what are the ramifications of points-of-light?

[messy]

allo

once i discovered what "points of light" means, i realized it's an idea that i like and can use in my homebrew. now i'm trying to determine what effects points of light will have on the world. here's what i have so far:

if cities/towns/villages are the few (or only) safe havens for civilized races, then the inhabitants of those areas will become largely confined to the city/town/village in which they reside, right?

if that's the case, then civilized people would become more geared towards urban life than agricultural life, right?

and if that's the case, wouldn't things like technology, education, and urban life in general advance more quickly?

wouldn't people confined to urban life have more interpersonal interaction?

and if that's the case, wouldn't they have more children?

conclusion: does points of light result in a faster growing, faster advancing civilization?

messy

 

[Dice4Hire]

With modern technology less than 2% of the population can grow enough food to feed everyone. In the middle ages it was well over half.

Technology and artistic endevors increase the larger amount of people who have free time to engage in these things.

But in a points of light world, if the people have trouble even growing food (due to monsters and such) they are gonna starve, not thrive.

 

[Dykstrav]

Keep in mind that concentrated populations don't necessarily result in faster social or technological development. In the modern day, we've grown accustomed to rapid change in technology and society, but it's very recent as far as history as concerned. This may skew our perceptions about social and technological development.

Over the grand scale of history, most change has been very slow and gradual--measured over the course of decades and centuries. A person from Ancient Rome or Greece transported to the eighteenth century would find the world very different, but recognizable. All food is still made and prepared by hand, military commanders still ride into battle on horseback, most people are still illiterate, and aristocrats still govern the world. Sure, a few things might amaze and delight the displaced ancient, such as the printing press or the firearm, but they would be able to understand the device when you explained it to them, and possibly be able to recreate it in their own times with the proper directions.

Now take a person from the 18th century and bring them into the late 20th or early 21st century. Even assuming they could speak the same languages as we do, they would find the world drastically different. Most people today have no idea how to butcher the day's hunt and cook it over an open fire. While wealthy people may still own horses, it'd be for recreation and not transportation. Even the youngest children can read and write. A few governments maintain aristocracies in ceremonial positions.

Also keep in mind that the implicit D&D setting lacks our modern technology. The vast majority of settlements will be relatively small, because they need a lot of land to grow food for all those people. Most people who think of themselves as living "in" a certain settlement would probably live within a day's travel of the settlement itself. Since agriculture is so labor-intensive with limited technology, it's a vastly more important and dominant industry for those people.

Sanitation could also be an issue. Without running water or plumbing, chamber pots are the norm and bathing and even hand-washing are probably uncommon. Disease takes a heavy toll on urban populations in such conditions, even in developing areas of the world in the modern day.

These major factors, among others, limit the "realistic" size of a population under these conditions.

The answer that ultimately matters for you, I think, is if your conclusions are right for your campaign. If they result in the fun of your players and yourself, run with it. That being said, you can get a justifiably "realistic" or "reasonable" extrapolation to support whatever mode of play or social order you'd like for the setting.

If you want to gloss over sanitation, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Most D&D players and games already do--I've never seen an illustration of Waterdeep, the Free City of Greyhawk, or Sharn with filth-grimed streets or people emptying chamber pots from second-story windows. The blessings of an agricultural deity or the rituals of druids and other spellcasters could result in bountiful harvests, intensifying the yield of agriculture.

It can be just as compelling or interesting as a "realistic" setting, and also helps cement the place of magic and religion. It becomes understandable why so many humans pray to Pelor or laud the adventurers who stop goblins from raiding outlying farms.

 

[Pseudonym]

I've never seen an illustration of Waterdeep, the Free City of Greyhawk, or Sharn with filth-grimed streets or people emptying chamber pots from second-story windows.

Great image, especially with regards to Sharn. Living on the lower tower levels would be especially problematic.

 

[arscott]

if cities/towns/villages are the few (or only) safe havens for civilized races, then the inhabitants of those areas will become largely confined to the city/town/village in which they reside, right?

Yes. Which matches the medieval society than D&D is loosely based on. Most people never strayed more than 20 miles from their birthplace.

if that's the case, then civilized people would become more geared towards urban life than agricultural life, right?

No, because cities do not have the farming capacity to support themselves--their food must be imported. In PoL, where transporting goods is much harder, cities are going to be in bad shape unless they have sufficient military force to protect their food supplies.

and if that's the case, wouldn't things like technology, education, and urban life in general advance more quickly?

Slower. When supplies are scarce, non-essentials like education are the first things to go.

wouldn't people confined to urban life have more interpersonal interaction?

and if that's the case, wouldn't they have more children?

Probably not, if any effective family planning is possible. Children in an agricultural setting are valuable--more hands to do the work. In an urban setting, children likely become a liability--food will be more expensive, and with specialization of labor, children won't be much use as workers.

conclusion: does points of light result in a faster growing, faster advancing civilization?

nope.

 

[deadsmurf]

Great image, especially with regards to Sharn. Living on the lower tower levels would be especially problematic.

