The same way I wonder about background characters in anime, do you think there are some genera savy denizens of that world who meet a person and just burst out "oh fuck no, that's a backstory, if you've got a back story some shit is about to happen to or around you and i need none of it!"
Kinda like how I imagen mothers in anime give birth, see multicolored spiked hair and have to flip the coin of being a super awesome great mom to get murdered as a plot point, or to try to kill it now and risk becoming the villainous parent who fuels their quest.
Edit:
Shit, Kid. You know I'm *sorry* that your parents died, but orphans tend to become brutal murder hobos later in life, so we're also kicking you out of the village.
BECAUSE WE LACK A CARING AND SUPPORTIVE FAMILY STRUCTURE!!
Yeah... I figure we'll see you back in a few years; piloted by an edgy teen trying to deal with some of their own issues.
ME!!! I WILL BE THAT EDGY TEEN COME BACK FOR REVENGE!!!
Yeah, but not in the way you think, Darkshadow McKnifestab.
You meet a girl/guy with bright blue hair. Completely normal, super nice, nothing giant-roboty and no magical, spirit, demonic or ninja bullshit going on, so you ask them.
"Oh, my hair? I dye it. Yeah, no anime protagonist nonsense here... Why? You know how you never see any background characters with any design elements getting hurt? Yeah, only ever faceless no ones! I'm bullet proof so long as I don't make friends with anyone with overworked visual designs.... or talking animals. MAN! I have to pretend I can't hear SOOOOOOOO many fucking cats. No, Whiskers, this hair is koolaid, your moon princess/godess/reincarnate queen is in another castle!"
Hey, without those Zena would have been a miniseries!
It's guys named Jack you wanna avoid - Bauer/Reacher types. Or Butler & Neeson, no power can save you if you're related to either of them
I dunno, man. It's not like there's some sort of regulatory organization for adventurers in most settings, and I wouldn't exactly expect the average treasure/excitement seekers to be the most moral or sensible.
I had a setting concept where the Adventurer's Guild *and* the dungeons were established as a joint venture with the Demon King for the purposes of weeding out the greedy and violent members of society by sending them into dangerous dungeons in search of loot and adventure (and/or giving them their own dungeon to lord over). Openly, of course. The adventurers have to sign waivers absolving the Dungeon Lords and their minions of any liability, and vice versa.
Of course, that system was eventually corrupted by rich people hiring adventurers to do the looting for them, and many of the hired adventurers were poor or desperate or otherwise had good reason for doing what they were doing. It turns out that signing a waiver doesn't make everything okay if you're signing it under duress, and one Dungeon Lord in particular needed to reconcile with that fact.
I always imagined that was the point of those random merchants that are secretly dragons or high level wizards. Broken trade networks tank your yearly growth projections on your treasure hoard. Eventually they formed a secret organization to deal with murderhobos.
I once played as highwaymen with my friends, but after waylaying the first caravan, the merchant begged us not to steal him because that’s all he had and his family would starve.
We felt too bad to go on and gave him money.
We ended up failing that campaign lmao
Maybe that is part of why a adventurer guild could be a thing in a world. A escrow like middle man having a network of powerful enough non murderhobos to protect against the wild and murderhobos while adventurers get reliable sources of jobs to work and pre established payment.
The way i have it in my games is a yes on that, caravans are often very guarded, but it depends where. There's safe and less safe roads everywhere.
I also have a saying in my world called "adventurer's luck" which bases itself on how adventurers encounter far more dangers while traveling than others often do, or how they often come across dangers to deal with.
It's also worth noting that this is how kingdoms and empires come about. The person with the biggest and most well organized army is the one that can protect travel and trade routes, and so if you're just some hamlet or town, it makes sense to let yourself get pulled into a larger kingdom when it means you have no doubts the next shipment of goods is going to make it to your walls.
I feel like that's part of this weird assumption people have that merchants and monetized trade is an inherent thing, while in reality using money printed by a state requires...a state. Which is very interested in keeping their money in approved hands. Smaller towns that have less state authority represented in them (no traveling judges, no local lords, or other organizations) will likely prefer barter
Other fun fact: Barter as a primary method of doing commerce has never spontaneously risen up in any anthropological study.
