D&D 5E Stink of the City and other unpleasentries, do you pay attention to them?

[Sacrosanct]

London in the 14th century was a cesspool. Literally. Mud, human feces, animal feces, animal entrails and butchered remains, and garbage covered the streets, sometimes inches thick. People piped their feces into each others' homes (complaints to the city made the offender remove such piping, but they had 40 DAYS to do so--according to records we have of the time).

London wasn't unique in this regard. But has anyone actually emulated this in their campaigns? It seems in our fantasy worlds in pretty much all literature (from Salvatore, Brooks, etc, etc), cities are pretty clean. Even the slums of the city just have piles of garbage in the corners, and no one has to wade through S*ht covered streets, literally to go anywhere. I think we treat it like we treat the "no PC ever has to go to the bathroom". I.e., certain realistic aspects we ignore for the sake of fun gameplay. But I think there's an opportunity to add a significant impact to the campaign by having cities more closely resemble realism in a medieval era. Would PCs avoid cities almost universally? That would have a pretty big impact to the game world, from selling your loot, to being attacked by bandits in the more rural areas you do rest up at, etc, etc. Or do they go into the city, which also has plenty of opportunity for major situations to happen (plague, illness, Con checks every 10 min to avoid puking for those who aren't used to it ).

 

[delericho]

As you say, for us it's one of those things that we largely ignore in favour of fun gameplay. You are right in that there are some opportunities for world building and the like by doing things differently, but it's not something I've tried.

 

[Mephista]

Not at all. I mean, think about it. We have level 3 spells from druids to represent good harvest spells, meaning they can be part of the game and culture. Clerics can, and often do, take the part of midwives and healers.

I don't know why we can't have wizardry and other such magic use as part of sanitation. Even a simple cantrip can remove stench with the scent of perfume. Bathing is likewise easier with the help of basic magic. Stinky cities are the direct result of lack of sanitation. In a game where magic reigns, I see no reason why we can't have a basic understanding of sanitation and how to deal with it.

Further, there's almost always going to be gods of healing, and gods of sickness and pestilence. I imagine the blessings of the healing gods would help negate the stench that came from the latter gods.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Not at all. I mean, think about it. We have level 3 spells from druids to represent good harvest spells, meaning they can be part of the game and culture. Clerics can, and often do, take the part of midwives and healers.

I don't know why we can't have wizardry and other such magic use as part of sanitation. Even a simple cantrip can remove stench with the scent of perfume. Bathing is likewise easier with the help of basic magic. Stinky cities are the direct result of lack of sanitation. In a game where magic reigns, I see no reason why we can't have a basic understanding of sanitation and how to deal with it.

Further, there's almost always going to be gods of healing, and gods of sickness and pestilence. I imagine the blessings of the healing gods would help negate the stench that came from the latter gods.

Yeah, but if you go that route, no game world would have starvation, no filth anywhere, no sickness, no failed crops, etc etc. This isn't directed at you personally, but this argument comes up pretty often about how we just handwave away whatever because "magic". But if you do that, you should be consistent. And I posit that in most settings and game worlds, it isn't assumed magic will take care of these things because all the other things that magic just as easily fixes are a core part of how the setting is often described--poverty, run down areas, etc. I posit that in most game worlds and literature, magic is hardly ever used to fix the ails of the typical peasant.

 

[Minigiant]

Well my worlds deal with it in racial ways.

Dwarves convert biological wasts into mining explosives.

Elven metabolism is slower so they resort to "brown gardens".

Dragonborn and Tiefling heavy communities incinerate wastes.

And my City of Guilds has a STRONG Sanitation guild.

 

[Mephista]

Yeah, but if you go that route, no game world would have starvation, no filth anywhere, no sickness, no failed crops, etc etc.

The difference is the availability of magic. If you have access to druids, then we have no failed crops.

This creates a kind of lopsided world, where its not technology we rely on (which is available to improve the lives of the many), but the powers of held by groups of select individuals. It creates a world where all humanoids are NOT created equal. If you're born with sorcery, or gifted by a god or the spirits, then you are objectively superior to anyone else. If your country can't raise or train many magicians, or they see themselves as superior and don't use their magic for the mundane people and only themselves...

