This is a rather long follow-up, and although it is in part a point-by-point criticism of J.M. Ivler's article, it isn't meant unkindly. All of us have a tendency, I think, to project our modern life backwards. A book I've been reading written in 1745 wonders why the Ancient Britons didn't use iron weapons, and concludes that they worshiped Bronze [Hearn1745].

I have tried to add some details of mediaeval (loosely -- 11th C. through to early 16th C.) England and Europe, and a few notes about the 17th C. Many things we take for granted, such as newspapers, banks, and shops, simply didn't exist. [OK, there were shops, but not in any modern sense; I can post a list of shop signs (before writing) if you ask me]. In 1611 England had a population of roughly 4 million people. More than 80% of these lived in the country. This means that you were never more than an hour's walk from the nearest village or town, except in a few specific areas such as Wales or Scotland :-) :-), or parts of Sherwood or the New Forest.

London had a late-mediaeval population approaching 50,000, the only English city approaching some of the greater continental cities. York had 8000 inhabitants, and a few larger country towns had as many as 1000 inhabitants. An average country town in the 1520s in southern or central England had a population of five or six hundred, not more. [Platt1976] This isn't at all like North America, where there are vast tracts of country-side essentially uninhabited.

Keep in mind that the old early-warning system of lighting beacons on hill-tops to warn of invasion worked only because there is a line of sight from village to village stretching right across England. Later church bells were used, and you can generally just hear the bells of the next village in the distance. More on bells later.

Now to the article...

J.M. Ivler ([i--l--r] at [vxs.mdcbbs.com]) had some good points writing about NPCs. To me (English), it's all very American, which is fine if that's what you want; if you want to be European-Mediaeval, there are some changes to make.

>Small village
>     Farmers
>     Smiths
>     Housewives [no wenches - or a very few]
>     Town sheriff [just 1]
>     General store owners

A small village in England, even as late as the start of the 16th C., had really ver few people, and certainly no shops as we think of them. There wasn't a 'corner shop, open all hours', Ronnie Barker notwithstanding :-), and there wasn't a take-out pizza place (and still isn't for the most part).

>in a village of this size the local pub was a B&B that served ale...

Hmmm... B&B is also modern. Inns existed throughout Europe, however, from very early days, and they served the dual function of an overnight rest for travellers and a change of horses. Larger towns had stables -- such as Hobson's, where one always had to take the first horse in the queue, which gave us the phrase 'Hobson's choice'.

Instead of a store there would be a small market perhaps once or twice a week, or less often if there were less than (say) 300 people in the village.

If you wanted to buy a carefully-crafted iron spike (goodness knows why), you went to the local blacksmith and asked him for one, and if necessary he made it on the spot. No factories, warehouses only really for imported goods (or exports at a harbour), few shops.

North Americans should note that a market in Britain and most or all of Europe was and is not at all like the markets that seem to be here in Canada; if I wanted to buy a carpet, or new shoes, or a clock, or fresh fish, or meat, or any kind of food, or perhaps a second-hand [used] book, or a lamp-shade, I'd go to the market, and there would almost certainly be a stall selling it. Sort of like an open-air miniature shopping mall. Markets in England at least were never really just for food.

>Village
>     Tradesmen
>     Store owners
>     Some wenches
>     Local guard [sheriff and 3-4 locals who know how to use weapons]
>     Storehouse owners
>     Money transaction
No.
>     Newspaper (weekly postings of notices)
No.
>     Possible: some "passers-through" (parties like the gamers)
>     Possible: a "retired" character or two
>     Smiths

Until the 16th century even the Bible was not available in English outside a few monasteries. And most people couldn't read. The first newspapers didn't really appear until the 18th century, with the Tatler, Spectator, Idler, etc., and their audience was those who had been to private schools, or to fee-paying, privately-run 'public' schools (e.g. Eton, Christ's Hospital).

So if we predate the gun, we predate newspapers. Broadsides were printed a little earlier -- essentially one-page news sheets, but terribly biased.

