and territorial holdings numbering up to about 2 million), maintained a ~3000 ship fleet (about ~40 thousand something men, not counting any marines, which could pretty much double that figure). which was why they were one of the strongest naval powers in europe. but most of these crews were not from Venice or any of their holdings. the officers were but the crews were recruited from the entire Mediterranean region, the venetian reputation for high pay making many skilled sailors willing to sign on. so their navy (and army, as their army operated on similar principles) actually represented a far smaller percentage of their citizenship than its numbers would imply.

[eliakon]

Just a minor point here...
I went through the books last week.
I was curious how rare rune weapons actually are.
not counting the 500 sets of Dragon armor nor the 1000 runic rings of the Dwarven lords. Nor the Runic Idradine Circlets nor the Rune keys nor the generic Rune Swords that every alchemist and magic shop in Palladium has a chance of having in stock. Just counting the ones specifically listed in canon NPC write ups or treasure hoards and not counting Dyval nor Hades as part of Palladium, nor anything Deific?
I got to 110 named rune weapons with between 30-60 more unnamed and unstated ones on 'scrubs'

[kiralon]

Just a minor point here...
I went through the books last week.
I was curious how rare rune weapons actually are.
not counting the 500 sets of Dragon armor nor the 1000 runic rings of the Dwarven lords. Nor the Runic Idradine Circlets nor the Rune keys nor the generic Rune Swords that every alchemist and magic shop in Palladium has a chance of having in stock. Just counting the ones specifically listed in canon NPC write ups or treasure hoards and not counting Dyval nor Hades as part of Palladium, nor anything Deific?
I got to 110 named rune weapons with between 30-60 more unnamed and unstated ones on 'scrubs'

Most of the alchemist shops say no rune weapons, all the ones I found specifically denied rune weapons (and usually holy weapons too), but the western empire might have one. Can you name a couple that say they can. My pc's will be lining up there for sure.
Otherwise that's a lot of rune weapons for something that is very rare. I wonder what the ratio of rune item to standard magic item is for the npc's, im guessing its pretty close.

[eliakon]

Just a minor point here...
I went through the books last week.
I was curious how rare rune weapons actually are.
not counting the 500 sets of Dragon armor nor the 1000 runic rings of the Dwarven lords. Nor the Runic Idradine Circlets nor the Rune keys nor the generic Rune Swords that every alchemist and magic shop in Palladium has a chance of having in stock. Just counting the ones specifically listed in canon NPC write ups or treasure hoards and not counting Dyval nor Hades as part of Palladium, nor anything Deific?
I got to 110 named rune weapons with between 30-60 more unnamed and unstated ones on 'scrubs'

Most of the alchemist shops say no rune weapons, all the ones I found specifically denied rune weapons (and usually holy weapons too), but the western empire might have one. Can you name a couple that say they can. My pc's will be lining up there for sure.
Otherwise that's a lot of rune weapons for something that is very rare. I wonder what the ratio of rune item to standard magic item is for the npc's, im guessing its pretty close.

I'll check both of those stats on my next run through the books.

[Whiskeyjack]

So Khemennu is listed under holy places for the church of light and dark. First is Sekti-abtu, the Antes Tower of light, and Khemennu. The first two are specifically stated as being on the Palladium world. The last is not given a location, just that there are over 2 million faithful.

[Whiskeyjack]

Im also not sure it would increase the populations of some of the countries that much. Ill have to check Western Empire but they could probably swallow it up pretty easily. Remember that the Palladium World is H-OO-J huge. JUST the Western Empire is the size of most of North America. Seriously, check out the scale in the base book. The presented land mass is about as big as all of earths habitable landmass when you DONT include the Land of the Damned.

I'm not sure where you're getting your scale from. The main book map on pg 287 has a scale that puts Palladium at about 3000 miles wide, and 2500 North/South. That's about 7.5 million square miles. Or two million square miles smaller than North America.

I've always increased the scale in my games as the country sizes don't really work at that scale.