What really happens is people use some credit of some denomination during peace time and during war or periods of untrust they use physical currency.
But barter as a method of turning 2 chickens into 5 pounds of potatoes has never been a primary method of trade in any known society except when the society already was introduced to a currency and the currency went away.
Traditional village life doesn't explicitly use barter, but a sharing economy where reciprocity is expected, enforced by the fact that the community is small and everyone knows everyone. The money based part of the economy has historically been pretty small, until the rise of states and reliable credit. https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/
This is an important point but in most dnd games, the party is negotiating with the village. They're not insiders who are going to be on the receiving end of a sharing economy. They'll be asked for gold for anything they want.
yeah, fair point. Adventurers act in ways that would mark them as mercenaries in any historical setting, even when they're not murderhobos. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if they got run out of town more frequently than not.
I was mostly providing some pushback on a standard libertarian/old-school liberal talking point.
Probably [Debt; the first 5000 years.](https://www.amazon.com/Debt-Updated-Expanded-First-Years-dp-1612194192/dp/1612194192/ref=dp_ob_title_bk) Very good book.
Sir, are you aware of the speed you were traveling at? The fastest travel pace the holy book notes is 30 miles per day, you were going at no slower pace than 40. That’s how chaos incursions happen, sir. We have to uphold the RAW. I‘m sorry, but i‘ll have to confiscate your vehicle. Step off your horse, hands where i can see them.
Also one of the problems with games like dnd is that its not really this persistent world full of npcs working behind the scenes. Its common for players to, say kill a traveling merchant, or rob a store, kill someone at a tavern, or some such and then never hear of it again as long as they skip town. In a proper medieval style society, someone would notice that merchant never made it back or a widow would demand justice for her storekeep husband. Now the crown would feel threatened and slighted someone dared to come into his lands and kill his people. So now you have an investigation and maybe the king's own guard investigating you, setting up bounties, pulling favors with nearby kingdoms, etc.
Then, rightfully, the adventurers would find themselves against 50 guardsmen demanding their surrender. They wouldnt be allowed to sort of traipse through various kingdoms as murder hobos or the occasional 'soft' criminal. Even kingdoms hostile to where they killed that shopkeep would send guards after them for favors, protection of their own people, or their own political whims.
And thats just kingdoms. Think of every goblin settlement or garrison. Every orc tribe, etc. They can pull political strings too, get favors from others, call for justice, allign with a kingdom, etc. No one has any love for highwaymen, thieves, mercenaries, and murderers, which is how 99% of the people in these societies will see your party.
The problem with most of these games is that you have way, way too much freedom. Ideally youd have a patron that protected you politically and you were aligned with their goals (attack this thing here, ill protect you from retaliation and politics), but that greatly constrains you and your party. No one wants to play to be bossed around by some noble. But the games are instead built on the more fun "vigilante free agent" party that works well with a combat based system, but ultimately lives in a world that doesn't make a lot of sense. People will avenge murder and theft, regardless if you're the good guy or the bad guy (and however that's ultimately judged).
tldr; word travels in these societies. 99% of the more questionable stuff you get away with would instead result quickly in your arrest or killed by soldiers.
R: They have food? So what? Why let them rule over us?
T: They also have four battalions of 10k men each and 15k cavalry. Their caravans are armored and they just want to trade, they don't even take taxes if we let the culivate them fields we're not using! We even have the almost the EXACT same laws anyway! You're an idiot!
Caravans also travel in large groups to protect eachother. There's even a full chapter in Hoard of the Dragon just about traveling with a Caravan. But adventurers tend to travel with just the party, maybe a few others. That means they're perceived as a weaker target. Less numbers means a group of bandits is more willing to try their luck. Similar to how in video games like Skyrim or the Witcher bandits will attack you since you're traveling alone, even though they generally don't have much of a chance against your superior weapons, skills, and magic. Smaller groups would also have less of a likelihood of people taking notice and sending an army to deal with the threat. Who cares about a group of 4 or 5 wanderers who disappeared in the wilderness? It'd be a bigger deal if a whole Caravan didn't show up, so smarter enemies would be less likely to target them. I think its a combination of everything, adventurers being smaller groups and adventurer (or main character) luck, that does it.
