From: moonbroth (nick@etyries.com)
Date: Tue 09 Apr 2002 - 14:08:46 EEST
> Nick's Age Distribution Table is a powerful and very effective
Thanks, John! But I completely agree with you that:
> The present version, in adapting the age pyramid to TR's statement
For the record, I first developed the table for populations that were
33% children (cf. the Balazarings in "Griffin Mountain"), which is in
line with real-world populations, then had to flex it *heavily* when
the population stats in "Thunder Rebels" came out.
I'm extremely grateful to John for identifying flaws in the current
figures (which I had not previously noticed), and hope we can hammer
out something more reasonable over the next few days.
> While constant pregnancy not be a particularly far-fetched
I would *strongly* resist it. It makes Glorantha too darn weird. In
general, I aim to make Glorantha match our reasonable expectations,
so we can focus on the stuff that's *meant* to be weird. I'm sure
we'd have heard before now if all Heortling women of child-bearing
age were constantly pregnant.
> Nick notes that the figure for Rome in Empire was only 31.7%.
My source for this is a fairly approachable site, as demography goes:
http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/Life.html
Have a look if you enjoy this kind of thing.
> Another promising option is to differentiate the male and female
I think you'd be hard pushed to make enough of a difference through
this, without skewing the culture (as John notes). It might be worth
doing, but then you'd have to use distinct gender separations for
different cultures (depending on how "adventurous," "live-hard"
and/or "die-young" the male and female populations appear to be). For
these reasons, I'm against major tweaks based on gender.
> A third option, less appealing for me, would be to reduce the age
Doesn't work for me -- same reason as "all pregnant, all the time,"
it'd be too darn weird for gamers' reasonable expectations.
> Thoughts?
Can we pin down where the "50% children" figure came from? (Same
source as all those detached family homes in the other Read Me First
pages?). Is there any good reason to stick with it, and not (say) go
with 33% children / 33% women / 33% men, which is more natural and
intuitive.
Cheers, Nick
John wrote:
> tool that's made our job much easier
> that a clan is 50% children, produces some odd effects.
> assumption for the Heortlings, I found it a sobering thought
> birth mortality rates so there are a few more women of child-
> bearing age at the expense of those live-hard, die-young,
> adventuring males.
> of senescence to artificially inflate the children percentage, but
> this means less elders.
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