[Whiskeyjack]

In regards to magic and helping with farming, here's a quick list of spells I could find that seem like they would be a big boon to communities.
Calm Storms, Circle of Rain, Darken the Sky, Atmosphere Manipulation, Dowsing, Dust Storm, Identify Plants, Rock to Mud, Create Dirt or Clay, Dirt to Clay, Dirt to Sand, Grow Plants (doubles growth rate!), Wither Plants, Animate Plants, Create Mound, Crumble Stone, Dig, Animate Object, Mend Stone, Repel Animals, Wall of Thorns, Mend Metal, Wood to Stone, Globe of Daylight, Create Heat, Lower Temperature, Create Fog, Salt Water to Fresh, Create Water, Rain Dance, Globe of True Sunlight, and Mend Wood.
And those are just the Warlock spells. A level 4 Earth Warlock can double the growth of a farmers field (40' area) for the entire summer for a meager 8 PPE.

[Braden Campbell]

... The main book map on pg 287 has a scale that puts Palladium at about 3000 miles wide, and 2500 North/South. That's about 7.5 million square miles. Or two million square miles smaller than North America.

We also know from an FAQ that it's only 4 time zones wide... so, yeah, roughly North America-sized.

[glitterboy2098]

... The main book map on pg 287 has a scale that puts Palladium at about 3000 miles wide, and 2500 North/South. That's about 7.5 million square miles. Or two million square miles smaller than North America.

We also know from an FAQ that it's only 4 time zones wide... so, yeah, roughly North America-sized.

i'd say that is more than big enough, given that europe, north africa, and the middle east managed to cram in far more countries, people, and places than PFRPG has into a similar area.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1re4cQ ... -xGIFdrE3V

( image from the handy site: https://thetruesize.com/ )

[kiralon]

In regards to magic and helping with farming, here's a quick list of spells I could find that seem like they would be a big boon to communities.
Calm Storms, Circle of Rain, Darken the Sky, Atmosphere Manipulation, Dowsing, Dust Storm, Identify Plants, Rock to Mud, Create Dirt or Clay, Dirt to Clay, Dirt to Sand, Grow Plants (doubles growth rate!), Wither Plants, Animate Plants, Create Mound, Crumble Stone, Dig, Animate Object, Mend Stone, Repel Animals, Wall of Thorns, Mend Metal, Wood to Stone, Globe of Daylight, Create Heat, Lower Temperature, Create Fog, Salt Water to Fresh, Create Water, Rain Dance, Globe of True Sunlight, and Mend Wood.
And those are just the Warlock spells. A level 4 Earth Warlock can double the growth of a farmers field (40' area) for the entire summer for a meager 8 PPE.

They all have limitations to a point, dig for some reason just states that it does holes and tunnels, and it doesn't transfer the dirt away. Mcircle of rain and grow plants are the best, but grow plants is a 10ft square per lvl of the warlock, not 10 ft radius per level, so at level 4 he can do 4 10ftx10ft squares (probably circles but squares are easier). The circles of rain in times of drought is probably the best one to refill dams, which they probably do in times of emergency. I found 1 warlock group that mentions that they go out and help in Timiro, that to me tends to make me think that the others don't as much, druids do help but the one group of really mentioned are working against the authorities.
Magic could be fairly helpful, some new spells would have to be founded though as the current ones are strangely limited. Why is grow plants so small an area. Mend wood and mend metal are great, but its likely easier to get it done by hand as it is a manpower skill.
Creating water, or ice for food storage and transport.
How much money would creators of Ice make in the hot places of the world. The towns have plenty of information about shops and the sometimes quirky things they do, but none of them mention doing things like that. Its mostly a list of mundane things with, oops better chuck in a church here and a magic place there. Where are the magic based industries. Guilds could certainly get together to do it, but there isn't anything really showing that they do. I have house ruled simple magics that are used by builders to help protect houses as they are built due to things being able to pass through the walls and suck your face off. Wizards tend to be elitist. If they find military service too restrictive and mundane, what are the chances of getting them into the fields. Warlocks seem a little less so but still command officer level wages, and how often does the officer get down and help plow the land.
And this is what the main book says about warlocks.
Warlocks
tend to be concerned with power, change and anarchy, for their world
view is a picture of seething, unrestrained forces, freedom, and change.
As such, a warlock will rarely bind himself to a king or god, he is a free
spirit to wander the universe, and to observe and instigate change.

