Khorvaire:Two Problems

[Kichwas]

(How long have humans been in Europe as original inhabitants without monsters to deal with?)

About 40,000 years.

DNA shows that Europeans, Native Americans, and Asians share a common ancestor who's line is still living in Central Asia (Afghanistan and its neighbors). We all left Africa way back when, went to Central Asia, and there from there all split at around the same time for our seperate continents.

And we -did- have monsters:

Rival humans, Wolf, black bear, and other predators in Europe. Worse in Asia and even still worse in the Americas.

Until the gun, these places were full of creatures that would rip a person into shreds at whim and with ease.

What counts isn't the monsters but the resources (America lacked beasts of burden for example) and the factors needed for advanced civilization: ability to control and disperse food, goods, law, and reproduction.

That's why in -every- developed region on earth that got that developmen in pre modern times (before electricity), settlements are dense - a village every mile or so, where you can walk between them in an afternoon.

They might -also- be vast unsettled wilderness between and around each civilization, but in themselves they are dense.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I don't know the population of Khorvaire, but if it gets too far below 40 per square mile it will break aparrt - the means of keeping a food supply going are not there.

This implicitly assumes the area of nations in Khorvaire are fully settled. They are not. Every nation in Khorvaire are small clusters of dense settlements separated by vast wilderness with capability to project power over the vast terrain to the next settlement. And the ability of settlements in a magical fantasy setting to project power are vastly different than Middle Ages Earth. There are spells like plane shift, teleport, shadow walk, fly spells, aerial mounts, etc. In a world with spells like these it is not too easy to find your own private corner of the world to control before others hundreds of miles away feel threatened and show up to let you know how they think of your ambitions. The ability to project power and control over vast unsettled territory is simple is a world with such magic in available.

Khorvaire doesn't have the historical development of ANY real world "old world" nation or continent. Khorvaire is a continent of colonies. Politics are timeless, and the current political climate of Khorvaire DOES have analogues to real world situations.

Regards,
Eric Anondson

 

[Gez]

I'll reiterate my point from last time this subject popped up.


Countries contain lots of uncivilized places. Why? Because it's necessary for them to have large no-man's-land.

Remember that, "if it's in D&D, it's in Eberron". Now, open your MM. You have lots and lots and lots of kind of predatory carnivorous monsters. To support them, you need lots of game, which need lots of smaller game, which need lots of vegetation, which need lots of space.

All this space is lost for civilized creatures. I'm willing to bet that at least half the land is made-up of such no-man's-lands. Civilizations make up a spider webbing patterns, with dots (settled areas) connected by strands (policed traderoutes), and surrounding lots of empty spaces (monsterlands).

 

[micromaximum]

All of this talk about Australia has led me to notice that the map of Khorvaire bears some resemblence to the map of Australia flipped upside down and mirrored so the left side is now on the right. I can even sort of see Tasmania and New Guinea.

 

[Hellcow]

Hey all!

I don't intend to be too concerned about this, I'm afraid. What's done is done. However, for what it's worth, the population of Khorvaire is not supposed to be evenly spread across the land. As people have said, there are monsters here (and while some of the monstrous population has been counted in the population numbers, certainly not all), and the idea of stretches of dangerous and uninhabited forest and moor is part of what I *LIKE* in a fantasy world; if there are farmers everywhere, why haven't *they* dug up those goblin ruins? There's a lot of open space, and people cluster together. You have a mass of people in Sharn. You have farming communities around Sharn. But that's not to say that you have a solid continuous level of population from Sharn to Zilspar, let alone Sharn to Orcbone. By comparison, 14th-century England was a relatively safe island where the most dangerous predators were people.

This will be expanded upon when the different nations are dealt with in more detail, because different nations do have differing density; Zilargo and the Mror Holds in particular have tight population centers in a lot of open space. But the big thing is: if it bothers you, quintuple the numbers. Yay for you! On my end, I've never had the party counting each peasant. Perhaps the population should have been higher for maximum realism, but it is what it is -- and that's not the sort of thing I'm going to worry about erratawise, because unless you do get all of the citizens of Breland in one room it shouldn't adversely affect your game.

One thing I will say is that I believe that the goblinoid population is most likely higher than has been revealed. The goblinoids dominated the continent before the arrival of humanity, and despite their wars and troubles, there don't seem to be enough of them for that. However, this doesn't concern me, because what's in the book is what is known. A hundred years ago, people didn't realize how many goblinoids were in the region of Darguun; now they do. The goblinoids retreated to the mountains, to Khyber, to the depths of forests, and its possible more will appear, especially if one of the Heirs of Dhakaan consolidates the power of the clans.

 

[Kichwas]

All flawed excuses aside, at the end of the day you have to, on a mundane daily level be able to meet four basics needs for your population in order to hold a civilization: you need the ability to manufacture or import and then disperse food, reproduction, law-security, and basic goods.

Without that, you will not be able to hold a population - you will not survive.

There is no way around it.

You have to do it.

If density is too low, you cannot do it unless you have something that can get around density on a massly available, cheap, and mundane level.