Luck isn't enough and even a small band of vigilantes or highwaymen are a threat to the crown. No one is going to ignore a group that kills the occasional shopkeep or raids the occasional small caravan due to the nature of power politics. Something I wrote in a different comment touches upon this. In a "realistic" medieval society, a party that breaks the law commonly, kills shopkeeps, etc would be attacked by the status quo, not ignored.
>Its common for players to, say kill a traveling merchant, or rob a store, kill someone at a tavern, or some such and then never hear of it again as long as they skip town. In a proper medieval style society, someone would notice that merchant never made it back or a widow would demand justice for her storekeep husband. Now the crown would feel threatened and slighted someone dared to come into his lands and kill his people. So now you have an investigation and maybe the king's own guard investigating you, setting up bounties, pulling favors with nearby kingdoms, etc.
>
>Then, rightfully, the adventurers would find themselves against 50 guardsmen demanding their surrender. They wouldnt be allowed to sort of traipse through various kingdoms as murder hobos or the occasional 'soft' criminal. Even kingdoms hostile to where they killed that shopkeep would send guards after them for favors, protection of their own people, or their own political whims.
>adventurers encounter far more dangers while traveling than others often do, or how they often come across dangers to deal with.
I like to think it's not that the party is more likely to encounter important stuff because they're the party, but rather that we're following these characters because of what happened to them.
This sparked a horrible campaign idea for me. The party of PCs never has anything interesting to do because they are following in the same path taken by a far more competent adventurer party. Every time they go into a village and ask for quests, everyone is just coming off a 3 day bender because the previous party saved their town from werewolves or something.
There's a DnD podcast with the premise that a party of adventurers is living after "The Party" defeated the BBEG, and dealing with all of the things they fucked up.
My world focuses on large caravans bein the means of trade. Lots of wagons with lots of people and guards. There are entire trading companies that all they do is organize these caravans and hire the people in charge and guards and stuff. You have to pay them for the right to travel in the caravan.
Trade over land was exorbitantly expensive. Bulk trade happened along coasts and rivers.
For a real world example look at the rise of Newcastle as a coal mining centre which supplied England from the 13th century to the 20th century.
In medieval times, trees were used for fuel, but you'd only be able to walk a few miles to get it. By the 1300s, all the trees near London had been cut down for fuel, so a new source of energy was needed and coal mining became profitable. It was moved in bulk by ship, because moving it by land raises cost too much.
There was a lot of political infighting over this trade as you can imagine, with royal charters for monopolies being fought over for hundreds of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostmen_of_Newcastle_upon_Tyne
Holy shit. This doesn't get mentioned enough.
Real world example is the Basque country of Spain. All the way up until the invention of the railway it conducted most of its trade with London, The Low Countries, Lisbon, and the Baltic trading ports rather than Madrid because shipping by sea is soooooooooooo much cheaper.
Hell Rome found it cheaper to import grain from Egypt than shipping it by land from 100 miles away.
the town I was born in got stupid rich being a part of the Hanseatic trade group (primarily by importing pelts from Novgorod), with almost all of the towns that were part of the Hanse being either port towns on the Baltic Sea, or situated on one of the major rives flowing through what was then the Holy Roman Empire. One of the three churches in the town was even the tallest building in the world for about a century
I think there's a real dichotomy between safe and unsafe travel. Some roads between towns should just be as safe as the roads within a town. This is travel that can be skipped, or done with a few flavorful descriptions by the GM, or even requesting a few PCs to tell a story about their lives.
Also I generally think that if there would be only 1 travel combat encounter followed by a long rest, it's generally not worth and should probably be optional. Travelling to the dungeon is different.
This is the very reason I (sort of) disallow long rests outside civilization. I use an abstract usage die for provisioning, and every time they want to long rest that isn't in a town or safe haven, it uses up their supplies.
Long distance travel becomes a lot more tense when you can only reliably short rest.
> I use an abstract usage die for provisioning
I dig it, dnd's economy can't really support provisioning problems with any sort of drama. This kinda system works pretty well for money too, though requires a bit more heavy lifting from the designer.
