Building a medieval village, or, being overly detailed and ridiculous

[Jeff the Green]

Hasn't salt historically been mostly mined, though? Distance from the ocean isn't really significant for salt availability, just where there used to be seas that have since dried up. Your village probably wouldn't have a salt mine nearby, since that would be a very valuable commodity, but being inland doesn't mean they have no salt.

Not until the 19th century, at least according to Wikipedia. With disruption of trade they are unlikely to have access to it.

There are other ways to preserve meat, though. It can be pickled (e.g. corned beef), saponified (literally, "turned into soap"; e.g. lutefisk), jellied (e.g. aspic; eels will naturally gel when cooked, and they could very well have eels in the river), fermented (e.g. salami), jugged (cooked in a stew in a tightly closed vessel), or my favorite: made into confit (poaching in a spiced animal fat, usually duck, and then letting the fat solidify around the meat).

[Spiryt]

Salt haven't been mined (as in, deep underground, need mines) on large scale trough most of the history, but it was still commonly produced by evaporation method.

It would still be usually mostly bought from places specialized in it, and expensive of course.

But acquiring large amount of salt didn't require neither mine nor sea.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

As far as bandits go...what you're seeing is probably closer in feel to wandering outlaw groups than settled bandits preying on a specific area. They're certainly armed and dangerous but banditry is largely an opportunistic crime - if it's there someone will take it but they're as likely if there isn't to just shoot a deer instead.

In which case, the groups are probably fighting amongst themselves or else going to areas that are richer pickings, so they're not that much of a threat to the villages.

For what you've described, any bandits in the area are probably small, weak group(s) that can't hang onto anywhere more valuable (maybe they're an old group that's coming to the end and have either been evicted from their old territory or had it reduced to the last few square miles, or they're a faction from a much larger group that's splintered - maybe the old leader was killed and their lieutenants are are now fighting amongst themselves for control, or they're a new group that's starting to take over territory), or they have other reasons to be there (maybe there's an old mine that's been abandoned and forgotten about in the collapse of the empire that they're trying to restart - which may mean they go on slave raids later, maybe they're the "protectors" I mentioned, maybe they're searching for some artefact, a tomb or something else that's supposed to be in the area, maybe they're trying to create their own nation state.

For food, I guess you could potentially encase food in clay, then fire it to turn the clay into a ceramic "can". Maybe as part of the cooking process so you've killed off microbes in it as well.

[Valefor Rathan]

Maybe I missed it but the "Three Sisters" (corn, beans, squash) would be good in this set up. They can be grown together in the same plot, they provide essential amino acids together, they increase each others' utility (both planting and consumption).

Instead of guinea pigs, what about rabbits?

[WarKitty]

<<snip>>

Yeah the bandits were meant to be enough of a threat that you don't see lots of traders or spend large amounts of time outside the village by yourself or leave stuff lying around, not really an organized threat. They're endemic to the whole northern region, not just that specific village. The combination of the terrain and the southern dwarven empire keep them from going farther south really.

(Before anyone asks, the dwarves think selling weapons to the stupid lesser races is more interesting than conquering a bunch of useless barbarians that can barely make a proper horseshoe.)

Though part of the idea is that someone tries the "make your own nation state" about every 20 years or so.

Maybe I missed it but the "Three Sisters" (corn, beans, squash) would be good in this set up. They can be grown together in the same plot, they provide essential amino acids together, they increase each others' utility (both planting and consumption).

Instead of guinea pigs, what about rabbits?

The three sisters aren't really suited for a far northern climate. Corn especially, but beans aren't really great in this sort of soil either.

Yes to rabbits though - especially as pelts would be valuable in the cold weather. I imagine they've got a rabbit fur vest thing going.

[Jeff the Green]

Yes to rabbits though - especially as pelts would be valuable in the cold weather. I imagine they've got a rabbit fur vest thing going.

I thought you didn't want to damage your players psyches.

Spoiler: Teh cute

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[Valefor Rathan]

The three sisters aren't really suited for a far northern climate. Corn especially, but beans aren't really great in this sort of soil either.

Yes to rabbits though - especially as pelts would be valuable in the cold weather. I imagine they've got a rabbit fur vest thing going.

My bad. Didn't catch the climate.

You could also just invent something that fills a similar role for your world.

E.E. Knight's "Vampire Earth" series has some kind of fungus that fits. Grows underground, subsists on waste, but it's near tasteless. They dry it out to use to make a kind of "flour".

