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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1995556" data-attributes="member: 7240">Firstly, this may be true in the animal kingdom but it has not been true amongst human groups historically. When demographic disasters hit, pastoral and hunter-gatherer cultures with lower birthrates, surprisingly, tend to gain dominance over agrarian cultures with higher birthrates. This tends to be because these smaller cultures are less immediately impaired by labour shortages and reduced population density than their faster-growing, denser neighbours. It seems like everyone is imagining what will happen 100 years after the cataclysm without considering the rational actions of everyone in the first century.Secondly, the term "eliminates most competitors" obscures the fact that the ratio of population between the various humanoid competitors remains the same. What remains obscure is what they are competing over. I think you're doing evolutionary biology here without reference to any sociological factors. Thirdly, don't most D&D worlds still have big wild areas that are generally uninhabited by intelligent humanoid societies? If so, don't the kobolds already have large areas of untapped resources into which to expand even without the cataclysm?Fourthly, what sort of cataclysm is this that doesn't affect food supply? Unless this is a plague that affects only humanoids and nothing else, I don't buy the argument that the food supply wouldn't be as or more greatly impacted by whatever the event is. A much more typical cataclysmic model is one that wipes out the food supply, thereby subjecting populations to disease and starvation.Fifthly, based on the Monster Manual, it appears that kobolds have a very high infant mortality rate. This suggests to me that most kobold mortality is not caused by other humanoid species. So, even assuming that the cataclysm impacts humanoids exclusively, it will actually cause an increase in the ratio of things that kill kobolds to kobolds. For instance, if a key factor in kobold mortality is weasels eating their eggs and the cataclysm only affects humanoids, the ratio of weasels to eggs will skyrocket, spelling bad news for the eggs, and, eventually, for the weasels too.I'd be happier to discuss this if I weren't being told that it was the inevitable outcome of a cataclysm.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?</blockquote>

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