So... Step 1. Add a brothel, step 2-10. Add a brothel Thank you for another goated video to watch on my daily walk, and for answering my question! That does make sense, if the "thieves' guild" is big enough it has an established HQ (even if you need to move a bookcase aside to enter, wow, so secret) that isn't able to be taken down with a raid, they might as well take over the town/city
@KalashVodka175 I think it's far more likely for a council of criminals who lead small independent outfits to meet up as needed to sus things out. Like how the mob used to it
The Banestorm setting has, in one city, a subgroup of the Mercenary's Guild called 'Practicals'--those who weren't straight combatants or wizards and were otherwise easily-employable trained people, and were employed for 'certain skills'.
When it comes to "spheres of influence" it's also worth mentioning that a lot of cities would protect the territory around them (that belonged to the city) with defenses like earth ramparts with thorny bushes on top and watchtowers, castles and sometimes even smaller cities integrated into the defense line. There were examples of cities hiring knights to serve in such castles, sometimes even knights they had disputes with earlier. And sometimes the main roads inside their territory also had ramparts and ditches to both sides so traders and travelers couldn't just venture off into the farmland but were forced to stay on the road. It also made it more difficult for merchants to just go around the city, they were supposed to enter and offer their goods to the city (and pay customs of course). The funny thing about the "medieval peasants only worked 150 days" thing is that it's based on a number of days stated by Gregory Clarke in like the 80s or something. If you see it on Twitter, you will probably see a correction that he since then raised the days to 300 days. But even that isn't really true. The article from which the number comes uses 300 days because that's the number of days the average worker worked in like the 1860s and he wanted to compare their wages and output to that of medieval farm workers, so he assumed the 300 days for medieval times as well in order to properly compare those two times. And the "stay in a city for 1 year and one day" rule did exist, but more in the sense that the lord of that peasant had 1 year and 1 day to demand his peasant back, although he probably had the difficulty that he didn't necessarily knew where his peasant went to and the city officials could just lie to protect their new labor force.
@@DesksAndDorks If you search for "Frankfurter Landwehr" (means "Frankfurt land defense") there is a really cool map of the German city of Frankfurt am Main (there are two Frankfurts, so we distinguish them by their river) in the early 18th century. It shows Frankfurt and its domain and then also the defensive lines a few miles around the city. 18th century is obviously quite a long time after the medieval age, but the Landwehr itself goes back into the 14th century including many of the watchtowers, so the overall shape was probably very similar. Four of those watchtowers (called "Warten") were replaced by newer ones in the 15th century and still stand, those are: Sachsenhäuser Warte, Galluswarte, Bockenheimer Warte and Friedberger Warte. There are pictures of all of them on the internet and they also all have Wikipedia articles in German. Another part of that defense line was the Kühhornshof, which was a fortified farmstead similiar to a manor house I guess. It's no longer around, but there are some cool drawings of it, it was basically a bunch of interconnected wattle-and-daub and stone buildings with a courtyard surrounded by a wide moat, so it looked like the the whole thing was built in a pond or something. It goes back to the 14th century. Another great map is of the city of Trier. There was a scientific project recently to reconstruct Trier in the high medieval and in the late medieval age. The publisher "Verlag Reichelt" has a page of a book called "Stadtrekonstruktionen von Trier im Mittelalter" (City reconstruction of Trier in the medieval age). Above the descriptions are some tabs, one of them reads "Mediendateien" (media files) which will show you the Beilagen (supplements) 1-3 as a free download. Those are the two very detailed maps and one depiction of a tower. As I said, those maps are based on archaeological and historical evidence.
Internal guild drama can lead to some really fun missions for a party. Imagine Master Mason Mark Masonson has a son, Journeyman Mason Marcus Masonson. Marcus has completed his masterwork: A quartzite golem, animated by the secret magics of masonic technique. A rival Journeyman Mason has stolen it, probably intending to take credit for himself in his own home city. Now Master Mason Mark Masonson has hired your party to find the masterwork and bring the thief to justice!
To say nothing of internal power struggles in a single guild that may involve players in their battle for dominance and supremacy in a given organization!
I always find the 'planned' city an interesting thing, as an englishmen you'll often see both and 'natural' settlements often feel nicer to walk around and discover stuff. Though you will more often encounter a hybrid, especially in places with a ring road which can often split towns up in a somewhat unnatural way.
Hybrids happen often when they're built onto or as an extension of early Roman settlements (which would have been planned) it's pretty great all things considered!
I really like the idea of a cursed stone getting repurposed. It could be the soul cage for a lich, once part of his tower when he was at the height of his power, now in the foundation of a nearby town wall and so he's able to keep tormenting the town
I think the idea of guild districts is a transposition of the modern notion of zoning laws where residential, commercial and industrial areas are divided into discrete, easily demarkated zones, rather than the reality that a majority of craftsmen lived in houses attatched to or very close by their place of work.
That's interesting. I'm not sure if that does work because it seems like it's been in the cultural imagination for a while but that could be why it's continued to be so popular.
@DesksAndDorks possibly. I don't know how far back the idea of discrete districts like we see in fantasy goes back, but I always imagined it came from the fantasy writers of the mid and late 20th century using their own cities as inspiration for how a fantasy city should be set up, which meant that the zoning laws used to build their city unintentionally became part of the cities they crafted in their literature.
@@jacobbrown7367 there are historical precidents for zoning for things like Slaughter houses and tanneries, these areas would therefore be near to each other but not strictly connected. The guilds for both of these (Butchers guild and Leather Workers or Sadlers guilds) would base around these industries and so it is historically accurate even if not always prevalent.
29:10 the guildsperson who had to flee town because their guild was deemed unworthy can be a pretty good backstory for an adventurer. Lots of directions that could go in - rogue who turned to theft because of it, paladin who swore revenge on the faction or individuals whose machinations led to it. Some sort of wanderer background due to the exile, or even just the trauma of losing everything like that whether or not it was justified. If their family was innocent it could lead to a distrust of mobs or of authority figures like the people who led the guild. If guilty it gives a sense of their untrustworthy character. Motivations could include revenge or redemption, but it could also be a simple background that gives the player a connection to a faction, and a reputation among certain population based on that connection to the faction. I’ll have to remember this.
