D&D 5E A brief rant about Rime of the Frost Maiden, farming, logistics, and ecology

[NotAYakk]

So I like cities and villages, but I don't want them surrounded with oceans of farmland. I want to be able to walk to the wilderness pretty quick.

So my D&D default is that ritual magic can and is used to boost food production. Not "create food and water" or magic items that mass produce food, but blessing fields, plant growth spells, animal fertility rituals, preservation charms, etc.

These in turn are fed by some resource that is geographically limited; ley lines, for example. Intense agriculture, up to a limit, becomes possible at spots where ley lines cross; there cities are built, fed by a shockingly (for the middle ages) low number of farmers and farmland.

This high density in turn permits the military to guard the area against monsters.

Small holds are also warded with the magic of hearth and home, which makes monsters less likely to attack.

Go more than a day's travel away, and you reach the limits of patrols, and you are in the wilderness. Roads are partly protected by shrines and the magic worked into roads by the feet of travellers.

---

Under this model, the settlement is self sustaining (mostly), even though it is arctic. The eternal winter hurts, but isn't fatal, because they where not on the edge of survival before. Their farm-magic works in the winter.

The wilderness is similarly a magical ecology. D&D has far, far to many preditors for it to make sense otherwise. So there is significant ecological damage, but not collapse, in the eternal winter.

 

[Jd Smith1]

If that isn't what you want from 30 bucks in an RPG, that is totally fair. But I am not saying it is B movie. I am saying it is cinematic in the sense of films that loosely draw on history but don't heed details like the ones pointed out as important (and gloss over them to focus on other things like atmosphere, etc). Now, I am not saying it couldn't also be interesting to take more of a realistic and gritty approach (my initial comment about going full Braudel was intended as a compliment as I love books like The Wheels of Commerce (also why I mentioned HARN). I don't see that as WOTC's forte though. I think there is a spectrum of material here. I don't really play WOTC D&D anymore, so for me this is a distant concern. But when I did still run WOTC back in the 3E days, my experience as a GM was most players and groups weren't really concerned with these kinds of historically based details or with this kind of fact checking in a module. I am assuming it is written for that type of player and group.

It's definitely B movie material. It is too large of a concept failure to be anything else. Even by FR standards.

 

[Shardstone]

After reading this thread, I still don't get it.

Why is it so hard for WotC just to provide some written out possibilities for how the people are surviving? Why can't they just include a paragraph, or a break-out box, or a column, or even a footnote about how magic is used? I know for some GMs (and me too, actually) love coming up with their own reasonings, but that doesn't excuse WotC here. For a 50 dollar hardback adventure, they should, at the MINIMUM, give a roll table with ways the tentowners have survived so far.

1. Sacrifices to Auril have made it so that the light of her aurora keeps the plants alive.
2. The druids work hard to make sure the animals survive the winter with all means of primal magic.
3. The dwarves send regular supplies to the Ten Towns to ensure they don't collapse, in exchange for some kind of service.
4. Magical underdark heat vents are underneath the towns, providing them with enough heat to survive.
5. The few scattered spellcasters are forced to spend all of their arcane or divine might sustaining their local populations.
6. Sunlight is stored in magical items every year, and the abundance of sunlight stored over hundreds of years now sustains Icewind Dale.

That's it. That's all I'd ask for. For an adventure costing $50 in the store, yes, I want the option to have some kind of logic to it. I know a lot of people in this thread are apparently very against logic, and think that anyone that asks for it are overly willful and being stubborn, but no, we're not - we just want our money to actually buy a good adventure, and more importantly, we WANT WotC to put out good adventures. I want WotC to be the BEST it can be, and I strongly believe that until they start handling their books with a little bit more gravitas, they won't be able to achieve their true potential.

Is it wrong of me to want them to be better? Is wanting improvement an erroneous thought? Why is it that on this forum, when people want something improved, a whole army of people manifest from the darkness to tell us how FOOLISH we are for wanting such a thing?

 

[Mallus]

For $30 you should expect more than a low-budget B movie plot.

But low-budget B-movie plots work for D&D.

If I wanted an Oscar-contender, I wouldn't let the brilliant deranged knuckleheads I've gamed with for the past 20 years anywhere near the plot. I'd handle it myself, because I would be writing a book.

 

[Jd Smith1]

So I like cities and villages, but I don't wany them surrounded with oceans of farmland. I want to be able to walk to the wilderness pretty quick.

So my D&D default is that ritual magic can an dis used to boost food prodiction. Not "create food and water" or magic items that mass produce food, but blessing fields, plant growth spells, animal fertility rituals, preservation charms, etc.

These in turn are fed by some resource that is feographically limited; ley lines, for example. Intense agriculture, up to a li,it, becomes possible at spots where ley lines cross; there cities are built, fed by a shockingly (for the middle ages) low number of farmers and farmland.

