I followed those rules for the most part when I ran my last campaign, (town size, cash on hand, amount of magic around, etc).
It pretty much just resulted in the party getting the hell out of half the towns as quick as they could.
As for the starting as npcs or 2nd level commoners thing, whatever floats your boat, but I doubt I'd enjoy running or playing a game like that.
Aren't fighters and bards common enough?
Piratecat said:
Ithink I disagree. All those people in the city are insular. It is the people in the hamlets and villages are are creating food for all the city folks to eat. They are also who the PCs will run into 9 times out of 10 when travelling anywhere. When natural disaster or monsters strike, it's going to be the villages that have the most trouble resisting. . . and then what happens to the city folk next harvest-time?
If you go by one of the lattice-like settlement patterns (
http://mayagis.smv.org/settlement_patterns.htm has some nice examples using real data about Mayan culture), once adjusted for average mobility (everyone have horses) and of course for things like mountains, which suck to settle on, but don't matter much for figuring out what settlements the party runs into as they most likely aren't crossing the mountain just because its there (and if they are, well, thats a fun group!) Then the party will never be too far from a big city, or at least a moderately sized one.
The idea is the small hamlets and such all surround big cities. It is pretty rare for super tiny hamlets to be out in the middle of nowhere; most hamlets are where the farmers that feed the local city live, and obviously the farther from the big city market the harder it is to sell your crop.
What's the point? Even when the party is in a one-horse town, they can still ask a villager where the nearest city market is, and there will likely be one less than a day away. (Assuming no recent bridge destructions, hell-balls, etc)
Heck, there is even a real good chance they could see the big city, as most small-time hamlets have cleared nearly all the land for farming. (And most big cities have done the same).