I appreciate it, man. It was a pretty fun way to make a city, and i really enjoyed it. I hope you can use that process as well and make your own cities!
No views and comments yet? Let's fix that... Wait, it was released barely a minute ago? Wow, new personal record for going to UA-cam and then finding a video that was just released.
I freaking love this video. Absolutely fascinating. It's worth mentioning Novigrad was inspired by medieval city of Gdańsk in Poland, both in books and in the game, which is why it's so well made.
That makes so much sense now that I know the exact name. I knew it was a smattering of medieval cities including polish ones but couldn't find the exact name. Many thanks!
When you started talking about guild cities I thought that the Hanseatic League, or maybe the Templars might come up, I’d love your take on those as they seem very interesting
Templars and religious orders in general got a mention in our video on knights, but I'd love to revist them in their own video they're really fascinating
@@DesksAndDorks And the other orders became even more powerful after the downfall of the Templars since most of their belongings didn't actually go to the French king but to other religious orders.
39:12 regarding the escaping the fief leading to freedom, “Life in a medieval village” (Gile&Giles) mentions this phenomenon. I can’t speak to the exact mechanism because I don’t have the book on me right now and because the laws varied greatly from place to place but the laws governing English peasants were complex and broke them down into various groups. I think the book mentioned one village with at least 27 different distinct classes of peasant but it can be simplified into rough categories of free and unfree. This applied to land as well as people. An unfree peasant may owe certain additional taxes to a lord and may own both free and unfree land. (Example is unfree peasant having to pay a fee when they get married while a free peasant does not). Unfree land would have additional or higher tax burdens. Taxes could be complicated but could include labor or coin. Labor would be counted at a certain rate that depended on the season/day. Harvest time would count as a higher amount toward the work owed. Some places would allow people to pay coin in order to get out of labor owed. This was often at a higher price as it would be used to hire laborers to work in their place. Peasants that left the village would no longer be taxed, but the exact details vary. Rent would still be owed if they owned land. I think a year and a day is one tradition but it really boils down to you cannot collect tax from someone who no longer lives there. Leaving would be discouraged of course, through legal means or social pressure but I do not remember many details other than that they would leave to get free. I do know that records were burned during a widespread revolution (I forget which one), in order to destroy records of peasant obligations, so that implies that those obligations could follow a peasant in some way. The nice thing about fantasy is that you can create any system of social classes you want and it can feel realistic if well done.
If guild districts weren’t a thing, what kind of districts were there? Were districts more like neighborhoods or were they structured around some unique service? Did people call them districts?
So guild districts were a thing but just not nearly as prominent or prevalent as fantasy games make them out to be. Most would be sequestered in guild halls or multiple buildings. Guild districts would form as a result of necessity (shipwrights, sailors, etc needing a coast) or because they did a needed service that was undesirable (tanners being forced to the outskirts because of the smell associated with their work).
Oh, also, more folks should use fantasy catacombs. My major cities always feature an extensive catacomb system, and it is an amazing way to extend secret societies or to add deeper levels of intrigue. My fantasy country's main archives are in the depths of the catacombs, which makes just getting there an adventure (especially with all the monsters that populate it). Not necessarily "realistic", but Paris and Odessa have catacombs, so i feel justified.
I live in Newcastle, north east England, about a mile from the start of the Roman built Hadrians Wall. When people up here started building in stone again in the middle ages, they could have done the difficult job of starting a quarry, but there was effectively one that ran for seventy-odd miles across the country. Needless to say, loads of old buildings are choc full of Roman masonry.
@@DesksAndDorks absolutely! Loads of the forts were pretty stripped too. I dug two forts (Segedunum and Arbeia) and they were both pretty levelled before they got mostly grown over, and we were constantly finding "robber trenches" where later people would dig into the soil and steal the stonework underneath. A friend of mine lives in a 16th century house next to a roman fort in Northumberland, it's got loads of Roman stonework reused in it, and the door lintel is one of the centurion stones stating which cohort and legion originally built that part of the fort. Absolutely blew my mind when I saw it
It's so cool that there's so much history like that baked into everything that's built there. I've heard stories of subway excavation being stopped because they found Roman ruins and caches. It is mind blowing.
@DesksAndDorks yeah, it's an island of ruins and ghosts. Everywhere is layers of history. When we were excavating the fort at Segedunum we had to shift a load of Victorian stuff built over it, including a pub cellar dug into the fort and a lot of the sewage pipes with freakishly preserved contents (a real joy to scrape that out on a Monday morning). Newcastle is great for the multiperiod thing, the titular castle was built on the site of an AngloSaxon church which was built on the site of a Roman fort (theres stuff there from the iron and bronze age too), its surrounded by Georgian buildings, a medieval cathedral, modern structures and a Victorian train bridge stands in the castle garth, it's pretty amazing!
@Jez-Hunt there's still a part of me that wants to go back to school to be an archeologist and do digs! Hearing about excavations like that one makes me so happy. Also an island of ruins and ghosts is an awesome name for something.
I love it! Gives me some greatly needed parameters to write my handful of cities and large towns for my campaign region. Especially going to try to make the economy and guilds make sense, so there is then a basis for me to create drama around those economic ties. After all, the battle for resources is the essential reason of most conflict. I wanna give a cool little piece of knowledge about the urine thing: In the city of Tilburg in the Netherlands, the nickname for the cities dwellers was (and remains, despite the practice having of course died out) "kruikenzeikers" which literally means "jug pissers". They got this nickname from the surrounding cities because they had a major wool textile industry, and the urine was used to wash the wool. The urine was also a major component in the production of blue dye from the Isatis Tinctoria plant, the most common blue dye at least in that region until indigo became more commonly available during the age of discovery. Actually.. wool, leather, dyes... I'm starting to think... maybe you could do a video about what kind of goods where common around medieval Europe and/or the medieval and ancient mediterranean? What should absolutely be present in any town and what would be a possible specialized good that would be traded over middle and long distances?