[Whiskeyjack]

There's definitely a lot lacking. I'm still writing stuff up on the Time of a Thousand Magics, and one of the key things I'm looking at is how magic would be used for every day and figure out schools of magic that would cater to that.
One of the strange things is how magic is used to replace science in Palladium without actually doing that. Animated tools for farming or cleaning, transportation, water delivery, sewage disposal, construction should all have examples of magical ways that things are done without the science, but they don't exist in canon.

[kiralon]

Sounds entirely cool. If you have a few down you should send in to rifter while its still about. A few pages on extra magic from the time of a thousand magics would be a good read.

[Whiskeyjack]

I long ago gave up on the rifter. I've never even received a reply to confirm that a submission made it in to them.

[kiralon]

Darn, because the old lost magics was always something they could have developed more that had plenty of potential.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Im also not sure it would increase the populations of some of the countries that much. Ill have to check Western Empire but they could probably swallow it up pretty easily. Remember that the Palladium World is H-OO-J huge. JUST the Western Empire is the size of most of North America. Seriously, check out the scale in the base book. The presented land mass is about as big as all of earths habitable landmass when you DONT include the Land of the Damned.

I'm not sure where you're getting your scale from. The main book map on pg 287 has a scale that puts Palladium at about 3000 miles wide, and 2500 North/South. That's about 7.5 million square miles. Or two million square miles smaller than North America.

I've always increased the scale in my games as the country sizes don't really work at that scale.

Youre going to want to check that again. Just measured it with a ruler, and were looking at 3500 miles wide, and 3,000 miles north to south. Then i double checked with a notecard marked to match 500 mile marks, same figures.

Thats 10.5 million sq miles.

And, i suppose is should have been more clear - my earlier statement about NA was meant to imply “the habitable portion of NA” - because about 1/2 of Canada isnt really hanitable by anyone other than small substence level tribes. So my bad there for being unclear.

Palladium’s landmass, otoh, is habitable in its entirety. In fact, even the furthest north locations dont appear to be anywhere near the arctic (the GNW and Byzantium seem to be about... the Quebec area, at worst.. Harsh winters but perfectly livable for a large civilization.

[Whiskeyjack]

Youre going to want to check that again. Just measured it with a ruler, and were looking at 3500 miles wide, and 3,000 miles north to south. Then i double checked with a notecard marked to match 500 mile marks, same figures.

Thats 10.5 million sq miles.

And, i suppose is should have been more clear - my earlier statement about NA was meant to imply “the habitable portion of NA” - because about 1/2 of Canada isnt really hanitable by anyone other than small substence level tribes. So my bad there for being unclear.

Palladium’s landmass, otoh, is habitable in its entirety. In fact, even the furthest north locations dont appear to be anywhere near the arctic (the GNW and Byzantium seem to be about... the Quebec area, at worst.. Harsh winters but perfectly livable for a large civilization.

Actually, YOU may want to go back and check your measurements with a digital scale rule like I did, taking into account the entire coastlines of the world including the Inland Sea, Algorian Sea and the Sea of Scarlet Waters.
I actually did no such thing. I'm not that big of a dork. As was clearly stated in my post, it was a quick estimate. I used the side of a ruler and about 10 seconds to estimate one measurement and eyeballed the other.

If you recall you're the one who originally stated that the Western Empire was the size of North America, which was why I posted the estimate.

