how does a culture recover from an apocalyptic event?

[fusangite]

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".

True enough. Criticism accepted. Although this does only tend to happen after five iterations or so. Also, although I rarely pick fights on ENWorld, I do enjoy them when they happen. I think these fora are the ideal place to have arguments with people and I'll be honest here: I enjoy arguing. And I don't think I'm the only ENWorlder who derives a portion of his enjoyment of the fora from this pursuit.

And frankly, you're making some pretty broad assumptions yourself.

I can afford to. I'm only making the case that my scenario is possible not that it is inevitable.

And both of you have gotten sidetracked into the minutiae of specific races (kobolds vs elves)

Well, this is a sidetrack, in part because the main track isn't really going anywhere at the moment. Glassjaw appears to be AWOL so we can't get any details from him about what he's looking for and if any of our suggestions fit. Also, I think I've made it pretty clear that I'm not favouring any race all I was engaged in doing was showing that a particular scenario was not inevitable in order that should Glassjaw return we could discuss a wide variety of possible scenarios for his world.

Now, on with the show...

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).

First off, not to stick up for the kobolds or anything but don't kobolds also live longer in addition to maturing earlier?

Your succession cycle raises a really interesting issue that underlies much of D&D and usually isn't a problem until an issue like this comes up. Of course, in the real world, cultures adapt to different material and social conditions to maintain their dominance. But because a lot of Tolkien-inspired 19th century racial essentialism informs D&D, it appears that human beings are the only "race" that has that feature.

But wouldn't it be interesting if races other than humans had some, admittedly less, cultural and material adaptability, but some nonetheless? For instance, in order to retain their dominance, what might a centaur-run or kobold-run society do? How might it adapt?

To make a case for centaur adaptation, how about this? Centaurs might not pick up new skills and habitation patterns or increase their birthrate. They might, however, add value to their flocks in a number of ways. First off, they might train their flocks more intensively so that their sheep might come when called, increasing the possible ratio of beasts to shepherds. Also, they might also start fitting intelligent species into the pastoral paradigm. This might result in client humanoid societies being conceived-of as herds. Imagine the kind of social contract that might exist between a centaur ruling class and a group of humans raising hay for the sheep to eat during winter, or a group of dwarves constructing a flood control dam on a local river. What kinds of right and reciprocal obligations might come into being between these societies? I can also envisage a kind of sheep-dog caste of humans whose sole purpose is to act as intermediaries between the centaurs and their various types of flocks, intelligent and non-intelligent.

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?

I had assumed that a bureaucrat caste would be primarily or exclusively urban but I sort of see what you are getting at here: what of the numerous kobold proletariat? I really don't know.

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.

I have a lot of trouble with the D&D druid for exactly this reason. It's one of those areas we were arguing about from that last thread (where, surprisingly, you let me have the last word) -- I don't enjoy imposing modern conceptions of "nature" on pre-modern societies. It just seems cheesy to me. I prefer more historically-modeled sacred grove worshippers who, for the most part, had absolutely no problem with agriculture or with cutting down non-sacred trees for that matter.

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.

Glad we're on the same page nevertheless.

Yuan-Ti might make excellent beauracrats and a good race for overseeing or dealing with the human element of the empire.

My temptation, if we are to use Yuan-Ti, and again, I have some culture/genre problems related to the thread where we had our last debate, would be to make them the lower gentry/merchant caste below the dragons -- a kind of idle gentry whose power comes from holding title to huge tracts of land or controlling monopolies on certain trade goods. I also see them, if they are included, as one of the least populous groups in the society.

My feeling is that humans within the society would not be viewed as deserving of or requiring sophisticated dealings and therefore beneath the Yuan-Ti. Where I might see them as useful would be as "advisors" to the quasi-sovereign humanoid states at the high-elevation fringes 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.

This sounds quite appealing.

The whole empire might function through a series of deliberatives where the lizardmen, Yuan-Ti, and Kobolds make up the estates.