Time for a brief update on how to make cities better... oh it is an hour long. Well... I do need to smoke a turkey... guess I will just put this on my Bluetooth speakers as I do that. I love that my largest city (while intentionally not accurate to history) misses the first misconception. The city is born of a species that found itself growing absurdly wealthy, they have no city planning and never tried to make one they just expanded their city along the one trade route they had and invented what came to be called an Amble. They just build shops on the path from one city to another and have residences above making a narrow but busy stand of three roads that connect town to town. They have a MASSIVE road that has formed into a C shape all interconnected cities because for them nothing is planned for the long term, they are fairly nomadic by nature, and a third of the residences require you to be out of them in ten days or they charge absurd levels of rent, prior to that you can just use the facility for free. They also have communal places to cook food, bathe, and use the restroom along the Amble.
Finally got to complete the video. Well worth the watch, as always. Love the Witcher references, and the progression of a city as it develops (and why). Hate that whole "unalive" nonsense. I know it isn't your fault, necessarily, but i hate seeing this censorship disease spreading.
Glad you liked it man! I don't mind unalive as much as I mind that a lot of serious discourse gets algorithm bombed. It makes sense why (thanks online hate groups/disinformation campaigns) but it sucks because some topics deserve that space and nuance.
42:44 ok time out. I totally understand that the general and the shorthand come out in speech. I'm not throwing shade at you in any way here and am absolutely wishing to extend charity in the academic sense (good faith). "Village" or "Settlement"? What happened to "towns"? It's all over the place in a head spinny way. Ok. So a lot of what we see in rpgs in terms of cities should be classed as a "metropolis" and there might be say two or three in a campaign world. A larger town growing into a city (in my preference) should have some sort of ancillary feature adjacent or close by which is feeding into the overall importance and size. A river port, monastery with a hospital or library, a bishop's or wealthy count's palace. No small cities in between the large town and "city" designation? I have a city in a campaign world set as "city of Meeds" at the headlands that give way to "port of Meeds" and they sit at the end of an ancient road called "the Meedsway run". So there's the confluence of rivers with a river port, the ancient roadway intersecting with contemporary dirt track roads, Port of Meeds and then "City ofMeeds" with its cathedral and other crap to form a composite "large city" or "small metropolis". Of course in my hinterland I work with "Dark Age" population figures and want to render a noticeable divide between places with early period Medieval population and development standards. I tend towards the shorthand of "castes" instead of "classes". So merchants, warriors, priests and laborers. Of course I'm no historian but anthro twerp with a penchant for Pareto, De Jouvenel, Mosca and the crew of "Machiavellian contra enlightenment" types and the shorthand comes along with that bag. Interesting that Nicolo and Savonarola share the same home town though.. both had interesting notions about power and its exercise. Sorry for the tldr, thanks for the fine video!
Actually you talking about guilds not being like districts and more like annexes does remind me of various stories i heard about of individuals. The most interesting ones being the Thomas More and the father of Thomas Cromwell, Cromwell was a "humble" blacksmith. Who built an inn next to his workshop, which makes sense he could fix or make horse shoes for his customers etc lol. While More rented a house that belonged to i think a mercers guild. Both gives you an ideal of the make of towns and villages. Guilds owning property all over the place and not just stuff relating to their trade (being real estate magnates) and different but complimentary businesses next to each other
Were their examples of a single hall for all guilds to meet up if they were part of a town's governing system? Just the city council of the town i went to university in meet in the "guildhall" not sure if that's a hangover from it being a sight of a specific guild or if the guilds all met in the same site
another wild example of stones being pillaged from ruins is the Pyramids of Giza. Most of the casing stones remained in place until 1356!!! when a severe earthquake caused so much widespread devastation that the Sultan authorized the organized stripping of the Pyramids to rebuild. The Pyramid of Khafre might not have been substantially pillaged for its casing stones until the early modern era. Whenever it was, it likely coincided with an avalanche about 2/3 of the way up, causing casing stones to peel off the sides en masse (Khafre's Pyramid was built more cheaply on the inside) killing who knows how many in the process and isolating its remaining casing stones at the summit
Oh my, oh my. Such great content. Over 95% of all cities are built on the coast, a lake or river. Some cities were planned and orderly constructed, but many cities were unplanned and grew organically over time, following the contours of the land. Often, the planned cities had been ravaged by fire, war or disease and were razed and rebuilt on the corpse or the old city. Consider the adventuring possibilities there, my fellow DMs. Regarding Trade Guilds, they did LOT of good for members, including ensuring a supply of quality materials for a fair price to guild members, ensuring a fair price for the finished goods and guarding the trade secrets. The only real example of historical districts were those of tanners and fullers, due to the odour from the trade which drove them to the edges of the city. I can see the idea of multiple guild houses being near each other (as those houses are 'corporate HQs', not factories/workshops), to permit inter-guild functions and such. I agree with you about the markets and such, noting that in the muslim world, they were often permanent 'malls' with vast areas under shade. One thing to point out which is oft-forgotten in fantasy worldbuilding is the proximity of cities to one another. Take a long, hard look at the map of France at 17:50. EVERY city is built on a river and EVERY city is within 5 days walk of the next one. This means that any town/village is no more than 2-3 days walk to 'the city' and the enemy army in, say Rouen, is but a few days march from Paris. Another thing which is a fantasy anachronism is the widespread use of large sewers (suitable for adventuring in). With the exception of a handful of cities, there weren't sewer systems constructed in European cities until the industrial revolution. Most city sanitation was done via use of rivers/streams (whether covered or uncovered), cesspits and privies, with gong farmers removing the 'night soil' for use as fertilizer.
And, ya see....I should have waited until the Q/A's before I hit send. You mentioned a lot of the things there I brought up. One comment would be about the 'Great Pox' (aka syphilis) epidemic which first emerged in Naples in 1494. In less than six years, it had spread to every European country and, thanks to explorers, was in Africa, Asia and the Americas by 1520.
