What would it look like?

[Nightingale 7]

Umm...Sorry to hijack,but is it mere coincidence that the name of your city is the exact translation in Greek for "city"?

 

[doghead]

Ace says does say "this unimaginatively named city". I suspect its not really a concidence.

Hey Wombat. Thanks for the ideas.

OTOH, I would be interested in a truly serious endeavour in this direction.

This is what I was hoping for myself. Not so much to play it, but to see what it would look like.

 

[Krieg]

I certainly wouldn't say that we in the first world live in the worst conditions in the world, I don't think it changes the overall point. None of the institutions or powers I mentioned are available to the average citizen of the third world either.

The point is that those "institutions or powers" are VERY much available to us compared to individuals in the third world. A life without access to automobiles, electricity, running water & other modern conveniences means spending 10-12 hours a day merely trying to survive.

If you have the opportunity watch the PBS series "1900 house" or something similar.

Later today I will be flying to LAX (from the East Coast) it will take me 5-6 hours to get there. How long did it take Louis & Clark to make a similar trip 200 years ago?

Ultimately the "institutions & powers" we have access to have made our lives in many ways almost unrecognizeable to those of our forebears.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

The point is that those "institutions or powers" are VERY much available to us compared to individuals in the third world. A life without access to automobiles, electricity, running water & other modern conveniences means spending 10-12 hours a day merely trying to survive.

Which does show us that different parts of the world would have (obviously) different technology levels, and potentially different applications. I wonder though, if magical training wouldn't happen more like the old style Chinese martial arts. You know, where traineees had to prove their attitude and mindset were correct before being taught. I mean, if it was necessarry for self-defense techniqes, imagine how important it is for someone who can dominate minds or blow things up by thinking.

And how do those elves work. With their longer lifetimes, wouldn't they likely be higher level, and more powerful?

And wouldn't society still be pretty militaristic given that there are giants, and kobolds and hobgoblins and such out there in droves? While that might not be a big deal for the cities, little farming villages would just get stomped on. And even with new superfarming techniqes, it'll still require a lot of farmland to feed a D&D sized town.

Any smart people here able to figure out what sort of classed people would be in a little farming village?

 

[Ace]

Umm...Sorry to hijack,but is it mere coincidence that the name of your city is the exact translation in Greek for "city"?

No it is quite intentional

The humans on my game world were all SCA types and gamers (and historians and that lot) basically whovever the "shapers (an evil percusor race) would be best able to adapt to the society they ran

A lot of city names are slurred versions of Earth city names or are named stupid stuff like Polis

 

[Brother MacLaren]

And how do those elves work. With their longer lifetimes, wouldn't they likely be higher level, and more powerful?

The great equalizer for elves IMO has always been that you shouldn't earn XP for facing minor challenges over a long period of time. You only get XP for overcoming challenges that present a real and significant danger. This results in perhaps a 50% mortality rate per level for NPCs (because PCs are the main characters of the story, they have it easier), so only one in a thousand of those elves who try to gain PC class levels will ever make it to level 10. And that is a very small subset of all elves. The vast majority of them are still commoners, experts, warriors, and aristocrats.

By far, the factor keeping down high-level character numbers is violent death. Not age. Does that work?

 

[ThoughtBubble]

The problem with violent death as a limiter is that it has to apply evenly. And if we take the stats given to us in the first post, then that's (guestimation here) half a million deaths to make the adventuring popluation of one twenty thousand person town.

And in a world that spectacularly lethal, I don't think we'd see magic used in city construction projects. We'd be to busy holding off the goblins, and the giants, and the displacer beasts and the umber hulks and the gnolls and the weretigers and the occasional dragon, hydra or titan.

That's the world that I'm seeing. The world is constantly throwing something very dangerous at us meat snakcs, and most of a society's means are angled directaly at surviving the next year.

 

[Wombat]

Interesting thoughts.

Essentially, given the XP system, is the only way that our city can support all these classed characters at these high levels through open conflict? And if so, just how lethal is the world?

Then again, the Monster Manual actually gives us some clues. For all the non-abberation, non-outsider creatures and races to be viable, there would have to be a fair sized population of each. As most of these creatures are carnivorous, there must be a lot of competition amongst primary and secondary predators; this suggests either a heck of a lotta slow, easy to catch herbivores with a very high reproductive rate or a state of near constant warfare between both species and cultures.

In the Real World (Medieval version) something like 90% of the populace was involved directly in agriculture, mostly in small, rural communities. But with a world this vastly dangerous, such small villages would be nearly suicidal. Would fields have to be walled it? Would humans (and, by extension, elves, etc.) have switched over to a nearly carnivorous diet? Would haunch of hobgoblin be considered acceptable viands?

Enquiring minds want to know...

 

[Malk]

Isn't Arthur C. Clarke another resource? "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?" I disagree, however.
Magic can do a lot that is beyond the reach of our technology (curing AIDS) and can do some things that violate basic laws of science in such a way that technology might or might not ever be able to accomplish them (teleportation across unlimited distances; bringing someone back from the dead after several years with their memories intact without even a body to work from). Personally, I think technology is never going to be able to do a True Resurrection or Greater Teleport, so magic has it beat there.

Ok why dont you stop the next "average" person you meet and explain to them how nanotech is used to measure the mass of individual molequles. Explain to them string theory. Explain to them the rosenburg principle in quantum physics. See if that seems like magic to them. Hell I consider myself a fairly smart guy, but the more i see of quantum physics the more i think that it is magic. There are things that they have proved now that would have violated the laws of physics 30 years ago....50 years ago.

 

[Malk]

also come to think of it...i wouldnt entirely rule out seeing "teleport" in our society in the far nebulous future.