[kiralon]

And you might want to read about the winters in the gnw, perfectly habitable isn't what I'd call it.
America's wheatbelt is what I would call habitable, however a place that kills off a lot of the animals every 20 years due to winters that are colder than further north, that includes freezing bears solid, isn't what I'd call perfectly habitable. 6 month long winters isn't perfectly habitable, trees exploding from the cold isn't perfectly habitable. I like the cold myself, but not that cold. Byzantium is called almost warm compared with the gnw, because apparently the ocean currents are warm, and tend to keep the coasts warmer.

[Whiskeyjack]

I live in what is effectively the GNW. While we do share a lot of the effects from the winters they describe (poplars cracking in the cold is pretty cool to listen to when camping in the winter), most of what they write is definitely pure fantasy. I only have to drive a few hours North to notice the trees start to get noticeably smaller. True winter is only 3-4 months depending on the year.
Even worse is the hinterlands where they say that it starts snowing in October and doesn't stop until March (I think?).
You only have to look at the Nordic countries for the effect of the ocean. Even though they are all WAY farther North that where I live, their winters are nowhere near as cold. I think their summers are also much colder and wetter.
I've yet to hear of any healthy animal freezing to death due to the cold as described in the GNW either.
So there is a lot of artistic license taken when writing about the area and it doesn't quite all add up. I'd guess there's magic at work up there.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Greetings!

Has anyone else found population data provided by Palladium 1st edition source material problematic to work with and if so, how have you addressed the problem?

I have just started planning a campaign for 1st edition Palladium Fantasy RPG and bought Old Ones, Yin-Sloth and High Seas for source material. I personally have found it a bit difficult to use these as the information about city sizes and population is too wildly off from the real-world historical setting. One can let it go and it's fantasy of course, but I'd like to have a little more plausible background.

As an example the Islands of Bizantium has a population of 653 000 humans according to PB3 (High Seas). The war fleet contains 245 ships and just two Noble houses possess a total merchant fleet of 1000 ships (it is mentioned that the other Noble houses possess ships too, but no figures are given). Based on the list of ships at the end of the book it looks like the crew sizes vary, but for this exercise I estimated that warships would have a crew of about 100 (sailors and marines) and merchant ships about 50 on average. This would mean that the ships explicitly mentioned in the book would have a crew of about 75 000 in total.

A population of 653 000 would consist of children, adults and eldelry people... so let's say there are about 450 000 adults available, about half of them males (proportion of males to females would probably be lower than 50 % in a feudal style seafaring society, but anyway...). This would mean that only the ships mentioned would require 30 % of the adult male population as crew, which is not even remotely realistic in a historical feudal society (90 % of the population would work in agriculture; it is also stated that the Bizantium Islands are self-sufficient in this regard). It's not even remotely realistic in relation to most navalized historical societies of Europe (Ancient Greeks, renaissance-baroque Netherlands and later British Isles).

One could simply add a zero to the population (6 530 000) to make the numbers more sensible, but the land area of the islands is not sufficient to support this kind of number. By my rough measurements (90 000 km2) the islands are slightly smaller than Ireland, which currently has a population of about five million - Ireland's population was probably less than one million during the middle ages, which would actually go pretty nicely with the given population of Bizantium. Or one could reduce the number of ships possessed by the navy and mercant families, but then the societal structure described in the book would not seem sensible. There are similar issues with city sizes all over etc., this is just an example.

My solution is that I will use the setting as an inspiration and for general information, but I think I'll just have to drop the more specific stuff out.

Coming in very late to this question, I will point out that historically, nothing says ships crews are all citizens of the state that the ship's flag is from. Historically IRL, it was quite common for ships crews to consist of Seamen hired from foreign ports they drop by while trading, or to simply purchase Slaves. Adventures on the high seas the Gladitorial Arena is the most popular form of entertainment in Byzantium and that Slaves make up a good chunk of the entertainment. So it's entirely plausible that slaves, which are not counted as part of the local population, make up most of the crews, as slaves are unlikely to be allowed to even get off the ship (and so potentially run away)

So while your correct that it would take 30% of the adult male population to crew that many ships, nothing says that it draws all it's crew from Byzantium's population. It's entirely possible that foreingers/slaves account for most of it's crew.