Our Classic D&D Farms are Wrong.

wheat barley peas lentils rice flax Rye Millet and beans these are many of our fundamental crops foods which propelled us into living in permanent settlements engaged in farming and agriculture with just these we can ferment stew bake grind and bulk up meat dishes and when some or all of these are cultivated in different places around the world it changed our perception of the very land on which we live of course dates and specifics vary greatly from andian uh cultivation of potatoes and tomatoes to rice and soybeans in China but generally land becomes seen as a resource for cultivation and survival judged by its capacity to feed people as opposed to its natural ability to provide berries wild grains and sources of meat this is all to say that the growing of plants is among the most important cultural concerns in human history especially as without plant cultivation and domestication large-scale animal domestication becomes a pipe dream but in Worlds which play by DND D's rules there is a third level spell that many believe supercharges any agrarian econom plant growth in the fifth edition of D and D you can cast it in one of two ways one you make plants in a quite large area overgrown to the point that it is four times as difficult to pass by them this is frankly quite potent on its own and has some implications for revitalizing near- dead forests increasing Lumber or general Greenery yield in an area and even in Warfare but we're really here to talk about the second effect of plant growth if you spend 8 hours casting it you enrich the land all plants in a half mile radius centered on a point within range become enriched for one year the plants yield twice the normal amount of food when harvested firstly as a technicality if you manage to gather up all of your Kingdom's potatoes that are sprouting and going to be replanted in the next year in just a half half mile radius you will single-handedly double the entire Kingdom's potato Harvest for one single third level spell slot as they're technically plants this strategy does rely on the plant being easier and smaller to store in its younger stages and also relies on strong logistical distribution methods and a centralized farming Authority this is maybe technically possible in a feudal econ ionomy but generally this kind of seedling Warehouse loophole isn't terribly practical although I do maintain that for certain crops in an authoritarian enough developed State this is the most efficient option Farmers would be distributed their germinating beans and potatoes as well as potentially germinated seeds from other centralized nurseries allowing the regime to bless this food for Good Harvest for cheap and to potentially Sabotage dissenters by uh just choosing not to use the spells on the seedlings distributed to them under this system plant nurseries may actually be a practical agricultural technique after all as opposed to being invented at some point in the 1700s to serve modern Landscaping and Gardening functions but this is just one specific way that culture could interact with doubly yielding crops let's look at how this spell changes Agriculture and not just from a western medieval perspective either so for much of human history and around much of the world in many of our spaces land is not owned in the modern sense as in a price is put on a certain parcel of land and it is sold for the temporary SL Perpetual use of the person who buys it it's a weird system in itself that we have in modernity and it is not historically Universal by any means it is generally true that the Farmland around a settlement that supports that settlement is worked by up to 90% of the general population farming is and has been throughout history a community project the wise ones decide what is planted and when it should be harvested the strong ones perform the manual labor and the skilled ones make or maintain tools or train or drive animals essentially the tribe or Village or town is engaged in a constant project to feed those who cannot or do not work the fields being young children heavily pregnant folks wet nurses seamstresses and the like indeed most traditionally male jobs like building smithing and soldiering were either seasonal or highly engaged in supporting the process of farming campaigns in wars were fought once the seeds wen't in the ground and were ideally over by Autumn at least in Western Europe for the Harvest otherwise soldiers tended to get ansy as there wouldn't be enough time to harvest food prepare it and prepare themselves for the winter but a key feature of non feudal systems is that productivity really is an obligation only to one's own Community the community suffers when the crops suffer and everyone in the local area suffers too when this happens however in a feudal system the locals still suffer but they still must also give a portion of their Harvest as payment to their local Le Lord the Lord suffers too don't get me wrong but his suffering is rarely malnutrition it is usually increased obligations to his superiors in essence the system spreads suffering from local settlements through this long chain of seniority through financial not often practical suffering because the main draw of being made a lord was that your renters paid you dues from the Harvest of course this is a gross simplification but it results in two different styles of agricultural thinking