D&D General consideration on sapient folk having two distinct base cultures?

[Hussar]

Sure. 100% agree, but the knowledge of how to do something is very different from having the means to do so. Mining ore, refining that ore, and turning it into finished products are all steps that require not just knowing how to do so, but a significant investment in time and rather specialized equipment. Much of that equipment would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to move. Stretching the time a nomadic group stays in one place (cough dwarves,) or involving high fantasy magic could circumvent those issues but would create others.

I think magic is probably the bigger issue here. It's easy to refine ore. I simply ask the ore spirits and give them an appropriate gift and the ore is refined.

Agriculture is another tough one, as I mentioned before. Historically, food production spiked when humans settled and began farming. Without traditional farming how do these nomadic cultures compete with settled peoples? Again, magic, sure, but what about something more unique like sowing crops that require little upkeep before moving to a new location that is ready to harvest. Do that in enough places and you are moving every 3-4 months and constantly harvesting and planting. In theory, that gets you a constant food supply. Since you are working with smaller crops storage remains minimal, and thus portable.

Edit: the roving farmers would also need some way of protecting their crops from animals. Defensive measures might be difficult, but aggressively hunting large herbivores to the point of near extinction is entirely plausible. Some sort of guardian predator would be more fun, and less likely to piss off local druids, but conflict is fun.

Hunting to extinction is generally not a huge problem. I mean, in the real world, we managed to be hunter/gatherers for tens of thousands of years without too much difficulty, so, it's not like it's impossible. And, let's not forget D&D fauna as well. There's all sorts of really fun stuff you could live off of. Fire Beetles would be a MASSIVE change to the world. Beetles that large? Fantastic food source and a free source of light as well.

It really would be nice though to see a D&D world that wasn't just the bog standard fantasy world again.

 

[Ixal]

But, no one invented those things. The God of the Dwarves taught Maggun how to do this and then she spread the knowledge among the faithful.

See, this is where things get kinda weird. For some bizarre reason, despite the fact that in D&D worlds, people were created by intelligent beings, all the D&D worlds progress in a similar fashion to real world history - paleolithic through bronze age and into iron age (yes, I know I'm skipping rather a lot there). But, there is zero reason why that happened. Fire wasn't "discovered". It was gifted/stolen from the gods. Smelting works because the spirits of metal want to form certain shapes. And there REALLY ARE spirits of metal. It's not like these are things with no basis in truth. They are part of that reality.

So, all these notions of scientific progress go straight out the window. Fire isn't a chemical reaction - it's the release of fire elementals into the world who die almost instantly. So on and so forth.

Sure, if you want your fantasy world to work by real world physics with real world physics restraints, that's fine. But, that's just rather the sort of traditional fantasy approach. Fantasy world as ersatz Earth with a thin veneer of magic. Doesn't actually delve much into the actual reality of that fantasy world though. I find it a rather lazy approach to be honest. It's ignoring the facts of that reality in order to present a very narrow slice of what a fantasy world actually is. A fantasy world is a magical construct, created by beings of unimaginable power, fueled by narrativium.

I highly recommend the Science of Discworld books as an excellent primer for fantasy world design.

Even if you handwave the knowledge, forging and smelting takes time and infrastucture (although smelters can be created on a temporary basis) limiting their use by a nomadic society.
And they also depend on all the ingredients they need to be in the same place together with a food source as without permanent structures they can't store anything and also not take large quantities of resources with them.

You can of course invent stuff when you are dead set on making a nomadic lifestyle competitive, but even with your invention a settled life gives a much higher capacity of industrial production than a nomadic lifestyle which precludes any form of having large scale tools and infrasturcture and also keeping an inventory.
It also limits the size of the communities which in turn limits how complex the tools they can make can become as at some point you do not have enough workers to craft them.

 

[Redwizard007]

I think magic is probably the bigger issue here. It's easy to refine ore. I simply ask the ore spirits and give them an appropriate gift and the ore is refined.

