D&D 5E Stink of the City and other unpleasentries, do you pay attention to them?

[Jefe Bergenstein]

The difference is the availability of magic. If you have access to druids, then we have no failed crops.

Maybe. Or maybe the druids don't meddle with magically increasing crop yields to artificially bloat a population that's already consuming too much wilderness resources for its own good. Maybe they say no to Magically Modified Organisms. This also ignores evil gods and entities that favor blight and famine. I recently ran an adventure with a disease that couldn't be magically cured. If every 3rd level cleric or 1st level paladin can undo the god of disease's work, it kind of makes them look like a chump.

In regards to the OP, I play it up depending on the campaign or character. If everyone is city born, I let it fade into the background, as it would for the characters. If the characters are more rural/woodland, I make it more known just how odious they would find the big cities. Sometimes its just for texture or to explain an encounter. Yep, the ghouls and otyughs in the sewers hang out neat the butcher district because of all the viscera that sluices down from the shop.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Maybe. Or maybe the druids don't meddle with magically increasing crop yields to artificially bloat a population that's already consuming too much wilderness resources for its own good. Maybe they say no to Magically Modified Organisms. This also ignores evil gods and entities that favor blight and famine. I recently ran an adventure with a disease that couldn't be magically cured. If every 3rd level cleric or 1st level paladin can undo the god of disease's work, it kind of makes them look like a chump.
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I was just getting ready to reply but you hit the two points I was going to mention.

A druid needs not be good or evil--they have a mission of preserving the natural world. So in my opinion, I find it highly unlikely that they would use their powers to further the advancement/success of encroaching humanoid populations. I can't see a druid, after watching a forest being clear cut to make room for a field, say, "Hey! Let me use my magic to make sure your wheat grows to abundance!" Quite the opposite in fact.

And re: the "good clerics will clean all that up", you also hit the point in that there are just as many evil clerics out there, that I consider it a wash, by and large, on the affect they have. I.e., sure a cleric can help cure disease, but for every one that's doing that, an evil cleric is infecting people with diseases.

 

[TwoSix]

I was just getting ready to reply but you hit the two points I was going to mention.

A druid needs not be good or evil--they have a mission of preserving the natural world. So in my opinion, I find it highly unlikely that they would use their powers to further the advancement/success of encroaching humanoid populations. I can't see a druid, after watching a forest being clear cut to make room for a field, say, "Hey! Let me use my magic to make sure your wheat grows to abundance!" Quite the opposite in fact.

And re: the "good clerics will clean all that up", you also hit the point in that there are just as many evil clerics out there, that I consider it a wash, by and large, on the affect they have. I.e., sure a cleric can help cure disease, but for every one that's doing that, an evil cleric is infecting people with diseases.

Ultimately, you need to start by deciding what you want the campaign world to look like, and then rationalizing the place of different classes and different types of magic to make sure that they all fit into that kind of campaign world. Trying to derive a "real" D&D setting from the rules in the PHB is an exercise in futility.

 

[hbarsquared]

Short answer: hand-waving. Stink, magic, available resources, racism, gender-equality, homophobia.... All this tends to be ignored or have the most idle of mentionings in a game. The game is about defeating monsters and Evil, anything beyond that is window dressing.

With that said, depending on the campaign and group, each of these can absolutely add to the experience. I say go for it, if tou and your group are down playing that type of game.

The history itself, of course, is more complex. London was a cesspool because it was a barbaric outland town, not the pinnacle of civilization as in Rome/Indus/<any number of other advanced cities outside Europe> a few hundred years previous.

Keep in mind that the march/progress of technilogy has never been even, especially geographically. Three communities, aboriginal, medieval, renaissance - can easily coexist in the same era, and the same region.

 

[jgsugden]

I prefer these not to be elements that my group live action role plays.

 

[S_Dalsgaard]

One word - Otyughs.

I tend to ignore those things in my game, just like most PCs and NPCs have good teeth and the barmaids are pretty and clean.

 

[Morrus]

London in the 14th century was a cesspool. Literally. Mud, human feces, animal feces, animal entrails and butchered remains, and garbage covered the streets, sometimes inches thick.

I remember it well.

 

[Crothian]

I establish that they are there and bring them up in details every now and again. But if the players choose to ignore that aspect of the city then I'm not going to dwell on it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I establish that they are there and bring them up in details every now and again. But if the players choose to ignore that aspect of the city then I'm not going to dwell on it.

I definitely think this is the norm. I don't remember one time in 30 years where we worried about stuff like that. Just curious to see if people did pay that much attention to it and try to have a more "realistic" middle ages setting in their games, because I can see why someone would because of the impact it can have in a game.

 

[Mephista]

Only if those Druids choose to give of their labour in this way, which is by no means certain. And even then, only if there isn't a balancing sect of evil Druids bent on causing all crops to fail.

I did say "access to" for just that reason. The "of sufficient skill, nearby, and willing to help" were meant to be implied.