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Message: <blockquote data-quote="catastrophic" data-source="post: 5104171" data-attributes="member: 81381">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.</blockquote>

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