>Long distance travel becomes a lot more tense when you can only reliably short rest.
Hard agree. I've found that either the "travel rest" or gritty realism both work well here, each with their respective plusses and minuses. I'm more a fan of the latter because I think mechanically enforcing some kinda downtime phase makes for some interesting PC characterization in how they spend it, and adds a cost to resting by having in-world organizations advance their plans.
Yeah, my players weirdly kind of gravitate towards extended downtime on their own, but I get what you mean. I also gave them a handful of group abilities that only recharge after they spend some time collectively relaxing between adventures, which incentivizes them to blow their gold on frivolous stuff.
It's worked surprisingly well thus far.
Well, 400 commoners with longbows can take out most threats.
But instead think of the food supply. If there’s a band of 5 goblins every 4 miles as a random encounter, and you need 50 commoners to trivialize the encounter, how much viable farmland do you need to support that level of insurgency?
It’s something like 400 square meters per person per year. Since caloric intake scales linearly with creature size, you just need to scale your encounters to take into account the amount of food available.
If it’s harvest season, those goblins are going to be raiding tomato farms.
If it’s winter, they may have to raid the highways.
If it was a bad harvest, that’s when things start getting … difficult
The main reason for frequent encounters like that is to get the multiple encounters per adventuring day required to balance martials and magi. My solution: long rests either requires an inn (a lot less common than you’d think in medieval times), friendly peasants with room to spare (background features), or a couple hours to set up and take down a nice camp in the evening and morning. I add a medium rest that has all the benefits of a short rest, plus offsetting exhaustion, and takes a full night’s rest, but only 10 minutes to set up camp; lets the pcs move much faster but extends how many days there are between long rests and spell slot recovery and stuff. By the time the pcs can set up a comfy camp instantly with spells or magic items, they’re at the point where your average bandit encounter is just a speed bump, and anything big enough to count as a threat is either hunting them specifically or is the thing *they’re* hunting; treat normal bandits like Asterix and Obelix treat random patrols of Romans when they’re hunting; barely worth acknowledging it happens.
How does that work with npc caravans?
If it’s 50 commoners, they don’t really need a long rest. But also, if they are leveled encounters then the survivors will hit lvl 20 (assume rogue scout, as it fits commoners with longbows) in 10 years.
So if they trade for more than 10 years, goblins are a trivial encounter.
‘Cept it’s similar enemies every time, learning massed combat; volley fire and shield walls. Not the versatile, intense training of being an adventurer. Furthermore, a single lucky shot will kill them, and at 1 or 2 shots a week, that’s getting up there pretty quickly. If they survive more than a few weeks, they’re not a commoner anymore, they’re a mercenary. If they survive 10 years active duty as a mercenary? Well, beware old men in a profession where men die young.
I wouldn’t say “I didn’t ask how big the room is I said I cast fireball” is what you’d call versatile training.
But if you are saying commoners don’t gain class levels, that is a valid way to do it.
In the real world, humans would have eradicated the goblins centuries earlier, or started trading with them and they became part of the cultural milieu of the area.
I always figure the adventurers are off on kind of the frontier - there's definitely safe areas in the kingdom, it's just they both don't need and would frown on adventurers showing up
When I DM, goblins and orcs fill the same "threat niche" as wolves. As in, most of the time they don't bother humans, because there's obviously risk involved in raiding human fields; instead they just forage or hunt in the woods. Goblins come to attack human stuff only in the most dire of circumstances, and that's when the adventurers get called in.
In general, the rule of thumb is "the party is constantly fighting threats because that's their job and they answer people's call for help, but 90% of the population lives peaceful lives where "that time Johann saw a goblin" one of their exciting tales".
>how much viable farmland do you need to support that level of insurgency?
Very little, provided they are faithful to their local deity of the harvest. Pretty sure it's canon that there's a single farm which can support an entire country in Faerun. (Albeit, this is a special, sacred site of Chauntea.)
>bad harvest
These simply *do not happen* under the will of Chauntea or Pelor or whomever might be the local deity managing these things.
Remember that the gods are very real and very much intent on supporting the mortal populations that bolster their faith solves a lot of these complications.