[Valefor Rathan]

I thought you didn't want to damage your players psyches.

Spoiler: Teh cute

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Look at all those cute little mitten and slipper liners...

[Beleriphon]

Not sure what you mean here, not following this use of "break."

You know the setting and atmosphere you want, but I still think guinea pigs are perfect for an easily tended and protected food supply, especially one that can be raised indoors.

I think he means that it would make the players cry. Guinea pigs are by and large cute little pets to many people, not a viable source of food.

As for rabbits, keep in mind that fur rabbits are probably going to be the larger European variety rather than North American cotton tails (which tend to be what people think of as rabbits, since its what Bugs Bunny looks most like).

[WarKitty]

I think he means that it would make the players cry. Guinea pigs are by and large cute little pets to many people, not a viable source of food.

As for rabbits, keep in mind that fur rabbits are probably going to be the larger European variety rather than North American cotton tails (which tend to be what people think of as rabbits, since its what Bugs Bunny looks most like).

Yeah, it looks like even older domesticated breeds grow up to about 10 pounds per bunny.

[Beleriphon]

Yeah, it looks like even older domesticated breeds grow up to about 10 pounds per bunny.

Especially since fur rabbits now are Flemish Giants, which can get up to the size of a sheltie and weigh upwards to 20 pounds.

[VincentTakeda]

Dug into this a bit for a colonization campaign I ran 6 months ago... My notes indicate that I'd researched it and found that a half hectare per person is enough land to sustain a 'healthy modern american diet' including both fruit, vegetable and livestock. So thats a square of land 232 feet per side per person if you ignored the fishing completely.

[Spiryt]

Dug into this a bit for a colonization campaign I ran 6 months ago... My notes indicate that I'd researched it and found that a half hectare per person is enough land to sustain a 'healthy modern american diet' including both fruit, vegetable and livestock. So thats a square of land 232 feet per side per person if you ignored the fishing completely.

Where and when though?

Even in 19th century in many 'Western' places agriculture had efficiency that would be considered wondrous in say, 14th century France.

Of course such intensive methods have downsides too, but numerous output from hectare would be bigger without doubt.

[VincentTakeda]

No doubt there is a bit of fiat and finagling with this approximate number when you factor in things like location/weather/irrigation/technological level of the people. Didn't really go into Age of Empires levels of granularity. The example I gave presumes a person without 'tractors'... Manual labor or beast of burden. Thats still a pretty wide possible sweep in technology or circumstance.

[WarKitty]

Hmmm...wikipedia says an Irish Cotter in the 18th century would have had maybe an acre to acre and a half of land. If you assume rent was paid in labor rather than goods (not uncommon), that gives you about an acre to feed a family of likely 4-6. With significant supplementing, and if I haven't done my math wrong somewhere, we can probably give our village about 20 acres and be good.

[Spiryt]

Hmmm...wikipedia says an Irish Cotter in the 18th century would have had maybe an acre to acre and a half of land. If you assume rent was paid in labor rather than goods (not uncommon), that gives you about an acre to feed a family of likely 4-6. With significant supplementing, and if I haven't done my math wrong somewhere, we can probably give our village about 20 acres and be good.

In 18th century Ireland, pretty much whole land would be already long time divided, separated hedged by the way of different laws, feudal and post feudal property etc.

Plenty of people wouldn't be able to 'live' of their land in the slightest, they would b therefore working for people with sufficient wealth.

This is not very comparable to something (I think) you're trying to picture - situation where there's still plenty of 'no mans land'.

And I don't think it's really possible to feed such family with 2 acres of land... Bit of earlier, in 16-17th Central Europe, peasant would need at least some ~ 3 hectares (about 7-8 acres) of field to feed his family and poorer peasants helping him with work.

In more primal conditions, peasants with tiny, less than 1ha fields would either live in extremely humble conditions and/or need to supplement themselves with hunting, gathering, herding a lot.

[VincentTakeda]

Yep. California statistics and modern science have proven 5 people per acre is possible in ideal circumstances in an ideal environment (scientific total environmental control), with 0% crop loss, , and an all vegetarian diet. (no cattle. no bunnies. no ducks, sheep, goats, whatever... no grazing/herd animals).

Worst record california has documented has 1 person fed on 12.5 acres, so that kinda shows how bad it can get in a less than ideal arid environment. If each person in the village had to 'forage' for his daily meal across 13 american football fields each day... and each *other* villager had to do his own foraging across a *separate* 13 football fields each day... thats... uh... not really a village.

