Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Irda Ranger" data-source="post: 3960973" data-attributes="member: 1003">Zurai, I am sure your campaign and players will benefit from your strong conception of what is appropriate and average, but I think you have mistaken a correct (and internally consistent) model for the correct (and internally consistent) model.  I'm going to disagree in particular with what you think the correct average population of a settlement should be, since that is highly dependent on so many factors that there can be no "average."  In fact population seems to follow a power law "long tail / high spike" distribution which is defined by a lack of average and no variance.And that's based on "pure emulation" before we even get to "changes I've made because it makes the game more fun."Correct about real-world Medieval settlement patterns.  Before we get to "because it's more fun this way" world design, there are some D&D-world ("DDW") only facts which will change how D&D-settlement patterns may look:1) DDW has a much longer history than RW.  Although firearms have not been developed, DDW farmers may have inherited advanced techniques or carefully bred germ lines that boost farming productivity from RW-medieval levels.  2) Magic; it changes everything.  The spells, gods and magic items in the PHB and DMG is a mere sub-set of what the world has to offer.  It's the list of "things useful to adventurers" and does not include magical plows and forge-hammers, rituals to cure blight, restore nutrients to the soil or relieve drought, alchemical processes to substitute one resource for another or keep meat unspoilt for months at a time, etc.3) Farming may not a year-round thing in DDW, allowing farmers to gear up in the off-season  and go on "cave clearing missions" en masse every now and then.  Seeing how a longsword and chainmail shirt will often survive its owner the "used kit" market may allow every farmer and his mum to have a full kit in the attic for the January "orc hunt."These factors can change the farmer/non-farmer ratios.  So, what's possible for a RW-medieval settlement and a DDW settlement do not have to be the same.To keep the conversation fresh though, I have a question:How do you square this with the Halfling and Dragonborn fluff?  If the entire Halfling society consists of traveling caravan groups, and Dragonborn was all always-traveling mercenaries, then presumably they have a decent collection of knowledge on where to go and the safe ways to get there?  Do they horde this information and not share it with people?I still think that, as presented, POL has more to do with the lack of man-power to control the Wilds between settlements, not about a lack of information.  I certainly did not mean to infer from my posts that every square inch of forest between one town and the next was chock full o' monsters, but rather that the possibility of monsters/bandits/cultists exists at all points beyond a certain "point of light's" borders.  200+ strong groups of armed Dragonborn are just too much trouble for most of them to bother with, and presumably human merchants pay a fee to travel in their company.Honestly I'm not sure how the Halflings get through regularly, but honestly an "empty darkness" doesn't make any sense to me.  I mean, how many merchants have to come through and say "There are no monsters on the road" before the people start believing them? I can't imagine its really that many.</blockquote>

Verification