I've had that thought for a while, actually. I'll be honest. The biggest limiter for me is time. The youtube grind is awesome, but between that and the actual management of the publisher, I'm squeezed for time.
Another important thing to remember about early medieval cities is that their sphere of influence had to encompass sufficient food sources. A single city dweller needed between 8-10 peasants working in the fields to support them. Thus many many peasants had to be growing plants/tending livestock/etc. to support a city. Of course, both technology and magic can be used to decrease the number of necessary peasants!
Also important to mention is that encompassing it does not always mean being able to grow it themselves..medieval London and Paris both traded heavily for their foodstuffs!
@@DesksAndDorksTrue--the better transport infrastructure, the further away you could source food and enable local specialization. Hence the huge importance of the North African and Egyptian bread baskets to Rome East and West. We often forget how devastating the Vandal sack of North Africa was to the Roman tax/food system!!
@haligweorc honestly one of the biggest blows to the Roman hegemony on the Mediterranean and one of their most significant losses. But legit though you brought up a great point about feeding your people.
@@DesksAndDorks Well, if you look at maps of London from the 16th century, there was still a lot of agrictulture going on in and around the city. And it would've been even more during the actual medieval age. While trading became more and more important, it was simply not logistically possible for medieval cities to just live off their markets. On most medieval cities, "farmer" was actually the most common occupation (although in some cases they didn't refer to themselves as farmers but as gardeners to show that they were fancier than rural peasants)
Great content, as always! I have a quick question: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). Could you explain how to move them to Binance?
peasants: about 150 days work a year, but those days were usually hard grind and dawn to dusk--and with no protective gear or clothing. Hours worked==probably the same as you.
I did not actually know the names were different. I figured out you meant the city from the Witcher when you mentioned the Witcher but thought that they were the same city until seeing this comment. (I just finished book1 so I don’t think I got there yet. Names can be hard to remember, especially names from languages I do not speak.) But I meant in general, its a good idea to mention whether the town you are talking about is historical or fictional or both. An image from a game being shown on screen is not a citation, and could just mean you wanted something for people to look at. But also, text or images do not help people who have put the video on in the background, which I assume is more common for longer videos. (I frequently do this when working.) Its not strictly necessary, but it helps the reader follow along better, especially in a video where you discuss fictional and historical locations/events so I thought it a worthy suggestion to think about when writing future videos.
If you wan't to know more facts about mediveal cities I can recommend the following videos, sadly thei're not in englisch ua-cam.com/video/CKsOoLD9vOU/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/SdMd2sqP0MM/v-deo.html
I think it's important to clarify things before we start. If you don't like the intro, you can always skip using the time stamps that's what they are there for!
Greatings, a genuinely nice and comprehensive video, Id aspire to create such worlds in my dnd however I dont believe my players would be up for such deals of realism. The ruins part about recycling stone is especially amazing. And as Im czech and had to dabble in english phonology due to my college course here are tiddbits I hope I get right about the czech pronunciation. Anybody should feel free to correct me if im wrong. Thusly, concerning the grounding rod scientist you got the first name right. However with Diviš you made a slight mistake on the first syllable. The initial sound of D from Di- should sound like this (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palatal_plosive ) and then followed by standard i.
I'm glad you enjoyed the video! And I appreciate the pronunciation correction. I wanted to give Fr. Divis his due as the creator of the lightning rod! Good luck on your own world building!
if a medieval building collapsed it was fair game to be robbed and reused, slighted castles were canibalised all the time.
Very very true !
So... Step 1. Add a brothel, step 2-10. Add a brothel
Thank you for another goated video to watch on my daily walk, and for answering my question! That does make sense, if the "thieves' guild" is big enough it has an established HQ (even if you need to move a bookcase aside to enter, wow, so secret) that isn't able to be taken down with a raid, they might as well take over the town/city
Yes! We do have evidence of cells or specific gangs working in medieval cities (medieval Paris had a few competing gangs of cut purses for example!)
quality content, very entertaining and very useful worldbuilding advice, love it 😭
Much much much appreciated my friend!
A Troubleshooter guild is an interesting concept... A guild for "hitmen and poisoners" could be legitimate in an illegitimate manner
There were Italian mercenary guilds thay kind of operated like that!
@@DesksAndDorks
Do you think a « guild » of bandits could be a thing?
An association of different gang leaders who pool their ressources together
@KalashVodka175 I think it's far more likely for a council of criminals who lead small independent outfits to meet up as needed to sus things out. Like how the mob used to it
The Banestorm setting has, in one city, a subgroup of the Mercenary's Guild called 'Practicals'--those who weren't straight combatants or wizards and were otherwise easily-employable trained people, and were employed for 'certain skills'.
For a good look at the guild structures - check out Venice - their Guild Structure was amazing... Every Trade ended up with a powerful guild.
I cannot believe I forgot venice!!
When it comes to "spheres of influence" it's also worth mentioning that a lot of cities would protect the territory around them (that belonged to the city) with defenses like earth ramparts with thorny bushes on top and watchtowers, castles and sometimes even smaller cities integrated into the defense line. There were examples of cities hiring knights to serve in such castles, sometimes even knights they had disputes with earlier. And sometimes the main roads inside their territory also had ramparts and ditches to both sides so traders and travelers couldn't just venture off into the farmland but were forced to stay on the road. It also made it more difficult for merchants to just go around the city, they were supposed to enter and offer their goods to the city (and pay customs of course).
The funny thing about the "medieval peasants only worked 150 days" thing is that it's based on a number of days stated by Gregory Clarke in like the 80s or something. If you see it on Twitter, you will probably see a correction that he since then raised the days to 300 days. But even that isn't really true. The article from which the number comes uses 300 days because that's the number of days the average worker worked in like the 1860s and he wanted to compare their wages and output to that of medieval farm workers, so he assumed the 300 days for medieval times as well in order to properly compare those two times.
