Khorvaire:Two Problems

[d4]

I'm curious...do these details ruin your potential use of the setting?

for me? yes.

i have a lot of other, much stronger, reasons for not wanting to run Eberron, though. but even if i were interested in running a campaign in Eberron, i'd have to either change the map scale or change the population figures. yes, it bothers me that much. :\

 

[sword-dancer]

That's one heck of a war. I should think that a war that could kill that many people would have left the place far more devastated than comes across in the book. Civiallization would be a total shambles. Less than 10% of the people survived.
.

I don`t know the numbers, but the 30 Years war ravaged Germany, depopoulated entire Regions, and broke the realm in pieces.

A Commander in this war refused to helpt to an allie, because he couldn`t support his troops, through this wasted lands.(They couldn`t supprt thmeselves through plunder nad foraging, because the region had been wasted before).
Add to the direct damage and casualites of war, plague, hunger, despair and economic broke down, who would `ve killed a lot.

 

[Breakdaddy]

I think you're being highly presumptuous, assuming I'm trying to 'ruin' something. If it lacks an explaination for this it's already ruined and not by my hand. If it has it, then I have no issue here.

Well, Im a highly presumptuous guy. At any rate, take it in the spirit in which it was delivered, which was mostly as a kind of nod and wink. Honestly, however, I will lose no sleep at all trying to justify the whys and wherefores of daily life in my chosen campaign setting. I have been playing this game for over 15 years and never once has a group I participated in shown serious doubts as to whether an entire world or region was viable within the framework and strictures of our modern (or not so modern) world view. *shrug* YMMV of course.

 

[Storm Raven]

And the price of these services?

Whatever the economics of the setting dictate. The guidelines in the core books are just guidelines, in a setting with more casters around, the prices will fall as a result of the increased supply.

Animal Messenger:2nd level spell, minimum 60 gold to cast. Oh, and at third level it has a maximum range of 35 feet. Great method of long range communication.

You are reading the range wrong. The animal has to be within 35 feet of a 3rd level caster to be affected to begin with. Once the caster has done that, the range of delivery is only limited by how far the animal can travel in three days.

 

[jmucchiello]

I am curious, though. Why are the people who are concerned about it, concerned about it? Why is the population density important to you?

Anyone who posts on a RPG message board daily should know why people are concerned about population densities. It's the varying types of gamers explanation. Some people play RPGs for the Role Play. Some play for the Game aspect of playing. Other players enjoy the Simulation aspects of the game. While this is not to say that you must plant yourself in only one of these 3 camps, the fact is that some players have a heavy skew toward the Simulation camp. Whenever a statistic surfaces in a game, if it doesn't match their view of how the game should act as a Simulation of reality, it takes them out of game -- they can no longer suspend their disbelief. Just because your need for Simulation is less than other players' need for Simulation doesn't invalidate the sense of annoyance a bad statistic gives them.

Quite frankly I'm appalled at the level of intolerance toward how some gamers feel in this thread. If I think there are too many harpies in Eberron, I'm entitled to that opinion. Don't tell me to get over it or just change it. If it bugs me, I am bugged. I know I can ignore it or change it. That doesn't stop it from bugging me.

I'm particularly shocked by the number RPG authors/creators on this thread who discount the Simulationist's view in their posts. And I'm not referring to Keith here. Someone else at WotC should have been in charge of number crunching.

Okay, I'll stop with the Theory of Role-Playing stuff, now.

 

[Henry]

What I want to know is, why are those upset with the population numbers happier with altering the map scale, than altering the population density?

It would seem less invasive than altering map scales, travel times, and surface areas as a result. If I think 30 million people should be living in sharn than 10 million, fiat, and all it affects are number my players never see, such as agriculture statistics. They still have a week to travel from Sharn to Flamekeep, or what have you.

Any thoughts on that?

 

[Gez]

The point is that you get nomadic bands that wander the land searching out resources.

Indeed they do. And why do they do? Because resources are scarce!

Resources aren't scarce because population density is low. Population density is low because resources are scarce. If you deported all of China and India together on the North Pole, you would have the world's most impressive population density ever, and yet people would still have nearly nothing to eat (except other people dead from starvation, I guess).

Khorvaire, to the difference of Arctica, is plentiful in resources. Farming is possible.

