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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8190196" data-attributes="member: 93670">All of that is the problem chaos raised & it seems like you agree it's a valid problem so doesn't seem much to discuss there.B1 Free will is a complicated subject that philosophers have debated for as long as we've had philosophers writing things down & probably longer.  For our purposes we can stick to applying <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostWritersAreHuman" target="_blank">most [players] are human</a>. The reason all of those advancements in civilization & government occurred was because someone got rich and other people stayed safe while possibly reaping other benefits such as expanded trade new industries & some degree of laws being enforced. Historically that went as far as things like villages not part of the roman empire(village1) sending someone to a nearby village taken over by the roman empire(village2) & negotiating a way for that village1 can also join as taxpaying citizens of the roman empire in order to gain the kinds of benefits in trade/construction/roads/technology/education/etc that village2 gained (links with details were provided). The shire says that either the local feudal lord/empire rep/etc patrols shire lands for free out of the goodness of their heart or that bandits monsters & so on are not driven towards the unpatrolled shire lands people& trade because... well because.  The shire might have some patrols or similar, but the resources & technology  available to any given village are going to be much lower than those available to a large collective of nearby villages with the benefits of large scale trade/technology transfer/etc. Interestingly enough this actually causes the monster problems for the shire to grow because chasing off monsters(even intelligent ones) is easier than killing them as you noted.  On the wildlife example, I've scared off a bear by throwing a cuban sandwich in it's direction and witnessed a moose destroy a parked unoccupied car. Having a house makes the bear & moose less of a concern yes, but a bandit is much more likely to target a house than an empty field for obvious reasons.A player or GM can put themselves in the shoes of their pc or J-Random npc to judge things like motivations & such but like the bandits & monsters not fleeing to the relative safety of the shire that plot armor results in an unknowable world where they can not do that.I think I covered most of B1 up there but B2 touches on a few other areas that were raised.  Luck might help if a bear was the biggest baddest monster they might need to worry about, but bandits & intelligent monsters capable of following a map & understanding roads on top of having skills of their own.Out-of-the-way- implies some level of distance.  Yes to a degree being far away from other villages could have helped until they opted out but history shows that merchants were willing to take a <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=how+long+did+it+take+to+travel+the+silk+road&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS859US859&oq=how+long+did+traveling+the+silk&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i22i30j0i390l3j69i64.9796j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" target="_blank">two year trip</a> from western europe to asia for the silk road & know how merchants crisscrossed europe in more local routes so the distance needs to be truly astronomical for merchants to not bother.  That leaves two possible motivations that a gm or player could try on when putting themselves in the shoes of a pc/npc's mindset, interest & having too perfect of a safe area.Using interest to avoid the b2 problems for these ultra-distant halflings suggests that these halflings just aren't interested in what the advanced civilization is selling & that runs into big problems with matters of trade because we know they love food so the idea that they would be uninterested in crops or exotic spices grown in distant lands Using distance alone is saying that halflings have such a perfectly safe far off land that there is a second wave of historical empire building we can model mindsets with. In that case we all know how well that worked out for the poor natives of north & south america when the colonial powers started demanding gold they often didn't haveIt would be feasible if things like the athas/talenta/boromar halflings of darksun & eberron were represented making the shire halflings akin to the US great plains states  working in some level of unity with the more advanced urban & industrial coastal states but with those more militaristic halflings advanced in different ways.  With those halflings not present you run into problemsexcept the part where lord muckity muck of the nearby castle never asks his patrol commander about the big blank spot on the map here halflings are located.  "Content to live their lives as they have been" is a serious issue we see playing out in real time today with the decline of rural america where kids leave home to get an education & don't return due to lack of employment options.  It was a big enough problem for village1 to negotiate with the romans in village2 to become taxpaying roman citizens so hardly a situation unique to modern times.  It was even a problem for the natives of north & south america living on reservations despite the children who leave having to face prejudices that nothing suggests would apply to halflings</blockquote>

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