This sounds disturbingly egalitarian. In my view, though, highly-developed pre-modern bureaucracies tended to be associated with despotic rule rather than shared power. Non-despotic pre-modern structures tended not to develop as much of a bureaucrat class. I would therefore suggest that in the alternative, these creatures might all be self-governing but in the context of the absolute power of the Dragon Emperor.

Gnomes or other guest peoples have either advisory roles or are granted specific rights and obligations,

Rather than having non-reptile rights or obligations entrenched in any way, I would tend to see the "rights" of these peoples being entirely contingent upon a patron-client relationship with a particular mandarin or aristocrat whose death, incapacity or loss of favour could result in expulsions, deprivation of property or even slaughter.

and Dragons function as a less desperate, given that their superiority is so much more clearly manifest, patrician class.

Here, I agree -- but less numerous than patricians. I would argue in favour of a better equivalency to senatorial patricians.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

To make a case for centaur adaptation, how about this? Centaurs might not pick up new skills and habitation patterns or increase their birthrate. They might, however, add value to their flocks in a number of ways. First off, they might train their flocks more intensively so that their sheep might come when called, increasing the possible ratio of beasts to shepherds. Also, they might also start fitting intelligent species into the pastoral paradigm. This might result in client humanoid societies being conceived-of as herds. Imagine the kind of social contract that might exist between a centaur ruling class and a group of humans raising hay for the sheep to eat during winter, or a group of dwarves constructing a flood control dam on a local river. What kinds of right and reciprocal obligations might come into being between these societies? I can also envisage a kind of sheep-dog caste of humans whose sole purpose is to act as intermediaries between the centaurs and their various types of flocks, intelligent and non-intelligent.

I had assumed that a bureaucrat caste would be primarily or exclusively urban but I sort of see what you are getting at here: what of the numerous kobold proletariat? I really don't know.

I have a lot of trouble with the D&D druid for exactly this reason. It's one of those areas we were arguing about from that last thread (where, surprisingly, you let me have the last word) -- I don't enjoy imposing modern conceptions of "nature" on pre-modern societies. It just seems cheesy to me. I prefer more historically-modeled sacred grove worshippers who, for the most part, had absolutely no problem with agriculture or with cutting down non-sacred trees for that matter.

Glad we're on the same page nevertheless.

My temptation, if we are to use Yuan-Ti, and again, I have some culture/genre problems related to the thread where we had our last debate, would be to make them the lower gentry/merchant caste below the dragons -- a kind of idle gentry whose power comes from holding title to huge tracts of land or controlling monopolies on certain trade goods. I also see them, if they are included, as one of the least populous groups in the society.

My feeling is that humans within the society would not be viewed as deserving of or requiring sophisticated dealings and therefore beneath the Yuan-Ti. Where I might see them as useful would be as "advisors" to the quasi-sovereign humanoid states at the high-elevation fringes of the empire.

This sounds quite appealing.

This sounds disturbingly egalitarian. In my view, though, highly-developed pre-modern bureaucracies tended to be associated with despotic rule rather than shared power. Non-despotic pre-modern structures tended not to develop as much of a bureaucrat class. I would therefore suggest that in the alternative, these creatures might all be self-governing but in the context of the absolute power of the Dragon Emperor.

Rather than having non-reptile rights or obligations entrenched in any way, I would tend to see the "rights" of these peoples being entirely contingent upon a patron-client relationship with a particular mandarin or aristocrat whose death, incapacity or loss of favour could result in expulsions, deprivation of property or even slaughter.

Here, I agree -- but less numerous than patricians. I would argue in favour of a better equivalency to senatorial patricians.

On the first point, I'm glad to see that we both agree that given a truly tremendous apacalypse and the destruction of the 'normal' DnD social patterns we would likely see a shift away from, I feel there is a word from this but my technical ingnorance will force me to rely on description, single species social systems with the occasional group of other species hirelings or parasites, bugbears and goblins for instance, or social alliances, elves and humans, to societies where multiple species who were not dominant are forced to rely on each other. There are a lot of logical reasons for organizing things this way in the first place, so let's say that the adaptation occurs as a result of the initial power grabbers then developing strategies for keeping the 'naturally' dominant humans down.

