Simulationist Question on PoL

[med stud]

The existance of large empires doesn't mean that the empires have a tight control of what is happening in them. For a long time, pirates where a menace to the Roman empire. They had strongholds in the Mediterranian sea, well withing reach of the Romans but still it took a long time for the Romans to clear them out. Yet, the empire persisted.

A PoL- empire could be the same thing. The Empire may not be able to deal with rampaging dragons, but if the dragons are rare enough and not set on conquest the Empire can still survive. Armies of barbarians and goblinoids may be able to annihalate human settlements but they chose not to, instead forcing the humans to supply them with food and ritual sacrifices.

The Empires army may be strong enough to chase off a dragon or destroy a death knight, but it can't be everywhere at once. As long as the core of the Empire is strong enough to defend it's citizens, humanity can always regrow. If the Empire is oppressive enough, people will leave it to colonize the wilderness, despite the risks. Most of these colonies will be overrun by monsters. Some will survive.

The main focus of a campaign like this at heroic levels will be in the colonies, trying to make a living; the Empire exists as a far away entity, a symbol of strength, civilization but also a symbol of tyranny and oppression. It's involvment in the campaign will be limited to explaining 1) why humanity hasn't died out and 2) where lots of stuff comes from.

At paragon levels, the PCs will be powerful enough to carve out a niche, to seek out the large threats and incapacitate them. The Empire will maybe be more active in this faze, investigating the PCs and trying to strike deals with them.

When the PCs become Epic, it's time to bring out the big guns. The Empire, for all it's flaws, is the thing keeping humanity and civilization alive. If the Empire would fall, humanity would rely on the colonies, and the colonies have a tendency to die after a certain time. Now, a huge threat is descending upon the Empire, a threat large enough that only a dedicated band of very powerful heroes could save it. Alternatively, the PCs decide that humanity doesn't deserve to live on and instead turn on the Empire that is defended by it's gods and heroes.

For the atmosphere, the setting is filled with the remains of previous civilizations and races. Some of them survive as shadows of their former glory, such as dragonborn or tieflings. Others are extinct. Still others are subsumed into the human civilizations, like halflings. No matter what has happened to the previous civilizations, traces of them are everywhere. Poisoned zones from earlier wars, remnants of sorcery not yet understood by the present Empire. Ancinent undead with weird agendas. Ruins. The world is old but so far, no single civilization, nation or empire have managed to last for more than a few millenia.

 

[malcolm_n]

Great explanation. But, you forgot to mention that Gnomes are monsters; Raaaar!

 

[loseth]

I think that the real answer to this can be derived from fundamental economic theory:

The more dangerous travel is, the more difficult it is to get iron etc.

The more difficult it is to get iron etc., the more valuable iron etc. becomes.

The more valuable iron etc. becomes, the more attractive trading in it (and thus taking the risk of travelling) becomes.

In other words, in a PoL world where settlements are at first totally cut off from each other, stocks of iron and other useful stuff will get used up fairly quickly and won't be replaceable in most settlements. As such commodities are used up, they will get more and more valuable until at some point (and it won't take very long IMHO) some crazy and/or tough bastards are going to be willing to take the risk and ply the roads trading in the stuff. Expect merchants to group together for protection, forming huge caravans guarded by veritable armies of mercenaries, paid for with the super-fat profits these valuable goods will bring in.

These expensive caravans can porbably afford to make their circuit one or maybe two times a year, but when they show up at a village, boy do they make a killing. The occasion of a caravan visit is also, by the way, when the village receives its anual or bi-anual news/rumours. 'Ho villagers! Did you know that villagers like yourselves from the fine village of Tindale, just 15 miles down the road, have found an ancient tomb with a magical door that they cannot open? It is rumoured that it is the tomb of Kang the Mighty, and is filled with silver and gold. Any adventurers in town?'

