[OSSR]The Crusades Campaign Sourcebook

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Username17
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Post by Username17 »

Tussock: No. The things you are saying are so insane that I actually don't even know where to begin. I think I should probably begin with the underlying premises of your bizarre taxation argument. Even getting into specifics of what taxes actually were in different times and places isn't even relevant because your underlying assumptions are so out in crazy land that I feel like we aren't even speaking the same language.
Tussock wrote:30% tax vs 0% tax.
See: this is totally false. But it doesn't matter, because it's obviously predicated on a whole lot of other ideas about how societies operate and grow that are also false that we sort of have to go to a more fundamental level of discourse. I actually have no idea why you'd think that a zero tax rate or even a low tax rate would be a sign of things being better. In the real world, shitty places have low tax rates and good places have high tax rates. This is both a cause and an effect: the causation flows both from better places giving rise to higher tax rates and to higher taxes giving rise to better places.

If you think about the extreme cases, the correlation is obvious: the Scandinavian socialist paradises that are consistently rated the best places on Earth have a total tax burden so high that the government's spending accounts for about half the economy; while in a Mad Max-style or zombie infested post-apocalyptic wasteland with no government you actually pay zero taxes, which is the lowest a tax burden can be.

But sure, let's walk you through the logic. Imagine for the moment that government is run by greedy bastards who want all your money. Crazy, right? Now given that scenario, what would they set the tax rate to? The highest amount people could pay, right? And how much can people pay if they are richer or poorer? More and less, respectively. If you're making exactly enough to feed yourself, the maximum tax rate you could pay and not starve is 0%. But if you are making twice as much as you need to live, you could pay a tax rate of up to 50% and still not starve. Peoples' productivity and ability to produce surplus acts as a cap for how high taxes can be.

But now let's look at it the other way: Taxes don't make you poorer. Sure, they take wealth away from the singular you, but the collective you (y'all, if you have the right dialect of English) is unaffected. Because the government that is receiving the wealth is also part of your society. It's just a wealth transfer within the community, nothing has actually been lost. If you have to give some of the wealth you would have spent to the government and then they spend it instead, GDP is unaffected. The number of silver pennies or whatever that are being spent on end use items is the same. Whether taxes are 0% or 70% or somewhere in between, the effects on total wealth are always zero.

But it's actually better than that, especially back in the bad old days when there weren't a lot of non-governmental large firms. Bulk discounts are totally a thing. Capital investment is a thing too. It is more efficient to contribute to a single large project than it is to have a bunch of tiny projects. It's better to build an aqueduct than to have a lot of people haul buckets of water from the lake for their own use. Even though the total spent wealth may be the same, the efficiency of large scale production is simply better than the efficiency of small scale production. Having a large amount of taxing and spending means that more is being gotten for the money (for example: how the United States spends twice as much on their healthcare as other industrialized countries for the same outcomes because the US doesn't have bulk rate benefits that other countries enjoy).

And you know what? It's better than that. Because taxes are paid out of surpluses, which fucking peasants are much more likely to squander or hoard than they are to spend or invest. So in very real terms, taxing and spending in an agrarian economy makes your society wealthier in an absolute sense. You're taking wealth that would be spent at a low rate and spending it at a higher rate. Even if you just spend the tax incomes on hiring dancers and flute girls for your lavish parties, that's still economically stimulatory compared to just letting farmers leave their surpluses in a pile. At the very least it means that sexy ladies in your empire get to eat and practice dancing instead of starving or poking seeds into the ground. And that's awesome.

You and TNAMP both are subscribing to bizarre libertarian fantasy world where being a subsistence farming hermit is a preferred state rather than the reality in which we have societies and economies for fucking reasons.

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Post by Laertes »

Frank Trollman wrote:And you know what? It's better than that. Because taxes are paid out of surpluses, which fucking peasants are much more likely to squander or hoard than they are to spend or invest. So in very real terms, taxing and spending in an agrarian economy makes your society wealthier in an absolute sense. You're taking wealth that would be spent at a low rate and spending it at a higher rate. Even if you just spend the tax incomes on hiring dancers and flute girls for your lavish parties, that's still economically stimulatory compared to just letting farmers leave their surpluses in a pile. At the very least it means that sexy ladies in your empire get to eat and practice dancing instead of starving or poking seeds into the ground. And that's awesome.
This is only true in the special case where taxes are being spent or reinvested in the same place as they're raised. Empires don't do this; they tend to centralise capital or to expend it in prestige or military projects. In places like Egypt or Asia (by which we mean the western coastal lowlands of Anatolia) the Roman empire was simply there to extract wealth and didn't add much infrastructure. As a result those provinces did pretty badly under Roman rule, compared to their earlier Diadochi periods.

