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jmbrown
2010-10-17, 09:57 AM
This question branched off from another topic. Ever since OD&D, Gygax was a huge proponent of natural laws within a fantasy world. A roving band of monsters would have X number of warriors, Y number of noncombatants, and Z number of leaders based on X. A dungeon's denizens would depend on its level but sometimes a stronger denizen would appear to prey on the weaker. If intelligent creatures were in the presence of animal-like creatures, the former would domesticate and train the latter. If there's 1 shadow in a dungeon, it's assumed there'll be more because shadows multiply.

Since some people don't like my terminology, allow me to rephrase the topic: Do you create a logical consistency in your world reinforced by the game's mechanics? Very few RPGs are foolish enough to claim realism but most are deep enough to allow one to simulate a fictional world without requiring excess work from the creator.

So I ask you, how much do you submit to "naturalism" when building your worlds? Do you chart out NPC progression assuming that the bog standard NPC will have X ability scores while superior folk are clearly beyond this? Or do you just hand wave this and say "Anything goes as long as it sounds good."

Yuki Akuma
2010-10-17, 10:15 AM
When I design a 'world' I tend to leave everything fuzzy, so I can challenge the PCs no matter what level they're at.

I don't try to build as cohesive dungeon ecology. I try to make sure it makes sense, yes, but I'm going to gloss over what the predators actually eat, because I just don't think it's that entertaining to go into detail about it.

I do, however, makes sure that NPCs have ability scores that make sense - 3 to 18 scale be damned. If an NPC is meant to be the strongest guy in the world, he gets a bonus to Strength, despite being from a race without one.

(Also, 'submit'? You make it sound like it's a bad thing.)

jmbrown
2010-10-17, 10:25 AM
Since when did submit carry negative connotations, good grief?

Naturalism is all about keeping consistency in the world. If there's a dining room, there's bound to be a kitchen. If there's a kitchen there's going to be a chimney and refuse dump. If there's a chimney, it means an area the PCs could use to gain access to the dungeon. If there's a refuse dump there's going to be carrion scavengers like dire rats.

Naturalism writes the world for you. Give me a single room and I can write an entire dungeon in a connect-the-dots method, all revolving around a single location.

I recommend everyone read 2e's Monster Manual regardless of what version you play because they went absolutely all out with the naturalism. I hate how 4e tossed these assumptions out the window and just assumes that there are two levels: the PCs (heroes) and everyone else.

bansidhe
2010-10-17, 10:32 AM
100% agreed with the above!.....now if only their was a progamme that wrote it all out for you!

Eg:Wiped out those goblins eh.....Hmmm means those kobolds are planning expansion! More wolves in that bit of the forest,more game too...prob a bigger preadator may notice,wyrvns maybe?..:D

I really want this!
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

Morty
2010-10-17, 10:33 AM
I submit to the notion of doing what makes sense at the moment. If I feel like statting things out meticulously, I do it, but sometimes I don't bother. On the whole though, I support "Gygaxian Naturalism". It's less about having everything statted out and more about knowing I could have it statted out if I wanted to.

jmbrown
2010-10-17, 10:36 AM
100% agreed with the above!.....now if only their was a progamme that wrote it all out for you!

Eg:Wiped out those goblins eh.....Hmmm means those kobolds are planning expansion! More wolves in that bit of the forest,more game too...prob a bigger preadator may notice,wyrvns maybe?..:D

I really want this!
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

It's doable. You've got Dwarf Fortress which creates a sensible world map based on in-game historical data. If I had any kind of programming experience I'd write one that was compatible with dungeon tiles or geomorphs.

SilverLeaf167
2010-10-17, 11:10 AM
Dwarf Fortress is a funny game. I just started playing it, and even if the graphics are kind of... funny, it's incredibly logical and deep. For example, most games won't mind if the nobles have to keep their important meetings in the public canteen, but in DF, they get annoyed by it.

You really have to think with naturalism and logic when playing, or you won't get far.

arguskos
2010-10-17, 11:18 AM
Naturalism is all about keeping consistency in the world.
I do this, a lot. I'm actually in the midst of writing my own world currently (you can find it in the Homebrew forum /shamelessplug) and I'm taking care to ask myself "why does that work? Why are these nations at war still? Why? Why? Why?" I'm trying to make a world that is internally consistent and makes some base amount of sense, so that people can't go "hey, why doesn't X make sense?" and the DM goes "...uh... I dunno". I want the DM to always be able to say "because of Y and Z factors on X" and the players see that the world is logically connected to itself in ways that work.

Now, I'm having troubles, cause I am not an economist nor a biologist or sociologist, so my grasp of the required sciences to make a world that's perfectly consistent is minimal, but I'm trying dammit. :smallamused:

137beth
2010-10-17, 11:27 AM
I agree that it is annoying how 4e threw out dungeon ecology. I usually don't have time to fully stat out the dungeon ecology, though.

dsmiles
2010-10-17, 11:53 AM
This question branched off from another topic. Ever since OD&D, Gygax was a huge proponent of natural laws within a fantasy world. A roving band of monsters would have X number of warriors, Y number of noncombatants, and Z number of leaders based on X. A dungeon's denizens would depend on its level but sometimes a stronger denizen would appear to prey on the weaker. If intelligent creatures were in the presence of animal-like creatures, the former would domesticate and train the latter. If there's 1 shadow in a dungeon, it's assumed there'll be more because shadows multiply.

So I ask you, how much do you submit to "naturalism" when building your worlds? Do you chart out NPC progression assuming that the bog standard NPC will have X ability scores while superior folk are clearly beyond this? Or do you just hand wave this and say "Anything goes as long as it sounds good."

I used to, but it made world-building too long of a process.

MarkusWolfe
2010-10-17, 12:01 PM
Naturalism writes the world for you. Give me a single room and I can write an entire dungeon in a connect-the-dots method, all revolving around a single location.

Though I am a fan of naturalism, I must challenge you on this one.

A sacrificial chamber.

Halna LeGavilk
2010-10-17, 12:16 PM
Though I am a fan of naturalism, I must challenge you on this one.

A sacrificial chamber.

Well, it's gotta be used for something, right? Sacrifices are religious, so there'd be an alter of some sort nearby. Alters need priests, so the priest would have a room, and his/her/its attendants would also need rooms. Since the priest and its attendants are living there, you'd need a kitchen. There would be a refuse pile for the bodies, at least a little bit of storage so you can clean up blood and the like. Pens or cages or something for storing sacrificees in before the big day, and they'd need food. You'd need several guards to guard them, and assuming this is an evil place which is hiding out, several more guards and the necessary barracks/common room to support them. You'd need latrine facilities in the dungeon, and the like. Guard post, at the entrance, certainly. The priest would need a place to commune with his god, and assuming that the sacrifice chamber isn't it, there'd be a magic casting room, and probably an attached library or something to keep scrolls and the like in.

Does that work?

jmbrown
2010-10-17, 12:35 PM
Well, it's gotta be used for something, right? Sacrifices are religious, so there'd be an alter of some sort nearby. Alters need priests, so the priest would have a room, and his/her/its attendants would also need rooms. Since the priest and its attendants are living there, you'd need a kitchen. There would be a refuse pile for the bodies, at least a little bit of storage so you can clean up blood and the like. Pens or cages or something for storing sacrificees in before the big day, and they'd need food. You'd need several guards to guard them, and assuming this is an evil place which is hiding out, several more guards and the necessary barracks/common room to support them. You'd need latrine facilities in the dungeon, and the like. Guard post, at the entrance, certainly. The priest would need a place to commune with his god, and assuming that the sacrifice chamber isn't it, there'd be a magic casting room, and probably an attached library or something to keep scrolls and the like in.

Does that work?

Not bad! Instead of a garbage dump, I would say the priests feed the bodies to their pets which leads to monster kennels. The kennels are run by an expert trainer who'll need his own room and equipment. The trainer could actually be a normal person who was kidnapped and forced into his position, offering an adventure hook for players. Let's say there's a trap door which drops an unsuspecting person into a monster kennel so there's a trap right there. Being the secretive folk evil priests tend to be, there are several sliding doors to easily transit about the dungeon to escape or get the drop on adventurers.

Now we have to ask who or what the people are sacrificing to. Is it a god? Maybe it's a powerful monster. Maybe a section of the dungeon is flooded which invites an aboleth. Instead of ritualistic sacrifice, the sacrifice is offering a humanoid to become the aboleth's thrall. If the flooding invited a monster from the underdark, we can assume the dungeon is pretty deep so there's the presence of tunneling umber hulks, fungus men, or even drow.

ericgrau
2010-10-17, 12:38 PM
Ah, so Gygax does subscribe to naturalism. Awesome, glad I bought his world building books. Now if only I had the time to use them.

Volos
2010-10-17, 03:19 PM
Gygax is god. I have a book of his that explains how to not only build a Gygaxian World but to make plots and events within that world that will grip players and make the campaigns that legends are spoken of. I finished reading this book before even running my first real campaign. Now my players are so hooked that I won't have a weekend to myself for atleast the next three months.

ffone
2010-10-17, 03:37 PM
If players are smart, a certain amount of realism is important even if they mostly just enjoy tactics and combat over atmosphere. Naturalism allows the PCs to make reasonable inferences about the environment in order to inform tactical decisions, and have them be more likely to bear out if they reason well.

PopcornMage
2010-10-17, 03:54 PM
Since when did submit carry negative connotations, good grief?

About the time some on-high autocrat with no clue tried to impose some rules on how things were meant to be, but just caused everybody else to dismiss them.

Think of it like the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert.

That's how it feels to many people.


Naturalism is all about keeping consistency in the world.

I would call it authenticity myself. It is a valid point in many people's preferred world design.

For others, they just handwave it because they want to get on to other business.

I hate pointing you to Tvtropes, but there's more than a dozen examples of this subject there. I wouldn't even use Gygax in the discussion since I'm not sure it's the real key difference point. I could just as easily proceed with things on my own path simply because I disagreed with how he did things, not with what he was trying to do.


I recommend everyone read 2e's Monster Manual regardless of what version you play because they went absolutely all out with the naturalism. I hate how 4e tossed these assumptions out the window and just assumes that there are two levels: the PCs (heroes) and everyone else.

As far as I'm concerned, it was always the case, and it actually lead to quite a few senseless and pointless arguments by people who were rather missing the point. 4e did nothing more than stop trying to pretend it was a model of the world instead of a convenient set of game rules.

Sadly, I don't know that it stopped any arguments.

Tvtyrant
2010-10-17, 04:03 PM
I actually try to make realistic biospheres, with a certain area being one, then an area where two blend together, and then another.

Example: I want to build an ice age world dominated by dire animals and giants. There are 6 sentient species in this realm, four of which are giants, 1 is bugbears (who live neanderthal lives, and can survive due to their heavy pelts) and finally the prehistoric ancestor of the primary-interbreedable humanoids (humans, orcs, elves, gnomes, dwarves, halflings). This group looks like a combanation of all of them, which makes them somewhat similar looking to the bugbears that they branched off from a while back.

The animal populations work as follows: 5 normal animals for every dire animal (mostly heavy horses and bison), 3 dire herbivores for every dire carnivore (dire elk and wooly rhinos to Dire Tigers, wolves, bears, etc. Wolves being the most common). Then for every 3 Dire Carnivores, there is 1 magic beast/aberration/outsider that is currently there either to eat the megafauna or to kill the giants. The giants ride wooly mammoths into battle against each other, and mostly ignore the little tribal people dieing in the woods.

