Another issue to think about is what foods would a fantasy region have. With modern Western diets, foods that originated the world over are just one hop to a supermarket away. The ancient Romans didn't exactly subsist on potato pasta and tomato sauce, y'know?
There's also the impact that cultivating food would have on a region and a civilization. The Lands of Ice and Mice, for instance, devotes a great deal of its worldbuilding (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=5356071&postcount=18) to explaining the hows and whys of an alternate version of the Inuit/Thule developing agricultural: what native plants they might cultivate, how they could do it, what affect that would have on their civilization, how it would alter the landscape over centuries. The sort of stuff you don't need to worry about if you're doing a generic pseudo-European fantasy setting.
Fantasy-wise, magic can also impact agricultural production, and thus a whole lot of other things. There's this online steampunk novel, The Dead Isle (http://theoriginalsam.livejournal.com/24703.html), where there's a bit where we learn that their version of America never had mass slavery. There was no economic need for it, as magic had made automated harvesters/planters/gins/whathaveyou possible for centuries.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-08-24 08:52 pm (UTC)There's also the impact that cultivating food would have on a region and a civilization. The Lands of Ice and Mice, for instance, devotes a great deal of its worldbuilding (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=5356071&postcount=18) to explaining the hows and whys of an alternate version of the Inuit/Thule developing agricultural: what native plants they might cultivate, how they could do it, what affect that would have on their civilization, how it would alter the landscape over centuries. The sort of stuff you don't need to worry about if you're doing a generic pseudo-European fantasy setting.
Fantasy-wise, magic can also impact agricultural production, and thus a whole lot of other things. There's this online steampunk novel, The Dead Isle (http://theoriginalsam.livejournal.com/24703.html), where there's a bit where we learn that their version of America never had mass slavery. There was no economic need for it, as magic had made automated harvesters/planters/gins/whathaveyou possible for centuries.