how does a culture recover from an apocalyptic event?

[fusangite]

I said:

Elves are 70% the size of humans and yet, by your math, take 7-10 times as long to reach maturity. So clearly size is not the main determinant of how quickly a creature reaches maturity. Look at how much faster horses reach maturity than humans, despite their considerably larger size. Other than size, is there any other basis on which you can assert that other lizard creatures take longer to reach maturity than kobolds do?

You said:

1) You didn't say elves, you gave reptile people as examples. Elves have a longer generation than the reptile people because the author's decided to make it so. In the PH, they start their young adulthood at 110 years. Or are you contesting that?

You're not responding to my post. Re-read what I have just said; you have completely misread what I posted. I'm not comparing elves to lizard-people at all. What I am saying is that you cannot use the size of a species to determine the amount of time it takes to reach maturity. Elves are 30% smaller than humans and take 800% longer to reach maturity; by your reasoning, elves should take 30% less time to reach maturity but they don't.

So, I'll ask again: what is your evidence that lizardfolk and troglodytes take longer than kobolds to reach maturity?

2) Their turnover rate. They are not considered snacks on legs like kobolds are. If the turnover rate wasn't as high as it is, then the kobold peoples would be gone long ago.

I thought human adventurers, in your model, were supposed to be the main source of kobold mortality. Now you are asserting that being eaten is the main reason kobolds die. Who eats them, by the way? And does the proposed cataclysm impact these predators more or less than it does the kobolds?

 

[DMH]

I said:
So, I'll ask again: what is your evidence that lizardfolk and troglodytes take longer than kobolds to reach maturity?

That was the number 2 responce- the turnover rate.

I thought human adventurers, in your model, were supposed to be the main source of kobold mortality. Now you are asserting that being eaten is the main reason kobolds die. Who eats them, by the way? And does the proposed cataclysm impact these predators more or less than it does the kobolds?

Call it a typo- I meant snacks on legs and target practice for everyone under the sun and beneath the earth.

What eats kobolds- ogres, dragons, orcs, bugbears, bears, wolves, lions, purple worms, umber hulks, gnolls, trolls, hill giants, oozes, areana, minotaurs, other reptile people etc. Pretty much anything that doesn't mind eating an intelligent being and lives near them.

What shoots kobolds- hobgoblins, goblins, humans, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, elves, plus whatever other races the DM uses. So in other words, everything else.

To the last question- I haven't the least idea. They may have been similarly affected or just had their food supply decreased. We still haven't heard from glassjaw.

 

[fusangite]

I asked:

So, I'll ask again: what is your evidence that lizardfolk and troglodytes take longer than kobolds to reach maturity?

You replied:

That was the number 2 responce- the turnover rate.

What do you mean by "turnover rate"? From what data are you deriving this figure?

I meant snacks on legs and target practice for everyone under the sun and beneath the earth.

So you now do concede that good-aligned humanoids are not the main thing that causes kobolds to die? I suppose you see that this admission does a fair bit of structural damage to the house of cards you are trying to reinforce.

What eats kobolds- ogres, dragons, orcs, bugbears, bears, wolves, lions, purple worms, umber hulks, gnolls, trolls, hill giants, oozes, areana, minotaurs, other reptile people etc. Pretty much anything that doesn't mind eating an intelligent being and lives near them.

And where did this list come from? Did you just make it up or did it come from the highly dubious article? What makes you think that creatures just eat whatever crappy biomass they can get their hands on? That's certainly not how humans work. If there is better food that kobold meat around, what motivates creatures to kill them? You're not reasoning here; you're just wildly speculating. You have enough evidence to say that your scenario is possible but somehow you have converted this possibility into a certainty.

Look. I'm not telling you that you can't design a world where the kobolds become the dominant species by making up various things. But let's admit that this is what you are doing. There is no inevitability here. It's just a scenario you have thought up based on a whole host of creative assumptions you have made. You have decided that a particular outcome, a kobold-dominated world, would be cool. But cool does not equal inevitable.

