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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MDK" data-source="post: 6078436" data-attributes="member: 6705182">Not all worlds have an eternal battle between Good and Evil (or Law/Chaos for that matter); I never liked the notion and tossed it out right at the start. Good and evil exist in the world for much the same reason it exists in the real world: some people by nature are generous, others are selfish. Their upbringing (nurture) compounds this, or weakens it. And yes, this means no race is inherently evil, but they DO have certain tendencies, partly inborn, partly from culture. Orcs are agressive and value strength and battle prowess because they live in a harsh environments where, among other things, farming is difficult and being eaten or trampled  by a dinosaur is a real danger. Their culture (well, the feel of it anyway) is a cross between klinong and mongolian nomads. Goblins are generally cowardly, good at stealth, and they LOVE shiny stuff, but magic frightens them. Honour is something they really couldn't care less about. Other races have other tendencies, and since they all live in the same world, strife occurs as they compete for the same resources. While living space is effectively unlimited, nobody likes to travel another 100 miles through the wilderness if it's easier to kick out the current inhabitants of this nice area right here, and food isn't unlimited to begin with.Now in some areas, (notably Anankay and surroundings), magic HAS turned life much towards what we call civilisation, but even so, not everyone is a magician, either because they lack the interest, or because they lack the brains. If you equate Intelligence with IQ, then Int10 = IQ100. Now look up an Gauss curve for IQ, and you find that only 27% of any given population actually has the intelligence to LEARN spells (IQ110+ or Int 11+). Now the overlap with wisdom and charisma is not 100%, so the potential spell casting population is somewhat larger, but since not everyone capable of doing so will BECOME a spellcaster, I very much doubt even 1 in 5, never mind 1 in 4 or more people will be able to do magic even at the lowest level. Look a bit further on the curve, and you see that IQ 130, (or Int 13) is even rarer: 2,5%. Meaning your average hamlet of 50 people will have exactly ONE person capable of learning third level spells, and POSSIBLY higher levels. Int 19, needed to cast Wish, equates an IQ of 190; current IQ tests fall apart at those levels (as there's not enough people to test them on to make sure they actually work), but in our real world, with its 7 billion people, the number of people with that sort of intelligence is probably a few dozen at best, and probably less. In a mideaval world with its much lower population, the Int19 wizard could well be all by himself. Now obviously, statboosts from level-up and magic increases the numbers somewhat, but even so, I think a world where EVERYONE is a caster is flat-out impossible.</blockquote>

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