Re: Lots of questions

world population c. 1500 A.D. was about 500 million with about 300 million
concentrated in europe, china, and india.  these are all self-sufficient
cultures importing only luxury goods, but with plenty of local redistribution
by waterborne trade (requiring warship fleets to defend them from pirates).
spelljamming cultures would import necessities and export their finished
products to any culture they could profit from dealing with.  in a campaign i
played in some time ago, one asteroid culture set on a volcanic asteroid
imported mostly foodstuffs, coal, and ores, and exported metalwares and
gemstones.  it was an economy that was well thought out and worked.
agriculture in spelljamming cultures depends entirely on spelljamming vessels
available for trade; exotic spices would be an excellent choice for trade,
but would reduce that culture to complete dependence on imported foodstuffs.
i cant imagine a spelljamming culture based on pastoralism or hunting, so
intensive agriculture is a must, with developed rice-growing reminiscent of
tang china being the best choice (assuming sufficient agri-tech, water, and
irrigation).  anyway, thats a lot of talk about separate spelljamming
cultures...realistically, most spelljamming cultures would be dominated by
groundling empires.  forgotten realms' toril space would probablym soon be
dominated by shou and acadia, being the only spelljamming cultures capable of
sustaining such an operation.

R.