Where the Romans did expend that capital - in road networks along the frontiers and the inland provinces, in infrastructure in the dirt-poor Celtic parts of the empire, and in enormous prestige projects in Rome, Constantinople and Athens - they did add a lot of stuff. But the people of the more developed places that Rome conquered were very much not better off as a result of the Roman empire.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

The major issue I'm having is that NAMP is simultaneously discussing 'the Empire' as a political unit, but treating 'local regions' as separate for his purpose. We're not talking about the US versus Zambia or even Italy versus Zambia - we're talking about areas that share a political organization.

It's more like we're talking about California and West Virginia - they're both organized under the same overarching political structure. For a discussion of 'Economy' whether a transaction occurs in California or West Virginia, it still goes into the GDP of the United States.

If your argument was that trade from outside the Empire was hurting the Imperial Economy, that would at least make consistent sense, but arguing htat trade inside the Empire is hurting the Imperial Economy is self-contradictory.

If you want to make your argument that trade inside the Empire benefitted some locations more than other locations, I could accept that, but you have to give up 'the Empire' as your political structure to explain that in a meaningful way.

Outside of that, let's talk about 'trade'. The general idea is that you take a product that you have a surplus of, and you send it to someone that will give you something you don't have enough of. It doesn't matter what it is - it only matters that you have more than enough of it for your own needs. Extra food will rot, gold is useless if you don't spend it. Some surplus can be stored for later times or more favorable trade conditions, but ultimately, if you don't trade your surplus away, it doesn't benefit you in any way.

The idea that you can be 'completely self-sufficient' is also false. Even if you produce all of your 'basic needs', you will move on to wanting 'luxury goods'. Europeans didn't need spices to survive, they needed them to make their food taste better. If I'm able to produce enough food to survive, I'm still going to trade some of my extra wheat for some pisachios from California - because they're awesome and they have extra. Even if we are only discussing 'essentials to life', trade can and will exist - because some regions will be better at producing some goods than others, and it is more efficient to trade between an area of efficient production and inefficient production than to have every region try to produce everything itself. This increased efficiency is what leads to an increased standard of living.

Going back to Zambia, you have to recognize that political boundaries limit the free movement of people. Generally, during the Roman period, people were generally free to move within the Empire. If there are no cloth producing jobs because someone else has created more efficient production methods, you have the option of participating in a new industry or moving to another region. That said, you will recognize that 'increased efficiency' WILL lead to a loss of production jobs. If 100 people were previously making clothing, and now 10 people make all the clothing, you have 90 people that will need new jobs.

When we talk about the Roman and the Medieval period, though, we're not talking about major changes in the means of production. Most crafts were local because there were few ways to establish a local competitive advantage in that field - while you might ship WOOL, you wouldn't be as likely to ship WOOL CLOTHING - bulk shipments of raw materials used for local production make more sense. In the modern era with mechanized production, that has changed.

Long story short, trade within the Empire, by definition, is good for the Empire. Trade within the Empire may benefit regions within the Empire more or less, but you have to shift your evaluative framework to even begin to make that claim. Ultimately, specialization allows for increased efficiency which allows for an increased standard of living. Self-sufficiency the way you're using it is itself contradictory because no matter what political framework you choose, some portion of it will be more or less than self-sufficient. Chicago, as a political unit, is not self-sufficient. The United States, as a political unit, is not self-sufficient (though perhaps it could be) - but even if it WERE, that would be analogous to the Empire and some regions would be better off than others. You should try to make your point without requiring constant shifts in framework.
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Post by name_here »

tussock wrote: The Plague of Justinian did not spread to the new states. It's specifically a product of the big Romanised cities with massive grain imports. The Eastern empire used the old system of government and continued to have Plagues, the West used a new one and did not.
Except it spread to fucking Britain.
High Middle Ages tax systems are ludicrous because it's the peak of the population boom. People had nowhere to go to get away from that shit, local lords grew ridiculously powerful as judge and lawmaker, and it just got worse until the plagues set in again and they dropped enough population to justify massive political reform, higher wages, and lower taxes. Earlier "tax" systems are the number of troops you have to provide based on the amount of land you're given to rule over.
That was an early tenth century document from a manor near Paris.

Here, have another one.
Charlemange's General Capitulary of the [i wrote:Missi[/i], 802]8. That no one shall presume to impede at all in any way a ban or command of the lord emperor, or to daly with his work or to impede or to lessen or in any way to act contrary to his will or commands. And that no one shall dare to neglect to pay his dues or tax.
Last edited by name_here on Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Were the other green books any good? Or did they snort nutmeg, too?

