Things, peasants would know in current Faerun time?

[Pinjata]

So, we have a village in Greenfields in Sword coast upon Uldoon trail. Village is rather often visited by caravans and adventurers on their journies. About 100 houses, a few inns and taverns, one temple.

My question is: what events would villagers be aware of, regarding their surroundings and Sword coast? Span of past ten years is most vital. Perhaps they saw Red wizards fleeing Thay after Shaaz Tam made it an undead region? Cali****es fleeing after overthrowal of genies in Calimshan? What events, on local an a global scale would they be aware of?


Thanks

[GloatingSwine]

Few and vaguely. They'll have good knowledge of things that happen around their village, but most people won't travel far from where they were born in their entire lives. So they'll have rumours that spread through market towns where they sell their produce, but those have come from other people who heard them as rumours.

If you want some more exotic tales maybe someone who's been called up by his lord as a levy and been marched further away from home than anyone in his village has ever gone and picked up all sorts of wild tales around the camp.

[Anonymouswizard]

They are more likely to know if it affects their family or the price turnips sell for. Most people in a city probably couldn't tell you about all the major events of the last decade, those in a village have even less chance.

Now that's to say they don't know any true things, but they're likely to be mixed in with a lot of untrue things. 'Granny Waxweather is a bad witch, the king abdicated two months ago, taxes have gone up by tent percent, and demons still rule Thay', that sorry of thing.

[JoeJ]

I'm not very familiar with FR, but if it's a regular stop for caravans, the villagers probably know a great deal about political and economic conditions as well as current events from one end of the caravan route to the other. Listening to the news from everyone who passes through would likely be their most important form of entertainment.

[Beneath]

What they pay attention to, but not a whole lot else.

Alternately, whatever is needed to create an appropriate level of challenge for the PCs.

Or: A great deal, most of it inaccurate or misleading.

Remember that, like, when they're limited to what caravan crew and other travelers talk about and what they remember from that, which will likely be what they talk about amongst themselves. Maybe there's one or two villagers who is fascinated by stories coming in from afar and remembers some form of most of the news, but these people don't have newspapers; anything they've heard has been passed between like, five people minimum in what will eventually come to be called a game of telephone before getting to them, and then they have to remember it. So dates will get confused, similar stories will get combined to become more interesting, parts will be forgotten and other parts embellished. In short, facts will become stories told by people where neither the teller nor the audience is particularly able to know what's true (nor do they care for truths that don't affect them over good stories).

If they have newspapers, printing presses, mass literacy, and libraries then this might change, but otherwise, nah.

It's also possible that they'll be deliberately kept in the dark about some things. If the local baron has a tax on them to pay his obligations to his liege (or I guess to the Lords' Alliance, in the Sword Coast), and then he no longer has to pay that obligation, he might keep it secret from them and pocket the difference. Some precedent gets set regarding the rights of peasants vis-a-vis their landlords, a judicial or religious edict, and their landlord will try to keep them from finding out. If they're a trade stop for caravans eventually this will get out, but the keyword is "eventually".

[denthor]

How many people? 100 houses easily 450 people age range months to maybe 3 64 year olds. Most 13 to 42.

The priest will know more then the average person.

Town drunk could be a former adventurer ranger 3rd level knows area well .

Town guards know which caravans are shady which are legit.

Is there a really rotten bar where you go to get into a fight?

Everyone knows something for a drink and a bite of food. Rumor has it there is a red wizard in the area. Bandits operations are in the woods/pass/. There are strange people dancing at certain times of the year. Don't know any of them but they are on the hill top. Druids evil cult whatever you want they just know they dance.

Don't know about the coast never been there. Know when to plant crops. I am looking to go and hold a torch for some cash. Do you need something moved? The girl here is looking for a husband.

[Darth Ultron]

In a general sense, Faerun is very well connected.

Though even in say 1400 Old Earth, the average person in Europe and Asia was fairly well connected and knew about ''the world'. Simply put, people talk and news does travel. Even more so in a place with a lot of visitors.

And Faerun has folks that can fly and teleport. So news can spread across the world...fast.

So maybe not a ''peasant'', but every commoner would likely have heard of anything that happened at least a couple months ago. Though, they might not know all the details.

Of course, things like undead Thay do tend to make the news fast....

[Mastikator]

Considering the accuracy of word of mouth, their knowledge about events would vary between "wrong" to "entirely made up" and if anyone had accurate information it would only be by random chance.

But mostly they wouldn't know anything, there's no internet, no TV, no radio. Just word of mouth, gossip.

[JoeJ]

The idea the medieval villagers didn't know anything about the outside world is a romantic myth. Itinerate craftsmen, merchants, and clergy carried news as they travelled from village to village. And the modern telephone game does not reflect the way information is passed on orally in non-literate or mostly non-literate societies. (Or, apart from party games, even in literate societies. Next time you play, try this variation: each person hearing a message spends two minutes discussing it with the person they heard it from before passing it on. See how much difference that makes in the accuracy of transmission.)

[BWR]

The idea the medieval villagers didn't know anything about the outside world is a romantic myth. Itinerate craftsmen, merchants, and clergy carried news as they travelled from village to village.

OTOH, look at how astoundingly ignorant (sometimes willfully) some people today are about anything beyond their own nose.

[JoeJ]

OTOH, look at how astoundingly ignorant (sometimes willfully) some people today are about anything beyond their own nose.

True. Awareness of the world appears to be completely unrelated to what level of technology is available.

[Anonymouswizard]

The idea the medieval villagers didn't know anything about the outside world is a romantic myth. Itinerate craftsmen, merchants, and clergy carried news as they travelled from village to village. And the modern telephone game does not reflect the way information is passed on orally in non-literate or mostly non-literate societies. (Or, apart from party games, even in literate societies. Next time you play, try this variation: each person hearing a message spends two minutes discussing it with the person they heard it from before passing it on. See how much difference that makes in the accuracy of transmission.)

There's also an issue of quantity versus quality. Add that into the fact that many of the things they deduce about their surroundings might not be particularly accurate, and you might end up with a decent amount of true stuff (about both the local area and surrounding world) mixed in with a lot of lies.

Or rather, without modern technology only important news will travel, or rather news that the travellers think is important. We also need to take into account memory drift over time, unless they're talking about it every day or the news is in a memorable form ('The grand old Duke of York/He had ten thousand men...') then there will likely be missing information or incorrectly remembered bits. Maybe not enough to make it useless, but enough to make it not entirely accurate. With modern technology there's a lot more news, so I'm less likely to remember the few important things.

[Darth Ultron]

OTOH, look at how astoundingly ignorant (sometimes willfully) some people today are about anything beyond their own nose.

After all, in 2018, people have access to the total sum of all human knowledge in their pockets....and they use it to look at funny cat pictures and gossip.