D&D General Need wheat. Too dangerous. (worldbuilding)

[Fanaelialae]

Sending Stones are an Uncommon item - so they cost a couple hundred gold and a couple of weeks to make (by Xanathar's crafting rules). Or a hundred gold and a few days for an upper-level artificer. But, they are permanent. Watchtowers and people to staff them cost money too - using Lifestyle expenses as a guide, we are talking about one gold a day per watchperson.

If giving the farmer a sending stone can replace the tower watch, it pays for itself in under a year.

I think that's an oversimplification. A single farmer with a sending stone is a potential target that the tower watch isn't.

Even assuming that a sending stone is worthless without the pair (and assuming there's no one who could acquire the other one) it's still a worthwhile target. Bandits who acquire it can potentially relay a significant amount of misinformation (no bandits sighted in the area, all clear to send the tax shipment through) before their ruse is discovered.

To be clear, I'm not saying that it can't work or shouldn't be done. It has the potential for interesting implications (like the above scenario). Just that I don't think it's as straightforward as the sending stones paying for themselves in a year. It's technically true, but only if those valuable items aren't lost, stolen, or otherwise absconded with.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I always felt that Gygax and company resolved this in Greyhawk rather nicely, and many classic modules sprang from these conflicts. Urbanite vs Ruralite: in Greyhawk this was often a religious conflict between Cleric (urbanite) vs Druid (ruralite). Two particular modules immediately come to mind: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief and The Liberation of Geoff. These two modules, and in particular the latter, express the rural life of free folk who are farmers in a fantasy realm. Giants regularly raiding their villages for food is a common occurrence. The anti-Giant Ranger of early D&D is at home here. Nature magic is a central part of life; and while everyone is not an ordained Druid, nor are they a theocracy, they all respect the Old Ways and live by them.

I loved these themes and held onto them when crafting stories and world building. These free folk hold onto their traditions and resist outsiders as a means of survival and prosperity. For a desert people create food and water would be a miracle spell. For farmers in temperate lands it's a waste of time. Plant growth and purify water are both more beneficial as a field of wheat feeds more people than a cleric spell. Spells like spike growth are better at deterring Giants and monstrous beasts than scorching ray, the latter revealing your position.

Growing up with Greyhawk I'm glad I got to experience these themes early on, combining mechanics and fluff to mold a cohesive fantasy society. It's refreshing to get away from the tired old narratives that are pushed in the real world and ignore them completely.

This makes me think that a nice "front" in a D&D world is the conflict between rural and urban, but complicated by the realities of commerce. That is, the clerics and the druids (to oversimplify things) are always vilifying each other, but their flocks are conflicted because the farmers need to sell their produce to the cities, and the merchants want to buy what the farmers are selling.

Oh, wait, am I describing the real world?

 

[Dausuul]

They're both examples of extortion. It's just that in your first example they have the decency not to frame it like they're doing me a favor.

No, those examples are qualitatively different. In the first case, the monster's relationship with the peasants is purely parasitic. The Big Damn Heroes can roll into town, kill the monster, and roll out again, and the peasants are better off in every respect.

In the second case, however, when the Big Damn Heroes roll through and kill the monster, the peasants are left with a new problem. They are now defenseless against other monsters--and those other monsters might not be open to making deals. They might prefer to just slaughter the entire town, eat their fill, and move on. The peasants might rationally conclude that having the original monster stick around is better.

 

[MGibster]

No, those examples are qualitatively different. In the first case, the monster's relationship with the peasants is purely parasitic. The Big Damn Heroes can roll into town, kill the monster, and roll out again, and the peasants are better off in every respect.

Modern extortionist work using the same tactics mentioned in this thread. They come in making threats, promise to leave the victim alone for payment, and they offer to protect the victim from other predators. In reality, these extortionist have no loyalty to their benefactors. They're just a bunch of predators protecting their prey from poachers. So, no, I don't see the situation as being qualitatively different.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Perhaps the wheat is what keeps the monsters at bay

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't know if many D&D settings really make a solid attempt to explain where all the food comes from and I don't know if most players really care. We're playing a fantasy adventure game not Sim Farm with the downloadable fantasy expansion. I also don't take things like random encounter tables as the norm for everyone in the setting. If farmer Brown wants to go visit his brother Eustace in the next village, nobody's going to bother rolling on some table to see if he runs into an owlbear or a traveling minstrel. The game is designed for high fantasy adventuring not simulating a realistic economy.