So stop trying to prove to us that this will happen. Instead, why not redirect your efforts to making the case for why this outcome is cool.

 

[Wolf72]

huh, I would think that most races, instead of trying to kill each other, would be more worried about consolidating their own power bases ... and steering clear of monsters (and animals like lions, tigers and bears ... dire even, OH MY!).

I mean there's plenty of non-intelligent (at least not sentient) critters that could make everyon'e life miserable. A few owlbears between the kobolds and elves, from above, would make a signficant difference in their inter-(or lack there of)-action.

 

[DMH]

So you now do concede that good-aligned humanoids are not the main thing that causes kobolds to die? I suppose you see that this admission does a fair bit of structural damage to the house of cards you are trying to reinforce.

Glassjaw didn't say that only good-aligned humanoids were affected.

What house of cards? I said that the faster breeding races would build up faster than the others and the slowest reproducers would die off. That is my arguement in a nutshell.

And where did this list come from? Did you just make it up or did it come from the highly dubious article?

Those are the species that eat humanoid flesh according to the MM. Since kobolds are humanoid and tend to be the weakest and most common prey around, they make the best target for food. Why go hunting for humans when some kobold kabobs will do just as nicely.

And do not insult a piece of writing you haven't read. That is petty and unbecoming.

What makes you think that creatures just eat whatever crappy biomass they can get their hands on?

And what makes kobolds crappy? Lizard meat is not disgusting and is usually tastey- like gator tail and rattlesnake.

It's just a scenario you have thought up based on a whole host of creative assumptions you have made. You have decided that a particular outcome, a kobold-dominated world, would be cool. But cool does not equal inevitable.

We are talking about fictional world that are just assumptions and again it is blindingly obvious that you didn't read the post where I said they would not be dominate forever. They would build and then die back just like every other species (except those they go extinct).

So stop trying to prove to us that this will happen. Instead, why not redirect your efforts to making the case for why this outcome is cool.

As I said before I am tired of this. Why would kobolds in charge be cool- steamtech. There could be a race between them (who focus on the mechanical aspects) and the gnomes (who focus on the alchemical and material aspects). With enough of both races around and possibly allying (difficult, but possible due to things happening during the cataclysm), they could change the face of the planet. For better or worse.

Or they could go the magi-tech route and reach for the stars. 2000 years could easily put them at that level.

And with both, they could hunt down the various monsters species and erraticate them like we have done on this planet.

 

[fusangite]

Glassjaw didn't say that only good-aligned humanoids were affected.

Nor did I. What I said was that at one moment, you base argument on the idea that the main predators of kobolds are good-aligned humanoids and the next moment you argue the opposite.

What house of cards? I said that the faster breeding races would build up faster than the others and the slowest reproducers would die off. That is my arguement in a nutshell.

Do you know how you determine the actual growth rate for a species in real life? You compare the birthrate against the mortality rate. You know some factors that affect the birth rate. You do not know the mortality rate. If you cannot even stick to your story from one post to the next about what causes kobold mortality, how can you possibly assert that you know their growth rate?

Those are the species that eat humanoid flesh according to the MM. Since kobolds are humanoid and tend to be the weakest and most common prey around,

Why are they the most common prey around? On what basis do you assert this?

they make the best target for food. Why go hunting for humans when some kobold kabobs will do just as nicely.

Now I don't even know what you are arguing. Is it now your position that kobolds will have a higher mortality rate at the hands of other humanoids? How does this impact your general argument?

And do not insult a piece of writing you haven't read. That is petty and unbecoming.

I'm insulting the position you believe the article to take. Take that however you want.

And what makes kobolds crappy? Lizard meat is not disgusting and is usually tastey- like gator tail and rattlesnake.

