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  • If you can afford to pay am army you can afford to pay the opposing side instead. And, many fine arguments abound for paying off potential invaders. It may be cheaper, and it may include paying them to go and attack somebody else.
    by ggm
  • sounds good
    by HybridSystem
  • acoup with yet another excellent blog
    by KylerAce
  • Awesome! I want to pretend to gut people, just like Attila the Hun...
    by johnea
  • I am designing a long term early edition d&d sandbox (Delving Deeper rules) and I have found this series and ACOUP’s other worldbuilding very helpful in shaping my thoughts and filling in the edges of procedurally generated stuff.
    by sklargh
  • I've just spent an hour reading these words, and am having my mind expanded much further than I expected.
    by manofmanysmiles
  • "a skilled blacksmith probably didn’t come from a farm and certainly isn’t going back to one."

    How certain is that really? I read a very niche, but very well researched book about local violin makers in my region, and there were hundreds, and that "didn't include the ones who merely made one or two fiddles as a project" according to the authors. All the people they listed did it as a side gig to their farming.

    People here had time they couldn't just sink into doing more farming and fishing. All primary industries have natural downtime. They very often spent that on specializing, often into useful things like cobbling, shipbuilding or carpentry, but also into less immediately useful things like making musical instruments or elaborate altar pieces for the churches. So what makes blacksmithing so special a guy who learned it would never "go back to a farm"?

    by vintermann

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