And the "stay in a city for 1 year and one day" rule did exist, but more in the sense that the lord of that peasant had 1 year and 1 day to demand his peasant back, although he probably had the difficulty that he didn't necessarily knew where his peasant went to and the city officials could just lie to protect their new labor force.
I totally forgot to mention how cities would defend their furthest limits. Thays a really great point man!
@@DesksAndDorks If you search for "Frankfurter Landwehr" (means "Frankfurt land defense") there is a really cool map of the German city of Frankfurt am Main (there are two Frankfurts, so we distinguish them by their river) in the early 18th century. It shows Frankfurt and its domain and then also the defensive lines a few miles around the city. 18th century is obviously quite a long time after the medieval age, but the Landwehr itself goes back into the 14th century including many of the watchtowers, so the overall shape was probably very similar. Four of those watchtowers (called "Warten") were replaced by newer ones in the 15th century and still stand, those are: Sachsenhäuser Warte, Galluswarte, Bockenheimer Warte and Friedberger Warte. There are pictures of all of them on the internet and they also all have Wikipedia articles in German.
Another part of that defense line was the Kühhornshof, which was a fortified farmstead similiar to a manor house I guess. It's no longer around, but there are some cool drawings of it, it was basically a bunch of interconnected wattle-and-daub and stone buildings with a courtyard surrounded by a wide moat, so it looked like the the whole thing was built in a pond or something. It goes back to the 14th century.
Another great map is of the city of Trier. There was a scientific project recently to reconstruct Trier in the high medieval and in the late medieval age. The publisher "Verlag Reichelt" has a page of a book called "Stadtrekonstruktionen von Trier im Mittelalter" (City reconstruction of Trier in the medieval age). Above the descriptions are some tabs, one of them reads "Mediendateien" (media files) which will show you the Beilagen (supplements) 1-3 as a free download. Those are the two very detailed maps and one depiction of a tower. As I said, those maps are based on archaeological and historical evidence.
I binge-watched all your worldbuilding videos in the past days. Such great content
Dude it is really really appreciated! Knowing people like the stuff we make that much means a ton
Internal guild drama can lead to some really fun missions for a party. Imagine Master Mason Mark Masonson has a son, Journeyman Mason Marcus Masonson. Marcus has completed his masterwork: A quartzite golem, animated by the secret magics of masonic technique. A rival Journeyman Mason has stolen it, probably intending to take credit for himself in his own home city. Now Master Mason Mark Masonson has hired your party to find the masterwork and bring the thief to justice!
To say nothing of internal power struggles in a single guild that may involve players in their battle for dominance and supremacy in a given organization!
I always find the 'planned' city an interesting thing, as an englishmen you'll often see both and 'natural' settlements often feel nicer to walk around and discover stuff. Though you will more often encounter a hybrid, especially in places with a ring road which can often split towns up in a somewhat unnatural way.
Hybrids happen often when they're built onto or as an extension of early Roman settlements (which would have been planned) it's pretty great all things considered!
I really like the idea of a cursed stone getting repurposed. It could be the soul cage for a lich, once part of his tower when he was at the height of his power, now in the foundation of a nearby town wall and so he's able to keep tormenting the town
It would be really cool man I'm all for it.
I’m stealing that!
I think the idea of guild districts is a transposition of the modern notion of zoning laws where residential, commercial and industrial areas are divided into discrete, easily demarkated zones, rather than the reality that a majority of craftsmen lived in houses attatched to or very close by their place of work.
That's interesting. I'm not sure if that does work because it seems like it's been in the cultural imagination for a while but that could be why it's continued to be so popular.
@DesksAndDorks possibly. I don't know how far back the idea of discrete districts like we see in fantasy goes back, but I always imagined it came from the fantasy writers of the mid and late 20th century using their own cities as inspiration for how a fantasy city should be set up, which meant that the zoning laws used to build their city unintentionally became part of the cities they crafted in their literature.
@jacobbrown7367 I know London had large areas that were of similar craftsman so I imagine it could have come from there.
@@jacobbrown7367 there are historical precidents for zoning for things like Slaughter houses and tanneries, these areas would therefore be near to each other but not strictly connected. The guilds for both of these (Butchers guild and Leather Workers or Sadlers guilds) would base around these industries and so it is historically accurate even if not always prevalent.
@chrisbates8906 tanners guilds I mentioned in the Q and A section for that reason too.
You are genuinely such an amazing content creator. Such a huge help as I get back into the hobby. Keep up these types of videos, it’s great stuff
Thanks, man! It's been tough trying to keep up the release schedule, but hearing it's helping out means a ton!
29:10 the guildsperson who had to flee town because their guild was deemed unworthy can be a pretty good backstory for an adventurer.
Lots of directions that could go in -
rogue who turned to theft because of it, paladin who swore revenge on the faction or individuals whose machinations led to it. Some sort of wanderer background due to the exile, or even just the trauma of losing everything like that whether or not it was justified.
If their family was innocent it could lead to a distrust of mobs or of authority figures like the people who led the guild. If guilty it gives a sense of their untrustworthy character.
Motivations could include revenge or redemption, but it could also be a simple background that gives the player a connection to a faction, and a reputation among certain population based on that connection to the faction.
I’ll have to remember this.
Heck yeah, dude, these are great back stories for a merchant character.
The way you quickly constructed Tendersford with that method and made it alive was impressive! I wanted to visit it immediately
I appreciate it, man. It was a pretty fun way to make a city, and i really enjoyed it.
I hope you can use that process as well and make your own cities!
No views and comments yet? Let's fix that...
Wait, it was released barely a minute ago? Wow, new personal record for going to UA-cam and then finding a video that was just released.
You have officially achieved first comment and thus are given a crisp internet high five!
I freaking love this video. Absolutely fascinating. It's worth mentioning Novigrad was inspired by medieval city of Gdańsk in Poland, both in books and in the game, which is why it's so well made.
That makes so much sense now that I know the exact name. I knew it was a smattering of medieval cities including polish ones but couldn't find the exact name. Many thanks!