>A village is filled with activity throughout the day, but as night falls,
>most of the people go home. There may be a "pub" all it's own, and then some
>B&Bs and maybe even a nice "hotel" of sorts, if the village is large enough.

If it has an hotel it is probably a town. A village may well have more than one inn if it is on a major road -- it's common to see pairs of inns along the older A-raods in England to this day. No hotels.

>Most of the "girls" in town are "good" girls and there is usually a
>central church (of sorts) or two, that try to make sure that people like
>you don't hang around for too long :-).

Almost every village by the 12th Century or so had a church. Just one [but see below]. It was usually stone, and fortified. Later, Yew trees were grown in the churchyard for making bows. Why in the churchyard? Because the berries are poisonous, and sheep don't graze in the churchyard. It was one of the few fenced areas. It also meant that the yew-wood was convenient if the church was attacked.

Church bells welcomed the release of John McCarthy in London yesterday, I am told, and they rang unmuffled for the first time in five years on VE day, my parents recall. In earlier days they rang out in times of danger, and tolled the passing hours. Churches and Church bells are part of England -- more so than in continental Europe because in England there's a church every three, four or five miles. More on that later.

Of course, any European town has its church bells aplenty.

Money transactions? Well, in early times peasants generally didn't have a great deal of money, if they were allowed any at all, and didn't have anywhere to spend it if they did have any, as they weren't allowed out of the village bounds. You still meet people in England who have never been out of the village where they were raised. They went to the village school, left at fourteen, and did whatever they did until they retired, right there. Later on, banks started to appear in the towns, but only for freemen (although by then the term was less important) and for the emerging Middle Class. The AD&D fiction of gold coins is no more than that for the Common Man. [sorry, no Clapham Omnibus in the Middle Ages :-)].

Good girls? The Middle Ages *far* predates the Puritans that so affected North America. Forget it. Why do you think syphili spread so quickly? See this month's Scientific American for a book review on this subject, by the way.

>Small town
>     Tradesmen
>     Store owners
>     Wenches
>     Landholders
>     Police/Garrison          -- only after Robert Peel!
[!!]
>     Warehousing              -- only after industrialisation, or at a harbour
[warehousing?]
>     Banks                    -- not until the 17th or 18th C. really
>     Guild halls
>     Smiths
>     Peasants
[peasants]
>     Retired "Adventurers"

>A small town has some commerce. It tends to interact more with the "outside"
>world and has various sorts of accomodations for travelers. In many cases,
>these towns are on well traveled roads and river/waterways. A small town
>usually has a number of churches, but they are not as "powerful" as those in
>the villages.

That's mostly OK...

>Landowners in small towns tend to own the farms around the town and have
>help that is hired in. In some cases the "help" live in the city, but
>most of the help is kept on the property of the landholders. A small
>town also has some organized "police" force that attempts to keep order.

"Police" is OK, although in Rural England it was the foresters as often as not. A small town has maybe 300 people, and is to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from a large village. Either could have walled defences.

Warehouses unlikely unless they are barns for hay or corn [by which I mean oats or barley, of course, not the American sweet-corn or Maize]. Tithe barns were used for collecting taxes in kind -- i.e. in produce, not money. Some of the oldest buildings in England are tithe barns.

A town will probably have a few tradesmen. The idea of making things in one place and then as a matter of routine selling them elsewhere was largely unknown, although as the wool trade gathered momentum that began to change.

Almost all agricultural land was held by the local nobility, either directly or for the King or another noble. This is in fact still true today in England, although not everyone is aware of that. For example, houses are generally built on leased land. I used to pay about L7 (UK$14) a year 'ground rent' for my house.

>Town
>     Tradesmen
>     Store owners             -- not usually; they rented them.
>     Wenches                  -- and boys too in equal proportion :-)
>     Landholders
>     Police/Garrison
>     Warehousing              -- no
>     Banks                    -- no
>     Guild halls
>     Smiths
>     Peasants
>     Retired "Adventurers"

>While most of the characters are the same, these tend to be "bigger". The
>concept is "more of the same". Where you have 2 silversmiths in a small
>town, in a town there may be 5 or 6.