On one hand, I can't think of a more misguided project than covering the Crusades in a <100 page book so they're pretty much guaranteed to do better. On the other hand, it's still a D&D game.
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In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Dean »

The Viking Sourcebook one was the best. The Celtic one was not good but not terrible and then everything after that was, in my memory, unusable.

One of the funniest parts of the green books and AD&D in general was that basically every book contained a new kind of Raging Barbarian. Complete Fighter, Complete Priest, Complete Druid, Complete Dwarf, Viking Sourcebook, and the Celtic Sourcebook all contained different version of some sort of Barbarian with different rules for some sort of Rage that Barbarian could go into.
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Post by tussock »

Heh, 2nd edition, where you don't need a class for Barbarians because any Fighter or Rogue or Cleric can be a "barbarian" (or "assassin", or "thief", no wait, you do need a thief class because Dex).

Also, here are fifty kits for your Barbarian Fighters, Rogues, and Clerics in our splatbooks (don't forget the humanoids book, it's full of them). Barbarian proficiencies and alternate proficiency sets for your core classes. And later, also a couple of Barbarian classes, and at least five takes on a Barbarian Cleric class. Plus some different optional rules for making "barbarian" characters without any of that.

Not all of them can rage, but usually when they do it's very bad for the other PCs. Lovely edition, really. You can sort of see how 3e ended up so verbose trying to cover all that territory. Definitely see why it's got a Barbarian class.
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Post by TiaC »

So, how many of them can you fit on one character?
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Post by Dean »

At most in one man I think you could be a multiclassed Berzerker/Barbarian Priest who has "Rage" and can cast "Incite Rage" on himself which makes him go into a different kind of rage.

Although through Human Dual classing it's possible that you could be all of them one after another and by the end you'd have 6 different kinds of rage on your character sheet.
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Post by Judging__Eagle »

It should be noted that the Complete Fighter's Handbooks "Barbarian" was more about a dude who got totally boned for wearing any armour that was remotely modern, basically anything that wasn't fur (how the fuck fur armour works is for the gods to explain, because fur armour wasn't written in the Comp. Fighter's HB; but useless rules on piecemeal and bone armour were) (my bad, confused this kit with the "Savage" kit). The CFHB "Barbarian" was basically Conan; their special thing was they had a weird +3 modifier to initial attitude rolls; that could turn into -3 if you didn't roll high enough.

The class kit that granted "rage" powers was the Comp. Fighter's HBs Berzerker. they get a +3 (totally non-magical) reaction adjustment for meeting other people who also have Berzerkers in their population; even if they're your enemies; and don't know you're a berserker, because not-magic?

The rules for the "berserk" of the CFHB "Berzerker" are longer than the Barbarian's entire write-up; summarized:

[*]It takes a "combat round" to go berzerk (i.e. 60 seconds, or 10 combat turns; so none of this "damage lets you auto-rage" stuff we saw in 3e)
[*]Blanket immunity to a bunch of mind affecting spells: charm person, friends (so you can totally kill joey and chandler and loot their foosball table), hypnotism, sleep, irritation (going berzerk is great when your boots are chafing I guess), ray of enfeeblement, scare, geas (suck it Cuchulain!). Plus the cleric spells: command, charm person or mammal (unless you're not a mammal Berzerker, in which case you may be totally out of luck? then again, humans are hyper-evolved snakes in D&D land), entrall, cloak of bravery & symbol.
[*]A +4 bonus against Tasha's uncontrollable hideous laughter, hold person, charm monster, confustion; and the cleric spells: hold person & hold animal
[*]Blanket immunity to the emotion spell; except for fear (which ends the berserk); the fear spell has the same effect; being charmed doesn't end your rage, or even make you obey them, but does adds the caster to your allies
[*]No real protection vs finger of death (you take the 2d8+1 damage after your berserk ends)
[*]Immune to KO results from punching & wrestling; half damage from bare-handed attacks
[*]Bonus of +1 to attack, +3 to damage, and +5 hp

Penalties:
[*]-3 reaction penalty from everyone else who doesn't have Berserkers in their population. Somehow all NPCs have Detect Berzerker as an always-on non-magic ability; no it doesn't make sense to me either.

