Fief & Town

All wealth, all power, is rooted in the land. Land provides a noble with grain to feed a household, fodder for knights’ horses, and even excess to be traded for costly spices, cloth and gems. What better measure is there of a house than the generosity of its table?¹

Fief and Town are two sourcebooks meant for players of rpgs to ground their understanding in how things worked in the Middle Ages. They’re effectively a summary course on all matters of life that might come up in a game - either one that’s trying to be specifically medieval or one that’s much more fantastical but wants the baseline to feel a little more authentic.

These are the best of their kind I’ve found. For my purposes Fief is the more useful - Town isn’t necessary - but that’s because Pendragon deals a lot with the countryside and not so much with towns. An urban campaign would probably prioritize Town.

Footnotes

1. Actually from Medieval France also by Lisa J Steele. ↩