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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 3963042" data-attributes="member: 6533">Here's the thing:If we go from the basic premise that PoL means two things:*Travel beyond and between established communities is dangerousand*The nature of the polity is such that your community and a community of potential enemies have close proximity to each otherThen any number of demographic models offer themselves up from history.  You'd be looking at anything from the densities of China during its modern warlord periods to the extreme nebulousness of human communities in North America after the post-Columbian plagues.I think there are ways you can narrow it down by adding additional permises, such as:*Imperial structures are absent*No military force can be counted on to keep order  -Though effective military forces are present such as Dragonborn Companies or Halfling Pirate Clans they can only exert a very localized influence.*There are occassional extra-dimensional invasions or intrustionsTo name a few that are hinted at in the PoL assumptions, but even there I think you are looking at a variety of possible models.If, on the other hand, you are attempting to create a DnD demographic system from the ground up - here's a question:What do you guys think are the real threats these patterns of settlements would have evolved against?Cause there are a number of different possible candidates within the DnD ecology and history for a PoL situation each of which might develop very different strategies on both the 'Light' side and the darkness.To name a case in point - many people in this thread have discounted a nomad strategy as non-competitive against the threats of a DnD world, but I don't know what your assumptions are about which aspects of the DnD ecology represent active threats.Now: I would assume that monster races with, if you will, 'fungal' cultures that allow them to establish relatively powerful communities with very few starting resources where ever imperial authority is too weak to root them out early, such as Kobolds or Orcs, are a threat to the establishment of imperial authority, but aren't that frequent a threat to the establishment of smaller communities.The probably do prey on travellers, make trade difficult, and represent a tax on agriculture by raiding herds and farms, but I doubt they get together enough gumption to wipe out established human communities, whether settled or nomadic, with any great regularity.  For that threat, kingdoms don't represent good adaptations, but any number of smaller communities do.  Nomads and Villagers can both still do well.  Though the Villagers will have to be fortified and the Nomads will need good scouts.But: What about singular monster threats?  Could any community be safe from, say, a vampire or dragon. Walls are going to be no help at all against a singular apex predator in the DnD-verse, and numbers just make you a better prey source.  True, a nomadic community runs the risk of running into one of these predators, but they also have the potential to avoid it where the village is just a target.I think the basic DnD contradiction is that on the micro-level and against basic threats defense is far superior to offense.  Against the more advanced threats no real defense is possible save through divine aid, heroic intervention, and the relative rarity or disinterest of the threat.  As a result, you can build a village or caravan or nomadic band pretty easilly, but a kingdom with great difficulty.Fortunately, there is great incentive to build kingdoms since they can leverage the factors that make you more competitive against the high level threats more easilly.Sadly, even with that leveraging the Kingdom gambit is far from certain.Thus, I think the idea of a cultural evolutionary track marked by the cyclical rise and fall of empires and the profound importance of heroic agents makes a lot of sense.At some point you might develop a culture or matrix of cultures that is able to deal with the both the basic and advanced threats well enough to allow for real constant cultural accumulation, but I think that point is both uncertain and a long way down the line for a DnD ecology.</blockquote>

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