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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3785372" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm reminded of a discussion of the population of the universe in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  The narrator notes that the universe is infinite, but has no inhabitants.  It arrives at this logic by noting that the average population density of an infinite space is zero, and so it stands to reason that you'd never actually encounter any inhabitants.  Obviously, this is a joke, and there is something wrong with the math and the reasoning.  However, while it illustrates the conceptual problems of the assumption of infinite space, its also very germane to your point.  It doesn't matter how unusual and isolated the pockets, antechambers, gate towns, and border regions are admidst the infinite space.  If those are the only regions you visit, then effectively they are common and numerous.  Maybe there are infinite voids of fire in out in 'Adventures Don't Normally Happen Here' and 'Middle of Nowhere', but if you spend all your time in the City of Brass then so what?  From a story telling perspective this is similar to the way planets are typically treated in science fiction.  Maybe there are vast ergs of sand on Tatooine, but if your characters spend 99% of thier time near a space port, effectively the majority of the (used) planet's surface is the inside of a cantina.Which will be no actual change at all, simply sticking a 'New and Improved' sticker on the product while 'fixing' problems that I don't actually have.  Of course, part of thier fix will be effectively saying, "Since we discovered that 99% of all adventurers on Tattooine occur in the Mos Eisley cantina, we've decided to make Tattooine the cantina planet and do away with all those useless wastes where no one actually goes.  While we are on the subject, we've done away with deep space too.  I mean, it's empty, what's the point?"</blockquote>

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