That's certainly an option. If you want magic to be that integral to your world then you can really do anything you want without much pushback.

Hunting to extinction is generally not a huge problem. I mean, in the real world, we managed to be hunter/gatherers for tens of thousands of years without too much difficulty, so, it's not like it's impossible.

The number of Ice age megafauna that are no longer around is astonishing, but I was suggesting that our farmers could intentionally hunt them to extinction to prevent the beasts grazing on their crops.

It really would be nice though to see a D&D world that wasn't just the bog standard fantasy world again.

There are several that I miss.

 

[Hussar]

Even if you handwave the knowledge, forging and smelting takes time and infrastucture (although smelters can be created on a temporary basis) limiting their use by a nomadic society.
And they also depend on all the ingredients they need to be in the same place together with a food source as without permanent structures they can't store anything and also not take large quantities of resources with them.

You can of course invent stuff when you are dead set on making a nomadic lifestyle competitive, but even with your invention a settled life gives a much higher capacity of industrial production than a nomadic lifestyle which precludes any form of having large scale tools and infrasturcture and also keeping an inventory.
It also limits the size of the communities which in turn limits how complex the tools they can make can become as at some point you do not have enough workers to craft them.

Yes, well, I did mention that bit about how settling into one place brings out the giant monsters that will eat your town.

Oh, I do realize you'd have a setting that is VERY different than the bog standard Eurofantasy one. I was just kinda inspired by the thought. And, like I said, after forty years of settings that are not terribly different from each other, I'd LOVE to see a setting that actually went in this direction.

Hrm, I wonder if I could adapt Scarred Lands to this. Titans would work as a pretty good motivation to not settle in one place too long. That large city is just a nice petite fours for the mountain sized Titan of Gluttony.

 

[Ixal]

Yes, well, I did mention that bit about how settling into one place brings out the giant monsters that will eat your town.

Oh, I do realize you'd have a setting that is VERY different than the bog standard Eurofantasy one. I was just kinda inspired by the thought. And, like I said, after forty years of settings that are not terribly different from each other, I'd LOVE to see a setting that actually went in this direction.

Hrm, I wonder if I could adapt Scarred Lands to this. Titans would work as a pretty good motivation to not settle in one place too long. That large city is just a nice petite fours for the mountain sized Titan of Gluttony.

You could go the middle way and have moving cities like in the (bad) Peter Jackson movie, or if you prefer a fantasy inspiration the Roving Clans from Endless Legend who build tent cities on the back of giant beetles.

 

[Mind of tempest]

You could go the middle way and have moving cities like in the (bad) Peter Jackson movie, or if you prefer a fantasy inspiration the Roving Clans from Endless Legend who build tent cities on the back of giant beetles.

now you have me at giant beetles.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

The real trick here is to posit a nomadic human culture without slapping on the wealth of awful colonial tropes that usually apply. A nomadic culture that can hold it's own against more industrialized nations though? One that isn't defined by less-than terminology? That's a strong idea.

The Mongols, and Genghis Khan, say hi.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

even tolkiens elves have something of a split, but dwarves never had.

The Five Houses of Durin. Lived in different parts of Middle-Earth and had some differences, though I would have to dig into the books to remember just what they were.

 

[Hussar]

You could go the middle way and have moving cities like in the (bad) Peter Jackson movie, or if you prefer a fantasy inspiration the Roving Clans from Endless Legend who build tent cities on the back of giant beetles.

Heh, I do like the giant monster as mobile home idea. It's certainly got some legs.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The Five Houses of Durin. Lived in different parts of Middle-Earth and had some differences, though I would have to dig into the books to remember just what they were.

yeah, could you do that I want to know if there are any great divides in dwarves so I can know if they can all not be just copies of the same guy?

The Mongols, and Genghis Khan, say hi.

also, most of dnd is set at a tech level where industry is still hard and difficult so exactly when the Han himself did well.