Excerpt: Fallcrest

[Spatula]

Y'know, the unimportant that no one other than world builders care about.

Ah, like population numbers, what the populace does for a living, imports & exports, high-priced inns (only need the basic room on your stopover to killing more monsters), the names of different watering holes (why more than one? why bother with a name even? who cares what it's called, right? you can't kill it), who in the government handles routine commerce & public projects, how that person is chosen for their job, etc. etc. etc.

I mean, I agree with you, all that stuff is useless if you're just on your way to the action movie in the dungeon. Nevertheless, the above (and possibly more, as presumably the excerpt is only a portion of it) is all in the DMG.

 

[Hussar]

Ah, like population numbers, what the populace does for a living, imports & exports, high-priced inns (only need the basic room on your stopover to killing more monsters), the names of different watering holes (why more than one? why bother with a name even? who cares what it's called, right? you can't kill it), who in the government handles routine commerce & public projects, how that person is chosen for their job, etc. etc. etc.

I mean, I agree with you, all that stuff is useless if you're just on your way to the action movie in the dungeon. Nevertheless, the above (and possibly more, as presumably the excerpt is only a portion of it) is all in the DMG.

You're probably right. The reason being the apoplectic nerd frenzy that would result if they didn't include it. The fact that 99% of it will never see the light of day will not stop people from insisting that IT MUST BE THERE.

Isn't it funny though. I look at the fact that there's more than one inn and figure, ok, well, you've got a high end inn for one type of adventures and a low end inn for other types of adventures. Others look at the previews and worry over whether or not the economics of this fictitious town works.

In my mind, people should spend far more energy actually worrying about stuff that matters at the table and a lot less time with world building. Obviously I'm in the minority here.

What really makes me shake my head is this presumption that if you aren't spending all this time and energy on "who in the government handles routine commerce & public projects", your game is nothing but mindless hack fests with no depth. Since when does amateur fan fic=deep meaningful play? The incredible arrogance I see whenever this comes up just astonishes me.

See, if you want to spend all that time doing all that background work, more power to you. Go right ahead. But, don't presume that my game is any less rewarding or deep just because I choose to focus on the campaign rather than, what I consider to be trivia.

 

[Mort_Q]

In my mind, people should spend far more energy actually worrying about stuff that matters at the table and a lot less time with world building. Obviously I'm in the minority here.

Although I agree, I also think that world building is... fun.

 

[Wormwood]

In my mind, people should spend far more energy actually worrying about stuff that matters at the table and a lot less time with world building. Obviously I'm in the minority here.

The minority *here*, perhaps, as ENWorld skews heavily toward DMs---obsessive DMs at that.

But I wouldn't say we are in the minority of D&D gamers (especially considering that world-building tends to be a solitary pursuit).

See, if you want to spend all that time doing all that background work, more power to you. Go right ahead. But, don't presume that my game is any less rewarding or deep just because I choose to focus on the campaign rather than, what I consider to be trivia.

Thank you.

My games have *improved* since I focused my energies toward the table and away from my notebooks (so to speak).

 

[Nikodemus]

Here's what I don't get about the urban vs rural population gripe.

This is a rural population. Heck a good Pueblo in the American Southwest could boast better numbers than this and though those were civil they certainly weren't urban. Mind you maize is a better producing crop than wheat, but they would have also lacked domestic animals and were working in a far more hostile environment.

I like that the layout really reflects the feel of ruined city like Rome.

People probably have pasturage and working gardens within the ruins of the city walls.

The presence of walls (and various legal privileges to those within them) traditionally defines urban space in the middle ages. 1000 people inside a walled space certainly counts as urban for medieval Europe. As numerous poeple have pointed out, however, we lack the number of people living inside the walls and the pictures don't suggest that it is all that many.

 

[DeusExMachina]

While it's fun to create worlds, I always try to keep it useful. Whether a farm town has 60% farmers or 65% farmers is a totally useless difference to me as DM and also to my players.
However, a 500 man mining town in the middle of the mountains with no fertile farm land around (my starting campaign) needs some way of getting food, because it's obvious that they have no regular food supply. So I invented an edible mushroom that gets farmed in several of the caves creating by mining, which forms the basis of their diet, which is supplemented by hunting and regular caravans with food supplies.
Now we have new locations (the caves with food), new NPC's (the hunters and food merchants) and possible storylines (what happens when the food supply gets cut off somehow?). That imo is effective worldbuilding that deals both with creating a believable world while also working on the stuff that is needed to create a story...

There are alway sgoing to be certaint hings wrong with a town created in a game like this, because it's simply not feasible to model a complete economy, culture and whatnot of a large area like that and still have a social life. As long as a DM can give me some basic reason as to why a town is there or why it is the way it is, I am satisfied even if it has some consequences that are strange if you think about it for long...

 

[Irda Ranger]

In my mind, people should spend far more energy actually worrying about stuff that matters at the table

Agreed. Why don't you stop worrying about what some of us consider fun, or at least an interesting discussion.

