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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 6391715" data-attributes="member: 59082">All of which I understand - that farms allow for villages which allow for towns which allow for cities. But the "satellite" scheme I described has to do with the power and military protection. Power is centered in the cities and radiates out. Remember that my initial inquiry was how could smallish settlements survive in wilderness or frontier regions that were teeming with monsters? Except in D&D worlds. Consider the North in the Forgotten Realms, or even the Dalelands.And that is probably what most published D&D worlds do, and that is what I am questioning. But the point of this is to talk about how it might be possible for smaller settlements to exist in remote places where many threats exist. Again, I'm not talking about Cormyr, but the Dalelands - and even that is only "semi-wild," but it is still wild enough to question the survival of the dales.Now you're talking!In our world they'd probably be equivalent to either bandits or wild tribesman; either way, the more civilized settlements would need means of defense.So you're saying that either look at just about every published fantasy world as completely unrealistic and not to be used as a model for a more realistic creation, or just not worry about it and play.See, I'm looking for something between - something that allows for a small village on the frontier of civilization, or a fortified hostel along a long road through wilderness. There are ways to explain this stuff, to make it work. Maybe the owner of the hostel is actually a powerful wizard, or maybe the small village has a pact with the neighboring tribe of orcs, giving them a tithe of one person per month on the full moon. I don't know, stuff like that. I'm merely pointing out that most published fantasy worlds seem to avoid, ignore, or not care about this sort of thing - both in terms of monsters, but also--as has been pointed out--in terms of actual sustainability. I'm sure we could find numerous cities in the Realms or Greyhawk or Krynn that simply don't make sense for being where they are. So how to bring a greater level of "fantasy realism" to the equation? How to keep the D&D fun-ness alive, yet with a sense of realness to it? It is an open-ended inquiry.</blockquote>

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