I am designing a long term early edition d&d sandbox (Delving Deeper rules) and I have found this series and ACOUP’s other worldbuilding very helpful in shaping my thoughts and filling in the edges of procedurally generated stuff.
If you can afford to pay am army you can afford to pay the opposing side instead. And, many fine arguments abound for paying off potential invaders. It may be cheaper, and it may include paying them to go and attack somebody else.
"a skilled blacksmith probably didn’t come from a farm and certainly isn’t going back to one."
How certain is that really? I read a very niche, but very well researched book about local violin makers in my region, and there were hundreds, and that "didn't include the ones who merely made one or two fiddles as a project" according to the authors. All the people they listed did it as a side gig to their farming.
People here had time they couldn't just sink into doing more farming and fishing. All primary industries have natural downtime. They very often spent that on specializing, often into useful things like cobbling, shipbuilding or carpentry, but also into less immediately useful things like making musical instruments or elaborate altar pieces for the churches. So what makes blacksmithing so special a guy who learned it would never "go back to a farm"?
- running a forge isn’t something you can do alone (even if lighting a forge and doing the blacksmithing is doable for a single person, you still have to get the fuel for the forge, which typically is charcoal, coal, or coke)
- running a forge isn’t something you do in small pieces of natural downtime. Once you fire up a hearth, you’re committed to using it for the entire day.
By the time violins existed, then you are already 100+ years into the modern era and much of this article no longer applies.
Centralized states were becoming much more common and developing much more administrative capacity. Literate bureaucrats were much more easily available. Economic surpluses were much larger. Directly recruiting, equipping and paying an army became much more practical than it previously was and the other methods described here were no longer as necessary as they previously were.
9 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 34.9 ms ] threadHow certain is that really? I read a very niche, but very well researched book about local violin makers in my region, and there were hundreds, and that "didn't include the ones who merely made one or two fiddles as a project" according to the authors. All the people they listed did it as a side gig to their farming.
People here had time they couldn't just sink into doing more farming and fishing. All primary industries have natural downtime. They very often spent that on specializing, often into useful things like cobbling, shipbuilding or carpentry, but also into less immediately useful things like making musical instruments or elaborate altar pieces for the churches. So what makes blacksmithing so special a guy who learned it would never "go back to a farm"?
- running a forge isn’t something you can do alone (even if lighting a forge and doing the blacksmithing is doable for a single person, you still have to get the fuel for the forge, which typically is charcoal, coal, or coke)
- running a forge isn’t something you do in small pieces of natural downtime. Once you fire up a hearth, you’re committed to using it for the entire day.
Centralized states were becoming much more common and developing much more administrative capacity. Literate bureaucrats were much more easily available. Economic surpluses were much larger. Directly recruiting, equipping and paying an army became much more practical than it previously was and the other methods described here were no longer as necessary as they previously were.