D&D General Need wheat. Too dangerous. (worldbuilding)

[Ixal]

Well, sure, somewhere in the world there is a war going on pretty much all the time. That doesn't change the fact that for about 90% of the population of the world, they aren't involved in an armed conflict at any given time. And, yes, cities were enslaved. Sure. But, again, these are outliers.

To put it another way, how many times was London enslaved? London's a couple of thousand years old. Must have happened many times.

And, what kind of industrial center are you thinking about? What time period are we looking at? Again, looking at Japan, Japan was more or less self sufficient and trucking along for centuries.

Something I think people tend to forget is just how empty the medieval world would be. The population of all of England in the 11th century was what, 2 million? About 1/30th what it is now. That's a LOT of empty space. D&D worlds are freaking ginormous. The population density should be about what you see in Siberia or northern Canada.

London was sacked several times during the roman and viking times. And remember that is one of the most defensible cities out there, on an island, far away from any borders and too large to be raided by random viking bands.
Same for Japan. An island with usually very peaceful neighbours most of the time. Those are the exceptions, not the rule.

And I am not talking about globally, even regionally conflict was constant be it wars, rebellions or just raiding.
The time after WW2 till now was the most peaceful time (western/central) Europe ever experienced in recorded history.

The industry I was thinking of was large iron smelting operations. From the numbers I have seen 1 ton of iron goods required 100 tons of wood which need to be locally sourced because bulk transportation is limited unless you find a fantasy solution for it or are on the coast. So even when the total requirements for wood can be balanced with the total forest of the entire country to be sustainable, the wood is required in very few areas and locally a give and take forestry does not allow for industry.

Collections: Iron, How Did They Make It? Part II, Trees for Blooms

This week we continue our four-part (I, II, III, IVa, IVb, addendum) look at pre-modern iron and steel production. Last week we prospected our iron ore and extracted it from the ground and did some…

acoup.blog

During the ancient and medieval era there was significant deforestation and Europe was nearly stripped of most forests in the span of a few centuries, forests only really recovering in times of catastrophic loss of life which freed up farmland to be overgrown.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Odds definitely are not that we killed them off. Odds are that changes in climate did.

But like you say we don’t know.

I agree that it should be up to individual dms. But it would be nice if we at least got a couple of examples in the published settings instead of every setting presenting a single view of how species interact.

No one is talking about what you do in your game and I have no idea why you are getting defensive about it.

I think this is the larger point. When I read the Mordenkainen entry on elves... I get little or nothing about how they interact with non-elves. Let alone with the wider world.

DnD doesn't really discuss the monsters they put in it as part of the world, they just sort of... appear. A large variety of monsters just wander the world, find caves to live in, and attack people, but rarely interact with each other. I don't think I want a full monster ecology series, a lot of that information got to be too much, I don't need special skin cells to scientifically explain how a Displacer Beast works... but I'd like a setting where the monsters felt more like part of the setting instead of "the stuff over there"

 

[nevin]

I think the frequency of item 3 is the real sticking point. If the city in question has enough raiding or monster attack events to make yearly agriculture not feasible, then the city is either currently sinking into famine, or has another source of food.

Since massive famine and starvation aren't the baseline for most settings, I think we have to assume that monster attacks and raiding on farms are a relatively infrequent occurrence. The whole reason an adventurer might get called into looking into those events is because they've become disruptive enough to threaten livelihoods.

I was not implying that goblins are eating wheat. I was implying that goblins are eating farmers.

Again unless attacks are constant farmers should be able to farm. post scouts warning pyres whatever. If they are so constant they cant farm then city needs trade, or support or it dies. No other real option. unless its an excessive number of attacks, its no different than cavemen hunting and avoiding bears and cats or polynesian fisherman trying to avoid big sharks. People are remarkably resilient they'll find a way or find another plce.

 

[Cadence]

Does this all change if its Halfling farmers and Gnoll raiders instead of Humans and Goblins? (I could swear some other thread made me think so...)

 

[Dire Bare]

In a standard fantasy world . . . . farmers are not in constant danger of being eaten by monsters.