Second Point, if I let you have the first word it was simply because we had moved on to other conversations. Further, the fact is that I think we are simply deriving two very different uses from the category of literature. I would argue that mine is more accurate, but I don't think you're entirely wrong, save for maybe on the essential nature of DnD but there I think you recognize your limitations and are going with a preference, and I think your perspective is very useful.

But my point in terms of the druids is that a society with that level of technical expertise on flora and fauna in their own right has been exceedingly rare and, in the case of lizardmen, is expected to be supremely exotic. As a result it wasn't my thought that the lizardmen would reject agriculture so much as that their version of it would likely be very tangent to the way it developed in human models. The nearest comparison I could come up with in my own head would be an exceptionally swampy and green version of the idealized modern French system of agriculture with lots of small scale farm holdings supporting a lot of people individually very well as a result of deliberate attempts to create fairly unique and appropriate farming circumstances, with a huge variety of food stuffs being created even on each individual plot, and a very high degree of both local expertise and central planning/organization.

In the system, the lizardmen themselves are sort of a protected group for the system functions both as a rather boutique means of food production, which fits the tastes of the dragons nicely, and as a retirement system for the lizardmen as the military caste of the reptilian empires. Thus the system also functions both as vast communities of small scale lizardman style villas or less urban versions of Roman retirement colonies and as a sort of rural academy system for young lizardmen being raised to be soldiers. Humans are brought into the lizardman areas occasionally as raw labor from time to time and thus kept handy but not in the lizardman areas as they no doubt offend their druidic sensibilities of how people ought to live. Further keeping them out allows the lizardmen to occasionally organize large scale raids in order to train their young in group warfare. Sparta with water, relish, and nicer gardens.

third. I thought Yuan-ti for the beauracracy/human managers for two reasons: 1.) they have a higher potential for personal power than individual kobolds and thus could prove more useful to Dragon overlords yet are still far enough beneath dragons to pose no threat. 2.) they already have a parasitic relationship to humans, there are going to be Yuan-ti there anyway you may as well, from the dragons point of view, make them part of the system. High level Kobolds can be in charge of the Kobold proletariat and the industrial/mercantile portions of the economy where Yuan-ti dominate the service and labor portions of the culture. I like them as the high advisors and officers, sort of Magi or Medes to the more conventional lizard races Persians and Babylonians.

fourth. My point was not to make it sound egalitarian in the sense of right and justice so much as egalitarian in the sense that each of the species is equally obligated to the dragon overlords. Keeping them in seperate deliberatives prevents the client species from developing aristocracies outside of the dragon system, keeps them busy with internal politics, and keeps them divided into their own interests. Naturally the Dragon emperor would still be the ultimate arbiter.

Fifth. I agree on this point, though I would think it foolish of the Dragon emperor to not guarantee these contracts himself. This gives him an indepent stream of revenue from a universe of highly dependent minorities and a series of convenient scape-goats to personally massacre should it prove necessary in the course of public relations.

Sixth. Senatorial patricians is what I had in mind the whole time. Though I might argue that given the new nature of things dragons might be willing to have hatchlings at higher rates. A corps of very young dragons or half-dragons could easily function as gentry or knightly class. Further, it would enforce a system of adoption/patronage for the royalty and high aristocracy as all ranks beyond that of 'knight' would be dependent on age and ability.

Further it works out well, as Dragons thus become a more or less independent but superior branch of the government. For all the constitutional elegance they might enforce on their subject peoples, a single dragon may undue any law or accomplish any project. They capitalize on their great might and minimize their small numbers by making themselves the ultimate ombudsmen. It is certainly possible for the lizardmen to accomplish great things on their own and within the system, but it's so much easier and more wonderful to invoke the aid of a dragon and simply get it down.

