Why D&D?

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
I get that you can change things up to make different settings, but most RPGs in various ways don't model whole worlds very well. Keep pushing and at some point something breaks. You can't use Traveller character generation to model actual military forces for example, I doubt the actual Army in a Traveller universe is filled with people who spend 4 years make Lieutenant and leave. The forces can't be 5/6 or more Lietuenants (5+ for commission), and least among the volunteers. The Traveller world generation doesn't work for the core of an empire and it spits out too many worlds that just wouldn't stay settled the way the UWP specs them out. But it DOES create an interesting place for adventure and a place for PCs. The chargen says that the type of Army guy who would go off and be a Traveller is someone who made Lieutenant or Captain in their first 4 or 8 years and got bored and went off to seek fortune. The Scouts don't give surplus ships to some 1/6 or more of people who leave the service. That's the type of stuff I'm talking about when I say RPGs don't model worlds well.

Making every NPC in a D&D campaign leveled helps with things a bit, but the world can't function with travel between cities having random encounters with bands of 100+ orcs. And any reasonable economy is going to be trashed by adventurers finding chests full of coins.

Just about every RPG I've played has focused on the extraordinary people who adventure or investigate or whatever the game is about, and focuses it's world modeling at providing a place to have the adventures or mysteries to investigate or whatever.

Heck, even TV shows don't try to model real world. They pile on lots of extraordinary events otherwise the show would be too boring or have too fast a timeline.

Frank
 
robertsconley said:
The process of people pretending to be character interacting with a setting with their action adjudicated by a human referee can model anything in human experience equally well. Which is to say imperfectly but instructive.

However as a leisure activity, the lion share of what RPGs could do has been focused on adventure. While I could run a campaign of people playing basket weavers, it not what I find interesting or fun in my hobby time.

As the issue Faylar Faylar brings up, I view that a setting issue. If you don't enjoy a setting where fighter can be two, three, or ten times better than an ordinary warrior, then you are not going to enjoy D&D unless it is tweaked.

The way I got around that issue is to make every NPC a leveled character. I don't view level as a special mark in my campaigns using the classic rules. I instead view level as a shorthand for experience.

It also helps that starting in OD&D, the difference between a 10th level OD&D fighting man and a 1st level fighting man is not 10x. This is because the only thing that scales like that is hit points. Everything else follows a much flatter power curve.

So at least with how OD&D sets up its numbers in my experience the difference between a 10th level fighter and a 1st level fighter plays much like a fighter between a 50 point GURPS character built as a warrior and a 500 pt GURPS character built as a warrior.

However starting with the Greyhawk supplement the number shift and produce a different balence. One that keeps shifting from edition to editions. D&D 5th edition in my view returns the curve to one more like the one that was originally present. Although infused with a wider array of options due to hit points and damage being increased over what OD&D does.
Click to expand...
That's the problem though. the setting doesn't support the power creep. Even the novels (as bad as they are) lay low high level characters to low level foes.
So hence, why I say its a system issue. Don't get me wrong, there is so much to say about what is wrong in a D&D setting too. Just in this case, it's system.
 
Faylar said:
That's the problem though. the setting doesn't support the power creep. Even the novels (as bad as they are) lay low high level characters to low level foes.
So hence, why I say its a system issue. Don't get me wrong, there is so much to say about what is wrong in a D&D setting too. Just in this case, it's system.
Click to expand...
My view that is Lord Vreeg's law in action. The setting will conform to the system despite what the setting description says. That why I stress create the setting first and then assemble or write the rules to reflect the setting.
 
Agreed
robertsconley said:
The setting will conform to the system despite what the setting description says. That why I stress create the setting first and then assemble or write the rules to reflect the setting.
Click to expand...

