Coins are boring

A while ago I mentioned that there are probably far fewer people in Ravenland than you think, and another Redditor complained that it’s hard to know what the world should feel like. I think this is clearly true, judging by official publications.

I’m going to use examples from the Book of Beasts because it’s what I’m reading at the moment, but I don’t mean this as a particular criticism of this book over others. I think the problem is endemic: supplement authors are writing extruded fantasy content with the serial numbers filed off, and a combination of word count limitation and lack of understanding about what makes Ravenland different is preventing them from writing truly interesting stuff.

The Missing Egg

The random encounter “The Missing Egg” (p. 126) says of a random monster egg “if taken to a nearby village it can be sold at a price of 2D6 silver coins”. If the PCs hang on to the egg, eventually it will hatch and angry mum will turn up.

I posited recently that in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Blood Mist, there just won’t (yet?) be a robust trade network between villages such that (1) you could find a buyer for a monster egg in a matter of days, or (2) failing that, there would be a nearby ruler with enough power and enterprise to mint coins that you could trust to keep their value even if you travelled a few dozen kilometres.

More importantly, though, selling the egg is boring! You get a random encounter, you steal a thing, you sell it for some coins, eventually you’ll get enough coins to buy an adamantium sword or mithril platemail. You barely paid attention to the McGuffin.

But if you’ve got an egg of uncertain provenance and you’re looking for a buyer, that opens up all sorts of possibilities!

Most obviously, you might want to sell the egg and be done with it, but maybe your buyer wants to wait until just before/after it hatches, (a) to be sure that it’s genuine, (b) to make a better ritual, (c) because they’re actually a secret society of egg-preservation working with the monster you stole it from etc. etc.

And there could be more than one potential buyer, with conflicting interests, all of which determine how the bidding war goes. If the price goes high enough, of course, some parties might decide that a solution to the law of supply and demand is to permanently reduce demand by killing one of the potential buyers.

That might mean that the PCs might need to temporarily protect the powerful creep who wants to sacrifice the fledgling drakewyrm as part of a ritual of summoning demons, even though they desperately want him to lose the auction. The reason is that they need the auction to drag on (ahem) long enough that the ancient elves they really want to buy the egg get their act together and decide to do something about it.

The Miserable Brewmaster

I’ve already given my players a random egg so I’m not going to run “The Missing Egg”; but I absolutely want to run “The Miserable Brewmaster”, where a master beer brewer has been robbed, of his kegs of beer but more importantly of his hops and other herbs, and his notes on how to brew all of them together.

The book suggests that bandits robbed him, and they’ll fight to the death to keep their loot (which doesn’t sound like any bandits I’ve ever read about - criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot, after all). If you defeat them, he’ll give you a keg and some money and go home.

Boring! Far more interesting is if the people who attacked him are from his own village, which has basically collapsed in recent years as the previous tyrant ruler died, or lost face as people travelled to other villages and realised that he was telling them lies, or the village’s economy was unsustainable regardless. The brewmaster has tried to flee with his recipes and some proof of what he can do, and most of the village wish him good luck, but some of the more vindictive or thirsty villagers have decided that they want one last go at his most excellent ale before they all probably die of starvation.

Or maybe the beer is so good that it qualifies as treasure from a dragon’s perspective? Or, hey, maybe random nearby demons want to understand how Ravenland mortals tick and they reckon getting drunk will help them understand?

Either way, the brewmaster can’t go home again, but maybe he’ll join you in your stronghold? Having not just beer but really good beer is a hugely important factor in attracting the skilled crafters and traders you need to make your stronghold truly special.

Great Serpent

Villagers are sacrificing a “terrified youngster […] one of the local sons or daughters every year to ensure good fishing for the coming season”.

What I want to know, right now, is whether this is sustainable. That tells you a huge amount about the society that commits to an annual ritual blood sacrifice like this, and any writer who ignores this aspect has ignored table stakes plot hooks.

(Back of the envelope reckoning: you’re talking about, on net, devoting a couple to churning out a baby every year that you’ll kill 10-15 years later; given the expected mortality rate of babies and the proportion of people in your village who can’t make babies because they’re too young or too old, this probably means that you’re growing at the rate of a village with about 10 fewer people than you. If the median population of a village is 30-40 this is a significant expense. Especially as you can expect that in the 10-20 years after the blood mist, villages and towns with favorable conditions will start to expand dramatically, either because they have access to resources that they couldn’t exploit because of the Bloodlings, and/or because they’ve acquired grateful immigrants from worse villages.)

Probably what the vignette author meant was that the village can afford to sacrifice one youngster every year indefinitely, because they’re already bumping up against how much food they can grow and hunt, and if they don’t kill someone every year, in years of famine the equivalent of one person per previous year of plenty will die anyway. Maybe during the blood mist that might have been true, but there’s plausibly more land that can be farmed or fished now, so maybe that changes things? Even if it doesn’t, young people who reckon they might be sacrifice candidates might be thinking about moving away, now that they can, and it turns out there are villages that don’t kill someone every year. If enough of them move, the sacrifices might not be viable any more.

And of course it’s possible that the population of the village has already been dropping, because of something else like a natural disaster or a disease or something, at which point there will be an increasing number of people starting to say “how about we try not killing the next generation of the village, see how that works?” (Especially if any previous ruler was foolish enough to write down e.g. “It is useful to sacrifice a villager to the sea serpent from time to time to encourage the others” and people find out.)

Hell, the sacrifice tradition might be an ancient one that was revived precisely because numbers were falling, and the elders got desperate. (Of course, the youngsters might think that the elders decided they were going to die anyway, so it’s basically a free play to sacrifice the young.)

Never ignore barter as a plot hook

More generally, asking “what are you willing to give me for this?” is an excellent revealer of people’s motives and character. “Money” is a conversation-ender.

“Money, but not the coins you prefer” at least invites the question “why these coins and not others?”

“You have no money that interests me, but fight off this pesky Gryphon and I’ll gladly give you five horses, because I’ll breed twice as many next year” is an offer you can reject, but come back to later, and much more interesting than “the ostler at the inn sells you five horses”.

“You’ll owe me” is either the beginning of a beautiful friendship or a terrible threat depending on who you’re talking to.

“Just do this one thing for me”… now that could be the beginning of a campaign.