My only regret is that I can’t think of any situation in which I actually need an exact calculation of how much it would have cost to get from Londinium to Rome during winter while avoiding the Atlantic
What about constructing a decent fantasy-world economics? ;)
What about constructing a decent fantasy-world economics? ;)
An alt-historical fic maybe, but you’d have to input an entire world of data to construct a fantasy world. Seriously, the world in ORBIS is amazing: they have detailed geographical tiles of land/shore/water/various-routes, water current speed in both direction, fees for each point to point, variation in fees by time of year… You’d spend more time constructing your world in ORBIS than it would take to write your novel with some reasonable guesses as to plausible economics.
Yeah, realistic worlds are not necessarily optimized for being entertaining. That’s why fiction exists, after all—because we’re not satisfied with nonfiction.
What about constructing a decent fantasy-world economics? ;)
Truly remarkable though...
An alt-historical fic maybe, but you’d have to input an entire world of data to construct a fantasy world. Seriously, the world in ORBIS is amazing: they have detailed geographical tiles of land/shore/water/various-routes, water current speed in both direction, fees for each point to point, variation in fees by time of year… You’d spend more time constructing your world in ORBIS than it would take to write your novel with some reasonable guesses as to plausible economics.
I know of at least one author who did exactly that (not with Orbis though). Predictably, the outcome was pretty boring.
Who was that?
Yeah, realistic worlds are not necessarily optimized for being entertaining. That’s why fiction exists, after all—because we’re not satisfied with nonfiction.