Generally agreed, its why I'm doing a High Fantasy rules and setting (at least as high as D&D, but not comparable directly or compatible.)
 
ffilz said:
I get that you can change things up to make different settings, but most RPGs in various ways don't model whole worlds very well. Keep pushing and at some point something breaks. You can't use Traveller character generation to model actual military forces for example, I doubt the actual Army in a Traveller universe is filled with people who spend 4 years make Lieutenant and leave. The forces can't be 5/6 or more Lietuenants (5+ for commission), and least among the volunteers. The Traveller world generation doesn't work for the core of an empire and it spits out too many worlds that just wouldn't stay settled the way the UWP specs them out. But it DOES create an interesting place for adventure and a place for PCs. The chargen says that the type of Army guy who would go off and be a Traveller is someone who made Lieutenant or Captain in their first 4 or 8 years and got bored and went off to seek fortune. The Scouts don't give surplus ships to some 1/6 or more of people who leave the service. That's the type of stuff I'm talking about when I say RPGs don't model worlds well.

Making every NPC in a D&D campaign leveled helps with things a bit, but the world can't function with travel between cities having random encounters with bands of 100+ orcs. And any reasonable economy is going to be trashed by adventurers finding chests full of coins.

Just about every RPG I've played has focused on the extraordinary people who adventure or investigate or whatever the game is about, and focuses it's world modeling at providing a place to have the adventures or mysteries to investigate or whatever.

Heck, even TV shows don't try to model real world. They pile on lots of extraordinary events otherwise the show would be too boring or have too fast a timeline.

Frank
Click to expand...
Yep
One simple look at Forgotten realms from a sustainability point of view and you are forced to ask "How can cities like Waterdeep exist when there are NO support settlements?" This has been a bugaboo of mine for a while since I started looking deeper into world building.If a generous ratio of people was 6% Urban and Waterdeep has a population of 130,000 Where is the remaining 26 million people who support that city? Even accounting for Magic, lets say increase that to 10% Urban... where are they?
Sure being a trade city may support larger numbers, but not that large, and then... how does every other city of comparable size with no support trade their non existing goods to it? Even assuming that all food and other infrastructure supports are magically generated, then that society would easily be a totalitarian magocracy or a theocracy instead of a free people's port or some such. If you could starve the population by simply deciding to, and there is no recourse, then you have an absolute iron grip and absolute power.
The sheer mass of humanity in that region would utterly strip away any threat no matter how mean or dangerous.
Almost all Fantasy RPGs suffer this. they want large urban intrigue centers and a society more akin to HRE, but they don't want the loss of wilderness to do so. So we are spoon fed an unrealistic scenario and expected to accept it because... magic?
 
Faylar said:
Yep
One simple look at Forgotten realms from a sustainability point of view and you are forced to ask "How can cities like Waterdeep exist when there are NO support settlements?"
Click to expand...
Dude most fantasy settings are garbage as far as verisimilitude is concerned. One of my players is an engineer and another a grad student who are quick to call BS (and rightfully so!) on idiot setting design so I work hard to inject verisimilitude into my games.
 
Brock Savage said:
Dude most fantasy settings are garbage as far as verisimilitude is concerned. One of my players is an engineer and another a grad student who are quick to call BS (and rightfully so!) on idiot setting design so I work hard to inject that into my games.
Click to expand...
Not disagreeing.
It's actually not that hard to do when you realize how FUCKING MASSIVE a planet actually is and map accordingly. You want wilderness, you have lots of Heath and a frontier. Keep the Capital away and use towns, villages, and hamlets instead for provisioning needs.
 
Faylar said:
Yep
One simple look at Forgotten realms from a sustainability point of view and you are forced to ask "How can cities like Waterdeep exist when there are NO support settlements?" This has been a bugaboo of mine for a while since I started looking deeper into world building.If a generous ratio of people was 6% Urban and Waterdeep has a population of 130,000 Where is the remaining 26 million people who support that city? Even accounting for Magic, lets say increase that to 10% Urban... where are they?
Sure being a trade city may support larger numbers, but not that large, and then... how does every other city of comparable size with no support trade their non existing goods to it? Even assuming that all food and other infrastructure supports are magically generated, then that society would easily be a totalitarian magocracy or a theocracy instead of a free people's port or some such. If you could starve the population by simply deciding to, and there is no recourse, then you have an absolute iron grip and absolute power.
The sheer mass of humanity in that region would utterly strip away any threat no matter how mean or dangerous.
Almost all Fantasy RPGs suffer this. they want large urban intrigue centers and a society more akin to HRE, but they don't want the loss of wilderness to do so. So we are spoon fed an unrealistic scenario and expected to accept it because... magic?
Click to expand...