Knaight
2010-10-17, 04:11 PM
I design settings with an eye towards verisimilitude, and anything that I notice that breaks it is fixed. That said, I very rarely employ stuff like huge amounts of fantasy monsters, so its less about realistic ecology and more about interactions between geography, politics, technology (including ways of thought), fantasy elements, etc. If imperialism is ripe, there has to be a reason a small country somewhere hasn't been conquered. It might be because they have bigger neighbors, it might be because nobody else wants the land they are on, it might be because they have a very focused military program and several weapons that nobody else has access to, but there has to be a reason.

jmbrown
2010-10-17, 08:14 PM
I hate pointing you to Tvtropes, but there's more than a dozen examples of this subject there. I wouldn't even use Gygax in the discussion since I'm not sure it's the real key difference point. I could just as easily proceed with things on my own path simply because I disagreed with how he did things, not with what he was trying to do.

As far as I'm concerned, it was always the case, and it actually lead to quite a few senseless and pointless arguments by people who were rather missing the point. 4e did nothing more than stop trying to pretend it was a model of the world instead of a convenient set of game rules.

Sadly, I don't know that it stopped any arguments.

I bring up Gygax because he and Arneson (especially Arneson who was a hardcore wargamer and tracked everything from individual roads to family households) created the concept among roleplaying games. It's not a model of the real world, and Gygax dismissed D&D as being anything close to realistic multiple times, but it is a model within the self contained fantasy world. If you play around with these assumptions then something has to shift to balance it out.

PopcornMage
2010-10-17, 08:26 PM
I bring up Gygax because he and Arneson (especially Arneson who was a hardcore wargamer and tracked everything from individual roads to family households) created the concept among roleplaying games. It's not a model of the real world, and Gygax dismissed D&D as being anything close to realistic multiple times, but it is a model within the self contained fantasy world. If you play around with these assumptions then something has to shift to balance it out.

Well, if you want to discuss what specifically Gygax (or Arneson) assumed and whatnot in regards to world-building, then that is a bit of a different discussion than where I saw this one was headed, which was towards a more generalized one regarding authenticity and verisimilitude.

What exactly do you want to discuss then?

Foryn Gilnith
2010-10-17, 08:56 PM
Well, it's gotta be used for something, right? Sacrifices are religious, so there'd be an alter of some sort nearby. Alters need priests, so the priest would have a room, and his/her/its attendants would also need rooms. Since the priest and its attendants are living there, you'd need a kitchen. There would be a refuse pile for the bodies, at least a little bit of storage so you can clean up blood and the like. Pens or cages or something for storing sacrificees in before the big day, and they'd need food. You'd need several guards to guard them, and assuming this is an evil place which is hiding out, several more guards and the necessary barracks/common room to support them. You'd need latrine facilities in the dungeon, and the like. Guard post, at the entrance, certainly. The priest would need a place to commune with his god, and assuming that the sacrifice chamber isn't it, there'd be a magic casting room, and probably an attached library or something to keep scrolls and the like in.

That was fun to read. It also sounds like it was fun to make, and that sums up my thoughts on naturalistic world-building. It's fun. Going into detail on the dungeon's ecology during the setting might not be fun, but fleshing out that detail beforehand is. The amount of detail is limited by my mental capacity, my schedule, and the requirements of having a world that will bend rather than break when exposed to PCs, but I can make a good effort at naturalism without having to bump up against these limits.

TheThan
2010-10-17, 09:09 PM
I support it too, mostly because it makes for a believable world. but then again, I don’t go into painstakingly minute detail. I do what’s necessary to make the game feel alive, the players should be able to fill in the rest.

jmbrown
2010-10-17, 09:12 PM
Well, if you want to discuss what specifically Gygax (or Arneson) assumed and whatnot in regards to world-building, then that is a bit of a different discussion than where I saw this one was headed, which was towards a more generalized one regarding authenticity and verisimilitude.

What exactly do you want to discuss then?

I'm discussing authenticity within the game. For example, we can guess how many extraordinary people there are in the world with scores of 18 based on the default method of character generation. If you change the method, say from 3d6 to 4d6b3, then suddenly the world has more paladins, druids, and bards than normal. We know that, in AD&D, humans rule over all other races because of their unlimited advancement. Elves may be keen in magic, but they can never master it as a human can. If you change this assumption then suddenly elves become masters of the arcane due to their longevity and unlimited advancement.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the rules work very elegantly in creating a world without having to fight against it. Using AD&D as an example, the PCs are very much a part of the world's natural order rather than beings that are far removed from it.

PopcornMage
2010-10-17, 09:45 PM
I'm discussing authenticity within the game.

Might want to be specific about which game then, and what you want to discuss. Most of the discussion thus far has been rather rules agnostic.


For example, we can guess how many extraordinary people there are in the world with scores of 18 based on the default method of character generation. If you change the method, say from 3d6 to 4d6b3, then suddenly the world has more paladins, druids, and bards than normal.

I don't feel there is a "normal" in any real sense of the word, and I really disliked the 3d6 rolls and the ability score requirements of 1st edition. And don't even get me started on what I think about the Bard and its custom class rules. Way too much in the way of custom one-off stuff for me to really think it was a good idea. And of course, they kept trying to add more.


We know that, in AD&D, humans rule over all other races because of their unlimited advancement. Elves may be keen in magic, but they can never master it as a human can. If you change this assumption then suddenly elves become masters of the arcane due to their longevity and unlimited advancement.

Actually I believe that humans "rule" over all other races because it was just the way certain folks wanted to do things, and I disliked the terrible way they tried to justify it. I found it to be quite unnatural really.


The point I'm trying to make here is that the rules work very elegantly in creating a world without having to fight against it. Using AD&D as an example, the PCs are very much a part of the world's natural order rather than beings that are far removed from it.

Ok, so you want to discuss how the rules of the game shape the world? Or how the world shapes the rules? It can work both ways.

But no, I never did think that the PCs were part of the world's natural order in any particular way. Especially since I've done so many different kinds of PC groups, from dungeon crawlers to merchant seafarers.

PopcornMage
2010-10-17, 10:09 PM
Oh, and as an example of the rules agnostic nature of the discussion, check the bit about the sacrificial chamber there.

No rules, it's about story/setting. Fair enough concerns, but different ones.

I'd give an example involving rules, but I'm reluctant since I think it'd be prone to starting an argument.

Yahzi
2010-10-18, 12:48 AM
So I ask you, how much do you submit to "naturalism" when building your worlds?"
Hehe. A lot.

http://www.worldofprime.com/

SilverLeaf167
2010-10-18, 01:21 AM
@ Yahzi: I just read through the Game section of your site. It seems you are one of those DMs who try to find IC explanations for EXP (in your case, "tael"). I usually do that, but it varies greatly depending on the theme. For example, if the campaign was about a party of holy crusaders, EXP would be something like "godly favor". In magic-heavy campaign, it might be "universal power gathering within those of great power and accomplishments".

akma
2010-10-18, 03:31 AM
In world building, I prefer the attidute of adding cool stuff and then thinking about how they would make sense. For exemple, I thought of a kingdom that got into anarchy and now is basically a lot of warring demon worshipping cults, but I haven`t decided why it`s like that (and there should be a good reason, I just haven`t thought about a good one yet).
I haven`t designed a lot of dungeons, but in the last one I designed there was a bathroom and a kitchen. But players probably won`t notice if things don`t make perfect sense. In that case, the dungeon dwallers didn`t have any easy way to make the dungeon, it would be much simplier for them to build hutts or set up tents. Yet, none of the players thought of that (at least they didn`t say anything).



Now, I'm having troubles, cause I am not an economist nor a biologist or sociologist, so my grasp of the required sciences to make a world that's perfectly consistent is minimal, but I'm trying dammit. :smallamused:

You`re players probably aren`t too, so as long as it makes general sense it`s ok.

jmbrown
2010-10-18, 04:10 AM
Might want to be specific about which game then, and what you want to discuss. Most of the discussion thus far has been rather rules agnostic.


It can work for any game hence why I specifically referred to AD&D in my above examples.


I don't feel there is a "normal" in any real sense of the word, and I really disliked the 3d6 rolls and the ability score requirements of 1st edition. And don't even get me started on what I think about the Bard and its custom class rules. Way too much in the way of custom one-off stuff for me to really think it was a good idea. And of course, they kept trying to add more.


You're subjective opinion. The "normal" is rules as written. OD&D and BECMI it's 3d6 in order. AD&D has multiple methods but the first implied is 4d6b3 which carries into 3e. 4e goes with straight point buy and an array of 16, 14, 14, 11, 10, 10. From a naturalist standpoint, the value of characters is a determining factor for how populous they are. It doesn't matter what you think of bards, they're supposed to be rare and one-of-a-kind. The AD&D was a full blown sage in most regards carrying knowledge beyond the realm of the normal PCs.

AD&D says that "general NPCs" are rolled with 3d6 with 1s counted as 3s and 6s counted as 4s. This meant a value between 9-15 with the average being 9-11. If the standard NPC were stronger than this, they would have PC classes. If everyone had PC classes, the PCs wouldn't be exceptional as the PHB demands they should be (exceptional, by Gygax's definition, is a 15 in an ability score).


Actually I believe that humans "rule" over all other races because it was just the way certain folks wanted to do things, and I disliked the terrible way they tried to justify it. I found it to be quite unnatural really.


Again, your subjective opinion. The designers explained their intent multiple times.



Advanced D&D is unquestionably "humanocentric", with demi-humans, semi-humans, and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of humanity. Men are the worst monsters, particularly high level characters such as clerics, fighters, and magic-users -- whether singly, in small groups, or in large companies... The game features humankind for a reason. It is the most logical basis in an illogical game. From a design aspect it provides the sound groundwork. From a standpoint of creating the campaign milieu it provides the most readily usable assumptions... From all views then it is enough fantasy to assume a swords & sorcery cosmos, with impossible professions and make-believe magic. To adventure amongst the weird is fantasy enough without becoming that too!

Emphasis mine. AD&D is a swords & sorcery game, humans are at the top of food chain challenging gods and toppling dungeons, and all the other races simply can't keep up. You might not like it but that's not the point. The game was written with this assumption in mind. If you change it, if you make elves unlimited in magic-user, then you must change other aspects about the game. There'll be more elven items because elves, who live for hundreds of years, have populated the world with it. There'll be elven empires because they're clearly superior to humans who can't touch their longevity. If you change or homebrew out the slightest aspect then you have to think about how it trickles down and effects other aspects of the game.


Ok, so you want to discuss how the rules of the game shape the world? Or how the world shapes the rules? It can work both ways.

But no, I never did think that the PCs were part of the world's natural order in any particular way. Especially since I've done so many different kinds of PC groups, from dungeon crawlers to merchant seafarers.

Rules = world and world = rules aren't mutually exclusive. As I noted above, AD&D is a swords and sorcery game where humans tangle against the weird, a result of the world affecting the rules. On the reverse side, the new alignment system influenced the D&D cosmology which gave birth to warring demons/devils below and the angels/archons above with poor humans caught in the center.

While you might not believe the PCs have a place in the game world doesn't rule other DMs from assuming the same. If the PC is supposed to be extraordinary, I'm not going to make every standard commoner extraordinary as well. The PCs became what they are because of their exceptional abilities. If all the PCs began as commoners with no skill in adventuring you'd be running a very different game than what the rules have implied.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2010-10-18, 04:26 AM
I don't think, in 3e at least, age limits are the basis of magical power. A wizard can go from level 1 to 20 in months... if he doesn't die in the process.

Aside from that, why should the magical prowess of a few members of a particular race be the basis of a world centered on that race? Could it simply be that humans breed like bunnies, at least compared to elves, and that's why you don't see as many elves around?

jmbrown
2010-10-18, 05:48 AM
I don't think, in 3e at least, age limits are the basis of magical power. A wizard can go from level 1 to 20 in months... if he doesn't die in the process.

Aside from that, why should the magical prowess of a few members of a particular race be the basis of a world centered on that race? Could it simply be that humans breed like bunnies, at least compared to elves, and that's why you don't see as many elves around?

