Mapping the Town - What should a Fantasy Town look like?

[TiQuinn]

Which is fine if that's what you want in your D&D game... but at some point it also means trying to equate D&D 'realism' to any sort of real-world 'realism' is rather pointless.

I don’t think it’s a pointless exercise because even if you ultimately have gaps or incongruities in your world building logic, the overall world design is better for you having thought it thru a little bit. The DM can always choose to stop world building at the point that it has no value to the game. Does it really matter figuring out how to create economies of scale or mass production of wall of force defenses for cities? Probably not, and for good reason…your PCs are going to want their own portable, cheap wall of force for their nightly encampment.

But figuring out that, yeah…the Royal Arcane Academy pooled its resources into a network of crystals that can emit a wall of force that completely encompasses the city as a defense now gives you a visual that you can use to describe the city:

The city is walled with spires at regular intervals and a glowing crystal mounted at the top of each spire.

 

[sevenbastard]

This is why I like my D&D to be more low magic. Once you try to to extrapolate what society would look like in response to the magic powers of even low level spells and things like misty step it becomes completely alien.

 

[bedir than]

What do people think? Should we design settings for the in game reality, or should the settings mirror historical recreations with a layer of fantasy on top?

I don't think these two questions are mutually exclusive.
Unless your setting guide tells you that flying creatures that attack cities are common there won't be defenses for flying creatures that attack cities, because cities don't usually prepare for once-in-a-lifetime events (see modern cities that don't plan for disasters).

Yes, more fantasy cities lack a definable characteristic as @Shades of Eternity notes. But those elements should be part of the overall flavor of the world, not some "this is the only way fantasy should exist" mantra that demands a certain level of magic that isn't true for all fantasy.

The Grishaverse is different than Fillory is different than Greyhawk is different than The Hunger and The Dusk. Each should have towns with different designs for their baseline assumptions of magic and violence, while also recognizing internal cultural differences. That's when a setting really breathes

 

[MGibster]

That Orkast map is what I think a fantasy community should look like. Overlapping walls, depth of defense, numerous strong points, that sort of thing. But, inevitably, whenever we get some fantasy town, it's another version of Hommlet or Orlane. No walls. Pretty much zero defenses.

Defensive walls are expensive to build, maintain, and man, so there's a reason you didn't see them in every community outside the larger ones or those built specifically for defensive purposes.

This goes back to that other thread where we talk about the illogical evolution of medieval fantasy. As soon as it was discovered that via magic one could create a 100-foot long Wall of Force... every nation and their mother would have begun the training of new wizards and the industrialization of that magical technology to be able to Wall of Force / Dome of Force every single city and town to defend against flying invaders.

Which is probably why the latest DMG goes out of its way to say the rules aren't meant to model a realistic setting. Wall of Force only lasts for 10 minutes anyway. And, like a real wall, having someone around all the time ready to cast Wall of Force sounds expensive. Aren't there better things you could spend your gold on?

What do people think? Should we design settings for the in game reality, or should the settings mirror historical recreations with a layer of fantasy on top?

What's the in game reality though? Like for 5th edition, the rules aren't the setting.

 

[bedir than]

Defensive walls are expensive to build, maintain, and man, so there's a reason you didn't see them in every community outside the larger ones or those built specifically for defensive purposes.

Which is probably why the latest DMG goes out of its way to say the rules aren't meant to model a realistic setting. Wall of Force only lasts for 10 minutes anyway. And, like a real wall, having someone around all the time ready to cast Wall of Force sounds expensive. Aren't there better things you could spend your gold on?

What's the in game reality though? Like for 5th edition, the rules aren't the setting.

Also, we have flying attacking systems in the real world. It's not towers and walls that defend modern cities from this thing that has existed for 100 years -- it's other flying things.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Defensive walls are expensive to build, maintain, and man, so there's a reason you didn't see them in every community outside the larger ones or those built specifically for defensive purposes.