The USA didn't begin to spread into the 'heartland' and the west until the railroad made it possible, and it didn't begin to hold onto and grow that new development until electricity brought refrigeration allowing for shipping, and the highways brought trucks making that shipping and transportation mass available.

If Eberron has an equivalanet it can do low density, but the lightning rail isn't that - it isn't developed enough and cheap enough as described.

If there is no other factor, at best you could have a series of 'New England like' colonies that claim to control huge expanses of land much like the USA claimed from east to west long before genocide cleared out the first nations and the rail and trucking gave it control and population spread.


If Eberron has that 'packed in colonies' model, then I've no objections. But if it tries to claim that these nations are settled over the land they claim then I have issues with that claim.

Keith's statement just before this post seems to indicate the 'packed colonies' model, but also seems to indicate that he just doesn't care about making his setting something people can get past a 'sense of disbelief' over (the not going to be concerned comment - which is easy to read in a negative light).

And frankly, I don't and have never bought the 'monsters keep it down model' because we have monsters in the real world, and we used to have worse - yet we rose up over them anyway and now see them as 'animals' because our modern tech makes them so easy to overcome.

If the monsters are tough enough to keep you down when you're already advanced past the stone age, they would have never let you get out of the trees in the first place - and frankly, the monsters of Earth almost were that tough. If the Africans had to deal with the monsters the Inuit do today, back when they were just getting out of the trees, I wouldn't be posting this right now.

-The Inuit by the way make a good example of what you get when you get too low in density.

 

[Hellcow]

The USA didn't begin to spread into the 'heartland' and the west until the railroad made it possible, and it didn't begin to hold onto and grow that new development until electricity brought refrigeration allowing for shipping, and the highways brought trucks making that shipping and transportation mass available.

The lightning rail isn't the standard form of freight transportation; the Orien Caravan is. And refrigeration doesn't require electricity: it requires prestidigitation. While most folks could afford such a thing in their homes, I have no doubt that Orien has shipping coaches that make use of a permanent area effect version of prestidigitation's cooling effect.

It is also the case that the lightning rail *was* more developed; the rail system was severely impacted by the war.

If there is no other factor, at best you could have a series of 'New England like' colonies that claim to control huge expanses of land much like the USA claimed from east to west...

Which is more or less what you do have. That's the point. You have central major cities, surrounded by supporting villages and thorps -- and then a lot of wide open space before you get to the next community. There is still exploration and dark territory to be found. There's gold in them thar hills, or dragonshards, at least.

 

[Kichwas]

The lightning rail isn't the standard form of freight transportation; the Orien Caravan is.

How cheap is that caravan, how able to distribute goods in mass is it?

Caravan travel is nortoriously difficult and expensive. It costs as much to go one mile inland as it does a hundred by river, if not more so.

You will note that I've said an equivalant is needed, not the same thing. If prestidigitation can be cast by even the common market stall owner, and put in every shipping 'vehicle' that travels the land at a rate fast enough to bring goods to market... then it works.

 

[Breakdaddy]

All flawed excuses aside, at the end of the day you have to, on a mundane daily level be able to meet four basics needs for your population in order to hold a civilization: you need the ability to manufacture or import and then disperse food, reproduction, law-security, and basic goods.

Wow, thanks for attempting to ruin a perfectly good setting with your opinion on what would keep a magically aware (and completely imaginary by the by) continent populated. Your game must be very fun, what with your vast repository of demographic data brought to bear on all of the players. Not at all repressive or boring, no sir...

 

[Gez]

And frankly, I don't and have never bought the 'monsters keep it down model' because we have monsters in the real world, and we used to have worse - yet we rose up over them anyway and now see them as 'animals' because our modern tech makes them so easy to overcome.

If the monsters are tough enough to keep you down when you're already advanced past the stone age, they would have never let you get out of the trees in the first place - and frankly, the monsters of Earth almost were that tough. If the Africans had to deal with the monsters the Inuit do today, back when they were just getting out of the trees, I wouldn't be posting this right now.

Well, compare the CR of a dire boar or brown bear with that of a aboleth or pyrohydra... Our "monsters" can bleed, and can be killed. They can't cast spells, they can't outthink us.

Fortunately, D&D monsters don't seem to need to be very numerous. Most are, naturally, very long-lived, so they don't rely on a high density to find mating partners often enough to stay alive as a species. Unlike, say, wolves.

Oh, and by the way, I think that lions, elephants, hyaenas, rhinos and hippopotamii are well worth the challenge of auks, seals, and polar bears.

So you have monsters that are too dangerous for the average hunting party to bring down, but rare enough to be merely avoided safely by simply not stepping into its territory. So, civilization spreads around the monster's territory. Sometimes, when people encroach too much, or once every 37 years when it's hydras' mating seasons, a few villages get slaughtered by monsters.

Seems reasonnable.

-The Inuit by the way make a good example of what you get when you get too low in density.

You get people who thrive and survived just fine until we arrived and introduced alcohol and candies. *shrug*