Prior to 3e, the demi-humans are always depicted as either static or slowly dying. Dwarves seclude themselves in their mountain homes where they battle against monsters from the deep and defend against monsters in the hills. Elves seclude themselves in their forest homes which slowly recede due to human expansion; once they reach that magic age they simply depart the world of mortals (in Complete Elves, it's described that elven birth is a major cause for celebration because it's so rare). Warlike races like goblins and orcs seem innumerable but their evil and disorganized nature causes their plans to fall apart without a strong leader or they attract the attention of one of the hundreds of powerful beings that keep them in check such as adventurers.

I really like Gygax's description of the humans as the greatest monsters. In AD&D, humans keep the world balanced by suppressing everyone else. When demi-gods and planar lords get out of check, rest assured some hubris filled human will be there with his magic sword and artifacts to kick his ass.

Curmudgeon
2010-10-18, 06:18 AM
Keeping things consistent with the ecology makes the world more believable and that enriches the gaming experience. So random wandering monsters get toned down, and edited to fit the surroundings. Instead I emphasize apects like migratory herds (depending on the season) with hunters tracking them, and merchant caravans with the brigands that such attract. If the PCs encounter a bandit party the treasure will be the equipment that the brigands need plus coins and portable trade goods stolen from caravans. If the PCs have a conflict with hunters they'll mostly get hunting gear plus dried meat and staghorn. Rather than each battle yielding the same value of randomly generated treasure I keep the spoils consistent with each encounter, and average the wealth over the 13.33 encounters per level.

MarkusWolfe
2010-10-18, 06:47 AM
I actually try to make realistic biospheres, with a certain area being one, then an area where two blend together, and then another.

Example: I want to build an ice age world dominated by dire animals and giants. There are 6 sentient species in this realm, four of which are giants, 1 is bugbears (who live neanderthal lives, and can survive due to their heavy pelts) and finally the prehistoric ancestor of the primary-interbreedable humanoids (humans, orcs, elves, gnomes, dwarves, halflings). This group looks like a combanation of all of them, which makes them somewhat similar looking to the bugbears that they branched off from a while back.

The animal populations work as follows: 5 normal animals for every dire animal (mostly heavy horses and bison), 3 dire herbivores for every dire carnivore (dire elk and wooly rhinos to Dire Tigers, wolves, bears, etc. Wolves being the most common). Then for every 3 Dire Carnivores, there is 1 magic beast/aberration/outsider that is currently there either to eat the megafauna or to kill the giants. The giants ride wooly mammoths into battle against each other, and mostly ignore the little tribal people dieing in the woods.

Sounds like fun to me.

Aotrs Commander
2010-10-18, 07:35 AM
I certainly spend a great deal of time on my worlds (and in my games) trying to get them to work on a realstic (but not real) basis. From magic to culture to history to ecology. As both an armchair historian and armchair natural history/palentologist, I always make sure to try and start from a historically grounded basis and then work upwards from that.

My current camapign world, Dreemaenhyll, was the one where I finally cracked and have designed the whole thing from SCRATCH. To the point of tossing out the MMs and reimaging everything from first-principles-mythology (well, almost everything! There's still a strong Tolkien influence in the major races) It's a lot of work - and there's so much to be done, but it really has come out well! The world itself has no polar icecaps (or rather, no continents at the poles, so no major glaication), which has meant to ice age. Thus, there is an ecology on the primary that is approximiately 1 mya ago North America ('cos they had all the fun stuff). The major human nation is basically psuedo-Roman - very different from the usual not-really-at-all-Medieval - and meant I did loads of research to get the flavour right. (Again, mostly wiki. While you wouldn't want to use it for anything concrete, as an order-of-magnitude source, it's perfectly fine!)

One of my biggest personal bugbears is history timescales, and how virtually no author or games-world-designer in the entire world can write one without needless and irrationally inflating the timescale. Hundreds of years pass, and nothing happens, nothing changes. With Dreemaenhyll, with the ample assitance of the Civs and wiki, I've hammered out a world history in a sane timescale, over a mere 10,000 years of history (from the stone age to very approximately 1300AD in technological parity). It's a long job! One of the major events, the Dark Wars, is set 200 years before the "present" (that itself was reduced from far longer when I actaully sat and thought about it). The Dark Wars lasted about 80 years. I've sort of had to start writing the history in detail, to better gauge where things should be. I've done about 10k words on it and only got about a quarter of the way in! It's a long task, but it's worth it.

Yes, I can be absolutely obessive about this sort of thing on a bad day. And it often takes me as long to write the adventure as it does to write in that bit of the game world to support it.

But at least dragons1 have something to sensible feed on, e.g. Macrauchenia2 and cocktrices have good reason to be mistaken for a reptile/bird hybrids3.

And, owing the the not-Roman culture, I can cheerfully use with near-complete versimilitude, all the Latin (and/or Greek) technical terms I like...



1The group (not Great Drakes specifically) which are a type of archosaur that fall somewhere between crocodiles and dinosaurs. They stem from a relatively small genetic lineage froma common ancestor that lived in areas of high ambient background magic.

2A member of the litoptern family of mammals, now extinct on Earth.

1Cockatrices are magical mutated oviraptoids, one of the lesser number of dinosaur species found outside the Great Contient where they still hold sway.

Serpentine
2010-10-18, 08:04 AM
Sorry if this has been covered. However...
A roving band of monsters would have X number of warriors, Y number of noncombatants, and Z number of leaders based on X. A dungeon's denizens would depend on its level but sometimes a stronger denizen would appear to prey on the weaker. If intelligent creatures were in the presence of animal-like creatures, the former would domesticate and train the latter. If there's 1 shadow in a dungeon, it's assumed there'll be more because shadows multiply.That is natural? :confused:

A roving band of monsters would have a number of warriors, noncombatants and leaders based on what makes sense for the species, goals and circumstances (and game needs, but I determine the former from the latter).
A dungeon's denizens form a functioning ecosystem complete with primary producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers and so on, that consists of a variety of levels (although the party may happen to only come across level-appropriate denizens).
If intelligent creatures are in the presence of animal-like creatures, the former will hunt, avoid, farm, domesticate and/or train the latter according to the former's needs and abilities and the latter's disposition and attributes.
If there's one shadow in a dungeon, there's a pretty good chance there'll be more because shadows multiply, but it depends on how it got there, how long it's been there, and whether there's anything else around killing them.

What you listed to start with... That doesn't seem very natural to me at all.

In my games... I'm not clever nor time-rich enough to make sure my games are internally consistant and complex enough to stand up to detailed examination. I do try to give it enough history, with change, and ecology and sensicalness, to look like it has that consistancy and complexity to the players as they travel through a very narrow band of it. If that makes any sense...

Lord Raziere
2010-10-18, 08:15 AM
yea, I mean natural in a very big way is random and somewhat chaotic, sure natural is somewhat consistent but there is a lot of room for error, change and all that, cause change and inconsistency is also natural as well.

for example its natural for the remnants of great big army to be short on numbers and may not have many clerics or wizards around, natural they would green recruits mixed in with veterans and its natural for a gang of bandits to be rabble with random varied skill sets.

its also natural for someone to randomly encounter a herd of charging magical bulls coming their way.

Coidzor
2010-10-18, 08:19 AM
I think the word is subscribe...

And, yeah, It really seems to be the only way to create a setting if one is world building without making players that actually listened or read the details given to them stand up and ask inconvenient questions.

phlidwsn
2010-10-18, 08:30 AM
Gygax is god. I have a book of his that explains how to not only build a Gygaxian World but to make plots and events within that world that will grip players and make the campaigns that legends are spoken of. I finished reading this book before even running my first real campaign. Now my players are so hooked that I won't have a weekend to myself for atleast the next three months.

I don't suppose you remember title, etc. off the top of your head for that book? Sounds like an interesting read.

PopcornMage
2010-10-18, 12:42 PM
It can work for any game hence why I specifically referred to AD&D in my above examples.

Then I stand by my prior statement, I wouldn't refer to Gygax at all. But it seems you want a discussion on a particular game too.

Ok, then perhaps you may want to go back to your sacrificial chamber ideas and apply game mechanics to them.


You're subjective opinion.

That's why I said I disliked it. Was this unclear to you??? Am I not allowed to have opinions or something? You say *this* like it's a bad thing. Several times. I think that goes back to what I said in my first post in the thread, about why "submit" does have negative implications.


The "normal" is rules as written.

And I feel free to consider that to have no greater meaning, no sacredness, and to be totally replaceable by me, who is the person on the spot.


It doesn't matter what you think of bards, they're supposed to be rare and one-of-a-kind.

Um, yes it does. I'm running the game, am I not? Am I not supposed to do things in a way I like?

I disliked it, both mechanically and flavorwise, so I declined to use it. That also applied to certain other classes and mechanics. Alignment tongues were quick to be thrown out by me.


Again, your subjective opinion. The designers explained their intent multiple times.

And I actually find your quote to be confirming what I said. Since I don't want to argue with you over old quotes about people who are dead and can't speak for themselves, or be questioned, I'll just say...I didn't agree with parts of their paradigm.

I do think they supported that, except in their crankier moments.


Rules = world and world = rules aren't mutually exclusive.

But they are different, and worth noting. Aren't they? And as discussions go, it's important to know which way you are going.


As I noted above, AD&D is a swords and sorcery game where humans tangle against the weird, a result of the world affecting the rules. On the reverse side, the new alignment system influenced the D&D cosmology which gave birth to warring demons/devils below and the angels/archons above with poor humans caught in the center.

Yes, those are certainly examples of each. And that is why some people change them. The number of arguments about the value of alignment in the game is legendary.


While you might not believe the PCs have a place in the game world doesn't rule other DMs from assuming the same.

I don't believe they have a singular fixed place in the game world, to the point where you end up with something like the Order of the Stick where they actually get called out as PC's. Slightly more acceptable is something like Xcrawl where it's a professional sport. But I tend not to go in those directions myself.

That said, I can certainly respect a mechanical differences between PC's and not PCs, I just don't feel obligated to put it into the world as such, because I know that sometimes it's a necessary compromise for the efficiency of the game rather than attempting to create a paradigm based on the rules of the game.


If the PC is supposed to be extraordinary, I'm not going to make every standard commoner extraordinary as well. The PCs became what they are because of their exceptional abilities. If all the PCs began as commoners with no skill in adventuring you'd be running a very different game than what the rules have implied.

Actually I thought the original rules did imply starting off with no skill in adventuring. Moreso if you seek out some of the old O-level rules, but still, you are supposed to start out as a rather basic person who isn't that much better than the rest. Dark Sun may be an exception though.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-10-18, 12:50 PM
This is called "Gygaxian Naturalism?" I always called it "making life easier for the DM" :smalltongue:

Aside from the already-noted benefits of having heuristics for world design, you need an internally consistent world if you want the Players to engage in it. After all, Players determine their actions based on logic (at some level :smalltongue:) - if they invade a fortress they're going to be looking for the barracks to loot some gear. If the fortress doesn't appear to have a barracks (because you forgot to include it) they're going to starting looking around for one or get confused as to why anyone would construct a fortress in such a fashion.

If the DM refuses to construct games where logic is applicable, Players are going to get disengaged from the world and treat it as a largely static set-piece. At best, this results in Players "playing the DM" - trying to figure out how to solve problems based on what the DM is likely to have done, rather than what would make sense IC. At worst, the Players will begin sniping at the illogic of the world and treat everything as a railroad: either as gloomy passengers or madmen trying desperately to derail the train!

Seriously though - does anyone aim to make worlds that aren't internally consistent? :smallconfused:

PopcornMage
2010-10-18, 12:52 PM
I really like Gygax's description of the humans as the greatest monsters. In AD&D, humans keep the world balanced by suppressing everyone else. When demi-gods and planar lords get out of check, rest assured some hubris filled human will be there with his magic sword and artifacts to kick his ass.

