Re: Quiet or what?

In message <199508081913.MAA18066@????.org>  writes:
> I don't know about you, but I don't complain about a mailing list being
> empty without posting a new subject for discussion.
>
> A couple of new topics:
> How are the peasantry, the base of the economy handled in your Spelljammer
> universes?  Who grows the food, mines the metals, makes the clothes?  On
> the Spelljammer itself it seems that food is magicly produced in the gardens,
> but control of the gardens is a major political weapon for the lizard men.
>
>
> One element I'm introducing in my new campaign is that using magic like
> Plant Growth to insure high yields can tend to destroy common every day
> agricultural techniques for insuring high yields.  The priests may tend to
> discourage the use of fertilizer as a sign of lack of faith in their magic.
> Think of the destruction Dow Chemical did in selling fertilizer, they
> destroyed
> the old basis for managing crops as a tool to market their product.
>
>
> Are metals the basis for intersystem trade?  Is their bulk transport of
> produce and clothing?  Can an outpost be sustained entirely by imported
> shipments?
>
> Imagine a mining colony which mines an ore used in many magical items.
> They'd
> love to expand their operations, but the main limitation is a large enough
> food supply being shipped to them.  Imagine area where the prices of a day's
> meal is really high, a month's groundling's wages.
>
> Can priests create enough food to sustain them?  Can a society exist entirely
> on manna?  That is a lot of priests for only a few worshippers.  Do the gods
> demand a cut of the mining production?
>
> Michael Sandy

That's a good point, Sandy, but the gods would only allow such behaviour if it
was in line with their ethos, i.e., selling if you were a preist of commerce,
providing it free if you were a preist of healing or the home, maybe only if
there was a blight if you were a preist of agriculture.



:-) VOSS