D&D 5E Bury corpses

[jaelis]

You know what else you rarely see on maps? Toilets!
(Mines of Madness being a notable exception.)

I designed a lot of castles for my characters when I was younger. I was always careful to include several toilets and garbage chutes consisting of pits full of green slime.

 

[LordEntrails]

You know what else you rarely see on maps? Toilets!
(Mines of Madness being a notable exception.)

I designed a lot of castles for my characters when I was younger. I was always careful to include several toilets and garbage chutes consisting of pits full of green slime.

And garbage piles. And often wells. And a slew of other things that adventurers or players really don't want to or need to worry about.

 

[JCraigmile]

All those ghouls, zombies and skeletons have to come from somewhere, right? And not putting a graveyard on the map is like not putting bathroom facilities near villagers' homes or any kind of feeding troughs or offal pits in dungeons. There's just a certain level if assumptions made in fantasy gaming.
I did actually put graveyards on the village maps of one campaign. All those zombies and ghouls did have to come from somewhere. Especially the gigantic mob of kneecap chewing zombie halflings. As others have said, it's really the map maker's discretion and story dependent.

 

[transcendantviewer]

Guys, no reason to debate this. The simple reason is; DMs don't like Necromancy in the hands of PCs. It creates huge numbers of bodies that insulate the PC against plot developments. You can't threaten a wizard that can just use a few of his class features and a loophole in a spell to turn a Death Tyrant into a subservient slave for an entire month and then just sick his floating skull of death lasers onto an unsuspecting dragon. You can't threaten a master Necromancer with a zombie plague when he can just say "No, you're going to put Terry the Tiefling down and do MY bidding now." And above all else, it's just a tremendous pain having to keep track of an army of zombies, whether the player or the DM is doing it, it's just a pain. So, most DMs don't bother broadcasting graveyards because they either A. hold no relevance to the story, or B. are trying to disencentive the party Necromancer from looking for an army to sack the town.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

[MENTION=6762655]transcendantviewer[/MENTION], please don't phrase your opinion as objective fact.

Some of us DMs don't mind necromancy in the hands of PCs, have no problem threatening necromancer characters, and have no problem at all with handling the logistics of "an army of zombies."

 

[jasper]

I noticed that a lot of villages in D&D don't actually have a graveyard. How do villagers handle the corpses of deceased villagers? Would people usually just be buried wherever they died (like while traveling, next to the road)? Or is there some sort of "service" from the cities to gather the corpses and then give them a proper burial in the graveyard of a nearby city? ...Not on the map and not in the description either.

One does not talk about "coffin clubbing".
One does not talk about "burying for bucks and boons".
Once does not talk about "burlesque burials".
One can get "1 gp 2 sp, and 2 cp for a slightly moldly me ma from Ned Necromancer!".

 

[Caliban]

I've always assumed the bodies just got up and walked away eventually. You don't actually need a necromancer to create undead, they just formalize the process and make it more efficient.

Graveyards cost money, only wealthy people use them. Poor people just move the corpse off to the side and wait for the supernatural to take its course.

 

[Istbor]

Not sure what to say. Seen a few published adventures recently that depict towns with Graveyards included. Nightstone strikes me as the most recent. I think it is part, relevant information and part, subtly moving away from heavy handed religious practices showing up in text.

Besides, this way I get to decide what the peoples of the land do with their dead. I find that far more exciting! I should mention that I love world building though.

 

[MarkB]

Mostly the dead are put into some form of cold-ish storage - a side corner of a larder or basement, or the like - and left there awhile. Then, once every couple of weeks or so - more frequently in large towns or cities - the Dead Cart comes trundling through, and people pay the driver a couple of coppers for him to load the corpse on board. Nobody knows where the Dead Cart takes the bodies.

And nobody ever asks.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I think the absence of a graveyard is highly suspicious, and suggests that these aren't the harmless villagers they pretend to be.

Better to just go back to the ship and nuke them from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.