I actually found that to be self-centered, and rather arrogant.

Also see here. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhatMeasureIsANonHuman)

That's why I didn't like it.

Then again, my worlds tend to be all-human for just this reason.

PopcornMage
2010-10-18, 12:55 PM
Seriously though - does anyone aim to make worlds that aren't internally consistent? :smallconfused:

I have, but that was a case of Exposing the Matrix.

More often, however, when you find a lack of internal consistency it's just a lack of consideration of the implications. Which is so easy to happen, that some people just hand-wave it rather than try to fulfill what they consider an impossible standard.

jmbrown
2010-10-18, 01:27 PM
A roving band of monsters would have a number of warriors, noncombatants and leaders based on what makes sense for the species, goals and circumstances (and game needs, but I determine the former from the latter).


Is it not the goal of a leader to ensure discipline and organization in his troops? If there are X number of warriors then it's natural to have Y number producers to feed said warriors. How does that not match the need of the group?


If intelligent creatures are in the presence of animal-like creatures, the former will hunt, avoid, farm, domesticate and/or train the latter according to the former's needs and abilities and the latter's disposition and attributes.


Protection is a need. Food is a need. Extermination is a need as animals can be pests. I didn't go into a super descriptive, detailed, bulletted list because this is a discussion, not a tutorial.


If there's one shadow in a dungeon, there's a pretty good chance there'll be more because shadows multiply, but it depends on how it got there, how long it's been there, and whether there's anything else around killing them.

Considering a shadow can't be killed short of magical methods and any living creature killed by a shadow rises as one, it's safe to assume that there'll be more than one shadow present in a dungeon. While the shadow may be a weak undead, it is (by proxy of being incorporeal) more powerful than even creatures of higher levels.


I think the word is subscribe...

Either or. Subscribe in this context means "to be favorably disposed." Submit means "to yield to authority." The DM is the governing authority and if you follow the rulebooks you're adhering to their law. I don't see the problem with vernacular, here.

Subscribe works if you make up your own ecology.


Then I stand by my prior statement, I wouldn't refer to Gygax at all. But it seems you want a discussion on a particular game too.


This is an open discussion for any game, I just happen to use Gygax and AD&D for all my examples. You're the only one in this topic who wants to limit it to either/or.


Ok, then perhaps you may want to go back to your sacrificial chamber ideas and apply game mechanics to them.


Elaborate. What "mechanics" would apply to a sacrificial chamber? It's a dark room with a stone slab containing rusty manacles and caked in dried blood. What "mechanics" am I applying here?


That's why I said I disliked it. Was this unclear to you??? Am I not allowed to have opinions or something? You say *this* like it's a bad thing. Several times. I think that goes back to what I said in my first post in the thread, about why "submit" does have negative implications.


Your posts make you sound like your way is the only way, damn the rest. Perhaps I should make clear by defining my intent.

In-Game Naturalism: The natural workings of your world as defined by the game mechanics. For example, if a creature is defined as strong, aggressive, and numerous then it's natural that they rule the world unless some other natural occurence limits this (short lifespan, common weakness, an even stronger creature, etc.).

Gygaxian Naturalism: The natural workings of the world as defined by Dungeon's & Dragon's mechanics. Humans rule the world because they have unlimited advancement. Dwarves argue with elves because their alignments are complete opposites.


And I feel free to consider that to have no greater meaning, no sacredness, and to be totally replaceable by me, who is the person on the spot.


Then you don't submit to them. I don't see why this is cause for argument or recourse. You either follow the rules or you ignore them. Submit or omit. Why is this a difficult concept?


Um, yes it does. I'm running the game, am I not? Am I not supposed to do things in a way I like?

I disliked it, both mechanically and flavorwise, so I declined to use it. That also applied to certain other classes and mechanics. Alignment tongues were quick to be thrown out by me.


Again, you omitted the rules. I'm not saying you're a terrible, awful monster for doing this because everyone omits rules.


And I actually find your quote to be confirming what I said. Since I don't want to argue with you over old quotes about people who are dead and can't speak for themselves, or be questioned, I'll just say...I didn't agree with parts of their paradigm.

I do think they supported that, except in their crankier moments.


Suit yourself, I can't convince you otherwise. The rules, however, reflect on the game world. Humans rule over all other creatures because of their unlimited advancement. If this weren't the case then we may very well see a different tone in the writing or a shift towards more non-human material.


But they are different, and worth noting. Aren't they? And as discussions go, it's important to know which way you are going.


How are they different? Is nature not a set of invisible but inherent laws? Is science not a series of laws? Unless you determine every aspect about your world by rolling randomly on a table without modifying it to make sense (another thing Gygax mentioned constantly; roll randomly for ideas but discard the nonsensical bits) then your world is made up of laws. They may not be visible, but they're there.


Yes, those are certainly examples of each. And that is why some people change them. The number of arguments about the value of alignment in the game is legendary.


Whether or not they change them isn't important, what's important is that they exist because of the new rules. If you omit the cosmology then that's your own business but they exist for a reason other than providing an interesting place to adventure.


I don't believe they have a singular fixed place in the game world, to the point where you end up with something like the Order of the Stick where they actually get called out as PC's. Slightly more acceptable is something like Xcrawl where it's a professional sport. But I tend not to go in those directions myself.

That said, I can certainly respect a mechanical differences between PC's and not PCs, I just don't feel obligated to put it into the world as such, because I know that sometimes it's a necessary compromise for the efficiency of the game rather than attempting to create a paradigm based on the rules of the game.


My argument about PCs being a natural part of the game world is that I don't believe in the concept of "PC Glow." The characters are not divine beings (at least not yet) who can step into a bar and be approached by every stranger who wants their problems solved. I try to make my games so that the PCs must find adventures, the adventures don't come to them (although they may very well trickle down to them).

The players are extraordinary beings but I like to make a point that the world turns without them.


Actually I thought the original rules did imply starting off with no skill in adventuring. Moreso if you seek out some of the old O-level rules, but still, you are supposed to start out as a rather basic person who isn't that much better than the rest. Dark Sun may be an exception though.

The PCs are very much better than the average NPC. As I noted above, in AD&D the average person will have a score between 9-15 and won't ever gain experience points. These "0th level" folk have hit points based on their job and won't ever improve. Even elite NPCs, when in a party of PC characters, will only gain half normal experience points.

You might argue that this proves your point in that the PCs are removed from the rest of the world. To me, it only serves as a reminder not to overshadow the players because this is poor DM'ing. Let them succeed and fail on their own terms.


I actually found that to be self-centered, and rather arrogant.


If you submit to Freudian psychology, this is natural :smallsmile:

jseah
2010-10-18, 01:30 PM
In my case, my current project (and most ambitious so far) involves building a world from basically nothing.
After some thought with how I wanted things to work, I figured that I couldn't use the D&D ruleset and so went hunting around for ideas.

I'm still in the phase of building the magic system. The basic physics is done, although some kinks wrt teleport need to be worked out, but I can give partial explanations for why spells do what they do and what spells are possible.

This does mean that anyone wanting to play a mage will probably need to study the magic system first. (which is 10k words and only about 1/3 done!)


Which shows one downside of having too much material. If your world is a fantasy world, then it functions according to different rules from ours.
If you work through all the implications, most especially the ones surrounding the presence of magic, your players might very well need to read all your notes and entire setting just to be able to make the required logic.

jmbrown
2010-10-18, 01:35 PM
Which shows one downside of having too much material. If your world is a fantasy world, then it functions according to different rules from ours.
If you work through all the implications, most especially the ones surrounding the presence of magic, your players might very well need to read all your notes and entire setting just to be able to make the required logic.

Which is another reason why AD&D was humanocentric. We are all humans and can therefor connect with ourselves better than an alien world. As much as I love weird settings, it's a major hurdle you have to get over. I really, really don't like races as "Humans in suits."

For example, ElfQuest was a fantastic comic that made up its own unique world which felt alien but real. Still, the comic was criticized for being too different especially when it came to love and the infamous pre-battle orgy scene.

You might be interested in Bat in the Attic (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/) where the creator (a talented cartographer) is currently going through a series of sand box world building segments.

PopcornMage
2010-10-18, 02:15 PM
This is an open discussion for any game, I just happen to use Gygax and AD&D for all my examples. You're the only one in this topic who wants to limit it to either/or.

Nope, you misunderstand, I just want a clarity to the discussion. This is why I said way back in my first post:


I wouldn't even use Gygax in the discussion since I'm not sure it's the real key difference point. I could just as easily proceed with things on my own path simply because I disagreed with how he did things, not with what he was trying to do.

Your reply did not quite seem to acknowledge the difference, or recognize the fundamentals of the discussion very well. And that's just frustrating to me, because I can clearly see where folks are going to be talking past each other, not even realizing what they're each saying.

Like here.


Elaborate. What "mechanics" would apply to a sacrificial chamber? It's a dark room with a stone slab containing rusty manacles and caked in dried blood. What "mechanics" am I applying here?

Isn't that for you to figure out if you want to discuss it mechanically, and the implications of it? You're the one who has stated a desire for a a focus on the rules mechanics, not me. So I'd like to see you do it. If you want, I can certainly give you an example of somebody else having done it(see BA's design of a dungeon in Knights of the Dinner Table, it involved a sphere of annihilation), but I don't care to do it myself.

Me, I see your exposition on the subject not as a mechanic-based one, but one based on a more generic authenticity as to the real world. Which is fair and desirable, but a different subject.

And that's why I note the distinction you seem to be bulldozing past.


Your posts make you sound like your way is the only way, damn the rest.

Oddly that's how you seem to me, especially with your use of the word submit.

As for your terminology, I would work at it from a different perspective.

There is real world authenticity, which is things like you covered in your description of the sacrificial chamber.

And then there's mechanics-based ones, which leads to things like say the Great Wheel cosmology.

What you call "Gygaxian" is just a particular manifestation of the latter, no more, no less.


Again, you omitted the rules. I'm not saying you're a terrible, awful monster for doing this because everyone omits rules.

It feels like you are from the way you respond. Perhaps I'm coming across poorly to you in a similar way?


How are they different?

Hmm, I guess I should have explained it from the start, the difference between a world shaped by the rules, and a set of game rules shaped by the world. Think of licensed games. You can adapt one for a particular genre, or try to shoehorn it into an existing rules set.

You can also say "Well, I have these rules, what changes will they make to the world" .

It's all good, either way, as far as I'm concerned. Well, ok, not all licensed games are well-adapted, but that's another matter. But from a sense of enjoyability, I like both.


My argument about PCs being a natural part of the game world is that I don't believe in the concept of "PC Glow." The characters are not divine beings (at least not yet) who can step into a bar and be approached by every stranger who wants their problems solved. I try to make my games so that the PCs must find adventures, the adventures don't come to them (although they may very well trickle down to them).

The players are extraordinary beings but I like to make a point that the world turns without them.

So do I. That's why I don't have a concept of the "PC's" as being a part of the natural order, in the sense that they fill a role like top predator, or bottom feeder.

Or like as done in the Order of the Stick.


You might argue that this proves your point in that the PCs are removed from the rest of the world. To me, it only serves as a reminder not to overshadow the players because this is poor DM'ing. Let them succeed and fail on their own terms.


Not my point, but a natural extension of that particular conceptualization of the world. Not one I myself favor outside of the mechanics.


If you submit to Freudian psychology, this is natural :smallsmile:

There's a reason I linked you to the Tvtropes page already. I just don't consider the "Gygaxian" solution of justification desirable.

In other words, like Asimov confronted by Campbell's restriction of human/alien relationships, I decide not to have any aliens.

Werekat
2010-10-18, 02:50 PM
I try to in general. I'm actually having trouble with my current game, because it's gone too deep (when what most of the others wanted was a break from serious storylines and deep drama in our regular games). I can't help but think about this stuff.