a feudal system holds productivity as its over arching goal whereas a tribal or communitarian agrarian project has self-sufficiency as its core value communitarian Farmers don't necessarily need to justify their own worth working the lands that they are allowed to live on that's the key distinction yes most nations in history required settlements to send resources money soldiers or crops to support the nation's perpetuation but the introduction of the Lord as a profit seeking middleman who has technical control over the land creates weird Dynamics on a local level it does mean that in this strange s it does mean that in this relatively strange feudal system the development of new practices is kind of a necessity it's no coincidence that Britain moves from a fallow and active field model to a three field model into the Nori system all while landlords control the fields to a certain extent but it is also true that every single one of these advancements made in a fantasy world is compounded by the presence of plant growth all efficiency savings are Amplified at least technically you see we're missing one key piece of the puzzle you need a fifth level Druid or Bard or a ninth level Ranger for anyone to benefit from this spell many people even suggest that Druids might choose not to help with agriculture due to the necessity of land clearance and the introduction of homogeneous non- wild species but I would suggest that if you can find a druid Enclave they may in fact be more than happy to bless your Fields if it means less dramatic expansion and fewer slash and burn agricultural regions or resets but the central question really is is who's paying for it however rare spellcasters may be in your world there are still precious few people who will be willing to spell spend a full work day on a single ritual while using up their most potent magic without some compensation a traveling Bard May negotiate a feasting day or free food and a in their honor when they pass by or a parcel of land on which to build a house a druid may require compensation useful products like rope or Woolen garments or the promise of mutual Aid that the villagers act as Defenders if their Enclave is threatened it is possible that the Lord to Peasant or serf relationship is also fundamentally Changed by this perhaps Lords in a certain region are those who have this power to double yields in return the community offers them an impressive share of the fields profits and they get to live in the local manner as long as they continue to enrich the fields and protect the farmers with their magical skills this is in a very similar way that the landed Knight had responsibility for protecting and defending their lands but in the traditional feudal system where your lord has no magic but a good family name or at least being pretty rich who who's paying does the polity want to be in debt to another Lord a druid Ranger or Bard who offers some magical protection it doesn't seem like the worst idea but it is still actually risky after all doubling your yield means absolutely nothing if your crops end up all diseased one year then you've got two Governors come a calling a landed Knight and aard who both want their due so should the Lord pay well safe permitted travel through the Lord's lands and a room at the Manor is a decent benefit for a traveling Magic accuser but it is also true that in an environment where a local Lord is seeking to gain power and money from their Holdings paying large upfront fees is not very viable at least every year debts could be taken on but to incur a debt in for the promise of future food in a year is also risky considering the disease angle that I talked about earlier and this is really where things start to fall apart to put it bluntly the division of land into discret Parcels causes massive problems tenant farmers who may choose to self-fund this service may find that their Holdings are in too strange a configuration perhaps too thin or too spread apart to gain a full benefit of this spell Lords who may choose to get all of their land blessed in the same way may find that some of their neighbors land got blessed too Q the most most human of problems jealousy much like the legacy of colonialism it turns out that parling land as a series of geometric shapes leads to some people feeling left out and no matter how you arrage them a series of circles will have either significant overlap or significant dead space in between them in either case the ones paying for this service will find dead zones or zones when their neighbors and Rivals receive free benefits from your Investments designing a system from the ground up to include this would likely land on farming models significantly divorced from medieval Europe it is likely that the value of this technique would be more immediately seen in a non feudal world first we'd see itinerant spellcasters stopping in once a year at settlements to bless their Harvest probably doing this year around likely originally casting the spell in the Village Center to enrich the surrounding Fields this is likely easy enough to cover a village of 200 people's farming projects crucially in non- feudal systems a village as a collective would band together to pay the spellcaster perhaps a feast day on their arrival maybe traveling bards get a reputation for Indulgence as fat as a traveling Bard could be a lovely idiom to highlight that in