Intelligent Beings

[Doug McCrae]

And D&D writers do? Or Star Wars writers? Or Star Trek writers? Or Tolkien? Or Marvel’s Avengers?

You're quite right but my point is that while modern scientific concerns often don't apply in our fiction, they could never apply to the ancient Greeks because the ideas didn't exist yet.

 

[Morrus]

You're quite right but my point is that while modern scientific concerns often don't apply in our fiction, they could never apply to the ancient Greeks because the ideas didn't exist yet.

I don’t think scientific concerns (modern or not) apply to any fantasy writing, by definition. It’s rather the point of fantasy.

I’d argue that requiring your fantasy to meet modern scientific standards essentially eliminates a genre of literature. Why would anybody want to do that? We all know it’s not real. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t write it. Tolkien didn’t think Balrogs existed; he was writing fantasy.

 

[MGibster]

The Greek writers didn't worry about how their creatures evolved, whether they can consume enough calories relative to their energy expenditure, their ecological niches, whether enough of them exist to form a viable gene pool and so forth. We inhabit a different conceptual world.

When I debate with some of my friends about the existence of Big Foot I bring up things like ecological niches and energy expenditure. Just how much would a 400 pound 7 foot tall simian need to eat in order to survive? How many of them need to exist in order to maintain a stable population? How come we haven't found any of their bodies, scat, nests, evidence of predation, or some other physical evidence?

But why should you worry about such things when you're in Faerûn? In what manner does this touch your game? How many fantasy games are improved by applying a modern understanding of evolutionary theory to a cockatrice or a dragon? From my limited understanding of physics, a dragon shouldn't be able to fly but that doesn't bother me in places like Krynn where they soar through the air. I just need enough verisimilitude to get me through the day. I don't need to see a huge dragon at the bottom of a dungeon in a 50x50 room with no exits for it to squeeze in and out of without a damned good explanation. That said, I did rather enjoy those "Ecology of..." articles from Dragon back in the day because the information gave me ideas for how to use the creatures in the game.

But some people love world building and coming up with something, well, I don't like to use the word realistic but I'm not sure what else to use in it's stead. And that's a totally legitimate way to look at things.

 

[Scott Christian]

Sorry, but are we trying to understand how evolutionary forces and the unlikelihood of multiple intelligent species developing in parallel in the same biosphere is applicable to a pretend-elf game with magic and dragons and actual heavens and hells? I get that everyone has their buttons, I'm just wondering how it is you got past dragons flyiing, magic in general, pantheons of gods existing, the outer planes, even flumphs, to land on 'hey, it seems against our modern understanding of the development of intelligent species and available biosphere resources to have multiple intelligent species codevelop' as your suspension of disbelief breaker.

I can get past dragons (and flumphs) because they are so limited and a world like FR has an enormous portion that's still remote and unexplored. There are also planes of existence for other creatures to live on, that could rarely come into contact with the Material plane.

My thought is maybe I didn't explain it well enough. It just seems to me that all these races with cultures, especially since they live together, seems like they would clash a lot more. Where as a dragon, even an evil one, might realize that they need men, dwarves, etc. to be fulfilled.

Here is a small list: Aarakocra, Azer, Bugbears, Bullywugs, Centaur, Chuul, Cyclops, Drow, Duergar. This is just from the MM and only using A-D. I did not include other planar creatures, as for some reason it's easier for me to rationalize. I only included creatures (races) that are large in population, carry culture, and have contact with the traditional fantasy races. I don't know, it seems like a lot to me.

I should also point out that I like D&D settings. It's just from a world building perspective, this one thing seems "off" to me.

 

[Blue]

I had addressed this point in an earlier homebrew campaign world that I ran two campaigns in, totaling 12 years between them. (D&D 3.0 and 3.5.)

There was a large number of material planes, and they "floated" in the elemental planes, though they had separate locations/vectors in each of the elemental planes. When material planes were particularly close, it was possible to travel from one material plane to another using that element of the material plane - for for example when they were close in the elemental plane of water you could sail from one to another, and when they were lose in the elemental plane of earth you could travel underground (or via earthquake while underground) from one to another.

(Heh, i just noticed that when close in the elemental plane of air, you could get from one to another via tornado. I think the Wizard of Oz just became canon somewhere in that cosmology.)

None of that was common knowledge, but it came out explicitly in the second campaign.

Anyway, the particular material plane I was running had "thin walls", so it was easier to get to. Over the eons since the universe was created, various gods had used as a refuge to lead their chosen people away from oppression, genicide, or other calamedy. For example the humans got there were commoners fleeing on 13 Great Ships that sailed the seas for three years, fleeing a terrible war with the elves. (The human rulers were LE with demonic blood in their bloodlines.) There were even orcs from two different material planes with very different cultures. The only native sentient race was effectively underdark halflings that weren't around anymore.

Elves were an interesting case. They had Courts that were really fey demi-planes (this was before the Feywild was introduced as a plane in D&D), and the King/Queen of each Court had some control over how them moved in the elemental planes to bring them in and out of conjunction with the other material planes. The elves in the world at the start of the first campaign were ones abandoned there when their court moved on centuries before. In the second campaign a new Court came close and it happened to be the one that the humans had fought and fled.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I can get past dragons (and flumphs) because they are so limited and a world like FR has an enormous portion that's still remote and unexplored. There are also planes of existence for other creatures to live on, that could rarely come into contact with the Material plane.