Certainly, at that level of organization it becomes very easy to envision the dragon emperor as divine, and for him to enforce that vision.

 

[Andor]

Interesting. This discussion is beginning to sound like a Dragon dominated world I started to draw up a while ago.

My notes...

Dragon Lords

Ancient History

About 10,000 years ago (long enough for 2 to 4 generations even for dragons) a great priest of Io arose amoung dragon kind preaching unity, that the division between Dragons and lesser beings was more important than philisophical or idealogical differences. He managed to unite dragon kind under one banner, and united there was no force in the world that could stop them. In the 50 years war they conquered all the world, and settled down to rule it.

They set up a system where a Council of one of each dragon type plus the head of the Order of Io rules the dragons and thus everything. Each city, town, villege, or hamlet has a dragon ruleing over it. The dragons and their retinues shift cities at regular intervals (not unlike the ancient chinese buracracy). While cities do tend to be influenced by the alignment of their draconic rulers the periodic shifts in rulership tend to counterbalance this in the long run, though manuvering to keep like minded dragons in rulership of certain choice cities is one of the primary games of dragon politics. Disputes between dragons are settled before the council, by combat, or by battle between champions if the matter does not warrant the spilling of draconic blood.

Distribution of races

The dragons generally favor wilderness over civilization. Most of the land is wilderness, dotted here and there with small to medium sized towns. Hunting and fishing are prefered to herding which is prefered to farming. Farmland really only exists around the large cities. Only the tiniest of hamlets consist of a single race. The dragons do not much percieve the differences between lesser races and have encouraged intermingling. Only those races which could not abide even the semi-civilization that the dragons enforce do not live in cities. Trolls for example are only found in the wilderness (where the younger dragons consider them to be excellent sport.) The streets of a large city will be teeming with everything from kobalds and halflings to humans and gnolls to ogres and centaurs. As one might expect half dragons are fairly commonplace and many show traces of draconic blood. *

Even the youngest half-dragon has social status equivalent to a Knight and should be addressed as Sir or Lady.

Campaign Focus

About a hundred and fifty years ago a psionic plauge swept across the world. Most of the psionic orders were wiped out. Many of the crystal dragon perished. Unknown to most the illithids were wiped out to the last.

In an isolated town one psionic order has survived but is trapped by terror of the plauge. They have determined that it lingers in any psionically enchanted item handled by a plague victem and can spring up anew at anytime as long as any infected items remain. So they have placed a sphere of annihilation in a pit outside of town and hired a group of non-psionic adventurers to find and destroy every psionic item they can locate.

As this is a stable and sophisticated culture, high levels of training are the accepted norm. Mages for example are still considered journeymen untill they prove mastery of third order spells. Therefore starting level for PCs is 4th. This allows either some level of competancy to justify their hireing, or allows character concepts that require multiclassing to express, or allows characters of +ecl races. Average Npcs are generally 1st to 3rd level. Important NPCs will usually be 5th level and up.

Law

The dragons have an odd mixture of freedom and law in place. The preservation of draconic rule is the primary focus of the law. Preservation of the dragons comfort follows, and finally the organization of the realm comes a distant third.

The law is divided into four sets. Wilderness law, road law, city law and realm law.

In the wilderness there is no law. The land between civilization is the realm of monsters, refugees and bandits. It is the hunting preserve of the dragons. It is the saftey valve of their society. In theory the will of the council holds sway even here. In practice the small, the desperate and the very great are unlikely to care about the will of the council. Cross country travel is not a commonplace occurance. Those unfortunate towns not on the road network are very parochial and usually xenophobic.

On the roads violence is prohibited. Any conflict will draw an investigation by the draconic authorities. As a result caravans take their protection very seriously since any bandits must wipe them out if they hope to avoid destruction themselves. The roads do connect most (70%) cities.

-Andor

 

[Wolf72]

isn't that something like the dragonstar campaign setting ... well minus the futuristic weapons and galaxy spanning empire

 

[3d6]

To my mind, it seems that the races that would come to dominate would be the races most prepared for the sort of existence that an "apocalypse" would produce, i.e., the primitive races.

