BACK TO DWARVES & MINING INDEX
Forewords
Dwarves and mining go hand in hand like bread and butter. What if a group of brave and cunning dwarves decide to forge their own destiny in the mountain by doing what they love most?
That is, mining metals and gems.
Wizards build laboratories, establish arcane academies, erect magic towers and collect books for their library.
Clerics may decide to fund missions, form religious enclaves or become important members of their church.
Thieves may create their own guilds of street thugs, assassins, beggars or smugglers.
Warriors may form their own company of fortune, if they believe in a Code of Chivalry they may decide to establish a small dominion in some unclaimed lands or be granted a territory by the king.
Every character, once they become a renowned hero (or villain) may think it’s time to expand their ambition. It’s time to write their name in the books of history.
People will look at their heroes as leaders who they can trust, or villains to fear.
Even though dwarves of any class can become high clerics, captains of a company of fortune, chiefs of a guild of thieves or renowned wizards, their thirst for rare and valuable metals, marvelous gems and metallurgy is a trait that can’t be quenched.
Dwarf communities and mining are inseparable.
However, this series of articles will not be about dwarves and mining only.
It will be about mining as a downtime activity in general.
Dwarves are just the best example of how to use mining in D&D.
What we need to know There is no greater pride for a dwarf than establishing a successful settlement that could turn into a prosperous stronghold in the centuries to come.
The first step to write a handbook that explains how dwarves may set up a mining outpost is to investigate a bit more about what mining is.
We don’t want something that is too realistic, neither too banal.
What, Where and How?
We’ll try to answer these questions in order to have an idea of what mining is.
What can I mine?
As a general rule I could mine anything. But few things are worth to be mined, so we will spend some words and make some tables to define four categories of mine products:
- Stones Metals
- Gemstones
- Exotic Materials
Where can I mine?
Not every place is good to establish a mining settlement. So we will analyze some environments and their main features.
How do I mine and how much can I mine?
Many techniques exist, so we will see which of them are suitable for a fantasy world. We’ll talk about mining output and smelting.
The Settlement
Mining operations happen around a dwarf settlement. The settlement will influence the mining activities. We will define what a settlement is and we’ll try to treat it as if it were a “character”. That means defining “abilities”, “skills” and other features that a settlement may possess since its foundation, and that it may acquire as it progresses.
DWARVES & MINING #5 part 1
DWARVES & MINING #5 part 2
DWARVES & MINING #5 part 3
DWARVES & MINING #5 part 4
DWARVES & MINING #5 part 5
DWARVES & MINING #5 part 6
BACK TO DWARVES & MINING INDEX
This was exactly what i was looking for! Ive seen examples based on the strength of the miner and all races but dwarves (gnomes) only extract 75% when mining (i Still like that idea) but this was spot on! Thanks!
I just got one question, when it comes to by-products, how do you calculate the findings? (I havent read all the articles yet).
I was thinking something like using the tier as a value on how many by-products that CAN be found that week. And the Numbers of miners are the % that needs to rolled on a d100.
Examples: a tier 3 coalmine with 10 miners have 10% chance to find 3 amber/jet each week.
With 100 miners (or more),they will have 100% “chance” to find that each week.
What do you think, is that broken?
/Thomas
It works until miners are in the numbers of tenths, that is it works well if you plan to keep low the dwellers of a settlement.
I decided to relate the yield of a mine to the number of dwarves. Now, in the whole serie of articles I haven’t specificed two details:
1) How long the mine is going to last?
2) How many gems are extracted per dwarves/week?
I did it on purpose because I didn’t want the work to be 100% complete.
However, I had (and I have) an idea on how to solve this issue.
1) Solution to point number one could be rolling the number of weeks or months on a d100 to determine the lifespan of the mine deposit. Otherwise the Game Master may simply decide the lifespan of a specific mine.
2) And here comes the “no-answer” to your question. While I specified the output for metals, stones and exotic materials I didn’t do the same for gems. This is because the plan is that you find gems in numbers. It means every dwarf/week of work will yield X number of gems. So the idea is not expressing the value as a straight GP value.
Example: 10 dwarves are mining every week in a copper mine “quality 5” which yields 11gp of income per dwarf every week. It happens that copper may contain Azurite (Ornamental Stone average value per stone of 10gp). We may assume that every dwarf, together with the determined amount of copper, will mine 1d3 azurites every week…no matter the “quality” of the copper mine!
I hope I answered your question and that you read the answer.
The Dwarves and Mining game supplement is available on DrivethruRpg in pdf format.
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