Actually most of sharn has working sewage systems! Easy to run them when you just need to let the stuff follow the will of gravity, and drain out into the sea.
Only the lower levels (lower dura etc) don't have that sort of system, and I would think some might still from back when sharn was newer. I would think Ashblack and the Cogs just put waste directly into the magma furnaces.

Sharn is wet and grimy enough as is without flowing raw sewage

 

[catastrophic]

I think a better question is, what plot hooks can you come up with based on pol extrapolations?

*The cities that still thrive are probably from the nerathian era, and in addition to strong walls and other resources, probably have things like sewage in place. These sewers are acient, only half understood, and often haunted by various monsters.

*Food, Farming, and Famine are a big issue for every city, and two models might emerge. In the most likely one, only a single city can exist in a region, and it's forced to put a lot of effort into keeping it's farmland safe- it relies on regular military, local militia, and also adventurers to fill in the gaps. Adventurers are also popular as a solution because the kind of beasties that come out of the wilds tend to damage the morale of the standing military, and make short work of local peasant militia.

*There's also a built in class struggle here- the famrlands would be defended by their own militia, but exist mainly to support the city population. They might be an opressed class prone to rebellions, but stripping them of their militia will make it hard to retain the farmlands in the face of the wilds, especially if the organised military is busy putting down rebellions. Maybe a tyrannical city lord wil rely on adventurers to make up thedifferencve, which would make a good campaign bsae-in the early heroic tier, the pcs kill monsters, and then later on, they turn on their employer and start a revolution.

*Another option may be a give and take between the city and country folk, where the city folk need the farmers and offer elite units and the gold (and otther goods) to hire and provision adventurers, while the farmers benefit from protection and might have other rights, like their kids being allowed to attend the wizard's academy in the city if they manifest arcane talent.

*Neighboring cities that fight over land would be hard pressed to avoid a famine, and this could alter their tactics. Only a truly reskless conqueror would ever burn a farm or slaughter their enemy's livestock- in fact resources like this would be what most conflicts would centre around. Neighboring cities fighting over farmland might use smaller, elite units like adventurers to settle their conflicts, or even ritualised combat and other means to avoid a costly war. Of course, the local orcish horde is unlikly to give a rat's ass about anybody's crops, and so the threat of a barbarian invasion becomes even more dire.

 

[catastrophic]

I just had another idea absed on nerathian sewers. Imagine a pretty big city, datng from the empire, which is still heavily populated.

Imagine if back in the days of empire, there were people who worked on maintaining and managing the sewers. In the dark days that followed, these people gradually lost their rights, and over time they became exploited and treated as the 'lowest of the low' in the social heirachy of the city.

Eventually, having had enough and being the only people who knew how the sewers really worked, they decided to turn their secret knowlege to their own benefit- by forming a thieve's guild. Now the thieves control the sewers, and use them to access any area of the city, and the (now wealthy) families that once toiled in those depths stay in control by limiting how much of their ancient maps they reveal to their underlings.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If you're going for a more simulationist angle, yeah, a PoL setting would generally be very insular, geared toward well-defended cities and towns, very suspicious of anything outside of them.

Which is part of how it looks like Feudal Europe: you had a town, and you knew those people, and everything else was "strange foreigners" who weren't to be trusted.

This doesn't necessarily mean fast technology advancement, though it could. It could also mean small villages are normal, and big cities are very rare, because of how difficult it is to defend all the fields needed to supply the population.

If each farm can feed itself +10 people in a year, and each farm needs 5 "defenders," then each farm can feed about 5 "extra people" in addition to the people (including the defenders) that work the farm. Those 5 extra people pay a hefty premium, too (or, in a more feudal system, they provide the defenders in exchange for taxes).

Big cities would be limited to exceptional environments, where food production was easier than normal, or where defenders were more prominent, or something similar. It would have to be a trait of geography, in order to counteract the usual economies of farm life.

But a lot of that is sim-stuff. The basic question you need to ask yourself, like catastrophic pointed out, is "What cool stuff do PC's get to do in the world."

 

[catastrophic]

Yeah I guess if people want to focus on the gameplay, but still put some thought towards their cities, a good rule of thumb would be to decide that every city would have to have something Special about it that allowed it to exist. This special thing should be broad enough that it would help the city thrive, but beyond that it's just a matter of creating a cool hook. Some examples:

*A city in a hidden valley, untouched by the ravages of the world beyond it. If it's location is revealed, it could suffer greatly.

*A city with a unique geological or artificial structure- a sprawling river delta with many flood plains, a huge series of battlements that protect it's farms, or an elemental vortex that grants it perfect raionfall.

*A city that is home to a powerful order of mages, who use their magic to defend and enrich the city, but also place arcanists as the ruling class, and neglect other people.

*A city who's trade, government, and military are all suprisingly successful- due to the secret influence of the priesthoods of tiamat, asmoedus, and bane, who take their payment in the form of blood sacrifice!

*A city that relies on slavery to support it's farms, or possibly artificial workers like warforged or undead.

*A city who's patron deitiy has blessed it with great prosperity- but only because they're preparing it for it's role in an apocalyptic war. The nobility might evne know about this, and secrelty plan to abandon the place when the end times draw near.