Heh, have you read Diana Wynne-Jones' Tough Guide to Fantasyland?
 
Faylar said:
Yep
One simple look at Forgotten realms from a sustainability point of view and you are forced to ask "How can cities like Waterdeep exist when there are NO support settlements?" This has been a bugaboo of mine for a while since I started looking deeper into world building.If a generous ratio of people was 6% Urban and Waterdeep has a population of 130,000 Where is the remaining 26 million people who support that city? Even accounting for Magic, lets say increase that to 10% Urban... where are they?
Sure being a trade city may support larger numbers, but not that large, and then... how does every other city of comparable size with no support trade their non existing goods to it? Even assuming that all food and other infrastructure supports are magically generated, then that society would easily be a totalitarian magocracy or a theocracy instead of a free people's port or some such. If you could starve the population by simply deciding to, and there is no recourse, then you have an absolute iron grip and absolute power.
The sheer mass of humanity in that region would utterly strip away any threat no matter how mean or dangerous.
Almost all Fantasy RPGs suffer this. they want large urban intrigue centers and a society more akin to HRE, but they don't want the loss of wilderness to do so. So we are spoon fed an unrealistic scenario and expected to accept it because... magic?
Click to expand...
In 3rd ed D&D, there was the concept of the Tippyverse.

Basically, self resetting "traps" that cast Create Food keep the populace fed. Decanters of Endless Water and so on for the city sewage and water supply. Teleport Circles for rapid transit to other city states. There's more. But it's basically taking the implications of the 3rd ed magic rules and applying them to a setting.

Wilderness is dangerous. Because the cities become independent of them, with a weird new kind of magocracy/ theocracy in power. And outside is monster country.
 
Faylar said:
No, I cant say I have.
It covers stuff like this I take it?
Click to expand...


Yeah, it's an incredibly tongue-in-cheek tour guide of atypical fantasy fiction that constantly comments on the complete impracticalities and unreasonableness of those types of fantasy worlds. Think TV tropes organized as a narrative, replete with biting sarcasm (decades before there was such a thing as a "trope").

She covers everything from economics, to trade, to textiles, and practicalities of travel.

The section on horses is absolutely hilarious, where she comes to the inevitable conclusion that horses in fantasyland are an entirely different species than those in our world, most likely a vegetable life-form that procreates via pollination.
 
Faylar said:
Almost all Fantasy RPGs suffer this. they want large urban intrigue centers and a society more akin to HRE, but they don't want the loss of wilderness to do so. So we are spoon fed an unrealistic scenario and expected to accept it because... magic?
Click to expand...
The original City State region (5 miles per hex)
1596755746504.png

my take for The Majestic Wilderlands (12.5 miles per hex)
Note: redrawn in ink and pencil in 1987. All the yellowish area are croplands. And I used manorial data from Harn and Life in a Medieval City to figure out how much cropland there should be support the population.

1596755857348.png
 
Faylar said:
One simple look at Forgotten realms from a sustainability point of view and you are forced to ask "How can cities like Waterdeep exist when there are NO support settlements?"
Click to expand...
So keep in mind ancient, classical, and medieval settlement patterns don't lead to a very D&Dish feel. The places that have frontier are thinly populated in comparison to southern England, northern France, northern Italy, etc.

The best region to look at to get something that feel D&Dish is 15th to 17th century Russia and its economics. Basically Russian settlement pattern focused on the rivers letting the wilderness come near their major cities.
 
Stevethulhu said:
In 3rd ed D&D, there was the concept of the Tippyverse.