 

[Ten]

I think keeping those things in mind would make for an amazing campaign. A world that is slowly suffocating. Say there was a dragonlance cataclysm or something that was the cause of the PoL campaign, and was fairly recent (50-300 years or so). Although the outlying villages, towns, and even perhaps a city or two avoided catastrophe, all atrophy without any unifying force in the world. Once fertile lands are feeding a few less people each year, and succumbing to disease more often. Game is disappearing from areas that were plentiful for ages. Birth rates are down and deaths during childbirth are up, with the odds of a healthy child being too low to be reasonable. Merchants are starting to simply not take certain routes, as even with the massive profit potentially had, it is simply too dangerous. Hope is dying, and even the once idealistic young are succumbing to apathy.

How can your characters cope with a land that is not besieged by some dragon or undead horde, but rather is slowly losing the will to carry on? Even if you slowly grow stronger and more able to push back the monsters, creating new land to plant on and new ranges to hunt on, how do you deal with farmers and hunters that have given up hope of change? And if you are planning to take it to high paragon/epic, can they perhaps reforge a kingdom that once more unites a land and shines hope for all?

 

[VannATLC]

Well.. Ten, there would have to be something *causing* that malaise.

Humans are generally the last things to really notice something strange going on, unless it is particularly quick, as they adapt, change, and if kept busy enough, don't question.

 

[Ten]

That's exactly the point though, they don't question. If something is very, very gradual, humans tend to completely ignore it. Hey, I'll be dead before it affects me, so no use trying to adjust for the future! Pretty soon, you are looking at your winter stores and realizing that someone you know, as it is a pretty small settlement, is going to die of starvation. It's easy to fall into helplessness when you are isolated, your last contact with the outside world is measured in years, and a strong young man of 18 left a month ago to try and make contact and has not come back since.

As for the malaise...well, I said big cataclysm, right? Who's to say what ecological effects that could have on surrounding areas? I can certainly imagine a change in temperature that doesn't bother the humans too much could cause massive agricultural issues as well as animals migrating away.

 

[hong]

Hong's 4th law of fantasy: if you can't fix it with a sword, fix it with a fireball. If you can't fix it with a fireball, it isn't worth fixing.

 

[Dausuul]

Real-life humans have managed to scrape a living out of some amazingly barren places, so I don't think you need to worry that much about food.

For iron and such, there would need to be a light but not non-existent trade. I imagine that iron implements, and anything else that required trade to obtain, would be very valuable.

As far as castles go, I'd assume most of the castles currently in use were built before the last collapse.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'm doing my PoL in an advanced stone age setting. Something like medieval North America with dwarves, dragonborn, and a secret world ruling conspiracy of undead giant priests.

Metal weapons and armor are occassionally available but the vast majority of tools and the tech base as a whole relies on stone, bone, and sinew.

So, yeah, most of the Points are going to be largely self-sufficient with trade goods being mostly premium materials or products manufactured at some of the more developed points. All very portable, high profit, and non-essential. If the trader doesn't come that year people may be uncomfortable but they aren't screwed.

The Eladrin are the singular exception. They have an urban oil based economy where the term oil has been replaced by mana. It's an early Edison version of a powered society though where the mana can be harvested or gathered from a variety of sources but can only really be transformed into usable energy through extremely expensive and immobile well generators. As such they have no interest in controlling any land except for their urban areas and a few reliable mystic sites. They actually contribute to the PoL instability since they are only ever interested in any one else's economy on an extremely temporary and focused basis.

The Eladrin Raed processes into your town, showers everyone with wealth until the faerie circle sprouts, transfers the mana back to the well, and leaves. Relying on the Eladrin to do that may be tempting since its a lot easier than farming like a normal Pueblo, but it's a terrible long term idea.

 

[VannATLC]

How are you going to be crushing the people who make the advances necessary to move out of the stone age?

Specifically, every time somebody tries to create pottery with malachite or or some other crystallised metallic oxide that smelts at about 1000c (In a kiln) then they get copper or other appropriate metal.

5000bc is when that started happening, conservatively.

(I'm not trying to be a bastard, I like the basics of your idea.. but there would need to be susbtantial outside force preventing people from thinking/developing things like this)