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Comment by bcrosby95 | Hacker News Reader

This blog has been a treasure trove for building my RPG campaigns. I would pay lots of money for an "Idiot Worldbuilder's Guide to X" series of books based upon history.

I'm probably in the minority though.

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My personal favorites on his blog are the series on how people produced Bread, Clothing, and Iron in the premodern world. The depth there is amazing, going into all the raw materials and different skills and processes required to support agriculture, textile production, and metallurgy. It really gives you a deep sense of the material conditions that shaped life in the past, and how alien pre-modern economic existence would be to 21st century folks (clothing and food were really really expensive, like one new set of clothes a year expensive, whereas housing costs were proportionally low). Highly recommended.

Is there a particular article or essay this is from? Would love to read about this.

Bread series: https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...

Clothing series: https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-t...

Iron series: https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-...

The series on iron starts here: https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-...

The series on bread starts here: https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...

The series on clothing starts here: https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-t...

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