Basically, self resetting "traps" that cast Create Food keep the populace fed. Decanters of Endless Water and so on for the city sewage and water supply. Teleport Circles for rapid transit to other city states. There's more. But it's basically taking the implications of the 3rd ed magic rules and applying them to a setting.

Wilderness is dangerous. Because the cities become independent of them, with a weird new kind of magocracy/ theocracy in power. And outside is monster country.
Click to expand...
Using FR... its stated that 99% of people have no magicsl ability at all. There have also been occasions where magic stopped eorking as it should... or altogether. They still had no backups.
 
When it comes to modeling the mundane (non-adventuring-oriented) economy, settlement patterns, etc. of game worlds - especially when trying to do so using the rules as a model - is when my inner narrativist and/or gamist comes out. I'm more than happy to hand wave all of that stuff through approximations and what feels "good enough" as background detail to what's going on at the table.

I've got a few pages of rules for domain management in my D&D games (how various investments affect tax income and population growth and attitude of the population and likelihood of incursion from neighboring monsters or hard men) that are geared entirely towards making a fun game in itself and creating situations that will become adventure-relevant, with actual realistic economics or demographics a very distant third priority.

I learned this from the trade and commerce rules in Traveller (and, as much or more, from various attempts to "fix" those rules to make them more economically realistic) as well as from various "builder" computer strategy games - that something that's fun to play through (rolling on the tables, making simple decisions about resource allocation) that feels like what it claims to represent, and whose results are biased towards creating adventure situations is MUCH preferable for my purposes to something that produces more realistic and plausible results, especially if it also involves a complex, math-heavy system and tons of bookkeeping (which it almost inevitably has to in order to achieve any level of realism).
 
Funny enough, I do take farmlands and their importance into things. One of the reasons the recent "new" game I was asked to run, they started in a farm village who has lower trade than they used to (new road to larger towns was built for land goods to get to the water travel.) Which why when a fire started in their inactive farms (not producing anything that season) due to soil replenishment needs, the town dragged the PC's into a water line to put it out before it reached the farms and people (or town.) Though they were less worried about the land itself.
 
robertsconley said:
The original City State region (5 miles per hex)
View attachment 20744

my take for The Majestic Wilderlands (12.5 miles per hex)
Note: redrawn in ink and pencil in 1987. All the yellowish area are croplands. And I used manorial data from Harn and Life in a Medieval City to figure out how much cropland there should be support the population.

View attachment 20745
Click to expand...
Here is the thing though. Lets give a really generous ratio of 100 people per square mile... you still need 260,000 square miles of arable land to support Waterdeep at 130,000 people using already generous population density ratios. This is to match the relative setting as shown and to incorporate any reasonable figures from magical boons. To put it in context, Belgium is the only European country by 1500 to break the 100 per mile barrier. Even fance with Paris at 180,000 people was 36 people per 100.

A truly high magic setting where they have magical machines, ghost hands, magical food factories, etc... could probably replicate an industrial age city which would skew this, but D&D doesn't show that as a setting feature.

This also wouldn't just be a blanket of farmland. They would have badlands, Heath, rivers, roads, towns, hamlets, villages, ranches, pastures, etc... All of those would take up space and contribute to sprawl. Heath or moorlands, is not usable for farming because it is either naturally acidic or primitive farmers who had no understanding of crop rotations and fertilizer pretty much abused large tracts of land and made them barren. Heath was often used as grazing land since it grew coarse grasses and shrubs still, but not cropland as a result.
 
Last edited:
Faylar said:
Here is the thing though. Lets give a really generous ratio of 100 people per square mile... you still need 260,000 square miles of arable land to support Waterdeep at 130,000 people using already generous population density ratios. This is to match the relative setting as shown and to incorporate any reasonable figures from magical boons.
Click to expand...