They cannot hold a settlement together, even in the lack of enemies, and they need to search out and meet with other bands on a regular basis in order to enable stable reproduction.

Two other things that fundamentally sets Eberron (heck, any D&D world, actually) apart from the Real World. Presence of things higher in the food chain (and presence of other chains of predation than food, by the way); and lack of importance of genetics. Frankly, if you risked degenerescence and inbreeding in a D&D world when your population numbers where low, you would have humans, goblins, and orcs, and that's about all. No elves, no dwarves, no gnomes -- they would all have died out.

You don't get advanced civilizations, you get familial tribes living at subsistance level with subsistance based technology.

Again, this is a question of resources. You are inverting the causality between population density and resources.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

My vote

I'm throwing my hat in with the "this is pointless" side.

What this looks like:

"Oh my god, how could they do this? How am I ever to look my players in the eye and tell them that the carbon content of Khorvairian steel is 2.8%, when it should be no more than 2.1%. They'll laugh me right out of the gaming room! Oh, the humanity! How could Keith do this to us? There is no choice other than to demand that this be changed."

"Why yes, I'm going to have to agree with you. You'd think that these people never studied any kind of advanced metallurgy before they tossed off some unimportant numbers that have absolutely no effect on play."

"Also, I don't plan on buying the book for other reasons, but despite the fact that I'm not a customer, I expect them to fix this egregious error because I don't believe anyone should be forced to apply the half-dozen easy fixes that have been proposed to solve the problem. It must be official, damnit!"

...also, Eberron isn't earth. Perhaps there are conditions on Eberron that make life somewhat different than it was in medieval Europe? Perhaps?

 

[Hellcow]

And the folks of Khorvaire don't have the technolgy Alaskans have. Not even a telegraph.

No, but they have the speaking stone, which is just as effective. Most people won't use it because of the price, but we are still talking about a largely feudal society; how often does the farmer need to instantly talk to someone more than a day's travel away? If you're an important or wealthy person, you can send your message across Khorvaire in the blink of an eye. Heck, if you're REALLY important or wealthy enough, you can hire a Sivis sender and have your message sent *directly* to your target wherever they are. If not, spend your copper and use the Orien post.

In general, though, on this issue, I have to concur with what's been said before: "If and when I run a campaign set in Eberron, there will be exactly as many people/beings as I need, in the places where I need them." That's as it should be. There's a number that doesn't work for you. I'm honestly sorry to hear that. I set neither the final sizes of the maps, nor the final sizes of the population. But I can tell you right now, they are not going to change. I respect the opinion of those of you who are upset by this, but I do believe that you are in the minority, and that the average player does not calculate out the population density of the land. WotC trying to change this would be confusing to people who never noticed the issue to begin with, and you'd end up with people who follow things telling the DM "Haven't you been paying attention? The world's only half the size it says in your book." What's done is done. When I say "Change it yourself," it's not because I feel your pain is trivial, but because if you have a problem you can change it yourself... and in this case, WotC simply isn't going to change it for you.

The problem is there, at least in your eyes. Quite simply, it's not going to be officially addressed. So what's left? Either find a solution on your end that works for you (for example, looking to what can be done with prestidigitation et al to suit your concerns instead of saying "the society will collapse without refrigeration") -- or not to play in Eberron. Obviously, I hope you can do the former.

The secondary issue here is that no world is perfect. We do not have experts in every field developing the world. While I did not set the population numbers, I would also never ever have said "The population's too low to support civilization" -- because honestly, I'm not worried enough about realism to feel the need to calculate population density. I'm too busy enjoying my fantasy world. Likewise (and this is not something to talk about here unless you want the thread closed), some people have been offended because they perceive ties between Eberron and the Book of Revelations -- ties I never noticed or considered. Tomorrow, someone will say that it's impossible and insulting that orcs and goblinoids could have evolved on the same continent. We can't make a world that will please everyone. We can't spot every possible issue ahead of time, and we can't chase after and correct every gamer's individual concerns now it's out. You can make this work on your end if you choose to, and I hope that you do so.

 

[Henry]

...Tomorrow, someone will say that it's impossible and insulting that orcs and goblinoids could have evolved on the same continent.

Ah, I see you missed that thread about two weeks ago.