The occasional monster is a threat, just as is the occasional bandit or natural disaster. But monster attacks are not happening on a regular basis.

We sometimes view fantasy world-building from the lens of the D&D play table . . . . as player characters, we focus on the monster slaying, we rarely interact with farmers unless we're trying to save them from a rampaging monster! It can skew perceptions.

It's the same world-building issue that sees PC classes become common NPCs in the world, with wizards on every corner, selling "rare" magic items in shops in the market of every town . . . . or clerical healing and resurrection magic seen as commonplace . . . .

Now, if you want to build a world with common and constant monster attacks . . . . go for it! There are examples in the literature, for sure.

I just stumbled back on Matt Forbeck's Shotguns & Sorcery setting, which builds a world overrun by the undead, with those left alive retreating to a single city protected by a dragon . . . . this world is overrun by monsters! If I remember correctly . . . the inhabitants of the last city send out armed foraging parties for food and resources, grow crops within the city walls, sometimes utilizing D&D magic to maximize gains. It's a cool setting, but not your typical D&D campaign or fantasy world.

 

[Ancalagon]

I think this is the larger point. When I read the Mordenkainen entry on elves... I get little or nothing about how they interact with non-elves. Let alone with the wider world.

DnD doesn't really discuss the monsters they put in it as part of the world, they just sort of... appear. A large variety of monsters just wander the world, find caves to live in, and attack people, but rarely interact with each other. I don't think I want a full monster ecology series, a lot of that information got to be too much, I don't need special skin cells to scientifically explain how a Displacer Beast works... but I'd like a setting where the monsters felt more like part of the setting instead of "the stuff over there"

this is why I recommend the 2nd edition monster manual. Each monster/creature had an "ecology" section. It was really useful.

 

[MattW]

Imperial Rome imported vast quantities of grain from Egypt. Maybe your cities have a similar arrangement: trading partners (or colonies?) in safe agricultural areas.

 

[Tonguez]

Imperial Rome imported vast quantities of grain from Egypt. Maybe your cities have a similar arrangement: trading partners (or colonies?) in safe agricultural areas.

that doesnt solve your monster problem though, since now you open your supply lines to be threatened by sahuagin and sea serpents

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think this is the larger point. When I read the Mordenkainen entry on elves... I get little or nothing about how they interact with non-elves. Let alone with the wider world.

DnD doesn't really discuss the monsters they put in it as part of the world, they just sort of... appear. A large variety of monsters just wander the world, find caves to live in, and attack people, but rarely interact with each other. I don't think I want a full monster ecology series, a lot of that information got to be too much, I don't need special skin cells to scientifically explain how a Displacer Beast works... but I'd like a setting where the monsters felt more like part of the setting instead of "the stuff over there"

What do you thin about the ecology entries in the old 2E Monster Manual? It has been a while since I've read them, but seem to remember them getting more into the monster's place in the world.

I suppose one challenge here too is most monsters are general purpose for all worlds (unless it is an entry for a specific setting). So that might make it harder to fit them to a world.

One technique I have found useful for world building in this respect, and I mainly use it for intelligent creatures with societies, not quite as much for monsters that are more animal-like (though you could use it for them as well), is I photocopy a map of my world (usually about 10 times, but could be more or less), then I treat each page as an age or era before the present day, and track the movement, migration, settlement, expansions, etc of all the peoples and races. My main interest is stuff like dwarves, elves, humans, orcs, ogres, etc. But I also divide those group by language and chart the movement too (which comes in handy for things like naming conventions of locations later on). I find this gives me a better sense of where the orcs are, where the ogres are. I may well still have orc hill tribes that are a threat to cities and such (usually will have human hill tribes too), but I also tend to have more melting pots for cities, where there is a big orc population living in this capital, or a large ogre population in this city.

 

[Bedrockgames]

that doesnt solve your monster problem though, since now you open your supply lines to be threatened by sahuagin and sea serpents

The romans had to deal with things like bandits, storms and pirates. If Sahuagin and Sea Serpents are sinking ships or attacking ships at about the same rate, it all kind of washes out in the end