I won't have everything mapped out, not nearly - I'll often just take a cool concept as a seed and start building around it as plot requires (filling in all the blanks would take too much work). But I do try to keep it consistent. Though right now i have a classic dungeon made by an unknown outsider for unknown purposes, so it's an excuse to keep it crazy and unpredictable. But that's something new for me (all the outside forces clamoring for the riches and power inside are internally consistent, hopefully!).

But I'm not really a good DM - I get too caught up in cultures I like. General worldbuilding is way too much work.

Coidzor
2010-10-18, 03:00 PM
Well, using the word submit couches the whole thing in language like there's an active, hostile conflict otherwise.

Tvtyrant
2010-10-18, 03:07 PM
I'm starting to think this is a hostile forum. Look at the scorn people heap on Giacomo's arguments! And all because he wanted to make a monk that can swallow a wizard.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2010-10-18, 03:17 PM
*Snip cool Gygax description of human-dominated D&D world*Take the world you just described and get rid of racial class limits. I do not see a necessary contradiction.


I'm starting to think this is a hostile forum. Look at the scorn people heap on Giacomo's arguments! And all because he wanted to make a monk that can swallow a wizard.It's the internet. When someone makes a series of spurious claims that touch on a discussion repeated so often it feels like Groundhog Day (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/), don't expect people to respond as nicely as they could.

Mordaenor
2010-10-18, 03:32 PM
I do try to keep a logical constency going when creating my dungeons. In a way, I wish I didn't because I am awful at it. I always ask myself "Why is this monster in this room. What would he be doing if the PCs hadn't barged in on him. And how does he relate to the monsters in the rest of the dungeon." The problem is, I spend so much time second guessing myself because I don't have good (or any) answers a lot of the time. And it gets even worse when I try to incorporate non-combat encounters.

Gametime
2010-10-18, 06:28 PM
I'm starting to think this is a hostile forum. Look at the scorn people heap on Giacomo's arguments! And all because he wanted to make a monk that can swallow a wizard.

If you're interested, a quick search will reveal literally dozens of discussions on class balance that Giacomo has participated in, in which he has received responses running the gamut from polite disagreement to outright character assassination. Suffice to say there is a long history of argument following Giacomo's posts.

Tvtyrant
2010-10-18, 06:45 PM
If you're interested, a quick search will reveal literally dozens of discussions on class balance that Giacomo has participated in, in which he has received responses running the gamut from polite disagreement to outright character assassination. Suffice to say there is a long history of argument following Giacomo's posts.

Oh I know, I actually first saw this forum because I found his monk build (I had been looking at the Guide to Playing GOD and someone referenced it).

Personally I like naturalism because it makes interactions more immersive. Think about all the games where mindless monster A ignores sentient tribal monster B in order so they can both kill you. It really breaks the reality of the game when the ooze attacks the party and ignores the Kobolds that are closer to it.

If a dungeon has oozes AND kobolds the kobolds would have lured them into a pit and thrown scraps to them, or the colony is brand new and there are like ten kobolds in it. No one just allows apex type predators to live next to them, and while oozes aren't high CR they are actually really, really dangerous in a real society setting.

PopcornMage
2010-10-18, 06:54 PM
Not if you switch to a Garlic Soap!

Or is that just for Vampire Oozes?

Tvtyrant
2010-10-18, 06:57 PM
Not if you switch to a Garlic Soap!

Or is that just for Vampire Oozes?

lol. Its a square blob with two massive scythe fangs. Coin toss on wether to call it "vampire ooze" or "dire ooze." If its dire add random spikes to the square, if its vampire give it a cape. A SQUARE cape.

jmbrown
2010-10-18, 10:02 PM
Topic title changed to appease some people.


There's a reason I linked you to the Tvtropes page already. I just don't consider the "Gygaxian" solution of justification desirable.

And I find it the best solution. If there are aliens, then they must be equal to humans, below humans, or exceptional. If they're exceptional, there's no reason to play a human except for the latter to topple the former.


Take the world you just described and get rid of racial class limits. I do not see a necessary contradiction.

The contradiction is that nobody would play a human in a game that implies a human driven world. The various races can multiclass into ridiculously powerful builds like fighter/thief/illusionist. Why the hell would I want to play a level 20 wizard when I can play a person who has 20 levels in cleric, fighter, and mage? The only other solution would be to make humans multi-class but you still have the problem of humans not receiving any special bonuses or powers.

And because I have a free hour on my hands:

Temple of the Dog
Being a hidden temple of twisted cultists to their canine deity, fully built from the inside out.

Sacrificial Chamber: Dank chamber with a single stone slab adorned with rusty manacles and caked in dry blood. Deep recessions in the slab cause blood to flow in a decorative pattern on the ground, forming the symbol of Canis. One sacrifice is made every week at dusk in which all members are involved in a ritual of frenzied dances and howling that last four hours.

Canis is not actually a god but a powerful devil. Another evil deity, pleased by the priests of Canis, actually grants their spells in secret. Anyone who's not a worshipper of Canis and disturbs this chamber summons a nessian warhound by Canis himself! The warhound, however, cannot exist in the chamber longer than 10 rounds and it can only be summoned once per day.

Dungeons: Up to five slaves are kept here. They're fed carbohydrate rich foods (bread and creamed grains) to keep their muscles from atrophying so they make ideal sacrifices. A torture rack and a +1 barbed whip (inflicts damage even to armored opponents) align the walls. While the acolytes are punished for prematurely killing a slave, they're allowed leisurely time for regular beatings.

Altar Room: Small room with a rich rug and stone altar with twelve candles, a bloody bowl for offerings of fresh meat, and a man-sized statue of a dire wolf. The altar is unhallowed. Six acolytes tend to this room and pray at dawn. The high priest prays at dusk and offers the heart of the sacrificed at dusk on every third day. Creatures not wearing the Amulet of Canis cause the statue to animate and attack as a medium-sized animated object. The rich rug is worth 500gp if properly cleaned.

Priest's Room: Humble chambers for the six priests of Canis (three level 3 clerics, two level 4 clerics, and one level 5 cleric). Includes a bed, comforter, nightstand, and foot locker filled with prayer beads, holy objects to Canis, and a scattering of coins.

Acolyte Room: Even simpler chambers for the twelve acolytes (seven level 2 warriors, two level 3 adepts, and three level 2 clerics who are priests in training). The acolytes perform mundane tasks and guard the compound.

Underground Pool: A natural cave with a stream and fresh pool of water. The acolytes bath and dump their refuse here.

High Priest's Room: The high priest of Canis (level 7 cleric) lives in this lavish chamber. Instead of a bed, he sleeps on rich, overstuffed pillows and sheets like a dog's bed. Two hell hounds, absolutely loyal and granted as a gift from Canis for the high priest's devotion, rest here. A bookshelf contains an assortment of documents from a diary to holy scripture. Several priestly scrolls of levels 1-4 are stuffed in a desk including a scroll of slay living, the high priest's most prized possession. A locked chest contains yellow mold; when opened the spores release. The high priest keeps this chest to deter anyone among his rank foolish enough to enter his chambers assuming the wolves do not slay them first. A false wall in the priest's closet reveals a walk-in room with a chest filled with gold pieces, a ritualistic dagger (+1 wounding weapon), and various gem encrusted statues.

Secret Escape Chamber: The high priest is not above escape. If his life is in danger and there is no chance of winning, he grabs as much treasure as he can and escapes through a secret egress tunnel in his chamber.

Common Room: The acolytes dine and play leisurely games while not on their duties.

Kitchen: An enslaved commoner cooks simple meals from whatever the huntsman catches. The commoner is often killed feeding the vicious dogs in the kennels and is usually replaced every month.

Supply Chamber: Mundane supplies are kept here such as spices and cleaning tools.

Kennels: These kennels house 12 mastiffs (medium animal, 2HD) and one dire wolf (the "alpha") who are absolutely vicious to everyone, even the acolytes, except for the huntsman and high priest. The huntsman (a level 5 evil ranger) trains the dogs and hunts for wild game.

Huntsman's Chambers: The huntsman rests here with his queen sized bed which usually has an enslaved commoner woman manacled to it at all times. The huntsman is a skilled bone carver and makes disturbing fetishes out of human bones and animal horns. The huntsman is not a loyal follower of Canis but is respected for his services. He will retreat or surrender to save his life and provide information harmful to his employers if threatened. When not in his employ, he keeps his magic composite bow (+3 strength) hidden in a false floor underneath is bed along with 20 sleep arrows he uses to kidnap commoners with.

War Room: If the compound is attacked, all acolytes rush to the war room to pull a lever which activates all traps in the compound. Various mundane weapons adorn the walls.

Large Chute: A large chute near the compound entrance contains the many bodies of those sacrificed (and not fed to the dogs) or foolish adventurers who attempted to brave the compound. The bodies have attracted carrion crawlers who cannot access the rest of the compound due to a trick door. In case of an attack, a lever in the war room is pulled which drops the chute allowing the carrion crawlers access to the entrance halls.

Main Hall: The hallways are always lit continous torches. When the lever in the war room is pulled, this activates four trap doors conspicuously placed about the halls (all compound members know about these trap doors as they're all placed before a painting of a hellish landscape). The trapdoors drop anyone 30' to the kennels which are opened.

Secret Doors: Several secret doors are scattered about the compound allowing access to the main hall from the war room and any of the above living chambers. During an attack, the denizens of the compound use this to gain surprise against their enemies.

Lookout Room: A chamber above the compound cleverly hidden in the rock so as not to stand out serves as a watch for one of the acolytes who are always on duty here for 8 hour shifts. Anyone approaching the compound directly is likely to be spotted, causing the acolytes to warn the others and activate the trap lever. Only during sacrifice is no acolyte here on watch.

The Caverns Beyond: A network of natural caves grants access to the compound (anyone familiar with the terrain can make a knowledge nature DC 20 or geography check DC 15 to figure this out). The caves are home to a family of brown bears live here and ferociously defend their territory. Deeper into the cave is a patch of shrieker mushrooms and a lone cloaker who has taken residence. The cloaker is content with feeding on the carrion crawlers who prowl the chute the priests use to dump their bodies. The cloaker waits until the shriekers signal its prey before putting the hapless creature in a stupor and killing it outright.

It's possible to gain access to the compound from their underground pool provided interlopers are willing to brave the cold waters and low ceiling which force them to hold their breath at odd intervals. The waters are heavy and anyone slipping and falling will be washed away and buffeted every round (1d6 nonlethal) until they reach the underground pool where the water calms.

The Surrounding Fens: The compound is situated in a marsh totally secluded from passing eyes. Aside from the normal dangers of a marsh (quick sand), the strangest denizens are a loathsome catoblepas and the gray render who has taken a liking to it. The gray render leaves offerings of food to the monster in its sleep and will defend it to the death if attacked. The priests are aware of the catoblepas and give it a wide berth although the howling of many dogs scares the beast away when they're hunting.

Finding the compound requires dilligent searching and evidence of its existence as tracking in the marsh is near impossible. The huntsman hunts but once a week at which point he and seven dogs plus the alpha are away from the compound for 8 hours. If followed stealthily, the compound can be found. If the huntsman spots interlopers, he acts friendly and unknowing but mentally notes the adventurer's mannerisms to report back to the compound. If his cover is blown, the huntsman releases the dog and attacks, retreating by quaffing an invisibility potion if reduced to half hit points.

Thorn: This small village of a few hundred fishermen and loggers nestled at the edge of the fens has been plagued by the priests for years. Superstitious and not at all brave, the people have assumed the fens are haunted and do their best to stay away (although travelers and commoners will often disappear). Ironically, the members of the compound will visit the village regularly to restock their supplies and scout potential victims. Because no villager truly knows what the priests are up to, no disguise for them is necessary.