Intelligent creatures (and even unintelligent creatures) do not simply base their dietary choices on efficient absorption of biomass. Otherwise, humans would eat a lot more reptiles and insects than we do. Once again, you are arbitrarily determining that something will happen because it could happen. In this case, it's kind of funny because this position actually continues to undermine your argument that the biggest factor in kobold mortality is the action of good-aligned humanoids.

We are talking about fictional world that are just assumptions and again it is blindingly obvious that you didn't read the post where I said they would not be dominate forever.

I did. But you are presenting this short-run kobold dominance as inevitable when it clearly isn't. That's my point. Lots of things could happen in the short term. Your scenario is one of them.

Anyway, thanks for moving on to describing said scenario at the end of your post. Much appreciated. Maybe you could give us more details about the Gnome-Kobold technocracy that comes into being.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Isn't that what I just said? The reproductive lifespan is the single most important factor. If you go from 30% of women living to menopause to 70% -- that's your biggest factor.

Actually, the industrial revolution was not great for life span. However, a contemporaneous cultural shift reduced the average marriage age for commoners by a considerable factor and reduced taboos regarding sex before weaning. Thus, women weren't so much living longer as starting to have kids younger and having more kids per decade.

Yep, I just misunderstood you to not be referring to the beneficial effects of generally lengthened lifespan.

I was referring more to industrializing nations, though I probably should have said developing, not so much the original industrial revolution, but I'm glad to hear the theory.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Still, I will offer this:

I think rather than thinking about a kobold-dominated world, it would be fun to imagine more generally a reptile-dominated world. I think it would be quite interesting to have reptiles get a decisive upper hand over mammals. I see the kobolds as the bureaucrat caste in such a society with the most senior kobolds as sorceror-mandarins who advise the Dragon Emperor.

I see this resulting from some kind of permanent warming/seasonal screw-up so that winter never comes. I can see this reptilian empire keeping a tight lid on magic to ensure that winter never comes back. I picture tropical rice paddies doubling as fishing pools being worked by human slaves commanded by lizardfolk pastoralists who treat humans little better than the other draft animals they have working the fields and whip their slaves from the backs of giant geckos.

I see the empire having very different faces depending on whether it is night or day. I see the hot muggy nights as the times when the kobolds open their bureaucratic offices and hear the petitions of the subjugated peoples who have been working all day in the rice patties.

I can imagine a guerilla movement located in the coldest mountains making raids down to the big fortified hatcheries and public torture of the egg-smashers.

How about that?

Given the usefullness of kobolds as a base race what with the high birth rate and cleverness with traps, might they not be a better urban or industrial race?

Lizardmen I like, I think they'd do very well in the hierarchy as militants and pastoralists. Though I don't know much about their penchant for agriculture being natural druids. Hard to say what a druid society would do in terms of making farming models. I picture a highly diversified system, with lots of cooperation and a high level of 'technical' expertise from the druid caste. I like the rice paddies that are also fish farms.

Yuan-Ti might make excellent beauracrats and a good race for overseeing or dealing with the human element of the empire. Particularly given their parasitic relationship to humans. I'm picturing something like the first scene of Alexander Nevsky where human prinicipalities are surrounded by lizard lands and the Yuan-ti mandarins who are both their primary opponents and primary employers. Humans would essentially be a client society.

The whole empire might function through a series of deliberatives where the lizardmen, Yuan-Ti, and Kobolds make up the estates. Gnomes or other guest peoples have either advisory roles or are granted specific rights and obligations, and Dragons function as a less desperate, given that their superiority is so much more clearly manifest, patrician class. With younger dragons and the greatest of the Yuan-ti functioning as something analogous to the equites.