My thought is maybe I didn't explain it well enough. It just seems to me that all these races with cultures, especially since they live together, seems like they would clash a lot more. Where as a dragon, even an evil one, might realize that they need men, dwarves, etc. to be fulfilled.

Here is a small list: Aarakocra, Azer, Bugbears, Bullywugs, Centaur, Chuul, Cyclops, Drow, Duergar. This is just from the MM and only using A-D. I did not include other planar creatures, as for some reason it's easier for me to rationalize. I only included creatures (races) that are large in population, carry culture, and have contact with the traditional fantasy races. I don't know, it seems like a lot to me.

I should also point out that I like D&D settings. It's just from a world building perspective, this one thing seems "off" to me.

So, here’s a thing to consider. A bullywug will 99% of the time be in a swamp, hunting and gathering and worshipping weird swamp gods and being gross.

A centaur gonna be in the forest or maybe some steppes, in fairly small numbers, only safe from being wiped out by disease by luck and divine intervention. Again, like regional species IRL, but with gods looking out for them against stuff like large scale disease and famine.

So many of these creatures live in places humans only settle because there isn’t much competition or because they want to escape other humans. So, not in large enough numbers to really threaten the local bullywug or centaur population.

The peoples that do exist in the same niche either are in conflict, or cooperate instead.

Aarakokra live where pretty much no other intelligent creatures live, except maybe giant eagles and the like.

Honestly, IMO it’s mostly goblinoids and orcs that pose a logical issue here. In my worlds, bugbears are forest dwellers and live in trees. Goblins are scavengers and live anywhere they can coexist with other intelligents. Hobs I often forget about unless someone wants to play one, tbh. Orcs live in the wild places, and most conflict with them is colonial, with the “pretty” races expanding where they don’t belong.

Total population numbers of sapient species is similar to real world humans at a higher tech level, so entirely sustainable.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I don't know, it seems like a lot to me.

You're right, it is. Especially when they live in the same environment and that environment produces few resources, such as mountains, deserts, and tundra.

For example according to the 5e DMG, desert encounters include humans, kobolds, gnolls, hobgoblins, jackalweres, ogres, thri-kreen, yuan-ti, couatls, lamias, cyclopes, medusae, nagas, efreets, sphinxes, and dragons.

 

[Scott Christian]

So, here’s a thing to consider. A bullywug will 99% of the time be in a swamp, hunting and gathering and worshipping weird swamp gods and being gross.

A centaur gonna be in the forest or maybe some steppes, in fairly small numbers, only safe from being wiped out by disease by luck and divine intervention. Again, like regional species IRL, but with gods looking out for them against stuff like large scale disease and famine.

So many of these creatures live in places humans only settle because there isn’t much competition or because they want to escape other humans. So, not in large enough numbers to really threaten the local bullywug or centaur population.

The peoples that do exist in the same niche either are in conflict, or cooperate instead.

Aarakokra live where pretty much no other intelligent creatures live, except maybe giant eagles and the like.

Honestly, IMO it’s mostly goblinoids and orcs that pose a logical issue here. In my worlds, bugbears are forest dwellers and live in trees. Goblins are scavengers and live anywhere they can coexist with other intelligents. Hobs I often forget about unless someone wants to play one, tbh. Orcs live in the wild places, and most conflict with them is colonial, with the “pretty” races expanding where they don’t belong.

Total population numbers of sapient species is similar to real world humans at a higher tech level, so entirely sustainable.

Yes, this is exactly how I used to rationalize it. The ecosystem methodology served me well for twenty years. It's only lately that I've had the new thoughts. Still not even close to a deal breaker, especially when the DM handles it well. But I like that thought of them being remote, like the Yanamamo tribe of Brazil. It's just that if they are so remote, then adventurers would rarely ever see them.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You're right, it is. Especially when they live in the same environment and that environment produces few resources, such as mountains, deserts, and tundra.

For example according to the 5e DMG, desert encounters include humans, kobolds, gnolls, hobgoblins, jackalweres, ogres, thri-kreen, yuan-ti, couatls, lamias, cyclopes, medusae, nagas, efreets, sphinxes, and dragons.

Some of those don’t consume much or any resources, while others eat the others, and still others don’t fully live in the desert, but are connected to other planes.

Also, the game world doesn’t assume that all those critters live in every desert. You pick a few, and this desert/region of the desert is the territory of those critters. Some of whom are much better at desert survival than humans.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes, this is exactly how I used to rationalize it. The ecosystem methodology served me well for twenty years. It's only lately that I've had the new thoughts. Still not even close to a deal breaker, especially when the DM handles it well. But I like that thought of them being remote, like the Yanamamo tribe of Brazil. It's just that if they are so remote, then adventurers would rarely ever see them.

Right, adventurers should only meet them as either the oddball/exile traveling where vanishingly few of their kin have ever gone, or bc the party is in their territory. It’s fun stuff!