That'd be a lot.

>There may be one armorer in a small town who also
>made all the weapons, in a town there would be a swordsmith, and armorer, a
>bowsman [fletcher? bowyer?], etc.

Very unlikely. Only a city would have all of those in one place.

>There is also a major increase in the number of pubs and evening
>entertainment establishments. One key sign that you are in a Town is that the
>landholders no longer keep the workers on the land, but the workers are
>living "in town" and come to work and go back to town at the end of the day.

This was true in Europe, not really in England.

>Towns have a number of travelers as they are situated on main crossroads
>and thoroughfares.

Yes.

>City
>     Tradesmen
>     Store owners
>     Wenches
>     Landholders
>     Police/Garrison
>     Warehousing
>     Banks                     -- maybe, finally!
>     Guild halls
>     Smiths
>     Peasants
>     Retired "Adventurers"
>     Political Structure       -- you get this even in a village.
>     Other "Adventurers"

>A city is a city, at this point, most of the players have been defined.
>Cities just take the town concept and expand upon it. Cities are usually
>well defined.

If by that you mean that there is a strict definition of a city -- yes. It has separate laws applying to it, has more political freedom, is entitled to a bishop and a cathedral, and so forth.

Excavations have made it clear that mediaeval cities had suburbs, and indeed John Leyland mentions them [Leyland1511], and John Speed [Speed1611] drew some.

>They have classes of "housing" and most have [ghettos] of sorts. Costs
>[of] being in the city are much higher than anywhere else, the police are
>ineffective in the poorer neighborhoods. Landowners here generally own
>buildings, not farmland, and most farming is done well away from the city.

It would be wrong to overemphasise this. Even in London there were large areas of green common grazing land, and you can still walk from the centre of York to a farm in under an hour (e.g. along the A64, or towards the University).

>In fact, many cities rely almost completely on farm imports (which is one
>of the reasons that the expenses soar, and explains the poverty too).

The premise is correct, but the conclusion doesn't follow. There are poor people through social inequality -- greed, in other words. Death by starvation was common throughout Europe in town and country alike. Poverty is taken for granted as a necessary evil even in the Bible.

>Now, we have defined quite a few NPC types. These are the type of people
>that you run into every day. When you go to a store, and deal with a clerk,
>that is your NPC. The clerk didn't carry a weapon, and most of the NPCs
>don't either (well, in many cases, a knife is carried, it is more of a
>"tool" than a weapon).

Here I can heartily agree. Remember also that 'peasants' were not allowed to carry or own weapons.

>Running into other adventuring parties is infrequent in small places, but
>more frequent in larger places. Smaller places have a sense of community,
>people are on a first name basis, everyone knows one another. Larger places
>have none of that. Neighborhoods generally exist in small towns, but as the
>town goes, it loses touch with its people (or they lose touch with each
>other) and by the time they become a city, most people don't even know
>their neighbors.

This is really truer of modern cities than older ones, although to some extent I'm sure it was the case in London or York.

>One key difference is the fact that in a small village, the landowners are
>the farmers, but as the size of the town increses, they become landowners
>and have staff hired to do the farming.

Completely untrue in England and Europe. Not even true today.

>Castles and such are generally not [built] remotely, but are built to
>overlook properties, or land holdings. These generally have a "small town"
>atmosphere about them that deals with the "staff" and the workers of the
>property.

That's reasonable, provided you use an appropriate definition of small town.

>If you want to provide realistic settings, think about "early America" or
>early feudal systems where towns and properties were sparse. Think about
>"middle America" now, where you can go for miles seeing rows of wheat
>before you see a single house (or a small cluster of buildings). the idea
>that a party could spend days of boring time tramping through cultivated
>pastures, seeing only cattle and an odd herdsman is not unrealistic.

On the contrary, it is utterly unrealistic, unless your game is set in America or Australia.

>They may wander into a man bringing his goods to the "town" to market one
>day early in the morning (and buy some of the goods he has to sell) and
>then see him coming back in the late evening with an empty cart.