The villagers of fearful of powerful and "weird" strangers. Adventurers will receive a cold glare and hiked prices (10 to 20%). Because Thorn is the only village within 3 days of any major civilization, most travelers accept the cold greetins and move on quickly. If the Canis priests are routed and evidence of their involvement brought to the town, the adventurers are hailed as heroes and have statues built in their honor.

PopcornMage
2010-10-18, 10:20 PM
Topic title changed to appease some people.

Well, ok, but I was more concerned about the discussion than the title.


And I find it the best solution. If there are aliens, then they must be equal to humans, below humans, or exceptional. If they're exceptional, there's no reason to play a human except for the latter to topple the former.


Well, when it comes to mechanical balance, I can see the value of parity when it comes to characters, including races and classes but if you think the Gygax method is the best solution...I don't think I could swallow that at all.

There are other solutions, such as the way humans are treated in 3.x and 4e in D&D. Or you could go to a solution like GURPS with point-buys for everything, and races set at defaults that can be positive or negative.

And your contradiction is based on power-gaming. Which is bad role-playing, and as such, I'd prefer to deal with it person to person rather than in the game mechanics.

Doing it in game mechanics just makes for a constant case of chasing the leak.


And because I have a free hour on my hands:

It's a nice piece of work, but I don't think you actually made it a case of mechanics driven though.

I thought of another example, though it's based on an error in the rules, it comes from Knights of the Dinner Table. Apparently the Knights had found that untrained fighting dogs had the wrong dice assigned to them and could be found in excess numbers. So that lead to a Pack of Doom devouring the world.

Tyndmyr
2010-10-18, 10:44 PM
Since some people don't like my terminology, allow me to rephrase the topic: Do you create a logical consistency in your world reinforced by the game's mechanics? Very few RPGs are foolish enough to claim realism but most are deep enough to allow one to simulate a fictional world without requiring excess work from the creator.

So I ask you, how much do you submit to "naturalism" when building your worlds? Do you chart out NPC progression assuming that the bog standard NPC will have X ability scores while superior folk are clearly beyond this? Or do you just hand wave this and say "Anything goes as long as it sounds good."

I try to make things make sense. I try to have monsters in rational areas where they could conceivably have prey, and act appropriate for that. Countries are set up with the assumption that the players are not the only ones with adventuring granted powers and tricks.

Rule of cool is great for getting ideas to base things off, but you're not really done world building until you've made that awesome idea actually plausible.

jmbrown
2010-10-18, 11:49 PM
There are other solutions, such as the way humans are treated in 3.x and 4e in D&D. Or you could go to a solution like GURPS with point-buys for everything, and races set at defaults that can be positive or negative.


Only GURPS is a true solution. Most non-human races cost extra points to select and you're shoehorned into whatever abilities they may have. You can still spend points freely but the fact is those points detract from whatever the GM sets for character creation. An ogre may have to spend 80 points automatically for strength and in a 150 point game he's left with less than half points to buy things he truly wants. GURPS also presents role playing challenges in the form of forced flaws, traits, social stigmas, or reputation. In the end, you have to role play your race or else it's better to choose a human since you start with full building points.

3e and 4e are based entirely around builds which leads to power gaming. You play a human because you want that extra feat to pick that prestige class as early as possible. You take character flaws that penalize you less in order to achieve the maximum benefit. You play a half-giant with monkeygrip so your reach is ridiculous. In 4e, all the races are mechanically the same (+2 to whatever and an encounter power). Why should I play any other race except the one that offers me the best game benefit?

Yes, this is power gaming, and I argue that restrictions are the only way to inhibit power gaming. We always see topics like "How do I stop a tier 1 character?" and the result is always "Build another tier 1 character." Well, if you restrict the tier 1 character or make it difficult to play one then people are less willing to abuse it. Going back to GURPS, it's easy to cheese your character in a point buy system which is why the GM is encouraged to put his foot down and say "enough is enough."

You don't have to chase the leak when the leak is plugged.


It's a nice piece of work, but I don't think you actually made it a case of mechanics driven though.


I built all the rooms and encounters on the fly based on A) the assumptions I made in the rooms before and B) the Monster Manual's descriptions of monsters. KotDT can get away with a lot more because they're a satirical gaming group. If I were to point out oddities in the rules, I'd go ahead and say that in 2e bearded devils would've taken over hell because they're 10x more numerous than any other devil and they have enough hit dice to overcome the immunities of all devils except the pit fiend.

PopcornMage
2010-10-19, 12:07 AM
In the end, you have to role play your race or else it's better to choose a human since you start with full building points.

Actually I've played some settings where Humans cost posts. Not to mention the settings where there are different humans to choose from.

There's even one of these to be found in AD&D 2nd edition with Birthright. Maybe with Greyhawk, I'm recalling some rules with regards to human cultures...


Yes, this is power gaming, and I argue that restrictions are the only way to inhibit power gaming.

I disagree. You can just say to the person that you believe they're in the wrong group, and send them on their way. Or convince them to reform, and play within the same parameters as the rest of the group

Which you may take as restrictions, but they're not in the game mechanics, which was the point I was making. A GM saying "Enough is Enough" is exactly what I was talking about.

That's not plugging the leak, it's turning off the tap.

Of course there are groups that thrive on power-gaming, but they're not ones I'm in for long. It's a fine choice for those who like it, but it's not me.

However I think this tangent is going way off the topic.


KotDT can get away with a lot more because they're a satirical gaming group.

There is certainly a lot of truth to be found in satire. Other examples do exist though, I've seen a lot of discussions arguing how to build a world based on the "rules" in D&D. Like things about the castles. I just couldn't find any easily.

Serpentine
2010-10-19, 12:48 AM
Is it not the goal of a leader to ensure discipline and organization in his troops? If there are X number of warriors then it's natural to have Y number producers to feed said warriors. How does that not match the need of the group?The needs, goals and circumstances of a scouting troup of warbound bugbears in the mountains are going to be very different to those of an entire kobold trible on the move to a new home.
A Lawful species might need fewer leaders to keep subordinates in check than a more insolent Chaotic species.
A more self-sufficient species will need fewer noncombatants to feed the warriors.
Many species would avoid moving children and the elderly in the dead of winter.
For some species all adults are combatants, for others there might be a division of roles by sex.
Etc, etc, so on and so forth. I will use the Monster Manual "organisation" section as a starting point, but I will change it depending on the individual circumstances, and any changes I have made to the creature in question, and so on.

Protection is a need. Food is a need. Extermination is a need as animals can be pests. I didn't go into a super descriptive, detailed, bulletted list because this is a discussion, not a tutorial.Yes. Those are several different needs. So whether the intelligent creature will domesticate the unintelligent creature/s depends on those needs: an intelligent creature isn't likely to exterminate a useful unintelligent one (at least not deliberately). How does this contradict my statement?
Horses have been domesticated, but zebras have not. Why? Because there are certain evolutionary features of horses that make them easier to domesticate.
Europeans have chariots, wagons and warsteeds, but South Americans do not. Why? Because horses are more appropriate for riding than llamas.
Pigs are used for food, but hippopotumus generally are not. Why? Because the latter is far more dangerous than the former, and there's plenty of easier prey around.

By your apparent original logic, humans should have domesticated every single animal on the planet. This clearly has not happened. So why should it happen in a fantasy world? It doesn't make sense.

Considering a shadow can't be killed short of magical methods and any living creature killed by a shadow rises as one, it's safe to assume that there'll be more than one shadow present in a dungeon. While the shadow may be a weak undead, it is (by proxy of being incorporeal) more powerful than even creatures of higher levels.If a shadow was only created yesterday, then no, it isn't particularly safe to assume that there'll be more than one present (although characters/players may well do so).
If the world is full of shadow-eating creatures or holy warriors of Good who deliberately seek out and destroy them, and one went through the area recently, no, it isn't safe assume there'll be more than one.

Rarely are there "ecological" rules that I would apply to every single individual in my world. It all depends on the specific circumstances and contexts. And to me, that makes much more sense than that supposed "Gygaxian naturalism".

Tvtyrant
2010-10-19, 12:57 AM
....So the argument is that by using naturalism, your not using naturalism? The earlier examples weren't all cookie cutter as I could see.

I what is really in question here is how you plan out environments/random encounters. I set mine up to fit a modified ecological system, because I don't feel immersed if there are owlbears surviving next to Beholders. An environment can only have so many apex predators. If you do yours differently great, but I don't see why anyone here thinks there is a better versus worse. Random encounters are useful in both varied gameplay and limiting the meta-gaming of the players involved. If I ran Beholders day in and day out like I would love to, my players would feel that the game is stagnating, and would just use the same few strategys over and over again. If I throw a Gargantuan Black Pudding at them, or a group of melee drow, they are allowed a breather from aberrations and fiends (my personal favorites).

Serpentine
2010-10-19, 01:07 AM
My problem is that the examples for "naturalism" in the first post (even the modified version) don't seem at all "natural" to me. "The bog standard NPC will have X ability scores while superior folk are clearly beyond this" is the very antithesis of natural to me. It's downright artificial. What is natural is for every individual to be an individual, in a way that makes sense (with leeway for DMs to be lazy, quite reasonably).

For example, when constructing an encounter the other day, I decided to experiment a bit. For two of the enemy creatures, I did a "roll 4d6, play them as you roll them" ability generation for each of them. They were meant to be basically the same, but they came out quite interestingly different. So I incorporated that into their design: the one with overall slightly lesser abilities, except for Intelligence (much lower) and Wisdom (much higher) is now the subordinate and watch for the other, and is Rogue/Shadowdancer. The other was much tougher, stronger and cleverer, and has become the more prominent of the two, Fighter/Rogue/Shadowdancer.
The players/characters may never know, but these two characters now have a much more interesting, and realistic I think, relationship and personalities.

jmbrown
2010-10-19, 01:31 AM
I disagree. You can just say to the person that you believe they're in the wrong group, and send them on their way. Or convince them to reform, and play within the same parameters as the rest of the group

Which you may take as restrictions, but they're not in the game mechanics, which was the point I was making. A GM saying "Enough is Enough" is exactly what I was talking about.


There's always that temptation, though, not to mention players accusing the GM of fiat and circumventing what he established from the beginning. In the end, I'd rather eliminate it entirely than to modify it on a case-by-case basis and having to stop the game when it does come up. I remember an old Sage's Advice that actually encouraged a player to blow up their world because they gave too much treasure to the PCs, making them stupidly strong. I can't help but feel the situation would be circumvented if the DM gave the players options to use their treasure instead of obliterating it.


My problem is that the examples for "naturalism" in the first post (even the modified version) don't seem at all "natural" to me. "The bog standard NPC will have X ability scores while superior folk are clearly beyond this" is the very antithesis of natural to me. It's downright artificial. What is natural is for every individual to be an individual, in a way that makes sense (with leeway for DMs to be lazy, quite reasonably).


Notice how I said scores with a plural. There are exceptions among the average IE the PCs and elite NPCs. If the average NPC was above average, then they would set the new average and you would have to modify the other assumptions you make about the game world and rules.

Serpentine
2010-10-19, 01:44 AM
An individual does not make the average. If you have an NPC with 3 12s and 3 8s, the average is still 10 (I think - someone do the maths for me). If you have one NPC with all 12s and another with all 8s, the average is still 10.

"The average score is 10" doesn't mean "everyone except the exceptional individuals will have a score of 10", it means that, taken as a whole "the sum of all ordinary individuals, with all their variation, will average out to 10". The 3d6 roll, which is what is RAW used for NPC ability generation (iirc) forms a bell-curve, in which 9-11 contains the most individual scores, but which stretches right down to 3 and right up to 18. And you roll again for every single ability.

PopcornMage
2010-10-19, 01:50 AM
There's always that temptation, though, not to mention players accusing the GM of fiat and circumventing what he established from the beginning. In the end, I'd rather eliminate it entirely than to modify it on a case-by-case basis and having to stop the game when it does come up.