Faylar said:
A truly high magic setting where they have magical machines, ghost hands, magical food factories, etc... could probably replicate an industrial age city which would skew this, but D&D doesn't show that as a setting feature.
Click to expand...
Well Forgotten Realms certainly doesn't. But here the thing, I may craft my maps so that cultivated area match up with the population. And I can point out some rules of thumb to so you can avoid a calculator. But it still won't make the reader or listener care enough to do it. Instead most people look at creating a sense of verisimilitude in the name of making something that gamable.

For example Waterdeep does not have a comparable settlement for until you move a lot further south on the coast. It's hinterland likewise is devoid of settlements of comparable size. From Waterdeep to the Dales, from the Neverwinter to Baldur's Gate major settlements are sparse and villages are more common. And when they appear most of the time they are arrayed around a major settlement.

Like D&D this is a good enough solution. Glorantha does it, as well as several other published fantasy setting. Only in a few, for example Harn, does the author take the time to crunch some type of numbers.

And I have to caution that when you do the result will be totally at odds at the typical hobby's view of the fantasy landscape. Unless you keep the overall population low and spread out over a large area like in medieval Russia. So you may be accurate but the resulting map won't be liked.

For example this is a map of Harn. All of the civilized area are islands in a sea of wilderness. As a result Harn's population is very low. Far lower than of Medieval or even Dark Age England.

1596761512060.png

From the setting this is a map Trierizon equivalent to medieval France. Like Harn the yellowish area are areas of cultivation. Like France Tirerizon is densely settled with large regions of settled countryside that take days to travel across. While there is wilderness it is generally not the image many hobbyists have of a fantasy setting.

1596761282666.png
Both maps cover the same area.
 
robertsconley said:
Well Forgotten Realms certainly doesn't. But here the thing, I may craft my maps so that cultivated area match up with the population. And I can point out some rules of thumb to so you can avoid a calculator. But it still won't make the reader or listener care enough to do it. Instead most people look at creating a sense of verisimilitude in the name of making something that gamable.

For example Waterdeep does not have a comparable settlement for until you move a lot further south on the coast. It's hinterland likewise is devoid of settlements of comparable size. From Waterdeep to the Dales, from the Neverwinter to Baldur's Gate major settlements are sparse and villages are more common. And when they appear most of the time they are arrayed around a major settlement.

Like D&D this is a good enough solution. Glorantha does it, as well as several other published fantasy setting. Only in a few, for example Harn, does the author take the time to crunch some type of numbers.

And I have to caution that when you do the result will be totally at odds at the typical hobby's view of the fantasy landscape. Unless you keep the overall population low and spread out over a large area like in medieval Russia. So you may be accurate but the resulting map won't be liked.

For example this is a map of Harn. All of the civilized area are islands in a sea of wilderness. As a result Harn's population is very low. Far lower than of Medieval or even Dark Age England.

View attachment 20751

From the setting this is a map Trierizon equivalent to medieval France. Like Harn the yellowish area are areas of cultivation. Like France Tirerizon is densely settled with large regions of settled countryside that take days to travel across. While there is wilderness it is generally not the image many hobbyists have of a fantasy setting.

View attachment 20750
Both maps cover the same area.
Click to expand...
I'm working on a world map that manages to have the developed human lands with enough wilderness to be interesting. It's a planet, so it's not actually that hard to find the space for it all. One thing is that there was areas of badlands that made migration hard, so people may have avoided even trying to settle beyond them. Also people tended to spread east to west instead of north to south. It allowed their current practices to work instead of trying to cultivate new crops or animals for the environment, So you often get belts instead of blobs for borders.
You mentioned verisimilitude, and I agree, so long as a setting is more or less consistent, its not too much an issue.
When it doesn't even try to address such glaring issues, or constantly contradicts itself for plot is where I have an issue.
 