Which is probably why the latest DMG goes out of its way to say the rules aren't meant to model a realistic setting. Wall of Force only lasts for 10 minutes anyway. And, like a real wall, having someone around all the time ready to cast Wall of Force sounds expensive. Aren't there better things you could spend your gold on?

This is where we run into the issue between setting and game (as I think you are saying.) Wall of Force lasts for 10 minutes because that's the game having a rule that the designers have installed. However, if we were to consider any sort of "reality" of human beings within a certain setting having learned about and able to use magics that are represented by these "game rules"... none of these settings would be stuck with these rules as their actual only method for using them. In-setting characters have been inventing "new magic" all the time... after all, most magical traps aren't just game-rule "spells" that go off, but instead are completely original magical effects that a DM creates and places that "in-world"... and these original magical effects would have had to have been made up or created by some magician within the setting and put there. Which tells us that within these settings are all types of magic that are not actually represented by the "game rules" of Dungeons & Dragons. Magic exists extant of the game rules. Thus we cannot use game rules as our only window to the "reality" of what these setting have or do.

And thus comes the idea that magic within any of these settings would never get stuck ONLY in the forms of these "magic spells" the game rules gives us. They would be iterated upon by the in-world characters that use magic, and paid for by the in-world movers and shakers that could pay to have more people learn magic over the years and thus create new magic. Including walls of force that could be made permanent (for example). Would that cost a lot of money? At first, sure... but over the years as more people learned how to create and change "magical force", the costs would go down and the strength, usefulness, and ubiquity would grow and grow and grow. And that some point... force objects would become so easy and cheap to create that a person would be able to just go down the street to their own local shop and buy a "personal force-field" generator to cover their house (let along the town-wide force domes covering entire villages.)

After all... Charles Babbage, the first person to originate the concept of a 'programmable computer' did not see their work of mechanical computation begin and end with his invention. It was advanced. Over and over by more and more people. Becoming more and more powerful, more and more effective, faster and faster to work, cheaper and easier to make. Until we reach today... a little over 200 years following the announcement of his invention... and have now seen computers having taken over our world. And yet in most fantasy games we have histories several millennia long with magic or technology remaining exactly the same over that entire time, with little to no advancement or progression. And the reason for that illogic is simple... to facilitate our desires for the "fantasy" of our fantasy stories and to keep balanced and fun gameplay-- not to give us any anthropological timeline of where people most likely would actually be if these 'Humans' in these fantasy worlds are meant to be like us real Humans in our real world.

 

[Zaukrie]

Like dragons getting power from hordes, cities and villages get power from the massing of people. Somehow, maybe magic maybe godds, who knows, the more people in an area, the less flying creatures can attack, or the harder it is for armies? Something like that works in my brain. The gathering of intelligent beings creates some kind of magical protection?

 

[GrimCo]

Yes, fantasy worlds have all kinds of creatures. Some of them have wings and fly. But, question is always - how often are these creatures threat. If they are rare, no point investing in defensive structures. If they are somewhat regular, maybe extra archers and some balistas so you can shoot them down. If they are very common, you design habitats very different. Either you go underground ( hobbit houses in Shire are actually pretty good vs dragons and such, since those are inside hilly mounds).

When it comes to standard foes, like orcs, hobgoblins, goblins ( humanoids), it always depends where those towns are. If they are on the fringes of civilization, then of course, palisades and ditches are must have. But if towns are inside functioning civilized country, no point in spending money on it. You have regular patrols on the roads, on the borders, nearby town has it's own city guard and probably garrison of soldiers that can defend surrounding countryside.

 

[TiQuinn]

If they are very common, you design habitats very different. Either you go underground ( hobbit houses in Shire are actually pretty good vs dragons and such, since those are inside hilly mounds).

Tell that to the Dwarves in the Lonely Mountain.

 

[GrimCo]

Tell that to the Dwarves in the Lonely Mountain.

Well, to be honest, Erebor is shity design. Why the f would dwarf build anything with ceiling higher than say 2-3 meters. 3-6 meters top for big halls.