[*]The DM has to know your HP upon entering Berserk; and then has to black-box that data until you leave that state; giving you verbal hints as to how much damage you've taken
[*]No ranged combat while berserk
[*]have to auto-fight nearest enemies; no tactics for you
[*]Can't take cover from missile attacks
[*]Allies touching you force you to make Int checks to not mentally classify them as enemies
[*]Temporarily unaffected (until the berserk wears off at least) by: bless, CLW, aid, CSW, CCW, heal, regenerate (wtf?) and wither
[*]Taunt spell auto-works on you
On Berserk end:
[*]lose those +5 hp I mentioned earlier; and don't forget 0 HP = death
[*]collapse from exhaustion, as if Ray of Enfeeblement had hit you; for one round for every round you were berserk
[*]All spells that you were ignoring now dogpile you; but healing hits last, if you survived

Basically it's a way to easily get your character killed, for a tiny combat bonus; that prevents much safer bonuses (like Bless) from affecting you.

Even when I had no concept about character optimization in the 1990's, I thought this class kit was pretty bad. Now I'm just sure of it.
Last edited by Judging__Eagle on Thu Nov 06, 2014 11:43 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Post by Night Goat »

Judging__Eagle wrote:then again, humans are hyper-evolved snakes in D&D land
What?
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Post by TiaC »

Night Goat wrote:
Judging__Eagle wrote:then again, humans are hyper-evolved snakes in D&D land
What?
I think it's from the yuan-ti fluff.
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Post by schpeelah »

Night Goat wrote:What?
It's Frank's idea.
FrankTrollman wrote:Humans, and all hominids in D&D-land are hyper-evolved snakes. Not only are Yuan-Ti in the D&D hominid family (along with Elves, Orcs, and Ogres, but not Goblins or Dwarves), but if you hit Humans with "devolution magic" they turn into Ophidians.

In the simple Chakra balance model, all creatures have the same number of Chakra whether they are Beholders or Halflings. In the level-based Chakra balance model, creatures have a number of Chakra set by their power level - meaning that a Beholder has more Chakra than a young Halfling, even if more of those Chakra are full and they have less "open" Chakra. Creatures like Frost Giants would probably have more Open Chakra than basic Humans in the level-based model because they only have a couple Chakra filled with their racial badassery and come into adulthood with a much higher power level than "1."

From a "why were hominids created?" standpoint, I'm pretty sure that the answer is that Humans are a failed experiment to make a slave race too weak to rebel. From an appearance standpoint, hominids are freaky chimerae with the heads of Naga and the arms of Ophidians. In the time before the development of sorcery and enchanting, Humans didn't have inherent Incarnum and had no magic powers at all. Once they learned to extract power from astral diamonds and create mix-n-match magic items, they were very versatile - but as originally created they were very weak indeed.
Ophidians (Serpent Kingdoms):
Image
The Ophidians first came into being in the Monster Manual 2 back in 1983. They were short, thick bodied snakes with human arms sticking off the sides. They also had a weird venomous bite that would cause humans and related creatures to slowly turn into Ophidians and other creatures to die. Later books referred to this process as "degeneration" or "devolution." I think the important thing to take away is that Gygax often wrote up a couple of variations on the same theme - like the Drow and the Derro. And so it is that in the Monster Manual 2, Gygax wrote up two races of degenerate snake men who were once Human. Seriously: the Yuan-Ti are from the same book.

Now, some of that might be simple hedging. Yuan-Ti got their real monster entry in Gygax's Monster Manual 2, but they got their first writeup in the adventure Dwellers of the Forbidden City by Zeb Cook. So this might be a She Hulk thing, where Gygax was writing his own degenerate snake men who were once Human in case Zeb ever took control of the Yuan Ti brand back from TSR (oh, the irony).

It's just one of those weird things about D&D-land. Apparently if you degenerate Humans, they turn into snake people. I assume this applies to all the various people who are closely related to Humans like the Elves, Orcs, Ogres, Azurin, Gith, Illumians, Aventi, Tieflings, and so on. All of those things breed true with Humans and are closely related to Humans, so I'm guessing that when they "degenerate" they also turn "back" into snakes.

Of course, not everything is related to Humans. After the big "Goblinoid" split in 3rd edition (when Goblins stopped being related to Orcs and by obvious extension - to Humans), there is a quite sizable number of races that are all related to each other yet not at all related to Humans. These are the Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Snow Goblins, Fire Goblins, Bhukas, Amitok, Vril, Norkers, Vaetti, Bakemono, Dekanters, Varag, Forest Kith, Tasloi, Koalinths, Blues, and so on. Those are all Goblinids rather than Hominids. And since the more "degenerate" of them (such as Tasloi and Varag) are long armed knuckle draggers, I think these guys actually did evolve from the local apes.
Last edited by schpeelah on Sun Nov 09, 2014 11:53 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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