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For the Love of Mist - Out of Character Discussions

6/13/18 - John

I have long considered magic important to the settlement of land for Player characters. The spell 'Dig' may be essential for improving the land that we acquired in the swamps but the construction guidelines take into account general spell abilities so there will be some discussion on how to incorporate specific spells into the generic building guide.

I do have a copy of a spreadsheet for the building cost, just let me know where to put it.

I also want to confirm if the farming is the same inside the mist and out as well as usable land for farming. We have to check all our priests because there are spells that will help again depending how we incorporate specific role-playing casting with general long term planning.

Farming is not the same in The Mist but spells will not help that in the long term. The Mist applies negatives to the Farm Profitability chart. If you have priests that can help with Plant sphere spells etc. that will be good. But as it says all those things are taken into account for the overall averages of: For ease of game play, an average production to support a population of non-farmers works out to the following. With one square mile to work (640 acres) a community of 35 people can provide enough surpluses to allow 4 non-farm workers to live there. Each person farming (ages <7 is 0 worker, 7-11 is ˝ worker, 12> is 1 worker) contributes 2.8% to the yield.

The amount of usable land will be: So with 10 square miles of the Royal Grant you can farm about 9 square miles. That means 36 non-farmers can be supported by the 315 farmers that need to be attracted to work the land. You currently are at 25-28 people in your group.

So buildings need to be worked on for those 351 people that can be expected to have a permanent residence in these new lands.

The rules for building already take into account level, spell levels and availability, magic items etc. A medium wooden building is 40 by 20 for 800 square feet and takes 12 man weeks to build.

Quick guesstimate is Lisa's three characters combine to about 30 man weeks worth of building. So in one week they can build two houses that can have as many as three or four rooms each, the ability to house 4-8 workers depending on ages, etc. So average 6 people per building means 52 medium wooden buildings to house your 315 farmers. So that would take Branwyn, Indigo and Howard about 26 weeks to build enough houses for the farmers. That does not include barns, smithy, an inn, etc. Oh and no place for all the characters to live yet either.

Costs are something to consider also. Character levels help on time but not for pricing. For those 52 medium wooden buildings at 60 GP each equals 3,120 plus if you want to put wood floors in them instead of living on dirt that would be an additional 30 GP for roughly 3,150 GP for basic farm houses in a territory like this.

Things to work out more details on:

Remember to check Burst of Building for details on Branwyn's Tower, with lab, library, etc. and the Church of the Defending Mage information. Mario is working on something for the church. Having a bit more of a write up for the Jistille Estates will help with organizing what you want to do with Branwyn's new estate.

12/17 John

I want to start schedule (not a plan) so we can start to see the time frame we are expecting, but having a list of things to do (still not a plan) is the first step

1) Getting home - mostly clicking and the clock does not start till we get home 2) Clear land - Before we build, we must inspect, drive away or make friends with anyone already there. I imagine not a set amount of time 3) Build - Once we work out the details we will have a minimum but expect longer as we are building in a swamp. (We want to do this to cap off XP before training or else we train, build, get more xp and want to train more) 4) Training and traveling (Not a lot of variable but if we need to coordinate who is doing what, ie Miranda can't train Kel in Swimming when she is in Loosend and Kel is in Branwynville)

12/30 Lisa

We will likely be talking building the estate this coming week, so I thought I would throw some stuff out there to ponder.

We have to name it. I’ve been playing around with different names. How does Dragon Fen sound?

Then there is the matter of costs and what people want. Before we got an infusion of 250,000 gp, I was thinking we would have to sell everything we owned to build anything. And I’m prepared to do that even with this extra cash. A lot of stuff in the party pack has been sitting around in there from before most of the current players even came on board. My thought is that if we haven’t used it by now, we might as well sell it.

Things we have to pay for:

Barge:

  • I would like to get the barge for the gypsies. It would free them from Ghostwood and would be a goodwill gesture. Objections?