Well, I don't believe you can eliminate it entirely, but yes, it's that trying to deal with it on a case-by-case that gets me against game mechanics based fiddling, and moves me more to dealing with the people.

Mostly because I don't feel anybody is capable of making a rule system that can't become a problem somehow. So you end up chasing a leak instead of turning off the tap.

Which, to try to steer this tangent back towards the topic, is why I make a distinction between the rules, and the game world, and if there's some thing that brings a problem, I just say...suspend your disbelief, don't try to exploit it, and let's keep having fun.

Do I do things like having a dungeon exist for a reason? Yes. But I don't base it on some conceptualization of the rules. The concept of the world is another story.

Yahzi
2010-10-19, 02:52 AM
@ Yahzi: I just read through the Game section of your site. It seems you are one of those DMs who try to find IC explanations for EXP (in your case, "tael"). I usually do that, but it varies greatly depending on the theme. For example, if the campaign was about a party of holy crusaders, EXP would be something like "godly favor". In magic-heavy campaign, it might be "universal power gathering within those of great power and accomplishments".
The thing is, XP is the cornerstone of a D&D world. Gold is a distant second; and while it's true that there aren't any rules about where gold comes from, that's because everybody already knows (you mine it out of the ground).

But where does XP come from? Why can't my character fight illusions until he's 20th level? Unless you can answer that question (and others like it), your characters will always exist in a bubble you create for them. They can't interact with the world on its own terms, because there aren't any terms: only DM fiat. "Godly favor" means "whatever the DM wants."

Which is fine, for some kinds of gaming: but I prefer the sand-box style. When I ran a GURPS campaign, I wrote a computer program to generate every single noble and wizard in the known world. (Dang... I wish I still had that code). Then I read through the data and discovered interesting things, like this Duke is old and ready to die but has 3 strong sons, so there's a power grab going on here.

You might think about using my tael system; players really do like it. D&D is a resource management game, and XP is the most valuable resource, so why not let the players manage it? They can spend their loot on gear, or levels, or levels for their henchmen if they want. My last game was the first time I ever saw players voluntarily give XP to their henchmen - because it was under their control.

Yahzi
2010-10-19, 02:56 AM
"The average score is 10" doesn't mean "everyone except the exceptional individuals will have a score of 10", it means that, taken as a whole "the sum of all ordinary individuals, with all their variation, will average out to 10". The 3d6 roll, which is what is RAW used for NPC ability generation (iirc) forms a bell-curve, in which 9-11 contains the most individual scores, but which stretches right down to 3 and right up to 18.
That system winds up with an Einstein in every single village (3d6 = 18 one out of 216 times).

Saintheart
2010-10-19, 08:28 AM
I think like most things in life you can overdo logical consistency. Probably my only real criticism of the Age of Worms adventure path, for example, is that it goes so deep into detail and so far into backgrounds and providing logical reasons for monsters being where they are.

It's particularly a headache when trying to adapt the adventure path to, say, Faerun: it's a massive task to convert it and much of the reading in that campaign is related to fitting the campaign into the established world. Not saying I don't like a good story, but it gets to the point of being obsessive sometimes...

dsmiles
2010-10-19, 08:32 AM
An individual does not make the average. If you have an NPC with 3 12s and 3 8s, the average is still 10 (I think - someone do the maths for me). If you have one NPC with all 12s and another with all 8s, the average is still 10.

Yes, 10.


"The average score is 10" doesn't mean "everyone except the exceptional individuals will have a score of 10", it means that, taken as a whole "the sum of all ordinary individuals, with all their variation, will average out to 10". The 3d6 roll, which is what is RAW used for NPC ability generation (iirc) forms a bell-curve, in which 9-11 contains the most individual scores, but which stretches right down to 3 and right up to 18. And you roll again for every single ability.

Wait, what? You know all that, but had to have somebody do an average for you? :smalltongue:

Serpentine
2010-10-19, 08:44 AM
Nah, I could've done it easily enough myself, but I was lazy and/or distracted :smalltongue:

Aotrs Commander
2010-10-19, 08:44 AM
That system winds up with an Einstein in every single village (3d6 = 18 one out of 216 times).

Well, if you make the assumuption that Int 18 is Einstein, then you're already in a world populated by dozens of people and creatures and entire races (e.g Illithids) whose default intelligence is Einstien-level. That probably also makes Balors smarter than any human who has lived, ever. (And no, I cannot believe a Balor is smarter than Steven freaking Hawking!) On that metric, by the time you've got say, fifty wizards in you world's history, you've got half of the world's greatest minds who have ever lived. When you have a convocation of pointy-hats, it's like that scene in Star Trek the next generation where Data is playing poker with Einstein, Hawking and Newton. So, as they say, given that at that point you've already got an unrealistic number of fantasy smart people so, what the hell?

But then again, D&D has never equated intelligence to any real-world values (only graded even in AD&D by approximate, nontechnical terms), and it's very difficult to grade intelligence in the real world at the best of times. So any such metric is either guesswork or you are defining you own levels, which is it's own problems, as stated.

Like Serp, I work on 10/11 being the average (that is the mathmatical mean) of basic stats (and possibly the median; but not the mode), and that most people in the world have stats within one or two standard deviations. The lucky ones who have better basic stats (e.g. the PCs) just got a few more deviations away from the standard.

I also do not allow the games rules to define my world. Stuff happens in probabilities that mere dice rolls cannot graduate. I have a general rule. If the odds of soemthing are less than 5%, I don't care about modelling it with dice rolls, but that doesn't preclude it happening. But it will do so basically at DM fiat. I'm not going to do a FATAL and model a 1 in seven million chance with dice rolls, because that's stupid.

I thus might make the argument that Einstein or Steven Hawking might have base stats in the 20-30 range or something (if I cared enough about quantifiying it) and are also heavily optimised for their area of expertise (Knowledge (Physics)). (And, as I do not ascribe to the E6 power-level policy, possibly mid-to-high level.) Effectively, they would have "rolled" a result on their starting stats that is not achievable by regular methods.

I tend to use the nonelite array (13,12,11,10,9,8) when generating commoners and such. However, I did once create an entire village where I rolled everyone's stats on 3D6 (along with age and race and such) and it was interesting what came out.

That said, I do tend to have the (mook) enemies share stats and be mechanically identical. (One the other hand, I tend to use a mix of different types of mooks at once, and large numbers.)

Psyx
2010-10-19, 08:56 AM
Or do you just hand wave this and say "Anything goes as long as it sounds good."

I like a consistent 'realistic' world. It's why many of my games are semi-historical. If a game environment is believable, then the game is more immersive, and there is less chance of the suspension of disbelief.
If a game world is unbelievable, then players step-back from it and treat is as a joke much more easily. I don't want to do that. I want my players to get involved.
I also like repercussions, and those are made easier in a logical world, as one is working within a logical framework.

Guancyto
2010-10-19, 10:55 AM
That system winds up with an Einstein in every single village (3d6 = 18 one out of 216 times).

1/1296, actually. 1/216 is the odds of a given individual having an 18 in any stat. Your village might have one very strong guy, or one guy that can really, really hold his liquor instead.

When you consider that fantasy populations are usually pretty low and that education is often fairly sparse, that isn't so ridiculous. If he's lucky, the smart guy will go off and become a wizard. The tough guy will probably just be an exceptionally long-lived laborer.

One other common fantasy convention is that wizards and priests don't do much to improve the plight of the commoners. That means that between plagues, famines and orc invasions, regardless of their other stats the people with bad Con scores probably aren't going to survive to adulthood. You get a lot less exceptional people if you roll an array and go "oh, 6 con, he probably died of disease."

Psyx
2010-10-19, 12:00 PM
1/1296, actually. 1/216 is the odds of a given individual having an 18 in any stat. Your village might have one very strong guy, or one guy that can really, really hold his liquor instead.

(I think that your maths may be off somewhere. The chance of a villager having any one specific stat is 1/216... assuming a 3d6 roll. The chance of any villager having any one or more stats at 18 is 6/216.)

For my game worlds, those numbers aren't strictly true. The chance of an adventurer having an Int of 18 is indeed 1/216, but the rest of the population doesn't get such good odds. Adventurers aren't 'normal' people in my games, but tend to be a small cut above the rest, and are more likely to have the opportunity to have been educated to that Int 18 status.

You don't really get to be that smart by digging up turnips for a job, and without an excellent mentor of some kind. The limited opportunities for developing Int in a rural working environment simply make 18s in that stat rare. Although of course, 18 Str will be a lot more common there than in a town. The statistics for getting stats don't need to be a truism for the entire world; only for adventurers. Because players aren't generating peasants.

Let's face it: An 18 statistic is only about (a little under) 140IQ if we look at distribution. Hardly the peak of human capability.

jmbrown
2010-10-19, 12:22 PM
Uh, I don't know how we started talking about average ability scores because I mentioned a few times already that in AD&D, the average NPC would only have a score between 9-15 and in 3e it's assumed all non-warrior/non-elite NPCs are 11,11,11,10,10,10 which the MM specifically calls average.

Tyndmyr
2010-10-19, 12:25 PM
An individual does not make the average. If you have an NPC with 3 12s and 3 8s, the average is still 10 (I think - someone do the maths for me). If you have one NPC with all 12s and another with all 8s, the average is still 10.

"The average score is 10" doesn't mean "everyone except the exceptional individuals will have a score of 10", it means that, taken as a whole "the sum of all ordinary individuals, with all their variation, will average out to 10". The 3d6 roll, which is what is RAW used for NPC ability generation (iirc) forms a bell-curve, in which 9-11 contains the most individual scores, but which stretches right down to 3 and right up to 18. And you roll again for every single ability.

This. Sure, I've made NPCs with all 10s before. Thats a shortcut, for people that are unlikely to matter.

Realistically, people come in all shapes and sizes, with a variety of skills. I like simulating this when possible, even though it does take more work.

Note that while it sucks to roll up character in detail for bit parts...it does make them infinitely more interesting and reusable, though.

Guancyto
2010-10-19, 01:20 PM
(I think that your maths may be off somewhere. The chance of a villager having any one specific stat is 1/216... assuming a 3d6 roll. The chance of any villager having any one or more stats at 18 is 6/216.)\

Math is hard! </barbie>

But yeah, you're right. My mistake. Nevertheless, poor education and opportunity may make for some exceptionally intelligent turnip growers. People can (and do) live below their abilities quite frequently.

PopcornMage
2010-10-19, 01:21 PM
And then there's Camels.

Fax Celestis
2010-10-19, 03:21 PM
(I think that your maths may be off somewhere. The chance of a villager having any one specific stat is 1/216... assuming a 3d6 roll. The chance of any villager having any one or more stats at 18 is 6/216.)

1/216 chance of an 18, 1/6 chance of it being in Int.

Knaight
2010-10-19, 03:51 PM
1/216 chance of an 18, 1/6 chance of it being in Int.

Lets look at the Int roll here.
You have a 1/6 chance of rolling the first 6.
You have a 1/6 chance of rolling the second 6.
You have a 1/6 chance of rolling the third 6.
(1/6)^3 is 1/216.

Psyx's math is accurate up to this point. The 6/216 is wrong, the chance of having at least 1 18 is equal to 1-(chance of no 18)
1-((215/216)^6) specifically.
Which is a 2.75% chance
6/216 is 1/36, which is a 2.78% chance.

Ormur
2010-10-19, 05:06 PM
For stats I assume everyone rolls 3d6, the fact that my PC's roll 4d6b3 or that I build most NPC's with higher point buy simply reflects that adventurers and people of high level do not constitute an accurate sample of the whole population. My players as well as their adversaries are not average people, average people stay home on the farm or tend to to their businesses.