Faylar said:
You mentioned verisimilitude, and I agree, so long as a setting is more or less consistent, its not too much an issue.
Click to expand...
Just keep in mind that Waterdeep is a port and that tends to overcome a lot of demographic sins like

1596763649140.png
Which doesn't have much of a land hinterland. But situated excellently for sea trade

1596763730235.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: TJS
robertsconley said:
Just keep in mind that Waterdeep is a port and that tends to overcome a lot of demographic sins like

View attachment 20752
Which doesn't have much of a land hinterland. But situated excellently for sea trade

View attachment 20753
Click to expand...
Sure, but as I mentioned earlier... every city on Aber-Toril seems to run into the same issue. So trading for food sure, but from who?
Also trade hubs have even more problems with a very high transient population... merchants, sailors, guards, etc... so a lot of surplus would go to support them too.
The entire region is also always undergoing some sort of strife which leaves every region I can think of as pretty destabilized. Even in modern times that led to famine.
 
robertsconley said:
Just keep in mind that Waterdeep is a port and that tends to overcome a lot of demographic sins like

View attachment 20752
Which doesn't have much of a land hinterland. But situated excellently for sea trade

View attachment 20753
Click to expand...
Yes. Although Constantinople at it's height was probably about 500,000 and heavily reliant on grain shipments from Egypt. It dropped to probably around 50,000 after the Plague of Justinian and the loss of the middle-east to the Arabs. It may have been back at something like 200,000 under the reign of Basil II in the 10th century (although I'm not so sure about that last figure).

It's hard to see where all of Waterdeep's food for it's 1 million people comes from. It could be shipped in, but the question is from where?
 
Last edited:
AFIK unless the recently changed it, it was 130,000 in Waterdeep
 
FR and other box set settings stressed the empty spaces in between are not featureless and unpopulated, they are there for the GM to populate. Basically all that empty space is reserved space where campaign personization can exist, sort of like how the entire region of Sembia was promised blank thereon from the FR 1e grey box set. Apparently the print must have been far too fine because people have lamented about these "vast lonely expanses!" ever since and places like Sembia were filled in like an abhored vacuum of nature. :hehe: This is why you cannot have nice things.:hehe:
 
opaopajr said:
FR and other box set settings stressed the empty spaces in between are not featureless and unpopulated, they are there for the GM to populate. Basically all that empty space is reserved space where campaign personization can exist, sort of like how the entire region of Sembia was promised blank thereon from the FR 1e grey box set. Apparently the print must have been far too fine because people have lamented about these "vast lonely expanses!" ever since and places like Sembia were filled in like an abhored vacuum of nature. :hehe: This is why you cannot have nice things.:hehe:
Click to expand...
... then they added features and heavily implied it was nothing but wilderness.
 
Faylar said:
... then they added features and heavily implied it was nothing but wilderness.
Click to expand...

Were those the WotC years? :hehe: Perhaps there's a pattern.

:thumbsup: My readthroughs of 2e boxed sets (Lands of Intrigue, Vilhon Reach, The Moonsea, The Horde, etc. -- currently Spellbound) were more an added history chapter & concurrent novels metaplot chapter that rankled peeps. But the areas in between were still assumed filled with (assumed smaller) locales up to the GM's campaign needs.
 
Well... going from memory in 2e, there was a Beholder enclave mere miles from Baldur's gate. Nothing within miles grew.
Crops near Waterdeep would wilt and Rot forcing them to import food from beyond the reach of the blight.

Stuff like that. Was all 2e if I recall. One of my buddies was obsessed with FR and had a crap tonne of stuff on it. I got most of his books but not many of the FR ones when he left me holding the rent for 3 months.
 
Faylar said:
Using FR... its stated that 99% of people have no magicsl ability at all. There have also been occasions where magic stopped eorking as it should... or altogether. They still had no backups.
Click to expand...
They don't need magical ability. All that's needed are Clerics who can create magical traps that reset themselves. Hey presto, endless free food and clean water for all. Or all worshippers of a particular deity. But the Tippyverse is more a thought experiment, a way to explain why settings like the Realms look the way they do. And when there's a situation like the Time of Troubles, there's massive social problems., famine and rebellions.

Or there should be.

Me, I find the sheer scale involved to be the biggest issue. Both in terms of time and distance. It's been there too long and everything is too far apart.
 
