Only the Lonely: Why We Demand Official Product

[pemerton]

Maybe aim the book at GMs who want to transition from running adventure paths to creating their own material and provide them with some frameworks to do so.

Hmm. Is this a rational thing for a publisher of APs, though?

Anyway, if they do it, they should get Luke Crane and Robin Laws to write it!

 

[pemerton]

Neither of those things have to stay there, though. The mechanics work for any campaign you like.

It's not doubt true that things which are distinctive can become non-distinctive by being moved into other settings. But that doesn't show they're not currently distinctive.

My point is that GH doesn't have distinctive mechanical elements, precisely because GH is D&D.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

On the D&D website, Waterdeep is stated as having 2 million people.

Lore | Dungeons & Dragons

Learn about the incredible heroes, villains, and figures of legend that play a compelling role in the lore of Dungeons & Dragons.

dnd.wizards.com

I won't quibble over that though; the more anti-medieval piece there is that so many cultures and races are able to coexist so peacefully, practically like today's New York.

Or practically like cosmopolitan cities like medieval Paris and Constantinople?

 

[Zardnaar]

The difficulties in trying to run an "authentically" mediaeval RPG are almost insuperable, I think.

Even if one overcomes the problem of working out what is the truth about the mediaeval period - itself the subject of dispute among those best-educated in the field - there is what I think is an even bigger problem in the RPG context, namely, outlook and motivation. Both my own play experiences, and reading others on these boards, make me think that very few RPGers want, or are able, to play characters whose outlook is not modern. One sees this most starkly, but not at all exclusively, in discussions of paladins and alignment where behaviour that falls broadly within the romantic/honourable self-conception of a mediaeval warrior is labelld as "lawful stupid".

I'm currently most of the way through the second volume of Runciman's three-volume history of the crusades. Any expert mediaevalist probably has views on the correctness of its approach and account; I'm not qualified in that respect. But he has a lot of footnotes to primary sources and so I assume that the basic recount is largely accurate. Here is one story he tells, loosely summarised:

In the mid-twelfth century a Frankish army is on campaign against Nur ad-Din. They encounter some soldiers whom they take to be scouts, but they then realise they've encountered Nur ad-Din's main force. This is because they hear the whinny of a mule which had been a gift from the Franks to a sheikh whom they knew to be riding with Nur ad-Din in his army - per Runciman, the mule whinnied because it recognised the smell of the Frankish horses that it used to hang out with.

When one starts to extrapolate from this story to everything it implies about social and political relationships, the apparent lack of correlation between personal affiliations and loyalties on the one hand and "political" ones on the other, gift-giving between ostensible enemies, etc, one gets glimpses of a world which no D&D game I'm aware of has ever emulated.

How often in the history of D&D play has a party of PCs found itself fighting someone riding a steed that was a gift from the PCs, and this isn't a sign of betrayal, or of some fundamental change in loyalties (eg Kitiara in Dragolance), but is just what one expects, because duty (which everyone acknowledges to have almost overwhelming importance) brings acquaintances, even friends and allies, into conflict?

Or practically like cosmopolitan cities like medieval Paris and Constantinople?

Way bigger. Paris 1550 est around 350k, Constantinople fluctuated a lot more but 50-500k.

They were Imperial capitals. Not technically for France I suppose but Frances population was bigger than most contemporary empires.

Waterdeeps a city state. Venice hit 250 as a trade port, the Hansa cities (Hamburg, Lubeck, Bremen) are a lot smaller and are the real life Waterddeps.

Can't really have that many people in Waterdeep though. First century Rome had around a million. Imperial capitals, Egyptian grain shipments.

Waterdeeps 2 million number is BS unless they're referring to the great area.

Another comparison.

Manhatten (now). Population 1.6 million.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Or practically like cosmopolitan cities like medieval Paris and Constantinople?

Just curious as I actually don't have a ton of knowledge on this subject... but how cosmopolitan was medieval Paris?

 

[Zardnaar]

Just curious as I actually don't have a ton of knowledge on this subject... but how cosmopolitan was medieval Paris?

Put it this way if the French had a proper tax system they could have recreated the Roman Empire from Paris.

Their population was similar to the Ottoman Empire and around 5 times bigger than the UK.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Put it this way if the French had a proper tax system they could have recreated the Roman Empire from Paris.

Their population was similar to the Ottoman Empire and around 5 times bigger than the UK.

I was meaning "cosmopolitan" in the diversity kind of way, not the city's actual size. I have no doubt that cities are capable of massive populations; Imperial China is proof of that.

 

[Zardnaar]

I was meaning "cosmopolitan" in the diversity kind of way, not the city's actual size. I have no doubt that cities are capable of massive populations; Imperial China is proof of that.

It wouldn't have been very diverse. Jews had ghettoes until Napoleon, mass immigration didn't exist and you would have a few ambassador's from places like Ottoman Empire. This is 16th century or so before then even less.

Not everyone would be French, back then the regions were more nationalities. France wasn't unified as such until the 15th or 16th century depending on how you count it. You would have had Bretons and people from the old Burgundy.

The booted out Protestants in the Reformation, mist foreigners would be other Europeans with a very few visitors from North Africa or Ottomans.

Venice for example had the Turkish house. All the Turks lived in one house.

There were no Mosques outside of Sicily and parts of now Russia.

So everyone would be Catholic, European, and mostly French (99%+ probably).

London in the 18th Century had 10 000 Africans iirc but population of a million+ iirc.

It's been a while since Uni but yeah your diverse cities were the merchant ports in the med and places like the Balkans. They got cleansed in the 20th century (Nazis, Greece/Turkey, Yugoslavia etc).

Mosques were illegal, Protestant illegal (Catholic in the UK until 19th century).

People got exhibited into the 20th century.

 

[Don Durito]

I just can't buy Waterdeep as having 2 million people. Chang'an had the Great Canal, one of the greatest engineering feats in history to transport food.

Rome and Constantinople at their heights relied on massive grain shipments from Egypt (and the population of Constantinople plummetted when they lost the middle-east to the Arabs).

Even if we assume huge amounts of farms outside Waterdeep that are not shown on the map, it seems doubtful that the region really has the transport and storage capacity to feed 2 million people. If we assume peasant technology and a 9 to 1 population of farmers to urban dwellers that's 18 million people labouring to keep the city fed.

Fortunately it's all pretty irrelevant. The population of Waterdeep is big, exactly how big is just a number. Chop a 0 off the end and make it 200,000 and nothing really changes.

 

[jmucchiello]

I just can't buy Waterdeep as having 2 million people. Chang'an had the Great Canal, one of the greatest engineering feats in history to transport food.

Don't forget all the creatures living below Waterdeep when you consider its census. Wererats in the sewers, vampires in the undercity, probably whole tribes of goblins, etc.