Training:

Estate Building:

  • Land Clearing – mandatory, no clue on costs
  • Farms & Related Structures – also mandatory, no clue on costs
  • Branwyn Family Residence – I’ll put my thoughts together and will post later on this.
  • Ilero’s Thief Guild – includes a residence for him and Shur & Marisu or build separately together/apart?
  • Kayugan Shrine/Church – for Kenna & Snee, residence attached? Does Spring want this?
  • Hoffman/Miranda/Foto – 2 story Carpentry shop with residence on 2nd floor – Foto lives there too?
  • Hugh/Neith/Mercy – how do they want to situate themselves?
  • Kel & Shi – how do they want to situate themselves?
  • Indigo & Penelope (if she sticks around) – still thinking of leaving them at Orchard House
  • Howard & Johan – likely also split between Orchard House and Branwyn’s Tower at Jistille.
  • Ryan’s new character??
  • Optional things if we have any cash left – tavern, other guilds, markets, etc.

1/2/19 Carissa

Dragon Fen sounds nice (and I haven't any other ideas), and yes please to the barge (reason Thistle brought it up).

I'm mostly stepping back from building. Not really my forte (and all that maths!), but I would imagine some kind of treehouse for Kel and Shi with yard and den underneath for the wolves? Or at least den. Ideas I come up with for them hits a snag at being in the Mist. How can you grow awesome cool trees and such with limited sunlight? :)

Once things are agreed upon and build, I can contribute a little more in terms of world-building if wanted, like possible goods that can be sold at the market, what types of farms are around, ect. ect.

As for training, added link to the training plan to remind people who've kept up with it. Your estimate sounds about right when balancing the free skills (swimming, magic cooking?) versus all the slots now available after leveling for others (e.g. Shi has two slots, but one will likely be swimming).

1/2/19 John

Yes to bardge / we should build single family homes in groups of four for the farmers / I am hoping to find a natural area more suitable for Foto when we explore, but we need to budget something. If nothing else,he can be the blacksmith with a similar set up to Hoffman but it should be a stone building. /

Copied to and continues on Building Dragon Fen - Out of Character

After Building Dragon Fen

We are almost wrapped up with all of the building. The next full story arc that I had planned was for a first scouting mission for the Guild. Between Kenna, Shi and Branwyn there are lots of opportunities to need some ingredient or item. Having a person or five with a couple of guild members will be some nice fun adventures. There is also going to be an expeditions including Skull Church when people want to head in that direction, visiting Hell, a trip into Doeskin and a couple of surprises.

It is time to discuss how Dragon Fen evolves and expands. Now that Skull Church is going to be part of the Estate Branwyn has picked Hoffman to be in residence there. There is also the Church of Otterville, the Valoris Fenorian Solonor, and the Tieran Guild to flesh out more as we want to have a full description that gives everyone a space in the Estate.

Spring (and Mario?) will want to develop the church more. I also would like it to work with the Church of the Defending Mage in the Jistille Estates.

Carissa (and perhaps Mario?) will want to work on their sanctuary.

TMO will want to do some descriptions of the guild, and the members there. Hoffman might find a henchman there.

John will have Skull Church to organize.

Lisa will have the challenge of tying things together and working out the grand concepts for how Dragon Fen evolves.

Repeating here from else where for ease of reading:

As a refresher also on the local area under consideration. The Craniate Wastes contain both the Jistille Estates and Dragon Fen. You are very friendly with Jistille. To the north of that lies the Quelcon Estates (where Black Cloak is from), to your west just past Redfern Lake is the Medipop Estates. The enormous Mosskin Estates loom between both of those. All three are neutral at the moment. To the east across trackless swamps is the Eustace Estates, an old friend is working on rebuilding that Estate after the Civil War. Then to the southeast are the Bopel Estates which are not friendly to your side. A reminder You can download Google Earth plug-in here to have all these locations and distances available.

Also there is still space around the Wastes for small Estates that you are not familiar with or to create new holdings.