This is definitely something to consider. It can also be genuinely hard to know how many conversations like this online reflect what most people feel at the table. I only ever occasionally get 1 player in a group who seems to really care about this stuff. When I do, I find it fun, because they tend to ask a lot of setting relevant questions, they tend to dig a little deeper into the logic and details of the setting ('what is the door made of'-'who crafted the door and where did they get the wood', etc). But in most of these cases, the only people benefiting from me making those kinds of details connect are me and that particular player.

At the same time, I have seen countless conversations online where it is an issue for people (in recent Ravenloft discussions, which is a dream-like and not particularly realistic setting by design, a number of people criticized the setting on things like 'where does the food come from'). So if that setting can't get away with it for some folks, I imagine more standard settings can't either.

My view is to always lean in the direction of the settings intent and focus. In a setting like Harn, where something like agriculture could actually be a central focus to an adventure, I am all for it, and as a player I might expect more attention paid to things like how the local population is feeding itself. But for more surreal or more fantastic settings, I am not terribly worried about how the metal of the paladin's armor was mined.

 

[Umbran]

I think that's an oversimplification. A single farmer with a sending stone is a potential target that the tower watch isn't.

If you are talking "tower watch" as if it were a stone edifice with a dozen people in it, sure (but that costs far, far more than the stone). If you are thinking of it as a wooden crow's nest with two in it, then no, not really.

Even assuming that a sending stone is worthless without the pair (and assuming there's no one who could acquire the other one) it's still a worthwhile target. Bandits who acquire it can potentially relay a significant amount of misinformation (no bandits sighted in the area, all clear to send the tax shipment through) before their ruse is discovered.

To pull that off, the bandits need a whole bunch of inside information - that the tax shipment is coming, that the bearer of the stone has been set to send a go/no-go message, and so on. A stone given to ye standard farmer wouldn't likely be useful for that, as the Sheriff would ask, "Why the heck is Farmer Jessup trying to tell me about tax shipments?"

Once you have that much inside information anyway, the Stones would not be the real weak link in security - someone's already been captured and forced to talk, or there's an inside collaborator. Stones are then a lesser concern.

The Farmer's stone is probably only good for diversions, "Sheriff, there's bandits over on the east side of the river!" But you can get the same diversion by having someone beat up run into town and say the same thing.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Personally, if you are going to trade sheep for wheat, you should ask them for some ore as well. You can't turn your village into a city until you have 3 ore and 2 wheat.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Personally, if you are going to trade sheep for wheat, you should ask them for some ore as well. You can't turn your village into a city until you have 3 ore and 2 wheat.

This did make me think of just how challenging this particular rabbit hole can be. I was talking with a friend recently, who is very well read about history and someone I would consider more intelligent than myself, and he was trying to bring realistic economics to a maritime setting. It was excruciatingly difficult to get good information and understand the baseline costs of things (i.e. how many sheep x amount of wheat was worth). When I was doing my Roman campaign I had similar issues and remember trying to incorporate things like an imperial edict on prices (which turned out to itself be much more complicated). Now, when I do want a 'realistic' economy in my games, because I know I will never intuitively understand the economics of a medieval or ancient agrarian society, I just use anachronistic prices based on modern costs (i.e. well this chariot is comparable to a car so I will draw on modern car costs; if someone wants a meal at an inn, I charge them based on restaurant prices I understand). That has worked really well for me. It isn't historically realistic, but it tends to be much more consistent than when I research each thing individually because I don't really grasp those values on an internal level the way I do modern prices.

 

[Ixal]

By the way, if you are really interested about where the wheat comes from here is a good four part series (+rice) about that topic.

Pairs well with lonely cities about the lack of villages and supporting infrastructure around them in most fantasy movies and settings.