Worlds of Design: Pestilence & Plague

Plagues have made a big difference in world history, and may in your fantasy world. In the course of studying military and diplomatic history over most eras I’ve encountered a lot about this frighteningly frequent occurrence.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

The condition of the people was pitiable to behold. They sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without help. Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses, made it known by the stench of their rotting bodies. - Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)

Absent widespread healing or vaccines, plagues have historically been a fact of life, one of those things you hoped to avoid but sometimes could not. The effects were far-reaching. In building a world, you can ignore plagues, just as you can ignore famines and extended droughts that can bring down empires and even civilizations, or you can incorporate them into the history of your world. Whether that will increase the immersion of your game depends on your players. I’m going to talk about some characteristics of plagues and how you can incorporate them into your world building.

Lethality and Randomness​

The Black Death of the 14th century (also known as the Pestilence or the Great Mortality, peaking in Europe1347-1351) helps provide a guide to the lethality of historical plagues. Depending on the affected location, between a quarter and a half of the population died. Plagues in general are random, so that there were locations such as Milan, Italy that were essentially free of the Black Death. If you look at a map of the effects of the Black Death, you can see this variability for yourself. Some plagues almost always killed anyone who was infected, while others saw many recover and possibly gain immunity. Plague usually affected everyone, young and old.

It Kept Coming Back​

Historical plagues didn’t just peter out or disappear never to be seen again. They kept coming back in waves, with periods (often many years) in between that were relatively plague free. Obviously, there were no vaccines, and even if the plague were one that you became immune to after contracting it, there were people who had not yet contracted it, plus younger people born since the last outbreak. In some areas forms of plague continued to occur periodically into the 17th (and rarely 19th) century!

After the fact, a plague could radically change the nature of society. After the Black Death, the standard of living rose significantly. Ordinary people ate better because there was a lot more food (especially meat and fish) in relation to the population. The poorer land went out of cultivation and reverted to nature, for lack of farmers - but that meant on average people farmed more productive land. Laborers were paid more because there was a shortage of labor. Plagues had far-reaching social effects, e.g. widespread persecution of minorities and lawlessness. Effects were so pronounced that the time of the Black Death is sometimes regarded as the end of the Middle Ages.

The Fall of the Western Roman Empire​

A fairly recent explanation of the weakness and fall of the Western Roman Empire is that it was depopulated by plagues 180-250 CE. This is rarely touched on in the literature of the time (perhaps because it was so common), but archaeological investigation of Roman cities shows a great contraction of the lived-in area, indicating a much lower population long before the actual failure of the Empire. This is not the only reason of course. When you talk about the fall of Western Rome, the question is always why didn’t Eastern Rome (what we now call the Byzantine Empire) fail? Eastern Rome had a much higher population, far more cities, and could suffer a series of plagues more readily than the West.

Yet the Byzantine Empire suffered a great plague, possibly as bad as the later Black Death, in 541-549 (not disappearing entirely until the 700s). This doomed Emperor Justinian’s efforts to reunite the full Empire, for lack of manpower, though he did recapture much of Italy, North Africa, and even southern Spain before the plague.

In pre-Roman-domination times, a plague killed many Athenians including their leader Pericles (d. 429 BCE); some historians believe his death doomed the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War with Sparta.

What This Means for Your World​

Fantasy worlds are different from the real world in the availability of magic that can cure diseases. The question is always how much healing is available in comparison to the size of the population? We could say that the elites (such as Pericles) are much more likely to survive a plague thanks to magic, as opposed to historical plagues where anyone from an Emperor on down (including several Roman emperors who died from pandemics) was just as susceptible as anyone else.

As you build the history of your world a plague can make a huge difference, especially a plague as bad as the Black Death or the Justinianic Plague. In a fantasy world with many intelligent species, a plague might affect only one species to its detriment. When someone asks why there are so few of a particular species, an answer might be disease. Even today birdwatchers observe that house sparrows rapidly disappeared from much of the countryside, possibly because of disease.

Your Turn: How have you implemented plagues in your campaign?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I think you were a bit to light on Milan’s avoidance of the Plague. It was far less random and far more deliberate and managed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...medieval-response-plague-holds-lessons-today/

The city of Milan led the way. In the 1370s, Milan began separating the sick from the healthy and instituted self-quarantine measures. Those in close contact with the sick were required to isolate themselves for 10 days. As successive waves of plague hit the city, Milan’s epidemiological defenses became more elaborate. Plague hospitals were opened. Pilgrims passing through Milanese territory were detoured around the city itself, and camps were set up to keep travelers housed and fed without having to enter densely populated areas.