This high density in turn permits the military to guard the area against monsters.

Small holds are also warded with the magic of hearth and home, whixh makes monsters less likely to attack.

Go more than a day's travel away, and you reach the limits of patrols, and you are in the wilderness. Roads are partly protected by shrines and the magic worked into roads by the feet of travellers.

---

Under this model, the settlement is self sustaining (mostly), even though it is arctic. The eternal winter hurts, but isn;t fatal, because they where not on the edge of survival before. Their farm-magic works in the winter.

The wilderness is similarly a magical ecology. D&D has far, far to many preditors for it to make sense otherwise. So there is significant ecological damage, but not collapse, in the eternal winter.

Where does the ton of firewood needed to heat and cook for every single inhabitant each year come from?

Even with the magic cropland (which is an economic disaster in and of itself, having just rendered a majority of the population unemployed), any settlement is going to be at the center of an ever-expanding circle of cleared ground as trees are harvested for building, heating, cooking, and maintenance.

For that matter, if cropland isn't needed, why are their towns in remote locations? Without the dynamic of a scarce commodity (good growing land), cities and towns would be placed close together to make defense cheaper (armies run on money) and easier.

 

[Jd Smith1]

After reading this thread, I still don't get it.

snipped for space

Is it wrong of me to want them to be better? Is wanting improvement an erroneous thought? Why is it that on this forum, when people want something improved, a whole army of people manifest from the darkness to tell us how FOOLISH we are for wanting such a thing?

It isn't wrong. But WOTC has been getting a pass for third-rate writing, especially in FR, that they just phone it in.

 

[NotAYakk]

Even with the magic cropland (which is an economic disaster in and of itself, having just rendered a majority of the population unemployed), any settlement is going to be at the center of an ever-expanding circle of cleared ground as trees are harvested for building, heating, cooking, and maintenance.

Yes, the modern day with well 3% of the population employed in farming is an economic disaster with huge unemployment issues.

Trees are crops.

For that matter, if cropland isn't needed, why are their towns in remote locations? Without the dynamic of a scarce commodity (good growing land), cities and towns would be placed close together to make defense cheaper (armies run on money) and easier.

In this world, population for most of time was basically limited by food production.

People lived where there was cropland. Excess population concentrated in cities and settlements, where higher order production occurred.

In a world where land isn't the core producer of food, they will gather where the source is; in my case, I explicitly mentioned an example.

"These in turn are fed by some resource that is geographically limited; ley lines, for example. Intense agriculture, up to a limit, becomes possible at spots where ley lines cross; there cities are built, fed by a shockingly (for the middle ages) low number of farmers and farmland."

So there would be towns in such areas ... because there is food production there, and sufficient security.

This isn't rocket science.

---

D&D ecologies and populations don't look like those of any ancient society. And they have magic.

Having "small magic" or "slow magic" (not the flashy adventuring stuff) be the explanation for both is a simplifying explanation.

The magic of Hearth and Home, the magic of Road, the magic of Shrine, Druidic magic to grow food. Primal magic feeding the ecology, permitting huge monster predators in areas that wouldn't normally have the calorie food surplus to feed them.

Not decenters of endless water. Annual fertility rituals, maybe involving sacrificing something. Charms worked into walls and above doors. Prayers said by pilgrims as they walk the roads. Small sacrifices given to spirits guarding shrines. Things that people actually did in the real world; but in this world, they work.

That cumulative magic.

 

[Jd Smith1]

But low-budget B-movie plots work for D&D.

Not really. They work for those willing to accept that level of material.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's definitely B movie material. It is too large of a concept failure to be anything else. Even by FR standards.

I can't comment on the module itself, as I haven't read it. All I am saying is glossing over this kind of detail, doesn't make it a B movie in my mind (plenty of great films gloss over accuracy issues). Now I am not saying this module isn't B movie material either, as again, I haven't read it. It very well could be. I personally have zero interest in WOTC D&D, and never really liked how they approached adventures, so there is a good chance I would not have a favorable view of it were I to try to run the adventure. I just get that for the most part, this sort of fidelity to historical realism, isn't something WOTC was ever really about, nor was it something most of its audience seemed to care about.

 

[Shardstone]

I can't comment on the module itself, as I haven't read it. All I am saying is glossing over this kind of detail, doesn't make it a B movie in my mind (plenty of great films gloss over accuracy issues). Now I am not saying this module isn't B movie material either, as again, I haven't read it. It very well could be. I personally have zero interest in WOTC D&D, and never really liked how they approached adventures, so there is a good chance I would not have a favorable view of it were I to try to run the adventure. I just get that for the most part, this sort of fidelity to historical realism, isn't something WOTC was ever really about, nor was it something most of its audience seemed to care about.

This is true, and this thread proves it. Why go over the top and shoot for the stars with quality when people don't care so long as its enough? The wonders of creative capitalism I guess?