For my current project I had an idea I thought was neat.  When creating a magical item, the enchanter does not just magic something he bought.  He must, for example, forge a sword himself, and while doing so infuse it with the desired effects.  If the enchanter mines the ore for the sword himself and smelts it into steel, he can put more power into it.

This kind of plays into some other things I'm putting on the game.  Survival elements, like growing/gathering food and building a raft when stranded on a desert island.  And not just discovering a lost mine but grabbing some picks and bringing home some loot.

All of these require a somewhat more involved harvesting/crafting system than those I've seen in other games.  That's fine.  It's designed and mostly written up. 

What I'm lacking is reasonable numbers for things like how much iron ore can a medieval miner dig per day with usual equipment and circumstances, or how long does it take to spin 100 lbs of flax into linen (and do the other stuff required to process it.)  I don't really need historical accuracy, just a close enough guess to put a thin veneer of plausibility on the system.

Unfortunately this type of information has been very difficult to find online.  Does anyone know of any resources that have this information?

I've never found anything like that online that I would trust very far.  There are some very broad surveys (that you've probably already found) that will cover some basics.  Don't have any links handy, because none of these places had any info that I needed to refer to once I got the tidbits available.

You can kind of piece things together.  Search for medieval crafts, for example, and you'll quickly find a list of crafter names.  They'll tell you that a wright is a general carpenter and then go off listing cartwright, wheelwright, etc. If you then start digging into medieval carpentry and wrights, you'll get more details.  Then you may be able to back fill with list of wages and the like.

However, how much use this is going to be is also tied to life experiences.  I grew up around people who did a lot of real work with hand tools, some of which had direct analogs to medieval tools (even if they are of better quality). Plus, I did a fair assortment of some of that work myself. 

Now, if you want some reference works instead of online, I'd recommend the "Foxfire" books which are about rural crafts in early America, especially in Appalachia.  That's a good approximation (and only an approximation) of how similar things would have worked in an earlier era.  On the one hand, the Appalachian crafts have some short cuts because of advances in the tools. On the other hand, most of the things being documented are not being done by a full-time crafter in that field.  So if you make allowances for dedicated amateur with better tools, you can get in the ballpark.

Mainly, though, you have to do this subject by subject.  Even if it is interrelated.  There's really no correct appreciation for the time and effort involved, for example, until you take into account the time and effort to get food, clothing, and shelter.  Nevermind light with which to work.

Quote from: Mishihari on April 05, 2023, 06:39:59 AM
What I'm lacking is reasonable numbers for things like how much iron ore can a medieval miner dig per day with usual equipment and circumstances, or how long does it take to spin 100 lbs of flax into linen (and do the other stuff required to process it.)  I don't really need historical accuracy, just a close enough guess to put a thin veneer of plausibility on the system.

Columbia Games and Lythia.com has various articles on different occupations.
http://columbiagames.com/
Like Weaponcrafters https://secure.columbiagames.com/product/4833-PDF

https://www.lythia.com/

Autarch has stuff on specific elements of medieval life that is useful like

Axioms #3 Domains and Economics for agriculture
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/194008/Axioms-Issue-3-Domains--Economics

Axioms #17 Ore Never Changes for mining.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/422748/Axioms-Issue-17-Ore-Never-Changes

Axioms #20 Arms and Armor
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/422976/Axioms-Issue-20-of-Arms-and-Armor

The nice things that often the details behind the math is explained so if you have different assumptions you can plug those in and see what happens.

Good YouTube channel on processing flax.

https://www.youtube.com/@robstephens4635/videos





For Iron Ore, figure the ore will contain about 50% iron at best.

I think the AD&D1e dungeon master's guide has a lot of information about how much work hired NPC's can do per day/week, for many different professions.

@ Steven Michell, thanks for the Foxfire recommendation.  I'll check it out if I can't find an easier way to get at the info I need.  The fragmentation is the information is a real issue for me.  There are about forty different activities I'd like to know about, and this is not a big enough part of the system that I want to put a ton of research time into getting it accurate.  It would be awesome if I could find a single reference that summarizes what I need.

@estar, thanks, I'll check those out.

@Banjo, thanks but I'm don't really trust information from games.  There's actually a lot of stuff from games out there, but I'd guess that most of it is just made up.  If I hadn't already put a lot of work into making certain other areas of the game realistic, that's probably what I would do too.

Interesting video on world building.  Channel appears to have quite a few items on it.