Reconciling monsters and civilization

[Scalenex]

I require a minimum amount of realism in my D&D games. I don't care about physics much so the cat-girls are safe. I do care about economics and eco-systems. In short if a tenth level adventurer normally has x amount of gold worth of stuff and there is one tenth level character for every y number of total population, than that population should generate enough commerce to accomodate the adventurer. That's the economics half. The eco-system half involves monsters. If a forest houses certain monsters like displacer beasts, dire animals, and blink dogs, there should be enough game in there to support all the monsters that live in the forest and any ordinary animals that hunt game (wolves, bears, lions, etc).

This just doesn't mesh with medieval civilization. Considering how people in medieval times really encouraged wiping out things like wolves, lions, and bears, I figure they'd be far less tolerant of griffons and the like. Some things (like dragons) are poweful enough to survive repeated attempts at extermination but others really couldn't do it. Let's just look at kobolds. These are sentient beings that are usually described as disorganized bands making their living by looting and stealing. I can't see kobolds surviving unless the only human and demi-human civilizations were city-states. Pretending we had kobolds in our medieval era show up one day, Medieval France could wipe out kobolds in their lands within two generations. The live in tribes of about 400 people. You can't really hide that many people that easily. The king of France could get an army of 1000 people relatively easily and kobold stomp.

How can you reconcile a world with multi-city kingdoms and even empires with random encounter monsters? Here's what I've come up with none of which really fit with my story setting evolved from warring super-powers.

1) The empires and kingdoms are so concerned with their power relative to other empires and kingdoms that they want to keep their soldiers for reserve against their rivals and are willing to ignore goblinoids and the like destroying their villages. This one is most appealing but a nation that doesn't defend their homefront can't recruit new soldiers or feed their armies.

2) Magic is so powerful and mutable that almost any two magical creatures can mate and produce offspring (providing they are of opposite sex or one or they have really adaptable forms). This means that you can't wipe out a threat unless you get rid of all (for lack of a better term) Fae creatures from the land.

3) There are place of pure (and probably malevolent energy) beyond the reach of the civilized world. These regularly spawn new monsters to replace the fallen. For those familar with Warhammer, the forces of Chaos spawn weird creatures and hybrids near the poles. For those who are familar with Exalted, the elemental poles do roughly the same thing.

4) Civilization is so isolated and scarce, probably regulated to city-states. This is the state of Athas, the setting of the Dark Sun trilogy.

[oriong]

I think there are other possibilities beyond the ones you're mentioning here.

First, a lot of settings do posit 'monster territories': places where civilization is weak or non-existant and where these monsters can thrive much easier without having to worry about being wiped out. These could be remote mountains, spooky forests, and other places where people just don't go. Since fantasy geography tends to be on rather 'larger-than-life' scales it's quite possible that such places could exist practically untouched.

The most obvious example of these 'monster territories' is the Underdark. To take the kobold example, the primary bands of hundred or more kobolds might live underground in extensive cave systems with only raiding parties, foragers, or nomadic groups puttering around on the surface (after all, most adventuring groups don't actually run into 300 kobolds at a time). Now, these nomadic groups are too small and mobile to be easily hunted down and wiped out, and more will eventually come from the main 'camps' anyway so they're probably only dealt with when they become a problem.

Now if this theoretical human kingdom wants to send in several hundred men to wipe out this den of kobolds in the cave systems what's likely to happen? Heavy, Heavy, losses to the human troops, possibly a mass slaughter. The kobolds have darkvision while the humans are blind beyond their torchlight (of course the kobolds can see the torches coming from far, far away). Not only that, but they're size Small (can fit through narrow tunnels), have the 'home court familiarity advantage', and are naturally skilled trapmakers. Any human forces sent in to fight them would probably suffer heavy losses before they even saw a kobold, if they ever do see one. An experienced group of dwarven warriors would likely make short work of the kobolds, but unless the kingdom can afford to hire a squad of dwarven mercenaries I imagine they're more likely to leave them be.