 

[Stormrunner]

Fusangite, I see where you're coming from, but you seem to have a tendency to phrase your posts as "You disagree with me so you must be an idiot". This naturally raises people's hackles and makes them want to refute you. And frankly, you're making some pretty broad assumptions yourself. In particular, you seem to be assuming that there will be no "empty land" ATC (After the Cataclysm), given your repeated posts about "land hunger is not the primary cause of wars" and "people will be more aggressive ATC, not less". DMH isn't talking about wars between neighboring nations, he's talking about expansion into empty territory.
The human empire suddenly has only 1/10 as many soldiers. Do they continue to weakly defend a large territory, or do they pull back, consolidate, and fortify their most important "core" areas? Probably the latter. The kobolds, meanwhile are doing the same. Now instead of the nearest kobold burrow being a few miles from the nearest human border fort, that burrow and that fort are both abandoned and the nearest distance is tens or even hundreds of miles. The humans may be "more aggressive" and want to kill the kobolds, but doing so now takes more time and effort and is more dangerous (longer journey through uncivilized lands), so the pressure on the kobolds from the humans will indeed probably be less, at least for a while. As you yourself pointed out, pastoralists tend to have the advantage over agriculturalists immediately ATC. WHY? I suspect it's because moving a herd into new grazing land is much faster and easier than clearing/plowing/and planting a new acre - in other words, the pastoralists can expand faster.
And both of you have gotten sidetracked into the minutiae of specific races (kobolds vs elves) instead of treating them as examples, as they were originally used. From here on I'm going to use "kobolds" in quotes to mean "kobolds, goblins, jermlaine, and other Small fast-breeding races", because it's a lot easier on my typing fingers than saying "kobolds, goblins, jermlaine, hobbits, and other Small fast-breeding races" every time.
Yes, in the real world ther are more species than grass and oaks. However, the grass still recolonizes faster than the oaks - in the real world, not just in somebody's head - because it grows and reproduces faster. In the long run, the bushes and trees literally overshadow the grass and take over - but in the short run, the grass does get there first.

My scenario: the first to move into the "empty land" will be the highly-mobile, nomadic/pastoral races such as centaurs and worgs - they can get there and stake a claim first, and can immediately use the territory they claim. They will dominate for a while, but be slowly pushed out by the "kobolds", who are better at fortifying and holding onto the land they claim, and may be agricultural (just because they're nocturnal doesn't mean a race has to be subterranean). These in turn will be gradually conquered by the "humans", who have less quantity but more quality (longer lifespan = greater skills/knowledge = better equipment/magic).

 

[DMH]

The human empire suddenly has only 1/10 as many soldiers. Do they continue to weakly defend a large territory, or do they pull back, consolidate, and fortify their most important "core" areas? Probably the latter. The kobolds, meanwhile are doing the same. Now instead of the nearest kobold burrow being a few miles from the nearest human border fort, that burrow and that fort are both abandoned and the nearest distance is tens or even hundreds of miles.

Thank you for restating my "assumption" in better terms.

And both of you have gotten sidetracked into the minutiae of specific races (kobolds vs elves) instead of treating them as examples, as they were originally used.

True. I kept with kobolds because they have an innate magical knack even though the MM has goblins as the fastest breeders. I still believe that does give them an advantage.

(just because they're nocturnal doesn't mean a race has to be subterranean).

I never thought of them that way. I dropped the light blindness for kobolds a long time ago, but now you have given me a reason to use it.

These in turn will be gradually conquered by the "humans", who have less quantity but more quality (longer lifespan = greater skills/knowledge = better equipment/magic).

This is where 3.X has fumbled. By giving all intelligent beings classes (which should have the same stratification among them all), they powered up the weaker races beyond porportionately (sp). There is no reason now that the leader of a tribe of koblds can't be a 15th level or higher spellcaster. There is no reason that a highly trained band of kobolds can't be in the high teens (or even epic) and have the ability to wipe out whole human communities. The only way for humans to deal with it is to keep killing them while they are of low level.

But in game terms, there is no answer. It is a problem that the individual DM is going to have to deal with in his of her own manner.

It is too bad this thread is so poorly read (less than 10 hits/post) but I can see why with the slugfest.