Winter 2021 Update

Posted on December 13, 2021 by mario

Just popping in to give a brief update on where things are.

I’m not dead, just a little time-constrained with family obligations. But I’ve continued chipping away.

I’ve just finished extracting all of the facts and figures relating to the cost of travel, road carriage, and river carriage in “Travel in England in the Seventeenth Century” by Joan Parkes and “River Navigation in England: 1600-1750” by T.S. Willan.

In all, I managed to get nearly 600 distinct prices and figures out; my estimate would be that 80 percent are prices and the other 20 percent are distances or speeds. I’ve also got roughly 700 distinct “notes” (an example being “People travelled extensively by river in France, but almost not at all in England, 121-2” or “if a river was continuously navigated and free of obstructions, it was considered public, 22”). I plan on using the notes in “The Roleplayer’s Guide to the 17th Century” series; they’re meant to just serve as easily searchable things that I can come back to when I’m going to start working on that book in earnest.

Next on the agenda is to go through “The English Coasting Trade: 1600-1750”. After that I’ll take the prices and figures from these three books and format them in LaTeX. They’ll eventually make their way into both “3d6 Miscast Shillings” and “The Roleplayer’s Guide to the 17th Century”.

The current time frame for both of these books is “Time is Subjective”, but with that said, “3d6 Miscast Shillings” is approximately 95% complete, at least as far as the text itself goes. I still don’t feel like I have enough prices. While I have extensive sources for the prices of foodstuffs and carriage, it’s been difficult getting accurate market prices for weapons and armor (because this is the sort of thing that wasn’t usually for sale to regular folks).

As far as the “Hex Map Of Earth” project goes, it’s on an indefinite hiatus. With the current cost of shipping, it wouldn’t be feasible to have the maps printed and shipped, unless you want to pay three to five times as much for shipping alone. At the same time, I’m reconsidering the scope of the project and whether having them in print would be worthwhile or as useful as I had initially thought. I personally think a digital version of them would be much more useful, but I’m curious to hear from you all as to what you think (as that’s a much bigger endeavor).

Penitential advent, Mario

Tags

historical gaming, historical table-top role-playing games, historical random tables, history random tables, early modern period role-playing games, economic history role-playing games, prices and wages, prices, wages, prices in the seventeenth century, wages in the seventeenth century, prices and wages in the seventeenth century