Thus my .5 hectares per person is 1.2 acres per person, or about 5 acres for a family of 4 is a bit of a comfortable middle.

It is also said that a person can, on the top end 'work' between 1 and 2 acres with hand tools. 2 acres per person with hand tools should be outright exhausting, so thats another easy way to think about limits. A person with hand tools for the most part is physically unable to work more than 2 acres without tech.

Most of the web pages i'm checking out today agree that about an acre per person is good, so my '.5 hectare or 1.2 acres per person' assessment allows for some crop loss and pathways and access...

Like I say. Just depends on how granular you want to get with it. If your people want livestock, that .5 hectare/ 1.2 acres per person is a safe conservative call, and without machines, 2 acres per person is more than they could actually handle.

Rough numbers means your population of 90 with livestock could easily farm a square territory thats a half mile per side, or a 'crop circle' (pun intended) thats a half mile across (1223 foot radius). Not bad. Now you just gotta figure out the layout of the housing ^_^. We're talking about every man woman and child getting their own american football field's worth of farmland to work.

If they chose a square plot of land 3070 feet wide and tall, or a crop circle 3470 feet wide (1730 foot radius) it would be more than they could handle without machines, because each man woman and child would be responsible for maintaining 2 football fields worth of farmland on their own.

That might not be overdetailed and rediculous, but there you go... If we were talking about pathfinder I'd invest in 7 rods of splendor... Using 1 per day of the week you have a continuous revolving feast for 100 people using no land whatsoever... Not a cheap trick to afford 7 rods of splendor though... Each person in the village would have to chip in 1750 gold out of the gate, but once that's done, food for everyone until the village gets lynched and they steal our rods!

[WarKitty]

I'm wondering about some of these statistics...I'm seeing a lot of cases where subsistence agriculture did seem to happen with one family on less, even in marginal soil. A cottar would have worked for someone, for instance, but what he worked for was the right to grow and harvest his own food on someone else's land. It wasn't a good living but it worked well enough that people raised families. For most of history that's what working for someone else looked like - you didn't receive pay in any form we'd recognize.

Now I am assuming that a good amount of fish was being supplemented. I want to get granular enough to be able to assign numbers to each profession, and I'm just not seeing much useful info.

I just want to be clear - I'm talking per person as per every person, not per worker. So I'm assuming for a family of 4 you maybe have 2-3 workers. 2 adults, one child old enough to help somewhat and one small child.

[VincentTakeda]

Yep. Per person is how these numbers pan out. You figure a home with 2 parents 2 kids gets 4 football fields to work. But the kids might be too young to help. The 2 parents working 2 football fields apiece are going to be totally tapped out, but there's good odds that with crop loss and less than ideal climate controlled scientifically engineered seed, thats going to, on a good year, be plenty, and on a bad year, be barely enough, no matter what particular crop or combination of crops they choose. Nature being what it is.

Even presuming a collective where 90 people all went to work on one of their 90 football fields per day, each field is only going to be taken care of once every 3 months... So factoring in things like 'grazing rotation' is built into the estimate already.

Every farm even if it produces more than an individual family would need is still barely producing enough for the community as a whole to survive. One family is doing cattle while another does bees while another does sheep or alpacas for wool... It seems like a lot of space because while a beekeper may not need much space for the 'livestock' portion of his contribution to the community, the other kinds of livestock requires a lot of space to eat. This land also needs to be used to feed your cows and your chickens and your pot bellied pigs.

This is a pretty general rule to cover the complete spectrum of possible crops in a non scientific, non environmentally controlled scenario... factoring in things like 'supplementing/supplanting' is fiatting any shortcomings of the actual numbers, making the actual scientific reality pretty much just as much of a fiat, so accuracy becomes irrelevant. 1.2 acres per person is a reliable number to take in account the notion that the villagers will want to have both fruits, vegetables and livestock in both good years and bad without any outside help.

Any kind of fiat you do that helps them out (motorized tools/magical assistance) changes these numers in such a way that their accuracy becomes pretty inconsequential. While its undeniably true that a ten acre environmentally controlled greenhouse full of fruits and vegetables can provide a vegetarian village with enough food to feel full on leafy greens, roughage and colon cleansing apple juice, if you want a balanced diet in a legitimate farming community with farm animals... 1.2 acres per person... less than that and a bad year could cause some folks in the community to die of starvation or other low nutrition style health issues.