When you started talking about guild cities I thought that the Hanseatic League, or maybe the Templars might come up, I’d love your take on those as they seem very interesting
Templars and religious orders in general got a mention in our video on knights, but I'd love to revist them in their own video they're really fascinating
@ true but didn’t they become a massive banking network or something like that? Either way I’m loving all your videos
They did! A massive banking real estate and political power. Most of the religious orders did. Or the major ones at least.
@@DesksAndDorks And the other orders became even more powerful after the downfall of the Templars since most of their belongings didn't actually go to the French king but to other religious orders.
39:12 regarding the escaping the fief leading to freedom, “Life in a medieval village” (Gile&Giles) mentions this phenomenon.
I can’t speak to the exact mechanism because I don’t have the book on me right now and because the laws varied greatly from place to place but the laws governing English peasants were complex and broke them down into various groups. I think the book mentioned one village with at least 27 different distinct classes of peasant but it can be simplified into rough categories of free and unfree.
This applied to land as well as people. An unfree peasant may owe certain additional taxes to a lord and may own both free and unfree land. (Example is unfree peasant having to pay a fee when they get married while a free peasant does not).
Unfree land would have additional or higher tax burdens.
Taxes could be complicated but could include labor or coin. Labor would be counted at a certain rate that depended on the season/day. Harvest time would count as a higher amount toward the work owed.
Some places would allow people to pay coin in order to get out of labor owed. This was often at a higher price as it would be used to hire laborers to work in their place.
Peasants that left the village would no longer be taxed, but the exact details vary. Rent would still be owed if they owned land. I think a year and a day is one tradition but it really boils down to you cannot collect tax from someone who no longer lives there. Leaving would be discouraged of course, through legal means or social pressure but I do not remember many details other than that they would leave to get free.
I do know that records were burned during a widespread revolution (I forget which one), in order to destroy records of peasant obligations, so that implies that those obligations could follow a peasant in some way.
The nice thing about fantasy is that you can create any system of social classes you want and it can feel realistic if well done.
Dude. This was a fucking fascinating lecture. Great stuff.
Thank you, man! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I'm glad you found some really cool stuff in it!
Thunderbolts and lightning - very very frightening.....
Yes sadly Queen applies to the destruction of towns. (Hey that works a couple ways).
toooOoOooo meeeeeee
If guild districts weren’t a thing, what kind of districts were there? Were districts more like neighborhoods or were they structured around some unique service? Did people call them districts?
So guild districts were a thing but just not nearly as prominent or prevalent as fantasy games make them out to be. Most would be sequestered in guild halls or multiple buildings. Guild districts would form as a result of necessity (shipwrights, sailors, etc needing a coast) or because they did a needed service that was undesirable (tanners being forced to the outskirts because of the smell associated with their work).
Oh, also, more folks should use fantasy catacombs. My major cities always feature an extensive catacomb system, and it is an amazing way to extend secret societies or to add deeper levels of intrigue. My fantasy country's main archives are in the depths of the catacombs, which makes just getting there an adventure (especially with all the monsters that populate it). Not necessarily "realistic", but Paris and Odessa have catacombs, so i feel justified.
An episode on dungeons is probably overdue at this point.
I live in Newcastle, north east England, about a mile from the start of the Roman built Hadrians Wall. When people up here started building in stone again in the middle ages, they could have done the difficult job of starting a quarry, but there was effectively one that ran for seventy-odd miles across the country. Needless to say, loads of old buildings are choc full of Roman masonry.
Heck yeah. If I'm a medieval peasant, I'd be like, "Well there's all this stone here, and it's not like the Romans will use it.
@@DesksAndDorks absolutely! Loads of the forts were pretty stripped too. I dug two forts (Segedunum and Arbeia) and they were both pretty levelled before they got mostly grown over, and we were constantly finding "robber trenches" where later people would dig into the soil and steal the stonework underneath. A friend of mine lives in a 16th century house next to a roman fort in Northumberland, it's got loads of Roman stonework reused in it, and the door lintel is one of the centurion stones stating which cohort and legion originally built that part of the fort. Absolutely blew my mind when I saw it
It's so cool that there's so much history like that baked into everything that's built there. I've heard stories of subway excavation being stopped because they found Roman ruins and caches. It is mind blowing.
@DesksAndDorks yeah, it's an island of ruins and ghosts. Everywhere is layers of history. When we were excavating the fort at Segedunum we had to shift a load of Victorian stuff built over it, including a pub cellar dug into the fort and a lot of the sewage pipes with freakishly preserved contents (a real joy to scrape that out on a Monday morning). Newcastle is great for the multiperiod thing, the titular castle was built on the site of an AngloSaxon church which was built on the site of a Roman fort (theres stuff there from the iron and bronze age too), its surrounded by Georgian buildings, a medieval cathedral, modern structures and a Victorian train bridge stands in the castle garth, it's pretty amazing!
@Jez-Hunt there's still a part of me that wants to go back to school to be an archeologist and do digs! Hearing about excavations like that one makes me so happy.
Also an island of ruins and ghosts is an awesome name for something.
Haven’t watched but know it’s going to be fire
In some cases literally ayeeee 👉
Thanks for putting the murder hole question in 😂 amazing work as always!
Lol of course! It is a good question!
So needless to say wizards specializing in shooting blasts of elements like fire and lighting are likely gonna be banished or EXTREMELY regulated
1000000 percent. Watching your city go up in smoke is a perfect reason to hate wizards.
“Medieval mercantile Voltron” More beautiful words have never been spoken
I said it off the cuff and felt so proud
I love it! Gives me some greatly needed parameters to write my handful of cities and large towns for my campaign region. Especially going to try to make the economy and guilds make sense, so there is then a basis for me to create drama around those economic ties. After all, the battle for resources is the essential reason of most conflict.
I wanna give a cool little piece of knowledge about the urine thing: In the city of Tilburg in the Netherlands, the nickname for the cities dwellers was (and remains, despite the practice having of course died out) "kruikenzeikers" which literally means "jug pissers". They got this nickname from the surrounding cities because they had a major wool textile industry, and the urine was used to wash the wool. The urine was also a major component in the production of blue dye from the Isatis Tinctoria plant, the most common blue dye at least in that region until indigo became more commonly available during the age of discovery.