For example, lizardfolk are presented as a group of stone-age hunter-gatherers. As a race, they already possess the survival skills needed to prosper. Also, they are much hardier than most humanoids, with their +5 natural armor bonus and 2 racial HD.

Most humans, on the other hand, would be less adapted to the enviroment. The vast bulk of humans would not know how to make stone tools, for example, nor how to hunt for suvival.

Its seems to me that the better-adapted lizardfolk would florish at the expense of the less-adapted (previously more advanced) races.

 

[DMH]

The problem with lizardmen becoming a major player in the recolonization effort is their limited range. They live in swamps and marshes almost exclusively and do have the aquatic subtype.

My numbers in the chart are way off. I had an increase of 75%/generation when the growth rate for kobolds is 75%/year. So the end number is way below what they could produce in little over a century. And goblins with 50%/year are right behind them.

Another aspect I touched on only slightly and would like to see others' opinions on is the affect to the illithid population. Their food and host slaves (as well as themselves?) have been reduced by 90%. How would that affect the underdark?

If undead were not affected, that might have the greatest impact. They could turn the low level people into more undead much faster than the replacement rate.

 

[Hand of Evil]

We need to also think about the event because not all creatures will react the same way, some that I see:

Climite Shift: Cold - planet becomes colder: quick or slow - shift in axes is a quick event, ice age is a slow event

Climite Shift: Hot - planet becomes hotter: quick or slow - shift in axes is a quick event, global warming is a slow event

Space Event: Asteroid - size equals span, should have pockets of life

Space Event: Biological - hit whole planet, night of the comet stuff

Space Event: Invasion - nuff said, they just don't stay

Localized: Biological - this spreads and moves outward

I am sure there are others.

 

[Dark Dragon]

Yep, there are a lot of stories about threats from outer space (aliens, asteroids, collapsing stars and so on).

Interesting thread, I'm DMing a campaign similar to the wasteland setting in d20F. Some nice infos in that book.

I've used two components to get the campaign world to the point where I want to have it:
1) War. After several wars lasting some years (diving the population into two groups), the two powers went to war, equipped with end-20th century technology. The war lasts over thousand years. Billions died over the decades, the survivors retreated into large subterran "cities", where they are protected from surprising missile attacks and the heat of the sun. The two groups didn't fell apart, because the survival of one group depends on the power and the survival of each city. A lot of improvements to warfare technology were made, resulting in space battleships, hovertanks and handy rail guns as well as biological advances (genetics, and the like)
2) Heavy industries not bothering about climate and plant life. Each group uses every possible ressource to achieve victory without caring for the environment. This resulted in global warming, and the depletion of water supplies. At the end of the war, each group sends out raiding parties to gather junk in ruined cities or old battlefields, which is then recycled to built new weapons.

 

[Andor]

isn't that something like the dragonstar campaign setting ... well minus the futuristic weapons and galaxy spanning empire

There are parallels, but I did it first.

And they aren't really close at all. Both have dragons in charge and that's about it. Different tech, different scope, different emphasis, different racial tensions, different politics, different laws.

And while I like the idea I do have a few issues with the Paladin commandos of Dragonstar. I know some spec forces guys and 'lawfull' is not how I would describe them. Of course the lawful component of the paladin class is so poorly defined as to make them unplayable, although this has plenty to do with the poorly defined law and social.... Hmm I seem to be turning this into a rant. Nevermind. :\

At any rate to touch on the original discussion the early survival post-cataclysam is going to depend on the strength of the protectors the bands of survivors flock to. This may lead to odd pair-up and some of them may be in place millenia later. For example a band of humans who managed to talk a beholder into protecting them may have evolved into a morlock like servitor race now wide spread in the beholder controlled areas of the underdark.

So the world may have recovered to a normal DnD like world with little pockets of surprises left over from the cataclysm.

-Andor