More likely with different goods, in a barter economy, but either is likely.

>Try to play the NPCs as if they were "everyman". People are wary of
>strangers carrying swords across their backs (in general :-)), but the
>kids may come running up wanting to hear exciting tales of danger. Create a
>feel for the people in the town before the party gets there. This can be
>done by having them enter the inn, and already have the local "priest" and
>"police" there to check them out and make sure that they are not going to
>stay.

This is good. I have different greetings used by people from different parts of Artlan, for example -- nearer the borders they're less open, call you 'stranger'; near the coast or in the centre of the land they call you 'friend' and offer you food. But a good friend near the border will risk his life for you.

>A parent coming in to pick up his wayward daughter is always fun to have
>in a small town. There is always one girl that has "gone bad" :-).

Pick her up from where?

>Remember, in a small town, where a magician is not normally found, it would
>interest peole to see one (cripes, they might not even believe in magic as
>most have never seen it). In another town, the local preist may try to whip
>up the people against "the devil who makes fire from his hands"J. They may
>be a superstitious lot, or they may be well aware of mages, since a 15th
>level one owns the establishment in which you're drinking.

Harn gets this across splendidly. Ars Magica doesn't do so well.

>One key thing to do in developing any town is establish "people" that will
>deal with the adventurers. This includes the following (small town):

[description deleted]

Me, I use the village where I grew up, and the people in it... Mrs. Webb has seen lots of adventurers, and Miss Wiles shouts at them from beneath her honeysuckled arch, whilst Ron Goulder looks on. :-) :-)

>These "people" add life to the role-playing, and do it without costing the
>DM lots of time. In fact, they sometimes can make useful comments that
>allow a player to know a bit of the "play" without being fed it by "omens".

Yes, that can be very effective -- good example [which I deleted :-)].

Finally, I promised more on only one church.

If there was a local monastery or convent or (typically, as at Whitby) both, or a priory (as at Norton), there would be two churches in the parish, but only one for the use of the common folk. Leyland describes a fight over whether a child could be baptised in the village (parish) church. An arrow was set alight and fired at the thatched roof of the monks' church, and burned most of it to the ground. Thereafter baptism was allowed in the parish church.

References:
     [Leyland1511]
       John Leyland's Itinerary -- presented to Henry VIII in the 37th (or 20th?) year of his reign; reprinted in 1710 in 8 vols and in 1745 in 9 vols by Thos. Hearne;

     [Hearn1745] in a letter bound in with [Leyland1511], 2nd. edition only
     [Speed1611] Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, reprinted by Thames & Hudson with an introduction by Nigel Nicholson, 1988, 1989
     [Platt1976] Colin Platt, The English Medieval Town, Secker & Warburg, London, 1976.

=====Separate Posting =====

>>Lopez on infaltion because of increasing circulation of coinage (and trouble
>>you with prices not of the specific span of years (p. 71): "It has been
>>calculated that the cost of living quadrupled in England between 1150 and
>>1325."
>>
>This is really a fantastically low rate of inflation, are you sure it only
>quadrupled in 175 years... that's around 0.8% inflation per year.
>If this is the case, the increasing circulation of coinage must have been
>a very gradual occurence, and the average person probably would never have
>noticed.
>

It's not a type, inflation really was that low.

It has been suggested that if we went back to a system where the precious metal in coinage was equal to its face value, we could go back to a similar rate of inflation.

The English "pound" was so-called because it was a pound of silver. A silver penny weights 1/240 of a pound -- there were 240 (old) pence in the pound. Beautifully simple, no?

All this has nothing to do with typical (at least D&D) fantasy economies, where adventurers can spend 1000's of gold pieces without disrupting it. Can you imagine the effect if someone walked into a modern Bureau d'Exchange and said "I'd like to change 20,000 gold Krugerands to local currency please?".

[Side note -- until recently, at least in England, coins were immune to certain taxes. Some gold coins do exist, but the face value is nominal compared with the metal value. (mdcbbs.com is American, but sdl.mdcbbs.com is English)]