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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7356591" data-attributes="member: 4937">I've never heard that question put so directly and succinctly, but that is an equally good point.My general answer is that there is by and large a stalemate between the 'black hats' and the 'white hats' and the two don't attempt to destroy the other very often.  Although the two sides may not have absolute parity, they are close enough to parity that on their home terrain the defensive advantages that they have are enough to deter incursions most of the time.   As such, most of the trouble between the two is on the 'borderland' between them and involves minor raids and skirmishes.  Mostly though, the two sides try to stay out of each other's way out of healthy respect for the other's potential to wipe them out should it come to a pitched contest.   'Black hats' operating near the center of 'white hat' power will be particularly furtive.   Members of a 'white hat' race operating near the center of 'black hat' power tend to be either furtive or particularly accommodating (meaning that they offer tribute or otherwise try to make themselves useful).  Note that this requires that the demographics of the two sides be not that far apart.  The armies fielded by the two sides have to be in rough parity - one side can't be limited to 1 HD soldiery with poor weaponry while the other side fields 4 HD soldiery with excellent weaponry.   Likewise, the heroes fielded by the two sides have to be in rough parity.  One side can't be limited to 4HD leaders while the other side has 20HD leaders.  So if say human leadership is frequently 10th or 12th level, then their orc rivals at the least need leadership of 8th or 10th level.  You can make up some of the difference with 'breeding rates' but not nearly as much as some settings seem to think, because breeding rates depend on economic activity and productive capacity and rarely does a setting actually give the 'black hats' economic activity suitable to sustaining a high breeding rate or even the culture as presented.   Rarely does a dungeon of orcs or goblins have mines, workshops, forges, farms, mills, butcheries, smokehouses, and so forth suggestive of enough economic activity to support the inhabitants of the dungeon.  Often there isn't even a nod toward this, resulting in a goblin lair that is filled with dozens of rooms containing traps and defenses but not one single workshop to build or maintain such devices.I don't think that a world like Forgotten Realms with its hundreds or if not thousands of adventuring parties operating all the time and so common as to be a recognized profession, sucking up XP by wiping out monsters by the hundreds and thousands, and profiting thereby to become even better at sucking up XP is remotely sustainable.   To make that work requires you invent all sorts of mechanisms for producing vast numbers of new monsters without the need for biology, such as monsters that magically make monsters or all sorts of portals to 'monster world'.   My problem with that is that you tend to end up with this weirdness where there are all sorts of portals to 'monster world' flooding the world with monsters, but never a portal in sight to 'white hat world' flooding the world with monster slayers.   Hence, I've never felt that was a particular good solution to the asymmetry.</blockquote>

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