Every acre that gets burned by dragons or infested by locusts or eaten by wildlife is another villager that goes hungry... Survival means overplanning. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

[Jay R]

I tend to hand-wave a lot of details away by having an indeterminate number of outlying farms, plus professional hunters and fishers, because economic details do not improve the game.

[VincentTakeda]

Yep. If on the other hand we were building a farming community on the notion that they were going to focus on one crop, then sell/trade their bounty to neighboring villages, then of course in the real world we'd go with strawberries. Easily $60,000 per acre for strawberries.

You get 100 healty adult villagers picking 200 acres of strawberries or cashews or garlic or lavender for 12 million dollars a year presuming you could only get one batch of strawberries out of the field per year... and that you're in a climate where it's pretty much strawberry season year round... again... better than possible ideal circumstances... but thats a 'how much do we need to survive' question on an economics scale, not on an agricultural scale...

I simply commented here because the question that appeared to have been asked was one i'd taken delight in digging into previously and gone to great lengths to properly resolve for my own campaigns, thought I'd save others the work...

I wont deny it was a fun thought experiment last time I explored it. Of course my 'village' was 10000 people (the minimum commonly thought necessary to reseed a human population) on a giant technologically advanced spacecraft sent to colonize a new world and I wanted to map out a landing zone of sufficient agricultural size to support them all, with the presupposition that most of the technology would not survive the landing, forcing the villagers to attack the scenario in a more 1700's kind of way.

It ended up being a landing of a more 'pandorum' nature, half the passengers died and the players had a hard time wrapping their mind around the kinds of interesting things they should be doing to set up a colony. Sometimes ludicrous attention to detail goes unappreciated... Such is the nature of gm'ing. It was still fun to research.

[Spiryt]

I'm wondering about some of these statistics...I'm seeing a lot of cases where subsistence agriculture did seem to happen with one family on less, even in marginal soil.

Well, examples?

Irish cottars worked on such small fields because they had to - in your case there's no real reason to not use more land, if conditions are pretty 'primal'.

Not to mention that I doubt that it was complete 'subsistence', in whole 18th century landscape they still likely had some systems on falling down on community when times were tough.

Potatoes also were changing things quite a bit, they are very efficient source of food on small area, even if not healthy.

Either use way more fields if it's possible, or use burn-down methods of small fields, swapping them rather often.

In short, acre or acre and half field is really tiny and probably not realistic, especially since you're describing climate as rather cold and inhospitable.

[WarKitty]

I tend to hand-wave a lot of details away by having an indeterminate number of outlying farms, plus professional hunters and fishers, because economic details do not improve the game.

Depends on the game. If you have players who are going to be in charge and would enjoy the prospect of spending part of their time playing governor, a well-fitted economic system does improve the game.

[Beleriphon]

This references Domesday Book commisioned by William the Conquerer in 1085. Suggestions indicate a typical family in Englad worked 12 to 15 acres of land, although as few as 5 acres could be worked with. Feeding one person with wheat required roughly 2 acres of land, while today we could feed three people per acre using wheat. So we're looking at a 5/6 loss compared to mdoern farming.

http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/somm...%20Society.htm

[WarKitty]

I made a map!



Squares are 25 feet a side

Notes:

The tavern is pretty much just a big building with tables inside. Travelers can sleep on the floor if they like and will be offered a decent supper. Really though it's mostly a place to hang out and drink and dance.

The temple is not currently in use and most people prefer to avoid it - it's said that going to the temple attracts the notice of war. The common people practice a largely nature and home based religion that doesn't lend itself to separate buildings. So a sample ritual might be, say, that you must burn a handful of flour in your fireplace after the grain is in, to feed the hearth spirit for winter.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by WarKitty
The temple is not currently in use and most people prefer to avoid it - it's said that going to the temple attracts the notice of war.

Ordinarily a castle would have a church or chapel within the walls, rather than outside them, and often within the ground plan of the keep itself.

Originally Posted by Jay R
I tend to hand-wave a lot of details away by having an indeterminate number of outlying farms, plus professional hunters and fishers, because economic details do not improve the game.

Better to have something worked out ahead of time, especially if the players will be involved in the village economy.

Also, see thread title.

Originally Posted by Beleriphon
This references Domesday Book commisioned by William the Conquerer in 1085.

Good on yer for posting a link to something written by an actual historian.

[WarKitty]

Ordinarily a castle would have a church or chapel within the walls, rather than outside them, and often within the ground plan of the keep itself.