Most impressive was Milan’s detailed monitoring of cases. Physicians appear to have been quite skilled at recognizing plague symptoms, developing detailed criteria for discerning plague buboes from other, less deadly swellings. They identified patients who needed to be isolated and reported this information, along with a list of all deaths, to city authorities. These reports kept the city a step ahead of the disease, allowing its government to ramp up measures of isolation when the plague was on the rise and relax such measures when the plague had disappeared from the city.

The physicians of Milan instituted health passes, too, to certify someone as unaffected. The word quarantine comes from Venetian law requiring plague affected ships to not allow passengers and cargo off and wait off the coast for 40 days. Other places that instituted a quarantine required specific places that people waited, like islands or nearby towns.

If a plagues goes widespread, I think it is likely civilizations would institute a quarantine until it died out. Marking afflicted/unafflicted peoples with non-removable magic. World building and playing out a quarantine would be fascinating with teleportation and plane hopping magics.

 

[aco175]

There can also be plagues that target only some of the races. A bird-like flu can target aarakocra only leaving others not caring about it since it does not target humans or elves, until it hops species. I seem to remember something about elves being hit by something that targets their long memories. You can also overlay gods meddling in plagues and protecting their races or creating something in the case with FR Talona who is a god of disease. Also the orc god Yurtrus.

 

[jmartkdr2]

In the Exalted setting, the Great Contagion is specifically resistant to magical healing, just to prevent the magic-users of the time form stopping it. It was also created by archdevils. But if you want a plague without getting rid of healing magic, this is a way to do it.

After the fact, a plague could radically change the nature of society. After the Black Death, the standard of living rose significantly. Ordinary people ate better because there was a lot more food (especially meat and fish) in relation to the population. The poorer land went out of cultivation and reverted to nature, for lack of farmers - but that meant on average people farmed more productive land. Laborers were paid more because there was a shortage of labor. Plagues had far-reaching social effects, e.g. widespread persecution of minorities and lawlessness. Effects were so pronounced that the time of the Black Death is sometimes regarded as the end of the Middle Ages.

Not for nothing, all of these factors could lead to adventurers being a thing in the setting. Better food options and more cash in the hands of the poor means more people better trained, reversion to nature means more places for monsters, abandoned cities means adventure locales, more persecution will push people to become adventurers, and of course lawlessness means bandits to cut your teeth on.

This would all be especially true if the magical nature of the plague left behind more than corpses.

 

[Ixal]

Good article. Plagues often get ignored in RPGs as there is usually not much the PCs can do about it unless they have a supernatural origin which can be turned off (=killed). But even then the plagues themselves nearly never have any lasting effects on the society.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

There might be something to think about regarding access to resources to fight plagues. If magic can easily remove it, what about when the world building limits access to that magic? Only settlements with access to that magic will fend it off, per a Milan model, while those without will impose stricter quarantine measures like 10-40 period waits outside and markings.

 

[billd91]

Good article. Plagues often get ignored in RPGs as there is usually not much the PCs can do about it unless they have a supernatural origin which can be turned off (=killed). But even then the plagues themselves nearly never have any lasting effects on the society.

I think the typical plague would also last longer than the typical action in an RPG. Unless the PCs are active in the campaign for multiple game years throughout the plague outbreak(s), they wouldn't even see the long-term social changes being wrought.
That said, a campaign that was angling for the grittier end of things could certainly incorporate a plague as a background event in the setting that could have major implications for PC travel and how they're regarded as travelers.

 

[billd91]

There might be something to think about regarding access to resources to fight plagues. If magic can easily remove it, what about when the world building limits access to that magic? Only settlements with access to that magic will fend it off, per a Milan model, while those without will impose stricter quarantine measures like 10-40 period waits outside and markings.

Paizo had a treatment of how well magic can fend off a plague in their 2nd AP, Curse of the Crimson Throne, since plague is a theme/event in the AP. Their conclusion was that you can generally expect significant plagues like the Black Death to outstrip the ability of spellcasters to cure it. Spellcasters with notable levels would have to be quite a bit more common than even your typical D&D campaign to have a chance to stop it.

 

[univoxs]

I was designing a Homebrew campaign right when the pandemic hit and it revolved around a plague. No one wanted to play that idea in that moment heh.

 

[Marc_C]

A magical plague that transforms people into animal-humanoid half-breeds. No regular medicine can cure it. Only very powerful magic can restore a person but with a very high chance of killing the afflicted. Most people have learned to live with their new condition.