Stevethulhu said:
They don't need magical ability. All that's needed are Clerics who can create magical traps that reset themselves. Hey presto, endless free food and clean water for all. Or all worshippers of a particular deity. But the Tippyverse is more a thought experiment, a way to explain why settings like the Realms look the way they do. And when there's a situation like the Time of Troubles, there's massive social problems., famine and rebellions.

Or there should be.

Me, I find the sheer scale involved to be the biggest issue. Both in terms of time and distance. It's been there too long and everything is too far apart.
Click to expand...
Which brings us back to thd realms not being a totalitarian theocracy/mageocracy.
That kind of power would be unchallengable. The people revolt and they starve. Yet the realms are typically shown as free people with Thay as an exception.
Also its not just food and water. What about building materials, horses, everything else that a support population provides a city.
 
Faylar said:
Which brings us back to thd realms not being a totalitarian theocracy/mageocracy.
That kind of power would be unchallengable. The people revolt and they starve. Yet the realms are typically shown as free people with Thay as an exception.
Also its not just food and water. What about building materials, horses, everything else that a support population provides a city.
Click to expand...
"Some wizards do it instead".
"Do they call them ji-wizards?"
 
Faylar said:
Which brings us back to thd realms not being a totalitarian theocracy/mageocracy.
That kind of power would be unchallengable. The people revolt and they starve. Yet the realms are typically shown as free people with Thay as an exception.
Also its not just food and water. What about building materials, horses, everything else that a support population provides a city.
Click to expand...
Wall of Stone, unlimited building material. Wall of Fire and Permanence for unlimited energy. Shape Stone, and I’m sure there’s stuff to force grow trees and shape wood. Animals can be bred or summoned.

It’s a thought experiment, really. From the GitP forums. Sure, the ideas can be applied to other settings, but I think it would make for a cool original setting.
 
Stevethulhu said:
Wall of Stone, unlimited building material. Wall of Fire and Permanence for unlimited energy. Shape Stone, and I’m sure there’s stuff to force grow trees and shape wood. Animals can be bred or summoned.

It’s a thought experiment, really. From the GitP forums. Sure, the ideas can be applied to other settings, but I think it would make for a cool original setting.
Click to expand...
Indeed it would. Its not part of the D&D setting and that's why I contend it.
My example was Waterdeep at the moment. There is nothing to sugest any of this at play.
You would still need a magical factory to supply things and the way the vancian magic system works coupled with the low listed levels of town wizards.... wall of stone and iron in great numbers are less likely. As are permanent powerful items.
Thus would lead to a magical elite with absolute authority unless all forms of human ambition are eliminated (which it evidently is not) which is my major counterpoint to that argument.
Not only do the D&D settings lack an attempt at realism, they lack verisimilitude as well. We can only suspend disbeleif to make it work. Imo
 
Faylar Faylar Big, established, popular fantasy settings often suffer from too many cooks throwing ingredients into a pot that's been cooking for years without any concern for plausibility or consistency. They also tend to suffer from kitchen sink syndrome where they try to cram every single conceivable fantasy trope somewhere in the world to appeal to as many players as possible (Golarian is especially bad at this). Fortunately there are some excellent thematic settings out there with enough evocative detail to fire up the imagination while leaving enough undefined that a GM can make it their own.
 
Brock Savage said:
Faylar Faylar Big, established, popular fantasy settings often suffer from too many cooks throwing ingredients into a pot that's been cooking for years without any concern for plausibility or consistency. They also tend to suffer from kitchen sink syndrome where they try to cram every single conceivable fantasy trope somewhere in the world to appeal to as many players as possible (Golarian is especially bad at this). Fortunately there are some excellent thematic settings out there with enough evocative detail to fire up the imagination while leaving enough undefined that a GM can make it their own.
Click to expand...
That setting with just enough to be evocative is why I prefer the Known World over Mystara. Give me a map with thumbnails of important things and I can fill in the blanks for myself.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top