Hi folks,

I've been a bit quiet this week and last, the reasons for this are:

A) I've just completed writing Nova City Heroes and this will be with you all very soon (for those not up to speed on NCH, it's a Mutants and Masterminds campaign universe coming to you all soon).

B) I have written what might possibly be my Arclands lore magnum opus, a description of the main trading systems of Aestis and the different social, political and cultural meanings that trade have for different peoples. You can read it here:

The Trade Empires of Aestis

Call it the former history teacher in me, but world building has to be based in the things we already know about how people are and what they do. A great place to start when looking at the flow of trade and debt and the empires and wars they create is David Graeber's Debt: the first 5,000 years. In it, he makes the point that the version of economics we all have 'barter got too complicated so we made currencies to help us trade better' is a flawed assumption for which there is little or no evidence. Instead he suggests that trade, for most of human history, was a complex mix of cultural, social and political meanings and that debt too meant different things to different peoples at different times (and wasn't the brutal instrument of wealth extraction that it is now for people who had a more 'what goes around comes around' approach to things).

Here I've tried to capture this, and to make the point that whilst Arcites think that the world revolves around them and that their notions of money, exchange, debt and trade are universalised (and anyone who doesn't employ them is some sort of savage), there are plenty of other economic systems with totally different priorities. The Del'Marahans see the use of debt and obligation as an absurdity, accepting (through the Pheffist philosophy) that the swindler and the swindled will take turns to exploit one another from time to time, with life's ledger eventually evening out.

Fantasy can only draw from the material realities that we exist in, and in our world the brutal mercantile system that Arc has perfected was the weapon that from about the 15th Century onwards Europeans used to break the rest of the world open. I would like to hope that in Aestis, Del'Marah, Oloris, the Haatchi and the Ghothars are able to resist the enormous power of the Levat. I think that when creating a party of adventurers from different parts of the world, knowing how they see something as basic and fundamental as exchange gives options for really interesting interactions. If everyone speaks common, uses gold pieces and eats the same things in taverns then we lose so much depth and detail. What we in fact recreate is the homogenised modernity we currently exist in, where our cultural and social touchpoints from fast food to mobile phones are identical.

Anyway, make of it what you will, I hope you enjoy the article and I'd love to know what you think,

Nick