Oh that's the thing I forgot to mention. The current walls are much newer than the keep itself. So you can presume that the original walled area was much bigger and probably surrounded the temple and a fair bit more land. The keep is just sort of the only thing that hasn't been completely pillaged for its stone.

Better to have something worked out ahead of time, especially if the players will be involved in the village economy.

Also, see thread title.

Actually this thread was brought on by mentioning my plans to a player, who immediately began trying to figure out how much land they would need.

Good on yer for posting a link to something written by an actual historian.

Good sources are good!

Other stuff:

Spoiler: Demographics

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Of the population of 89, 15 are of ages 0-8; these are not counted in the work force at all.

Another 11 are ages 8-13, and a further 6 13-16. These contribute, but not on the same level as others.

We have 4 people in the elderly category, ages 50+, who aren't contributors to physical labor. Due to the nature of warfare in the area these are all women.

Specialists are going to be:
Smithing
Brewing
Tanning
Cheesemaking
Woodworking

Other labors such as spinning, weaving, bonecarving, and such are done at home and lack specialists, so this is only a list of what would have a full-time specialist.

There's also several military (PC class) specialists who are not currently practicing.

Spoiler: Diet

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Given the terrain and other concerns, it looks like you'd be shifting to a higher protein diet than would otherwise be common for the era. Fish is easy and smoked fish probably shows up twice a day. From what I'm seeing fish is more suitable to this sort of thing than land animals are. Supplement that with grains twice a day and various vegetables maybe once, and toss in some rabbit meat as well. Fruits and llama meat are most likely feast food, as are mead and proper beer. Something akin to small beer is probably the more common drink.

Spoiler: Other Stuff

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You're going to have a semi-communal approach to farming. The combination of a low number of draft animals and a higher number of men who may have military skills instead of farming skills tends to make that a necessity. (Mr. Fighter may not know a lot about farming, but he can still shovel manure and chop wood.)

[LongVin]

A village of 89 people probably wouldn't have anything approaching the size or strength of a castle. If there is some sort of feudal lord here, he would be on the level of a landed knight and would live in similar conditions as the rest of the villagers and unless he is basically a bandit himself would also need to maintain his own farm to a degree.

[WarKitty]

A village of 89 people probably wouldn't have anything approaching the size or strength of a castle. If there is some sort of feudal lord here, he would be on the level of a landed knight and would live in similar conditions as the rest of the villagers and unless he is basically a bandit himself would also need to maintain his own farm to a degree.

That came up in the thread earlier (it's getting long so I should probably re-summarize some stuff). The keep at this point is basically just a giant barn that's been stripped of pretty much everything useful. It's been many many years since it was a functional castle, back when this was a prosperous town. The old women remember their grandmothers talking about that time, when even in the last days of the empire every noble had to have his boots and bags done in the village, and a child could make extra coin gathering acorns and oak bark for the workers. Only the villagers could go in the grove, or the lady of the grove would get mad.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by WarKitty
The current walls are much newer than the keep itself. So you can presume that the original walled area was much bigger and probably surrounded the temple and a fair bit more land. The keep is just sort of the only thing that hasn't been completely pillaged for its stone.

Okay, that makes sense. Very well thunk-out.

My other comment would have been about the village homes inside the bailey, but you've accounted for that as well--they're using the keep for cover (and stables) and rebuilt their homes in its shadow.

Originally Posted by WarKitty
Of the population of 89, 15 are of ages 0-8; these are not counted in the work force at all.

Actually, if you have a couple of girls who are seven or eight, they'll be helping take care of the toddlers. This relieves some of the childcare burden from the mothers and lets them focus on their own work, which is a real benefit.

Interesting age distribution; I'm assuming the past few years have been reasonably good. The all-female nature of the elderly rings very true, and not just on account of warfare.

Originally Posted by WarKitty
The combination of a low number of draft animals and a higher number of men who may have military skills instead of farming skills tends to make that a necessity.

A strong fighting man could shoulder the harness for a plow himself, plus manage a lot of the other hard physical labor as you've pointed out. Just because someone is trained in fighting doesn't mean they can't contribute on the farm--and if they're mainly in the village anyway, rather than off campaigning, they'll likely be engaged on a daily basis.

Also, unless they were raised by noble families, many fighting men probably grew up on farms anyway, and were conscripted for one local war or another. They'll more than likely know their way around a patch of peas from childhood.