Actually.. wool, leather, dyes... I'm starting to think... maybe you could do a video about what kind of goods where common around medieval Europe and/or the medieval and ancient mediterranean? What should absolutely be present in any town and what would be a possible specialized good that would be traded over middle and long distances?
That is an absolutely amazing fact, and I did not know that! That is genuinely an incredibly piece of info. Cheers friend!
Just starting the vid. Super pumped!
As always, I hope it holds up, but I feel very confident it will!
Time for a brief update on how to make cities better... oh it is an hour long. Well... I do need to smoke a turkey... guess I will just put this on my Bluetooth speakers as I do that. I love that my largest city (while intentionally not accurate to history) misses the first misconception.
The city is born of a species that found itself growing absurdly wealthy, they have no city planning and never tried to make one they just expanded their city along the one trade route they had and invented what came to be called an Amble. They just build shops on the path from one city to another and have residences above making a narrow but busy stand of three roads that connect town to town.
They have a MASSIVE road that has formed into a C shape all interconnected cities because for them nothing is planned for the long term, they are fairly nomadic by nature, and a third of the residences require you to be out of them in ten days or they charge absurd levels of rent, prior to that you can just use the facility for free. They also have communal places to cook food, bathe, and use the restroom along the Amble.
That's a pretty cool city idea man.
"Well....I do need to smoke a turkey" I'm seeing you waving a match at a bird, and I KNOW that's not what you meant.
How dare you speak ill of Ravnica, the best MTG setting ever!
Just kidding, what an excellent video, as always! 🤠
I do love Ravnica a ton though!
"F'kin Bruges!"
"Its like being asleep and awake at the same time"
God darnit. I should have mentioned Bruges.
“It’s in Belgium”
so soon? don't mind if I do
Please right this way sir.
Finally got to complete the video. Well worth the watch, as always. Love the Witcher references, and the progression of a city as it develops (and why).
Hate that whole "unalive" nonsense. I know it isn't your fault, necessarily, but i hate seeing this censorship disease spreading.
Glad you liked it man! I don't mind unalive as much as I mind that a lot of serious discourse gets algorithm bombed.
It makes sense why (thanks online hate groups/disinformation campaigns) but it sucks because some topics deserve that space and nuance.
42:44 ok time out. I totally understand that the general and the shorthand come out in speech. I'm not throwing shade at you in any way here and am absolutely wishing to extend charity in the academic sense (good faith).
"Village" or "Settlement"? What happened to "towns"? It's all over the place in a head spinny way.
Ok. So a lot of what we see in rpgs in terms of cities should be classed as a "metropolis" and there might be say two or three in a campaign world. A larger town growing into a city (in my preference) should have some sort of ancillary feature adjacent or close by which is feeding into the overall importance and size. A river port, monastery with a hospital or library, a bishop's or wealthy count's palace. No small cities in between the large town and "city" designation?
I have a city in a campaign world set as "city of Meeds" at the headlands that give way to "port of Meeds" and they sit at the end of an ancient road called "the Meedsway run". So there's the confluence of rivers with a river port, the ancient roadway intersecting with contemporary dirt track roads, Port of Meeds and then "City ofMeeds" with its cathedral and other crap to form a composite "large city" or "small metropolis".
Of course in my hinterland I work with "Dark Age" population figures and want to render a noticeable divide between places with early period Medieval population and development standards.
I tend towards the shorthand of "castes" instead of "classes". So merchants, warriors, priests and laborers. Of course I'm no historian but anthro twerp with a penchant for Pareto, De Jouvenel, Mosca and the crew of "Machiavellian contra enlightenment" types and the shorthand comes along with that bag.
Interesting that Nicolo and Savonarola share the same home town though.. both had interesting notions about power and its exercise.
Sorry for the tldr, thanks for the fine video!
18:21 Wait, wouldn't this be the Capetians by this point?
Stop abusing the Dingus ! He's doing his best...
Actually you talking about guilds not being like districts and more like annexes does remind me of various stories i heard about of individuals. The most interesting ones being the Thomas More and the father of Thomas Cromwell, Cromwell was a "humble" blacksmith. Who built an inn next to his workshop, which makes sense he could fix or make horse shoes for his customers etc lol. While More rented a house that belonged to i think a mercers guild. Both gives you an ideal of the make of towns and villages. Guilds owning property all over the place and not just stuff relating to their trade (being real estate magnates) and different but complimentary businesses next to each other
That is exactly accurate! It's really cool to see the bleeder and cooperation from various crafts people.
Were their examples of a single hall for all guilds to meet up if they were part of a town's governing system? Just the city council of the town i went to university in meet in the "guildhall" not sure if that's a hangover from it being a sight of a specific guild or if the guilds all met in the same site
I believe that there were areas (I actually think that's where chambers of commerce come from).
Chat is this real?
Chat confirms we are in fact cooking.
another wild example of stones being pillaged from ruins is the Pyramids of Giza. Most of the casing stones remained in place until 1356!!! when a severe earthquake caused so much widespread devastation that the Sultan authorized the organized stripping of the Pyramids to rebuild.
The Pyramid of Khafre might not have been substantially pillaged for its casing stones until the early modern era. Whenever it was, it likely coincided with an avalanche about 2/3 of the way up, causing casing stones to peel off the sides en masse (Khafre's Pyramid was built more cheaply on the inside) killing who knows how many in the process and isolating its remaining casing stones at the summit
Oh my.gosh yes!!!!!
Oh my, oh my. Such great content.
Over 95% of all cities are built on the coast, a lake or river. Some cities were planned and orderly constructed, but many cities were unplanned and grew organically over time, following the contours of the land. Often, the planned cities had been ravaged by fire, war or disease and were razed and rebuilt on the corpse or the old city. Consider the adventuring possibilities there, my fellow DMs.
