The Campaign Builder's Guild

Battlemap overlays.

It would be so nice for playing 4th Ed D&D to be able to say, "Blast 2 looks like this." [show cardboard overlay and place it over the character mini.].

"It's a 15 foot bridge, like this one."

"Close blast 3 covers the area in front of you like this."

For the "One spell idea" you might want to look at some of Jack Vance's ideas. Read Tales of the Dying Earth.

I thought I'd give an update to how I'm doing with this econometrics project.

Even with the most simple models it's suprising but non-food activities are made possible by three things, communication, food distribution and food preservation, that's it. If a societies food preservation and/or ability to distribute it improves then so does the society's 'technology level'.
I means that do have a 'standard' D&D economy the technological development is actually around the level of the Tudors in England not Norman Britain, which was surprising to me.

More work to come...

Although this is more for actual adventure rather than the campaign itself I though Id mention it as I is very useful to me:

Masterplan (http://www.habitualindolence.net/masterplan/).

There are many 'DM's assistant' tools out there but this is the best I have come across.

Please add to this thread if you have any suggestions of your own.

Ultimately each area in a 'civilisation' will have a price list for things players can buy and the DM will have an economic history of the world.

Some good information here and thank you very much for it. I think though I need to describe the scope of what I am aiming for a bit better.

I'm trying to set up a long term economic simulation across a pre-defined map with climate regions starting at hunter gatherer and ending with the eventual end point of something akin to the early medieval period in Western Europe (not all regions of the game world will get that far of course).
As resources are consumed, groups of people will either: increase their ability to exploit what they have (technology 'upgrade'), migrate, join together or have a war over the limited resources.

I need:

Suitable effectiveness modifiers for a set of technology levels (hunter/gatherer, herder, farmer, irrigation farmer, specialist farmer, trader, sail capable, bureaucracy, Mesopotamian[think Sumer), feudal etc...)

How much food is required to support one human per year? (With age modifiers too, infant/child/adult/elder)

How much food can a given land area provide? (Including factors for climate and technology level to exploit the land)

How much surplus food wealth can be stored per year for a given technology level? What is the decay rate of that wealth? (I realise it may not actually be food that is stored)

How much food wealth in necessary to support non-food activities? (Technology advancement, agricultural improvements, smithing, mining, building etc...)

How much food wealth is necessary to support a given magical technology uplift? (Treating magic as a technological improvement is the easiest way to model its effect on a civilisation I think)

And lastly but by no means least, cheering on because damn if this isn't going to be a big project

I'll probably be using either a stupidly complex Excel spreadsheet for this or I'll program something to run the simulation (probably Java for those who might be interested).

I expect the simulation to run for several thousand years and result in a set of civilisations a differing technological levels (I'm including magical knowledge in that too).

Any thoughts? (Other than, "This guy's crazy!?")

The genes contain the data for all phenotypes. There just needs to be encouragement to express it. Either (as sparkletwist says) by racial mixing or by selective breeding.

Selective breeding could be intentional in the case of breeding slaves or un-intentional in the case of fashion, "S/he looks pretty, they look ugly. Marry those people over there". or inbreeding.

And as Biohazard said, it's easy to fill in the phenotype 'gaps' by including a bit of ethnic cleansing and genocide in your world history to explain why the 'people-in-the-middle' don't exist any more.

What about transitions involving a large transport of matter? Clouds of gas (poisonous or not it will affect the weather/ecology), Water, large temperature differentials...

Ishmayl.

A very good article. Thanks, it crystallised some ideas I was having and I also think I need to change some of my premises too. Thanks.

I'm looking to model a fantasy economy properly (potentially using econometrics) in order to create a campaign equipment price list that actually makes sense, rather than just being developed to facilitate gameplay.

I've already looked at the Medieval Sourcebook's Economic Life section and I am using that as a starting point for my numbers but I need

Math models. Surplus wealth per amount of cultivated land area, how much surplus can each profession generate, etc...

Modifiers for extra ordinary effects. Magic is the biggie but also things like "How does a ruined city full of hard to get to treasure effect the local communities?"

If anyone has any information sources and/or idea that can put my way this would be greatly appreciated.

Regarding taxes to my mind it's a matter of answering the questions:

1. Who uses it?
2. Who pays for it?
3. How do they pay for it?

Eg:
The protection of a town wall and a town guard
1. The townspeople and anyone residing inside the wall.
2. See point 1 and also a king from whom the town is a strategic defence point.
3. Building tax on residents and entry tax on merchants and all who wish to stay overnight.

A road
1. All who travel on it.
2. All who cannot avoid travelling on it (i.e. people with carts)
3. Toll gates at various stages on the length of the road.

A standing army
1. The general populace for their personal defence and the 'owner' of the army
2. See 1.
3. Collection is made by the 'owner' of the army by threatening either to take the army away from or to use it upon those who refuse to pay the 'tax' of the army's upkeep.

I agree with the previous posts that game mechanic changes (+xx -yy) should be a matter of cultural background.
Appearance (and therefore genetics) is a matter of environment.

I suggest however that if you wish for quick descriptions of an NPC use the character's own stereotypes and prejudices and not the player's.

"You see a Nimbraalese merchant who's dark skinned, curly haired and haughty features remind you of how your mother said they are the most cunning traders in all of Nostra."

This already gets away from the 'Looks like an African' aspect and possibly causing offence to player's in your group and yet still shows that your game world is not empty of people who have racially motivated prejudices. It's then up to the player to decide if their character will live up to the stereotyping of their upbringing or to move beyond it to realise that, "Hey, just because my mother said all Nimbraales were wily traders, doesn't mean they all are."

And the player gets involved in the campaign world's racial tensions/problems without getting too distracted by real world equivalents.

Sadly I don't think snappy descriptions will work. However once the first few times a Nimbraalese person is physically described in detail with the character's (not the player's) attitude stereotypes emphasised then, "You see a Nibraalese xxxx", will work fine.

BTW Anyone who makes a campaign world where villagers don't suffer from the, "But your not from around here!" syndrome isn't really making a world consistent with human psychology.