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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5457353" data-attributes="member: 42582">1st ed AD&D specifically eschews taking a stand on whether the game world is caste-based or not, and on whether it is feudal or not. I don't know about 2nd ed AD&D. I don't remember much on feudalism in the 3E PHB - I can't remember the DMG on this point, but the overall environment doesn't seem especially feudal to me. Other than the paladin class, D&D's medievalism has seemed to me to be defined by some basic technological tropes - swords, armour, horses, etc - rather than by its social or political structures, all of which tend to be wildly anachronistic in the way Prof Cirno pointed out upthread.I don't get this. Star Wars is based in part on a samurai film, and in part on a loose recreation of the transition of the Roman Republic into the Empire. 4e doesn't especially remind me of Star Wars, but if it did that would certainly be consistent with a pre-modern feel to the government. Well, Conan's world is a pastiche of a lot of times and places, including the approximately medieval (Aquilonia and its neighbouring kingdoms).OK. Most of the places my PC's could reach are "empty", in the sense that I don't know what's there. If they did decide to go there, then I'd make some decisions based on a combination of easiness and probable interest to me and the players.Stats? What are these things called stats? I don't think I even gave him a name!What happened is this: I am using a map (from Night's Dark Terror). On the map is a town (called Kelven). The PCs all started there, in a tavern, and got recruited for a job. One of the players named the tavern in his PC background - I can't now remember what it was called, but it was on the docks and served dwarven ale. After resolving the recruitment scenario, where the PCs negotiated for slightly higher pay, we then cut to the next day and the PCs hopping on a boat to go upriver. Since then, the PCs have returned to Kelven for one game week in two real-time years of play. When they went back, they bought some stuff, sold some stuff, and decided to talk to the ruler about the possibility of hobgoblin attacks from the north. At that point I decided that (i) Kelven does have a ruler, and (ii) he doesn't have much money or economic capacity, because the fall of Nerath has depressed trade and production, but (iii) a lot of what he does have is quite valuable, because he is the inheritor of Nerathi loot. (I was thinking here of high medieval Rome, which was a shadow of its former economic self, but in which everyone and their dog seems to have been able to find some lovely marble if they went out looking for it.) We then had a brief paraphrase of the audience with the ruler - we didn't actually play it out in 1st person style - and I explained that at the end of the audience he gifted the PCs one riding horse with very high quality tack and harness.You now know as much as I and my players do about the ruler of Kelven in my game. If more information - like a name - becomes necessary down the track, I'll work it out then!That there was a ruler never came up until the players wanted to meet him. Likewise the other stuff. I assure you I'm not lying. I really did make that stuff up while sitting at the gaming table, looking my friends in the eye, and telling them stuff that their PCs are remembering or experiencing!This is actually not true. You don't need to know where things are. You just have to know that there is enough space in the area in question that they can all fit in. And you can handwave the distances (if they come up) as minutes, hours or days of travel.In my previous game, the PCs (i) ruled a harbour town, (ii) had control of a lighthouse built on an island of that town, (iii) knew that the island was in fact the petrified body of a dead god, whose face you could see if you dived underwater, and from whose eyes otherworldly entities occasionally emerged, (iv) set up various rendezvous points outside the town, (v) did deals with spirits living some distance outside the town, (vi) visited the estate of a noblewoman living some distance outside the town, (vii) had fights and chases on boats in the harbour and in the water of the harbour, etc etc. (For anyone interested, this was a high level Freeport trilogy variant.)I had no no map showing the depth or topography of the harbour, no picture of the face or eyes of the god, no map of the surrounds of the town, and only a pretty low-resolution map of the town and harbour (from the module). No continuity problem ever arose. If one had threatened, I might have drawn a map, but in several years of play none was needed.I can assure you that I have my stuff together. Ask me about the mythical history of the elven gods and I can tell you probably more than you want to know. This is the stuff I need to run my game. I don't need to know whether or not some minor plot point town has a ruler.Heck, one key plot point in my game is the ruined city of Entekash from which the PC wizard hails (this city was introduced into the gameworld by the player of that PC, when the PC backstory was written up) and I don't even know where on the map that is - although I've got a general notion that it's north of the Black Peaks and east of the area where most of the play is happening at the moment.While it's possible that something more precise will eventually need to be worked out, I wouldn't be surprised if we get to the point where the PCs are exploring Entekash on the Plane of Ruined Cities in the Abyss (from Demonomicon) before we've got to the point where Entekash is placed on the map.Whereas I do this all the time. As I quoted Paul Czege upthread, "I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this." What an NPC knows is something that I'll resolve in the course of play in order to help me push and pull.What is the creation myth for the world of 3E? Neither the PHB nor the DMG tells me. The 1st ed PHB has a very evocative two-page spread on the planes, but it doesn't tell me who created them.4e, in having a creation myth which continuing consequences that are set up as part of the action that the PCs can expect to be engaged in is actually quite distinctive among the various editions of D&D. And the gods are doing a lot before you get to the epic tier - they are providing ideals for the PCs, they are the background to a range of antagonists, from Orcus cultists to Bane-ite hobgoblins, and they are the source of power for invokers, warlocks and others. They are utterly central to my game, which is just about to move from heroic to paragon tier.You seem to be saying that mythical history of the campaign world is a minor detail, and an ingame answer to the problem of child-killing paladin PCs is a major detail. At the same time, you're telling me that my game, which prioritises mythic history over minutiae and doesn't really need to worry about mass-murdering paladins (the issue has never come up) is a hack-n-slash game?I don't get this at all.As far as I'm concerned you may, and I probably should have let your reply stand on its own, but I couldn't help myself from having a stab at it also.</blockquote>

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