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2nd possibility:

Humans could, relatively easily, wipe out the 'lesser' gobliniods like kobolds and goblins. After all both are relatively unorganized, and on a one for one basis weaker than their human opponents, and very likely not nearly as well armed or armored. However, they're sneaky buggers and even if they can't hide forever it'll take time and men to dig them out. These are men who are not defending the kingdom from other threats, threats that may be much bigger than some kobolds who come by and steal cows every few weeks. This may include hostile human kingdoms (quite a possibility in some settings), but more commonly it'll include the 'greater' goblinoids. It's one thing to wipe out CR 1/4 kobolds after all, but when you're dealing with creatures like orcs it is the human soldiers who are starting to look outmatched, and creatures like hobgoblins, gnolls and bugbears could easily be major threats if there aren't men on hand to defend against them. It's this threat that lets the leser races survive.

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3

another one might be the issue that 'hunting down' kobolds and the like could lead to a lot more trouble than it's worth. Let's say the king sends 1000 men to wipe out the 300 member kobold tribe in Swampy Grove. The troops go in, slaughtering any individual or small groups they find, but before they even make it to the main 'nest' of kobolds they come across an adult black dragon which proceeds to hand these warriors their own innards on a plate. Even if the army got to the kobold camp first, survivors might flee into the swamp and actually combing it for kobold refugees will lead to waking up every big nasty that lives there. Just the rumor of a powerful creature living in roughtly the same territory as a group of kobolds might make a general think twice on how much it's worth to send in an army.



As far as the real 'monsters' I think it just comes down to the fact that so many of them are vastly more dangerous than humans and, maybe more important, rarely have much fear of them. Evne if the monster isn't sentient many of them are more likely to just rip into a group of human exterminators than allow themselves to be chased down, or pushed into a trap like many animals might. And when the thing doing the ripping can decapitate a 1st level warrior in one blow...

[El Honcho]

Sometimes the damage they inflict in remote areas just isn´t worth the effort of wiping them out. Near Town or trade routes, sure, but a looted small hamlet far away in the borderlands? Nobody would really care about that.

Sending out 1000 men on a crusade to wipe out a kobold tribe is costly, you have to support those troops and take care of the necessary logistic tasks.

[Saph]

Pretending we had kobolds in our medieval era show up one day, Medieval France could wipe out kobolds in their lands within two generations. The live in tribes of about 400 people. You can't really hide that many people that easily. The king of France could get an army of 1000 people relatively easily and kobold stomp.

But the king of France didn't have to worry about wyverns, dragons, giants, displacer beasts, and worse. If the worst thing out there was the kobold tribe, then sure, this would make sense. However, if that army of 1000 ran into a dragon that was out hunting, the results would be horrific. A dragon could easily wipe out 500 men of the army without taking more than a few scratches. From the king's point of view, this is a lousy trade. You try and kill off a kobold tribe that's no more than a nuisance, and to do so you risk what might be a quarter of the able-bodied men in the area? Not a good idea.

Solution? Hire a band of adventurers! This is exactly the kind of thing PCs take care of. They'll deal with the kobolds for a lot less money and without any risk to your citizens, and if they get killed, hey, who cares? They're only mercenaries. Much safer than trying to deal with the problem yourself.

But since PCs are few in number and only hired for one thing at a time, they aren't going to sweep the land clear of monsters - they're doing well if they just manage to get rid of what they were hired to kill. That still leaves plenty of other stuff out there.

Hence: lots of monsters outside cities, and lots of adventurers.

- Saph

[headwarpage]

On another ecosystem note: Suppose there's a reason most of these monster races have short natural life spans - to breed faster in response to pressure. Many species in the real world do this - coyotes come to mind - no less effort has been put into killing them than wolves in the US, but they're still around.

So basically, people do sometimes try to kill off entire races of monstrous humanoids. And they do kill off most of them, but the survivors all start giving birth to twins, and pretty soon they're right back where they started. And after a few rounds of this, they decide it's too much work, and leave the humanoids alone as long as they stay in remote areas and don't bother people too much.

[Lapak]

In my campaign, I assume these factors keep a lively monster population up and running. (And I begin with the point that there are relatively few 'monsters' running around deep within the borders of civilized territories.)