Edit: that means that one out of 216 has 18 in any given stat as a base. Not so unlikely actually. There's probably quite a lot of wasted potential in my campaign world.

dsmiles
2010-10-19, 05:49 PM
Edit: that means that one out of 216 has 18 in any given stat as a base. Not so unlikely actually. There's probably quite a lot of wasted potential in my campaign world.

If I had enough room left, I'd sig that.

Yahzi
2010-10-19, 11:28 PM
I have a general rule. If the odds of soemthing are less than 5%, I don't care about modelling it with dice rolls, but that doesn't preclude it happening.
That's an excellent rule. A d20 is just a bad random number generator; after all, it implies a Bard is equally likely to completely fail a performance (1) as she is to get a standing ovation (20).

Yahzi
2010-10-19, 11:36 PM
1/1296, actually. 1/216 is the odds of a given individual having an 18 in any stat. Your village might have one very strong guy, or one guy that can really, really hold his liquor instead.
Erm... not quite.

If you have 216 villagers, you're making 216 * 6 rolls: one for each stat. So your village is going to (statistically) have an Albert Einstein, Arnold Schwarznegger, Lance Armstrong, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Socrates, and a George Cloony hanging around. (Edit: Ninja'd!)

More to the point, it means your PCs will troll through the villages looking for the STR 18 guys to hire as mooks. :smallbiggrin:

As you said, small populations is one limiter: if your whole kingdom has 2,300 people in it (as the Vancian dystopian mileu does), then the statistical outliers are interesting. But so many published settings have populations in the hundreds of thousands...

Serpentine
2010-10-19, 11:39 PM
Uh, I don't know how we started talking about average ability scores because I mentioned a few times already that in AD&D, the average NPC would only have a score between 9-15 and in 3e it's assumed all non-warrior/non-elite NPCs are 11,11,11,10,10,10 which the MM specifically calls average.Well, I'm not talking about AD&D, for starters. For seconds, that doesn't make any difference. 3e may assume that they get 3 11s and 3 10s and call that average. That means that, if you want to make an absolutely, dead-centre, run-of-the-mill character that's average in every way, you get a character with 3 11s and 3 10s. You know what that says about the spread of ability scores in the population as a whole? Absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch. Negitory. Because the average is the middle, and can be contructed with a massive range of data. 10,10 = average 10. 9,11 = average 10. 100, -90 = average 10. 1, 19 = average 10.
The books assume that all non-warrior/non-elite NPCs are 11,11,11,10,10,10 because 1. it's easy, much simpler for a busy DM to handle, and 2. when you have 1000 NPCs, that is what they'll average out to - not, every single individual has those stats, but that the average of those individuals approximates that series. And, to go back to 1. it is easier for the DM to just even them all out when picking out an individual. It is an artificial, unnatural (to go back to the original topic) convention that reflects only convenience to DMs, not in-world reality.

Also, I would suggest that Einstein's good nutrition and advanced, modern education stretched his 18 Int much further than a turnip-picking peasant's. But by gum he knows how to pick a turnip.

This. Sure, I've made NPCs with all 10s before. Thats a shortcut, for people that are unlikely to matter.Nowai! We agree on something! :O :smalltongue:

bloodtide
2010-10-19, 11:40 PM
The whole 'all NPCs' are 10/11's in ability scores sounds very human centric. I don't think every race would have the 10/11 average.

Take dwarves. The average dwarf miner is not going to have a 10 for strength or Constitution. You only become a miner if you are strong and tough. If you were to line up two groups, one of miners and one of say telemarketers, you could tell the difference very quick.

And this goes even more so for races like illithids. The average illithid is not a 10 intelligence, it's more like 15 for them.

Aotrs Commander
2010-10-20, 05:34 AM
And this goes even more so for races like illithids. The average illithid is not a 10 intelligence, it's more like 15 for them.

Actually, their average is 18, as they get a +8 racial bonus. (Remember the stats in the MM are for a (mathmatically) average illithid...) Unless you're saying the average illithid always applies a 15 to Int, in which case the average would be 23. (Assuming a reasonably optimised universe, that's perhaps not totally unreasonable, though...)

Which is why I don't think 18 in a stat should be subscribed to be the upper limit of (real) human abilities. Especially when you're talking about the upper limits being an outlier whose stat and optimisation combination is literally one in several billion. I'd lay odds there may have not been have been that many (named) fictional characters in all published media, let alone in roleplaying. (I estimate I've personally had only about 40ish characters (as a player) in my entire 20-years gaming history.) Not only is it nearly impossible to make a character generation system to take those outliers into account realistically, there is literally no point, since statisitically there will be no player who will ever roll it up.

Hence my afore-mentioned rule.


That's an excellent rule. A d20 is just a bad random number generator; after all, it implies a Bard is equally likely to completely fail a performance (1) as she is to get a standing ovation (20).

I'll occasionally stretch to 1% if I'm playing Rolemaster or other percentiles are involved, but yeah.

(Rolemaster (of course) solves (well, theoretically) this problem by having manouver difficutlies instead of static DCs. Increasing difficulty not only applies a penalty to your roll, but you also have to get a higher total to get a 100%. Conversely, the bottom end Mudane and Routine manouvers are so easy to pass you basically have to roll down into nearly a negative hundred before you frack it up. And even then, for all it's vaunted realism, Rolemaster's open-ended rolls can give you some very strange (though nearly always humours results), such as our (in)famous Battle of the Fumbles (which is pretty much what it sounds like!))

But yes, (and bringing us towards the actual topic) as the real world doesn't model well with dice rolls. Or rather, you can only model the spread of chance your random number generator will generate. I find part of the logical consistency of a world is maintaining a reasonable level of randomisation. In that while most things fit within the rules, sometimes you get an outlier which you have to model outside it. (In RPGs, this amounts to "it's the plot" or "DM fiat".)

The trick is always not to try and model with the rules that one thing that happened once in recorded history (like the chap who survived falling several thousand feet or Albert Einstein or spontaneous human combustion1 or getting hit by a meteor) at the expense of the things that happen every other time. The granualarity of RPGs are simply not fine enough to do it; and there's probably not enough occurances for it to happen outside of narrative causality (e.g. the plot/GM deciding that would be cool).



1Well, the non-magical sort anyway...

Psyx
2010-10-20, 05:43 AM
If you have 216 villagers, you're making 216 * 6 rolls: one for each stat. So your village is going to (statistically) have an Albert Einstein, Arnold Schwarznegger, Lance Armstrong, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Socrates, and a George Cloony hanging around. (Edit: Ninja'd!)


Err... no. Because 1/216 of the population isn't Einstien. 1/216 only gives you an IQ of about 135+ish, based on standard distribution. Likewise, 1/216 people aren't Arnie. 18 Stats aren't the pinnacle of human endeavour.

Psyx
2010-10-20, 05:44 AM
Which is a 2.75% chance
6/216 is 1/36, which is a 2.78% chance.

I thought about doing it properly, but then settled for using the back of a ***-packet to work it out on, instead, figuring nobody would notice...

Fax Celestis
2010-10-20, 11:59 AM
The books assume that all non-warrior/non-elite NPCs are 11,11,11,10,10,10 because 1. it's easy, much simpler for a busy DM to handle, and 2. when you have 1000 NPCs, that is what they'll average out to - not, every single individual has those stats, but that the average of those individuals approximates that series. And, to go back to 1. it is easier for the DM to just even them all out when picking out an individual. It is an artificial, unnatural (to go back to the original topic) convention that reflects only convenience to DMs, not in-world reality.

Actually, on top of that they don't. Otherwise monster entries like goblins (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/goblin.htm) and orcs (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/orc.htm) wouldn't have text like this:


The goblin warrior presented here had the following ability scores before racial adjustments: Str 13, Dex 11, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 9, Cha 8.


The orc warrior presented here had the following ability scores before racial adjustments: Str 13, Dex 11, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 9, Cha 8.


The weretiger presented here is a 1st-level human warrior and natural lycanthrope, using the following base ability scores: Str 13, Dex 11, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 9, Cha 8.


The blue psion presented here had the following ability scores before racial adjustments: Str 8, Dex 13, Con 14, Int 15, Wis 12, Cha 10.

I can go on. What it boils down to is that creatures with NPC-class levels use 13 12 11 10 9 8 as their distribution, while those with PC-class levels use 15 14 13 12 10 8 as their distribution. Note in the examples how the blue has the elite array and has a level in Psion, while the others all have one level in Warrior.

tl;dr 11 11 11 10 10 10 only applies to creatures without class levels. Those with only NPC class levels use 13 12 11 10 9 8, and those with PC class levels use 15 14 13 12 10 8.

Lord_Gareth
2010-10-20, 12:18 PM
All of this is, of course, ignoring the fact that any D&D universe where you apply logic ends up becoming the Tippyverse.

PopcornMage
2010-10-20, 12:22 PM
All of this is, of course, ignoring the fact that any D&D universe where you apply logic ends up becoming the Tippyverse.

It's certainly a logic many people have extrapolated upon.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-10-20, 12:30 PM
All of this is, of course, ignoring the fact that any D&D universe where you apply logic ends up becoming the Tippyverse.
Really, only if you accept the rules for Magic Resetting Traps (from a splatbook, IIRC) and are playing 3.X.

In TSR D&D Magic was costly and risky to use - and difficult to acquire. There were no "free" spells beyond first level and magical items were difficult to make and rare by RAW.

In D&D4, the sort of Utility Magic you needed for a Tippyverse simply does not exist. They are either insufficiently powerful or too costly to reliably produce Tippyverses.

This is not to say you couldn't have a Tippyverse in other editions - just that the logic of the rules did not dictate it as a logical outcome.

Yora
2010-10-20, 02:15 PM
Also, it requires that everyone who could potentially become a spellcaster, can actually get the training to do so. Spellcasters can charge rediculous fees for training, and most people who could pay it won't be too keen to send one of the family heirs away to spend the next 10 years with a powerful stranger.
Also, there might be limits how powerful these spellcasters will actually get. While certainly possible by the bare rules, very few NPCs actually reach very high levels. With a couple of dozen wizards of 2nd to 6th level in a nation of millions, there's really not much to fear, that they will flood everything with fake gold and take all craftsmen out of buisness. Also, they probably have better things to do.

13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 is the same in point buy as 11, 11, 11, 10, 10, 10, both ending in a total of modifiers of +0. It just assumes that people will learn a profession that suits their natural abilities, and for the entire ppulation 10,5 will again be the average for any ability score. Only those presented in the MM are all warriors.

Dimers
2010-10-20, 10:49 PM
I try very hard for reason and what the OP calls 'naturalism' in designing a gameworld, on the grand scale. In the small scale, I don't bother. There can be a dozen reasons why there are lots of wolves in the Forest of Exampleness, or why the Cult of the Particular Case has taken hold in one town but not another ... and the players will never know those reasons. In my experience, if players seriously care about "why?" in the first place, they give me great ideas by suggesting possibilities amongst themselves. I just choose from among what they hash out. That methodology doesn't work so well when a hundred thousand sapients are the subject of the "why", because the possible answers can have vast impact on many aspects of the gameworld and the direction a campaign takes. I'm not comfortable with putting into players' hands that degree of control over my creation, so I try hard to find answers and trace their effects before a game starts.

PopcornMage
2010-10-20, 10:56 PM
I once had a group of something out of place in an area. The players decided to kill them all (despite me giving a chance for some to surrender or be let escape), and then got to wondering why they were there.

So they asked me.

I told them they had no reason to know. They complained. Insisted it wasn't logical, it made no sense. I repeated my answer, but feeling nice, prodded them into thinking of a certain spell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/speakwithdead.htm).

They proceeded to ask the wrong questions.

Knaight
2010-10-21, 12:05 AM
I thought about doing it properly, but then settled for using the back of a ***-packet to work it out on, instead, figuring nobody would notice...

Sorry about that then. Its just the way you expressed it implied that probability worked in a way it didn't, and I'm a bit of a math geek at times.:smallfrown: