D&D economics

[Sebastian]

Prtobably is old stuff but I thought it was worth mentioning

Trollman's Turnip Economy

A IMHO very interesting article about economy in a D&D world.

enjoy.

[bosssmiley]

That's only a single copypasted part of Keith and Frank's "Dungeonomicon", a homebrew which tried to make sense of the D&D world as presented by the RAW.

IMO the Dungeonomicon, along with the other works in the same series, is DM Gold.

A PDF of the complete Keith & Frank Tome series is here.

v-- re: potatoes as staple crop. Sure, right up until the Orcish potato famine...

[Dhavaer]

Very good read. I particularly liked the bit with the different calorie counts. A question: I've heard that potatoes give a much higher yield than traditional European crops; would a D&D world using potatoes as the main crop be, in general, better fed for the same amount of work?

[Stupendous_Man]

turnips, me lord?

[Jack_Simth]

Originally Posted by Dhavaer

Very good read. I particularly liked the bit with the different calorie counts. A question: I've heard that potatoes give a much higher yield than traditional European crops; would a D&D world using potatoes as the main crop be, in general, better fed for the same amount of work?

Yes and no. Yes, they'd have more calories; no, they wouldn't be healthier for it - potatoes (at least, the modern, bred ones) don't have much in the way of vitamins and minerals to promote health.

[Saph]

I've read this one before, but I forgot how funny it was. :)

Let's say that you don't want to exchange goods and services for other goods and services at all. Well, it's medieval times baby, there's totally another option. See, if you kill people by stabbing them in the face when they want to be paid for things, you don't have to pay for things. Indeed, if you have a big enough pack of gnolls at your back, you don't have to pay anything to anyone except your own personal posse of gnolls.

- Saph

[Dhavaer]

So what would be the best Joe and Jane Farmer could eat, assuming selection from all available crops (that grow in the same climate)?

[Sebastian]

Well, I've heard theories that the main reason that Prussia was able to become a Power was the introduction of the potatoes from america, I don't know how much they are valid but it is certainly an interesting "what-if" :).

[Emperor Tippy]

A single large potato (370 grams) has 284 calories. 390 grams of turnips has a calorie count of 108.

Wheat is better than potato's but it requires a lot more effort to grow.

[Dhavaer]

Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy

A single large potato (370 grams) has 284 calories. 390 grams of turnips has a calorie count of 108.

Wheat is better than potato's but it requires a lot more effort to grow.

Really? The way I heard it before, the advantage of potatoes was that you could grow more of them with the same effort in the same area than wheat, rather than any advantage of the actual tuber. Is it both, or is my memory faulty?

[Emperor Tippy]

Calorie wise wheat is 214 calories in 108 grams. Or over 3 times more calories per gram than potatoes.

But until modern farming came along it was a lot harder to grow wheat.

Total time required to grow potatoes (assuming you have an irrigation system) is maybe 24 hours. Here's a link, it's not difficult.

Growing wheat is a lot more difficult.

[potatocubed]

Originally Posted by Jack_Simth

Yes, they'd have more calories; no, they wouldn't be healthier for it - potatoes (at least, the modern, bred ones) don't have much in the way of vitamins and minerals to promote health.

And the wild, non-bred potatoes are toxic - or so I've heard. Not seriously toxic, but if you lived off nothing else you'd probably die.

[Emperor Tippy]

Originally Posted by potatocubed

And the wild, non-bred potatoes are toxic - or so I've heard. Not seriously toxic, but if you lived off nothing else you'd probably die.

The bred ones are toxic as well, just less toxic.

[Sebastian]

Originally Posted by bosssmiley

That's only a single copypasted part of Keith and Frank's "Dungeonomicon", a homebrew which tried to make sense of the D&D world as presented by the RAW.

IMO the Dungeonomicon, along with the other works in the same series, is DM Gold.

A PDF of the complete Keith & Frank Tome series is here.

v-- re: potatoes as staple crop. Sure, right up until the Orcish potato famine...

Thanks for the link.

I agree on this material being DM gold, I expecially like the part where he talk of the gold=power equation in D&D and how this end with hurting the game. in previous edition building castles and fortress or becoming politically influential were a large part of what D&D was, with today edition is not impossible but is certainly harder, because to build a castle or playing politics would need a lot of gold, and players would rather use that gold to buy their next magic item than to build a fortress, and how many times the PCs, the heroes of the land, live as beggars to save money to buy that new worpal blade or something similiar?

[Fenix_of_Doom]

Originally Posted by potatocubed

And the wild, non-bred potatoes are toxic - or so I've heard. Not seriously toxic, but if you lived off nothing else you'd probably die.

As opposed to what? I bet that if you live only on rice that you'd miss out on important stuff too.
Besides that, if you consider how potatoes were introduced in Europe(they were fairly wild in America I think) than they can't be to harmful, I find it hard to believe people back then already accounted for possible toxicity in their products when breeding them.

[Epinephrine]

Potatoes are in the same family as belladonna (deadly nightshade) - the berries that come from a potato plant are actually pretty toxic. Humans survive on toxic plants all the time though, as cooking typically eliminates many toxins (including the toxins in potatoes). Soaking some foods, washing them repeatedly can also leech the toxins out (the toxic cycads eaten by some pacific islanders as an example).

[jcsw]

Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy

The bred ones are toxic as well, just less toxic.

To be fair, everything is toxic in large enough amounts.
Even water... heh.

[nagora]

If you find potatoes which have a green tinge about their skins then DO NOT eat them, wild or otherwise.

http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/potato.asp

[Emperor Tippy]

Originally Posted by jcsw

To be fair, everything is toxic in large enough amounts.
Even water... heh.

No even small amounts are toxic. Potatoes are nightshades and all nightshades are toxic. It's just a question of how badly your body reacts to the toxin.

[Frosty]

I eat potatos all the time. Granted, never raw, only cooked, so the toxins are probably gone.

[Emperor Tippy]

Originally Posted by Frosty

I eat potatos all the time. Granted, never raw, only cooked, so the toxins are probably gone.

Not really. It's just a minimal dose. You would have to eat something like 4.5 pounds in 1 sitting for it to potentially become an issue.

[Frosty]

Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy

Not really. It's just a minimal dose. You would have to eat something like 4.5 pounds in 1 sitting for it to potentially become an issue.

Then shouldn't the Irish have died from potato toxins?

[Nerd-o-rama]

None of the Irish peasants could have afforded 4.5 pounds of potatoes in one sitting. However, you have to wonder about the effects of small doses of toxin over time as part of a regular diet, though. Perhaps one develops an immunity, like with alcohol, rather than a buildup of poison in the bloodstream.

[AKA_Bait]

Originally Posted by bosssmiley

That's only a single copypasted part of Keith and Frank's "Dungeonomicon", a homebrew which tried to make sense of the D&D world as presented by the RAW.

IMO the Dungeonomicon, along with the other works in the same series, is DM Gold.

A PDF of the complete Keith & Frank Tome series is here.

v-- re: potatoes as staple crop. Sure, right up until the Orcish potato famine...

Awesome! Thanks for the link to that .PDF

Saying that the dungeonomicon and the other parts are DM gold preobably not strong enough. Their stuff is probably among, if not the, most useful article I've read on 3.x.

[ArmorArmadillo]

Originally Posted by Frosty

Then shouldn't the Irish have died from potato toxins?

They might have, if the british didn't steal the majority of their potato crops.

[Renrik]

Originally Posted by Frosty

Then shouldn't the Irish have died from potato toxins?

They were too busy being killed by the English.

In all seriousness, though, no. Not enough potato at a time.

^ The British (as I understand it) usually didn't take the potato crop. The potato was the peasantry staple. The other crops were almost all taken by the British to pay for outrageous rent and taxes. In fact, the potato famine was not a famine at all.There was plenty of food, but it all went to the English.

The reason the potato is a better crop than wheat in some European countries is this: You burn down a feild of wheat, it's gone. To kill off all the potatoes, you have to dig up every last one of the potatoes and then get rid of them. They're a hardier plant that way. It's easier to recover a potato patch from a war.

[AKA_Bait]

Originally Posted by Renrik

^ The British (as I understand it) usually didn't take the potato crop. The potato was the peasantry staple. The other crops were almost all taken by the British to pay for outrageous rent and taxes. In fact, the potato famine was not a famine at all.There was plenty of food, but it all went to the English.

Some of the potatoes went to the British too. You're right though that the famine was not due to crop failure by and large. There was less produced those years due to a potato blight, but despite the blight there would have been enough food to feed the peasantry had the British not taken the same or slightly higher proportion of crops those years as well. Patrick Kavanaugh has a readable and quite good book on the subject.

/derailment

[Copacetic]

Giantitp: The only place you can turn a discussion on D&D Economics into an arguement about toxic potatoes.

[Dervag]

Originally Posted by Renrik

The reason the potato is a better crop than wheat in some European countries is this: You burn down a feild of wheat, it's gone. To kill off all the potatoes, you have to dig up every last one of the potatoes and then get rid of them. They're a hardier plant that way. It's easier to recover a potato patch from a war.

The other reason is that if your army is marching through the countryside stealing food from the peasants (in other words, "foraging,"), potatoes are harder to steal. Usually, an army is more likely to steal food than to simply destroy it- burning a wheatfield can take more effort than it sounds like, except under drought conditions. And soldiers have to eat too, so they're often just trying to take your food rather than bring up their own.

With potatoes, you can leave them in the ground and dig them out when you need them. Which means that if an army is marching past your farm and decides to "requisition" your potatoes, they either have to dig them up themselves or sit around while you dig them up. Either way, it takes a long time.

Whereas if you make a living by growing grain, you have to have stored grain in a silo on hand to eat. Which means that an army, friendly or otherwise, can get some quick food by taking your grain and leaving you with nothing to eat. Since potatoes can't be stolen so easily for the same reason they can't be destroyed so easily, the peasants are more likely to have food available after the army marches past.

It's not just the vulnerability of the crops to destruction. It's the vulnerability of the harvest to theft, too. And since potatoes can be harvested on the spot instead of all at once, they're a lot less vulnerable that way.

[Frosty]

I think my PC's strong-hold will probably grow lots of potatos then