Fantasy Worldbuilding, Money, Monsters, And Food

FANTASY WORLDBUILDING, MONEY, MONSTERS, AND FOOD Recently I’ve been sort of absentmindedly excited about a Dungeons & Dragons worldâ€"and not for the first time, either. I have notebooks full of D&D worlds, a few of which even noticed some play time. But what inspired this publish right now is the collision between worldbuilding and D&D. And the game itself does often collide with the efforts of the worldbuilder. You know I love monsters, and monsters have at all times been my favourite a part of D&D in general. I need a world stuffed with monstersâ€"every monster in every model of the Monster Manualand all of the elbow room I want to create creatures of my very own… But then, as with all good worldbuilding, logic ultimately intrudes. Now, when I say “D&D,” I are likely to mean Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, aka “First Edition,” and that’s as a result of I firmly imagine that one of the best version of D&D is… …the one you first played. And I began with AD&D, back in 1979. A scan of my very own copyâ€"an original fi rst printing from 1979. And within the unique AD&D Dungeon Masters Guideare web page after page of random encounter tables, which everyone I ever played D&D with used a minimum of from time to time. Though there is a distinction made between “Uninhabited/Wilderness Areas” and “Inhabited and Patrolled Areas,” you continue to have a 2% probability (every), within the plains (where farms would be located), of encountering as many as six ankhegs or up to eighteen werewolves, and a 1% likelihood each of encountering a bullette, as much as ten hill giants, a groaning spirit, as many as half a dozen weretigers, up to four manticores, or from one to 4 vampires. Even leaving out the opposite extra mundane but nonetheless harmful encounters like somewhere between twenty and two hundred bandits or at least two and possibly twenty wolves, which means, assuming you’re unfortunate enough to have a random wilderness encounter in the inhabited or patrolled plains, you have a ten% probabil ity of encountering a significantly highly effective monster, or a 1% probability of working right into a hostile military. Great fun for a high stage party, sure, but what in regards to the 0-stage farmer with possibly two hit points trundling along from a farming village to town with a cartload of apples? One in ten of those guys is lunch. Adding again in wolves and bandits and other hostiles it may be as a lot as 25%. Would you go to work daily understanding there’s a 25% probabilityâ€"even a 10% probabilityâ€"that you simply’re not going to make it to work alive? I’d say, most likely not. So then, how does this economy work? How do you feed a city the size of, say, Waterdeep or Greyhawk or Tarantis? If you utilize these wilderness encounter tables… you don’t. So then even should you’re thinking, Okay, Phil, I get it, however my D&D party aren’t zero-stage farmersâ€"let’s assume, say, these greater monsters are only drawn to higher level characters, not farmers… Well, that is senseless, however sure… D&D is a gameand ought to be fun before it’s logical. The subsequent question, although: Can you get away with this if it’s a world you’re constructing not for a sport you’re enjoying with associates but that you just need to release into the wild in any typeâ€"at the same time as an RPG setting but a lot much less as a novel? This goes to a query I coated to some extent in Writing Monsters: How monster-rich is your world? If it goes by the AD&D random encounter tables, probably it’ll end up as some type of dystopian hellscape by which the larger cities have long sense fallen to damage because of hunger or been lengthy been overrun by marauding gangs of hobgoblins and anyway the first ancient, huge pink dragon that flies by. That, by the way, can be a fascinating world for each a recreation or a novel, so I’m not dismissing it. But what if you want your RPG or fiction characters to have a city they will go to to promote all of th e gems they discovered preventing umber hulks and gelatinous cubes in a distant dungeon where they belong? Then you’re going to have to at least begin to consider the way to feed a metropolis of tens of 1000's of individuals, maybe, and using medieval expertise. That means a lotof the area around that metropolis has to be patrolled, basically utterly monster freeâ€"10% loss is not going to do itâ€"and in a position to provide food for the town dwellers. And assume, too, about what these city dwellers eat. There’s an fascinating article by Annie Ewbank about meals in fantasy novels that features a warning towards the ubiquitous stew: As I doggedly learn through the fantasy canon, I realized that the marvelous butter-pie was an outlier. Instead, heroes and heroines usually ate familiar fare, whilst they cast spells and rode dragons. For pages and pages, fortunate characters feast on desserts and ale. Other characters only get stew, which is oddly omnipresent. In her satirical jour ney guide to fantasy literature, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, (Diana Wynne) Jones jokes that stew “is the staple meals in Fantasyland, so be warned. You might shortly be eager for omelets, steak, or baked beans, however none of those might be forthcoming.” Is this beef stew? If so, you need acre after acre after acre of grazing land, freed from wolves, a lot much less ankhegs, to make that inexpensive for the stew-loving plenty. And these cattle herds are going to attract predators. A ache within the butt when these predators are wolves or coyotes, however dragons…? Omelets and baked beans can be simpler, in any case! And what of your city is on the coast, as most cities are? Then they eat seafood, right? Well, your AD&D metropolis fishermen have a 2% likelihood of having to fend off a dinosaur or an ixitxachitl… actually, basicallyeverythingon the ocean encounter listing will kill you, including massive carnivorous whales and big crabs. Deadliest Catchindeed! â€"Philip A thans About Philip Athans Ankheg and Goblin Stew Duh. Don’t neglect to scrub off the Cream of Leprechaun earlier than you go exploring both. I never did like stew, until recent years. The downside with goblins making stew is it might need something in it! I by no means had much of a style for the random encounter tables. I was struck by the identical idea: that this much danger simply from strolling down the street had to be anathema to an precise civilization. I chose to maintain the more strange and harmful creatures comparatively isolated.