Things to consider when placing a settlement.

[Redrobes]

The manufacture of such items would be very localized but you can transport those items so could still potentially be available where the resources are not directly placed for the manufacture of them. As Waldronate says, there is diminishing odds the farther away you get but I think for those items like black powder or ammo its more about the cost. I guess the smaller, more advanced and expensive items have a bigger radius for sale even if their rarity or sheer expense to buy is still a big problem. Also if an item itself is rare or expensive then its transportation would then be more expensive too due to risks and protection required.

Also, I can add that nitrates come from pig farms, charcoal grows on trees. Only the sulphur would be a bit of a problem and generally, although steel is expensive, its ubiquitous in fantasy role playing games. The knowledge of the process to create black powder would be rare though. I would imagine that those who knew it would keep it to themselves.

[waldronate]

Oh, and, um, you don't need steel for gun barrels or lead for ammo. You'd be amazed what rope wrapped around hollowed-out logs pushing rocks out the front will do. And most cannons weren't made of iron for a very long time because bronze was much less likely to explode on you than iron was. There's a very good reason why early cannon makers tended to also be bell makers.

Connections by James Burke is a good way to spend some down time (book or video, your choice).

Now imagine you have "fantasy technology" like a dragon chained in the smelter or a gnome making orbit on the back of a slightly broken decanter of endless water only to discover the importance of air (but their friends to get to see the shooting star reentering if conditions are right well).

Throughout human history, science has just been a way of finding rules for the magic. If it's repeatable and reliable and commonly available, it ceases to be magic (no matter how amazing it might be).

[bognor]

Hi there Waldronate, and thanks also for your further suggestions - there seems to be some crossover of interests with you, as I have already read 'Guns, Germs & Steel', and I watched James Burke's Connections when it came out on TV.. It was really fun.

I guess I didn't ask my question well though, and maybe that's because it isn't a reasonable/coherent question. My example of firearms was really to do with the dependency tracking, in terms of resource production/consumption/demand/logistics: For example, I am pretty certain that a smelting town would have a dramatically larger demand for ore and fuel than a farmer's market town. I think one of my queries is why there are steel towns, but there aren't knitting towns (hm well, there have been weaving towns - maybe it's just as simple as things that work well in teams vs those that are not - vs. economies of scale). I've got some sort of idea regarding the concrete examples - but it was more to do with the underlying theories. Someone decided to place Scranton Pa. where it is - and my guess is that it met a set of balanced economic criteria regarding supply, production, demand, and logistics. (I 'm not really talking about Isaac Trip's Scranton, as much as the brothers Scranton) - and, again, I'm using this as an example - I only know about Scranton thanks to James Blish's 'Cities in Flight' series ;-).

I mean - I get that some settlements are skewed by political issues - the Siachen glacier standoff would be an example - where, for both sides, each egg delivered to the outposts costs hundreds of dollars - and yet, there is nothing that the glacier does (or can do) for either side: It's just ice (Maybe I am naive), but choices are made based upon location and geography - and then those choices have huge consequences to the location, and certainly the human geography - sometimes even the landscape itself (thinking of mountaintop removal mining in the Appalachians, for example).

Years ago, I read a pretty heavy (academic, and not my field) book about the formation and dawn of civilisation(s) - how agricultural surfeit, led to granaries - which then needed to be guarded. It was a heavy precursor to Guns, Germs - far harder to read, but somewhat less self-accusatory (it kept to acheaological and paleolinguistic evidence). Also John Plant's stuff (he does a pretty inspiring YT channel called Primitive Technology) led me to think about - not so much tech tree (I think that the idea of a technological tree, or ladder is quite reductive (as you say - you can use a pig farm for nitrates, and you can make a pretty big bang without needing a gun barrel) - but technological dependencies are still there: To chop down a tree you need an axe (it might be stone, just as much as bronze or steel). So you either make one, or you trade for one. So you made the fire, but want to boil some water - you need a pot. You either make one or you trade for one. You see how much local pots are, and you've got a huge clay pit at the end of your hut.. So maybe you become a potter - but you have to learn how to fire a pot so that people will buy one: travel, trade, or .. experiment (all seem to be reasonable) - or just sell the clay.

Maybe I just need to think more about flexes of the CPT hex-grid...