1. The fact that powerful beasts roam the wilderness strongly increases the isolation/nationalism factor that keeps nations relatively small. As nice as it is to expand your territory, it's far, far easier to try to carve a chunk out of the neighboring human nation than it is to clear the wilderness of magical beasts. The constant low-grade infighting retards technological development and increases hostility to the idea of unification, meaning that most nations are too weak to succeed even if they did try to settle the Wilds. These weak nations do have occasional problems with monsters crossing the borders, and that's what they hire mercenary adventurers to deal with.

2. There are nations that escaped this cycle and grew extremely powerful, but they each have their own reason not to expand - one has grown about as large as current communication will allow them to usefully govern and the other has strict religious taboos against expanding beyond their traditional boundaries. (Note that religious taboos have some serious heft when the gods are real and active.) This second one also serves as a check on the power of the smaller countries bordering the really wild areas; they are quite capable of wiping out people who try to take their territory even if they aren't interested in gaining more. In the inner bounds of these places, you won't run into many non-urbanized monsters; most of the danger comes from humans and humanoids, shapeshifters and stealthy things.

3. Get far enough away from the civilized countries, and you hit the reasons why civilization is now far away: you run into the territory of the more dangerous monsters. Villages of stone giants, the hunting grounds of the great dragons, and so on; things that can easily crush any attempt to organize a settlement full of LA+0 creatures.

So essentially, I turn the question back around: it's not so much that people aren't motivated to clear the monsters, it's that the fact that monsters are out there keep them from growing strong enough to do it. Civilization exists, but it only lasts if it doesn't dash itself to pieces trying to accomplish Monster Eradication - the nations that try get stomped either by the creatures they're up against or their neighboring nations who see a weakness in their defenses.

[pestilenceawaits]

My thoughts on this are along the lines that these monsters are generally rare. It seems like you see them all the time because that is what adventurers do... seek and destroy dangerous monsters. for the general population in a civilized area most monsters are only legends and not really expected to be real. My second thought on this is medieval Europe and surrounding areas were not really that well connected. There were huge swaths of wilderness area for these strange creature to dwell in unbothered by humans. For example for many years gorillas were just a legend because they lived in such remote areas. people lived and died without traveling more than 20 miles from where they were born in this society it isn't unusual for them to be isolated from the creatures in the woods.

[Fhaolan]

This just doesn't mesh with medieval civilization. Considering how people in medieval times really encouraged wiping out things like wolves, lions, and bears, I figure they'd be far less tolerant of griffons and the like. Some things (like dragons) are poweful enough to survive repeated attempts at extermination but others really couldn't do it.

I don't see why not. There were many attempts at wiping out wolves, lions, and bears in the medieval and renassance periods, but they obviously failed miserably. Long into the pre-industrial period, wolves, lions, and bears had reasonably large populations. It's only in the industrial period of the last century have humans managed to wipe whole populations of these animals, and that is due more to the expanding human population taking over these animal's normal hunting and migration territories and turning them into farmlands and cities, than any concerted effort to exterminate them. Prior to the industrial period, the 'wilderness' areas were immense compared to the 'settled' areas.


Let's just look at kobolds. These are sentient beings that are usually described as disorganized bands making their living by looting and stealing. I can't see kobolds surviving unless the only human and demi-human civilizations were city-states. Pretending we had kobolds in our medieval era show up one day, Medieval France could wipe out kobolds in their lands within two generations. The live in tribes of about 400 people. You can't really hide that many people that easily. The king of France could get an army of 1000 people relatively easily and kobold stomp.

Ah, but here's the rub. If this was RL, the kobolds wouldn't have just 'shown up one day'. The question isn't: Why doesn't the King of France exterminate the kobolds?, the questions are: If it's that easy to exterminate the kobolds, why didn't anyone do it before the King of France got involved? Where did they come from? Why did they migrate to France? How did they migrate to France? How did they manage to survive up until the medieval period? Once you have those answers, you'll be able to answer why the King of France can't do it.