Regarding Trade Guilds, they did LOT of good for members, including ensuring a supply of quality materials for a fair price to guild members, ensuring a fair price for the finished goods and guarding the trade secrets. The only real example of historical districts were those of tanners and fullers, due to the odour from the trade which drove them to the edges of the city. I can see the idea of multiple guild houses being near each other (as those houses are 'corporate HQs', not factories/workshops), to permit inter-guild functions and such. I agree with you about the markets and such, noting that in the muslim world, they were often permanent 'malls' with vast areas under shade.
One thing to point out which is oft-forgotten in fantasy worldbuilding is the proximity of cities to one another. Take a long, hard look at the map of France at 17:50. EVERY city is built on a river and EVERY city is within 5 days walk of the next one. This means that any town/village is no more than 2-3 days walk to 'the city' and the enemy army in, say Rouen, is but a few days march from Paris.
Another thing which is a fantasy anachronism is the widespread use of large sewers (suitable for adventuring in). With the exception of a handful of cities, there weren't sewer systems constructed in European cities until the industrial revolution. Most city sanitation was done via use of rivers/streams (whether covered or uncovered), cesspits and privies, with gong farmers removing the 'night soil' for use as fertilizer.
And, ya see....I should have waited until the Q/A's before I hit send. You mentioned a lot of the things there I brought up. One comment would be about the 'Great Pox' (aka syphilis) epidemic which first emerged in Naples in 1494. In less than six years, it had spread to every European country and, thanks to explorers, was in Africa, Asia and the Americas by 1520.
Is Novigrad based on Novgorod?
I believe the city is based on London Florence Venice and a bunch of different cities in medieval Poland
Perhaps is you have the resources and desire you could try and find some medievalists of other regions of the world to work along side?
I've had that thought for a while, actually. I'll be honest. The biggest limiter for me is time. The youtube grind is awesome, but between that and the actual management of the publisher, I'm squeezed for time.
@DesksAndDorks I see that makes sense remember to take time for necessary TLC :)
I will attempt too! It's been super fun and the work goes well which makes it hard to stop
"Prep is death." Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, yes.
Another important thing to remember about early medieval cities is that their sphere of influence had to encompass sufficient food sources. A single city dweller needed between 8-10 peasants working in the fields to support them. Thus many many peasants had to be growing plants/tending livestock/etc. to support a city. Of course, both technology and magic can be used to decrease the number of necessary peasants!
Also important to mention is that encompassing it does not always mean being able to grow it themselves..medieval London and Paris both traded heavily for their foodstuffs!
@@DesksAndDorksTrue--the better transport infrastructure, the further away you could source food and enable local specialization. Hence the huge importance of the North African and Egyptian bread baskets to Rome East and West. We often forget how devastating the Vandal sack of North Africa was to the Roman tax/food system!!
@haligweorc honestly one of the biggest blows to the Roman hegemony on the Mediterranean and one of their most significant losses. But legit though you brought up a great point about feeding your people.
@@DesksAndDorks Well, if you look at maps of London from the 16th century, there was still a lot of agrictulture going on in and around the city. And it would've been even more during the actual medieval age. While trading became more and more important, it was simply not logistically possible for medieval cities to just live off their markets. On most medieval cities, "farmer" was actually the most common occupation (although in some cases they didn't refer to themselves as farmers but as gardeners to show that they were fancier than rural peasants)
So if you are Czech, please check his Czech, thanks.
Looooooooool!
Great content, as always! I have a quick question: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). Could you explain how to move them to Binance?
peasants: about 150 days work a year, but those days were usually hard grind and dawn to dusk--and with no protective gear or clothing. Hours worked==probably the same as you.
You should really specify that you are discussing Novograd as seen in a game and not the historical city.
I did by saying the name. I am.clearly saying Novigrad not Novgorod.
Also I'm pretty sure the giant video game pics are pretty decent indicators.
I did not actually know the names were different. I figured out you meant the city from the Witcher when you mentioned the Witcher but thought that they were the same city until seeing this comment. (I just finished book1 so I don’t think I got there yet. Names can be hard to remember, especially names from languages I do not speak.)
But I meant in general, its a good idea to mention whether the town you are talking about is historical or fictional or both.
An image from a game being shown on screen is not a citation, and could just mean you wanted something for people to look at. But also, text or images do not help people who have put the video on in the background, which I assume is more common for longer videos. (I frequently do this when working.)
Its not strictly necessary, but it helps the reader follow along better, especially in a video where you discuss fictional and historical locations/events so I thought it a worthy suggestion to think about when writing future videos.
Addendum: I think Novgorad has several common spellings, but I’m not sure, I certainly can’t spell it.
Pokethulhu? It's fun.
If you wan't to know more facts about mediveal cities I can recommend the following videos, sadly thei're not in englisch
ua-cam.com/video/CKsOoLD9vOU/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/SdMd2sqP0MM/v-deo.html
Even if they aren't in English if they've got English subtitles it would still be worth checking out.
Geez…why do you have such a long disclaimer!
I think it's important to clarify things before we start.
If you don't like the intro, you can always skip using the time stamps that's what they are there for!
@@DesksAndDorks come on, you don’t need to say all that gobbledygook. Treat your subscribers like the adults that they are.
@Robocopster again. If you do not like it..use the time stamps.
@@DesksAndDorks no thanks
Greatings, a genuinely nice and comprehensive video, Id aspire to create such worlds in my dnd however I dont believe my players would be up for such deals of realism. The ruins part about recycling stone is especially amazing. And as Im czech and had to dabble in english phonology due to my college course here are tiddbits I hope I get right about the czech pronunciation. Anybody should feel free to correct me if im wrong.
Thusly, concerning the grounding rod scientist you got the first name right. However with Diviš you made a slight mistake on the first syllable. The initial sound of D from Di- should sound like this (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palatal_plosive ) and then followed by standard i.
I'm glad you enjoyed the video! And I appreciate the pronunciation correction. I wanted to give Fr. Divis his due as the creator of the lightning rod!
Good luck on your own world building!