such a world as settlements grow it is likely that the spell starts to be cast outside the Civic Center in a large collection of Farmland often reserved for this purpose markers or walls might indicate the area of a mile diameter or roughly 500 Acres a rough Circle outside town where tradition dictates the ier and spellcaster must cast the spell the next development is likely a farmhouse or some sort of Farm warehouse buildings made to sit at the center of one such Circle as a farmer having your own vegetable patch produce at twice the rate is a lovely bonus for moving into the middle of nowhere um as we start seeing multiple Circle Farms start to interlock ideally each has a well somewhere near the center as well as the irrigation of circular Fields is more complex than linear ones in fallow Seasons perhaps these mile wide circles are set aside for animals to roam relatively freely so walls are established around these particular mile wide circles too planting becomes strangely simple too using a central rod and various lengths of rope planting in concentric circles just makes sense especially when an ox can plow in a circle simply by walking against the T ion of a Tor rope and here's the kicker there is precedent for circular Farmland even into the modern day we find circular fields in the Great Plains of the US why well they're large flat regions which are traditionally not terribly productive and traditionally notoriously hard to irrigate with traditional techniques so some clever clogs in the 1940s decided to create a movable rotating sprinkler powered by aquafers under the ground that rolls around the fields in a circle flat dry traditionally unproductive land is transformed then into one of the most efficient farming operations imaginable and all it took was a large sprinkler arm on Wheels and some flat land I have always been of the opinion that D and D works at its absolute best in a frontier Society but never did I expect to feel so Vindicated by a long sprinkler arm in the Dust Bowl I genuinely think that this sprinkler system kind of a rolling pivot-based Aqueduct would be the most important invention a designer in a D and D World could ever create at least for flat land my point is really this plant growth is so potent for World building that it must shape our designs it doubles field yield without doubling required labor or space accepting at harvest season essentially other than big Community efforts around Harvest Time 90% of people no longer need to be working the Farms larger populations can be supported with those folks free to work in other professions studying crafting as merchants or perhaps industry and that's the thing a food surplus was a massive factor in creating the British Industrial Revolution and if a settlement is actually sustainable without the use of plant growth then the use of this spell automatically creates a huge Surplus for that settlement this spell might even change The Agrarian landscape from smaller squarer parceled off tenant Holdings to a more Community focused Farm Reliant not on a local Lord but a local spellcaster for their protection circular Fields plows with variable curves on them and fewer territorial walls getting in the way of everything heck that engineer who is the first to properly irrigate flat dry Plains of land might end up being the richest man in the world but I think I'll leave you with just a few questions first could germinated seed nurseries actually make sense for say City to send out to satellite Villages and satellite Farms secondly what happens when the Caster doesn't come one year an adventure in the offing perhaps third are there actual serious practical implications to Fields being quite often circular or semicircle themed fourth is there any way that massive population growth and subsequent industrialization doesn't occur under a reliable version of this system and lastly what about the other use of plant growth for my quick perspective on that one well our ancestors spent thousands of hours building up defenses like moates ditches and hills and barricades to slow oncoming enemies down an instantaneous reduction of enemy speed by four times is absurdly powerful with for any defense which has any ranged capabilities especially as it technically stacks on top of other difficult terrain or traps this is an excellent defensive tool to protect fortifications but its best use is to utterly disrupt any coordinated charge leaving holes in a charging line which is strategically disadvantageous to say the least or you can use multiple castings as it's not concentration to section off advantageous approaches to your Army's position militarily it's probably more impactful than Fireball at least in large scale conflicts so yeah plant growth should change your world in multiple ways thank you so much for watching I I hope you've enjoyed this deep dive into agricultural history and a single D and D spell I I honestly I have no idea how I have an audience but thank you for sticking around my nerdy ass um let me know what spell I should be tackling next but with all that said I've been to otherwise known as the grung and master thank you again so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: The Grungeon Master

Views: 16,028

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Id: sYAWDuibmlU

Length: 20min 13sec (1213 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2024