Generally, my major cities have systems in place for the good of the people. Wizard towers give these assignments out to their apprentices as part of their training. Clerics of NG gods require healing, life promotion, and treatment for the unfortunate; LG gods' followers gravitate to law enforcement, CG focus on beautifying as well as psychology treatments. LN involves crafting and establishing order above all; TN are the libraries and research, as well as raw elementalism/nature. LE gods tend to sponsor the "necessary evils" to maintain society, including things such as royal assassins and dungeons. In my worlds, six of the nine alignment gods involve clerics that directly help a city function.

So, when I say "magic" is the answer, its not handwaved. Its a specific feature of how my worlds work, because that's how I see the gods and magic functioning. Magic replaces technology, but it also makes democracies ill suited to the world. Magic, as I said, revolves around personal power. If someone holds a high rank, you can be sure they have the power to back it up. The king and queen might be a high level paladin, or a bard, or even a warlock!*

They need to, otherwise some half-baked adventurer could try "retiring" from the field and just take over the kingdom, even accidentally.

* I have a custom Vestige Patron for my current world, and there's an entire subset of royal "necromancer" warlocks who specialize in calling up the spirits of the dead and communing with them, especially the wisdom of kings and queens past.

This isn't directed at you personally, but this argument comes up pretty often about how we just handwave away whatever because "magic". But if you do that, you should be consistent. And I posit that in most settings and game worlds, it isn't assumed magic will take care of these things because all the other things that magic just as easily fixes are a core part of how the setting is often described--poverty, run down areas, etc. I posit that in most game worlds and literature, magic is hardly ever used to fix the ails of the typical peasant.

That's because, most game worlds and literature, magic could fix it, but we either 1) lack the numbers to do it, or 2) magic users lack the incentive to. After all, why should they waste their lives for others?

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Gnomic piping And flushing toilets leading to Dwarven carved sewer tunnels where the local nightsoil merchants employ Prestidigitation to burn the waste efficiently and cleanly, whilst providing the tanners with their urine. I can see how these elements work but disease is a thing, clerics notwithstanding. And druids aren't tame gardeners in the employ.of the city folk - they'd be unlikely to take on the role of such imo. But yes, magic and races all can account for cleaner cities, for sure. Villages, maybe not so much, and there are always the poorer parts of towns where crime and or politics means the residents are left to their own stinky devices.

 

[I'm A Banana]

And my City of Guilds has a STRONG Sanitation guild.

I kind of like the way that Ravnica handled this:Necromancer-druids who turned the waste into food with insects and fungus farms.

Sigil's Dustmen handled some of this, in Planescape - they believed that to be inured to the disgust of detritus is to grow closer to accepting the fact of our dead existence.

Of course, while London was a stinking sewer in the middle ages, it's probably worth mentioning that London was a barbaric backwater in the middle ages - Istanbul had a sewer, anywhere significantly touched by the Roman Empire knew acqueducts, and the Indus Valley had sanitation before they had history. London (and New York and Paris, just to name three gross-as-heck early cities) suffered from something of a combination of not being able to keep up with population spikes, not BOTHERING to keep up with population spikes (ah, rampant classism + bickering local governments!) , and some ignorance of exactly what to do.

Which is just to say that it's not unbelievable if you want to narrative it out of your games (and can give you some interesting exploration in your own right - GIANT ANCIENT SEWERS!).

I could imagine a city modeled with that stink that made significant use of a plague vs. health conflict. Disease and poison and the like are rampant and easily spreadable and unless your world is crawling with high-level clerics, you're gonna die from that just like for real medieval Londoners did.

 

[delericho]

The difference is the availability of magic. If you have access to druids, then we have no failed crops.

Only if those Druids choose to give of their labour in this way, which is by no means certain. And even then, only if there isn't a balancing sect of evil Druids bent on causing all crops to fail.

 

[TwoSix]

My own campaign settings generally have enough magitech and/or advanced technology to allow things like sewage-filled streets, famine, and rampant disease to be rendered non-issues.