For some reason, the JADE blog refuses to let me post a comment using my wordpress account. After about six tries (and having lost the original comment after the first try - copy/pasted the second version of the comment), I've decided to post here, instead. So, if anyone else has trouble on the blog, post your idea here.


Here's my idea:

How about each town having a dominant and a secondary occupation, with the specifics influencing the inhabitants of the town, and even the layout? For instance, a Farmer(dominant)/Blacksmith(secondary) town would have a lot of farmers and some blacksmiths, and a few other types (plus housewives, children, etc, of course). In this case, the town would have a lot of fields of plants (assuming the herb system is expanded out to include other types of plants with other growth properties), a few forges (with blacksmiths to operate them), and a large shop specialising in food and herbs and a small shop specialising in weapons and armour.

What's more, perhaps there could even be combination-specific quests. Perhaps one farmer requests for you to find the master blacksmith of the town (all the blacksmiths look the same, so you have to find him by asking around), and give him a lump of metal ore, from which he is to make a scythe for the farmer to use. Not only will the resulting scythe be of the metal provided, and be slightly better in stats than a typical scythe of that metal, but it will even have a prefix or suffix.

You can then make a choice, once you have the scythe - you can return to the farmer and get some reward (which would vary based on the metal chosen), or you can leave with the scythe (which may break a local law).

Of course, if you do exchange for the reward, you now know which one is the master blacksmith, and can request that he forge a weapon for you, at a very steep price (he does it for free for townsfolk, but not for you)... but as with the scythe, the weapon will be better than usual, of the metal provided, with an ego.

Each combination would be possible, producing some unique behaviour. For instance, if you had a town with Wizardry/Thievery, the thieves would often try to pick the pockets of the wizards. If they are noticed, though, they will have a spell such as paralysis or sleep cast on them (rarely anything that does any damage, otherwise the town would end up losing all of its thieves rather quickly). Imagine walking through a town of wizards, with various thieves in a variety of exposed states due to having been caught trying to pick a wizard's pockets.

Race (which should end up having a "major" and a "minor" race component, where the "minor" race must be one of the "major" race's friendly races, and could be the same type as the "major" race) should influence the chances of occupations (for instance, orcish wizards should be very rare... still possible, though).

Oh, and beware of the rare town that has necromancy as the dominant occupation - expect it to be filled with graves and undead (a secondary-necromancy town would just have a few graves, and no undead) in addition to the necromancers, the secondary occupation type, and normal townsfolk.