February 28th, 2008: Just when I thought Living Greyhawk had nothing new to offer me for
comic material, then they come out with their own humorous article written by Eric Menge (and the NPC editor of said piece seems
verrrry familiar to me ;) ). The
Greyhawk Grumbler is a tabloid about every day Greyhawk City matters. I highly reccomend downloading the PDF version, because
the formatting and the masthead of this broadsheet is gorgeous. In fact I plan on using this as a flavor handout on my next GH City
campaign. The sidebar of the LG article got me thinking about the D&D economics of this tabloid:
The Grumbler costs 1cp to buy. This can be problematic. In the 3.5 PHB parchment, made from the skins of goats
and other hooved animals costs 2sp per sheet while paper,
is made of cloth fibers and costs 4sp per sheet! Those costs are
backward in my opinion because the advent of paper over parchment was due to the demand for parchment outstripping the
animals skins in supply. This is certainly a factor in such a literate society as Greyhawk City. Parchment would be
reserved for scrolls, spellbooks and official documents. It couldn't be cheaper than cloth fiber paper. Back on topic,
one can only assume Greyhawk City has developed a wood pulp paper that is extremely cheap to make. The only other option
would be the Grumbler is printed on reused
parchment (like ancient palimpsests). I find that unlikely however, because at 1cp apiece the Grumbler is also probably
made with a printing press(or a suitable magic equivalent), a processes I am not sure is canonically given in
Greyhawk's current timeline. The only other logical reason for the 1cp
broadsheet is the editor is a crazy philathropist and money is no object. This scenario is quite possible given Pluffet Smedger's
own rumor in the article sidebar.
Regardless of economics, only WoG's resident grump, Obad-Hai wouldn't like this publication.
Its rather surprising he is literate at all! Enjoy.
-mortellan