Obviously I'm in the minority here.

Not really. Plenty of people accuse others of wrongbadfun.

What really makes me shake my head is this presumption that if you aren't spending all this time and energy on "who in the government handles routine commerce & public projects", your game is nothing but mindless hack fests with no depth.

What presumptions? Play however you want; no skin off my back. I doubt Andor cares either. And even if we did think that, why would you care what someone on the internet thinks?

The incredible arrogance I see whenever this comes up just astonishes me.

I think you find arrogance because you're looking for it, not so much because it's there. It's remarkably hard to judge the emotional content of writing alone without the inflection of a voice or expression to give it context, which means that the reader's predisposition in usually determinative. Can you guess my mood based on this post?

[sblock]Extremely calm. Pulse about 75, I'd say. Mildly shocked by Hussar's energy about how "some people" are judging him, but mostly just wishing he could have posted "Eh, it's good enough for my purposes, so I'm cool with it" and left it at that.[/sblock]

See, if you want to spend all that time doing all that background work, more power to you. Go right ahead. But, don't presume that my game is any less rewarding or deep just because I choose to focus on a different kind of the campaign rather than, what I consider to be trivia.

(orange text and strike-through were my changes)

Just so there can be no misunderstandings, I don't.

 

[Irda Ranger]

While it's fun to create worlds, I always try to keep it useful. Whether a farm town has 60% farmers or 65% farmers is a totally useless difference to me as DM and also to my players.
However, a 500 man mining town in the middle of the mountains with no fertile farm land around (my starting campaign) needs some way of getting food, because it's obvious that they have no regular food supply. So I invented an edible mushroom that gets farmed in several of the caves creating by mining, which forms the basis of their diet, which is supplemented by hunting and regular caravans with food supplies.
Now we have new locations (the caves with food), new NPC's (the hunters and food merchants) and possible storylines (what happens when the food supply gets cut off somehow?). That imo is effective worldbuilding that deals both with creating a believable world while also working on the stuff that is needed to create a story...

There are alway sgoing to be certaint hings wrong with a town created in a game like this, because it's simply not feasible to model a complete economy, culture and whatnot of a large area like that and still have a social life. As long as a DM can give me some basic reason as to why a town is there or why it is the way it is, I am satisfied even if it has some consequences that are strange if you think about it for long...

This is a very good post. The only thing I would change would be to end the first sentence of the second paragraph immediately after "whatnot." It's not feasible to model all that period - even if you don't have a social life.

But DeusExMachina's methods and means are how I approach this as well: just some back of the envelope stuff to pass a smell test. It helps player immersion if the world feels like a larger, more complex place than they're really aware of at any given moment, and it also gives me tons of plot hooks and quest ideas. After all, not every quest should be "Retrieve the Artifact" or "Rescue the Princess" - you've got to mix things up to keep them fresh, and a world with a little thought put into it is a great source of fresh ideas.

Here's a quest hook for DeusExMachina's mining town: the town of Boulder Mines relies on water from a mountain stream, not only for drinking but also for irrigating the mushroom caves. But recently the water has stopped! The PCs need to travel upstream into the mountains to discover the cause of the stream's disappearance. There is water in the cisterns but if the PCs don't get the water flowing again within two weeks the mushroom crop will be lost and the town impoverished. If the stream doesn't start flowing by the end of the month the town will have to be abandoned!

Naturally this can lead to a simple cave-clearing adventure (because some Duergar diverted the stream to underground forges), but knowing a little bit about the world makes a believable hook with some good time pressure.

 

[med stud]

I want population numbers and I want some kind of logical consistency in a pre-gen town. To me, figuring that stuff out is boring so it's something I gladly pay for.

If the number of farmers are too small compared to medival Europe and the number of guards are too high, I can accept that as long as it's not one farmer supplying 1300 town dwellers. They may have more resistant crops than medieval Europe or the people withing the city walls may grow some food of their own. The guards may be a temporary thing or it can be that they are not full time guards; most likely they have a patch of land close to the town where they grow their own food. The town has 60 men and women that are capable at handling weapons, that's about it. Not too unreasonable considering the lack of a nearby king with mounted knights.

The walls may be too large, but again the town was bigger before. The walls can also be from an older civilization. The lack of a guard tower at the road approaching the village can be because it's razed. There is most likely an observation post there.

Fallcrest is maybe illogical but it's not outrageously illogical. A lot of the stranger stuff can also be explained with a minimum effort (like above).

---

I guess this puts me somewhere between Andor and Hussar

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I think you find arrogance because you're looking for it, not so much because it's there. It's remarkably hard to judge the emotional content of writing alone without the inflection of a voice or expression to give it context, which means that the reader's predisposition in usually determinative.

Arrogance is not part of emotional state, it's part of attitude. even calm people can be and can come off as arrogant.

Indeed, it could be argued that many who are the most calm are the most arrogant.

So, please, keep it substantial.