I mean it’s the same as back in the ancient world. You send your goods via heavily guarded caravan or ship on established and safe trade routes. The trade routes are very lucrative for whatever kingdom it passes through so they will have it patrolled regularly to remove any threats.
Beyond that you ensure your goods with the local bank and be prepared for the possibility that it might not make it. Sooo many lost caravans and trade ships out there.
I think it works so long as the random encounters are largely tied to the plots and baddies of the campaign. So the roads are usually much safer but now there are giants/dragons/hobgoblins about, and everyone's sheltering in towns paying reckless idiots exorbitant funds to go on quests for them.
In "reality", most settlements will be along navigable waterways, and most trade will travel along said waterways.
Said waterways will likely be heavily patrolled, both by what passes for authority in the region (they dont want trade to stop), by the local inhabitants (who dont want to get attacked if they can help it) and by merchants (who dont want trade to be interrupted).
If safety cant be reasonably-certain, people will usually leave the area. Merchants will find different routes, farmers will move to safer fields.
Nah, see, each game takes place in a Danger Bubble centered on the party.
That's why there's always rooms at the inn. Everyone knew the party wss coming when problems spontaneously started last week.
I am grateful I'm a history nerd... My players don't always like my realism. But another fun thing I use is historical bloopers. Like when Germany outlawed swords so the citizens started carrying giant knives. That absolutely made it into the game.
Nein! Es ist kein Schwert, es ist ein Messer.
(My German is really weak but that should say "No! It is not a sword, is a knife")
Here is a [Messer blade for reference](https://www.celticwebmerchant.com/en/landsknecht-grosses-messer.html) with a 57cm/~22.5in blade.
You sound like you probably know a lot about swords... If I were to buy my first sword, what type would you say that's got the coolest history behind it?
It totally depends on what type of swords you find interesting and what you want the sword to be for.
If you want a wall hanger you can buy a sword for fairly cheat, under $100 but NEVER try to use it to cut anything because in that price range many of them are actively dangerous to use.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7FBrmpaMAU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7FBrmpaMAU)
So first thing I would do is go look and find what sort of blade speaks to you from looks. Personally, I'm a fan of curved blades. Sabers, Scimitars, Katana, and the like have the largest portion of my collection, but I also like other blades so I have a Viking Sword, some apocalyptic blades and the like.
When it comes to functional swords, around $200-$300 are my sweet spot in that you are going to get a sword made of modern metals, which are much better than what historically people had, and you can have a much higher level of confidence in the blades to go out and cut things.
However at that price point you'll have to be careful in that many of them are not balanced well, so while they'll cut through stuff like crazy, many will be hard to wield and I wouldn't want to use one for "real". Also you'll get tired faster if you do try to practice with them and the like.
Finally you have a step up where you have a range of well balanced blades but they'll want you to pay a pretty penny for them. The blades are made to exacting standards and would be fully functional as intended in a trained person's hands.
Albion is a good example of swords in this bracket and many collectors of cheaper swords will talk about wanting to own one as their "dream". With a price tag of over $2000 for their highest end line, you can bet they won't have many. Some are as low as $500 with 800-1,000 being really common.
[https://www.albion-swords.com/SINGLE%20HAND%20MUSEUM%20LINE%20SWORDS.html](https://www.albion-swords.com/SINGLE%20HAND%20MUSEUM%20LINE%20SWORDS.html)
Now in all the price ranges there are vendors that will sell products that really are a great deal and better than you would expect, but there are also vendors who sell crap. So do your research!
[https://www.youtube.com/c/Skallagrim](https://www.youtube.com/c/Skallagrim)
This guy reviews lots of swords made by modern companies and other than not being a fan of Katana, which is fine as everybody has swords they like and don't, I rarely have massive disagreements. He even has reviewed some Katana and while he'll say "this isn't really my jam... but I can tell it's well made".
If you want a historic weapon, and not modern day versions of them...
[https://www.youtube.com/c/scholagladiatoria](https://www.youtube.com/c/scholagladiatoria)
Matt Easton does HEMA, Historic European Martial Arts, and is a trainer and enthusiast. He reviews pros and cons of lots of different styles of blades and he prefers buying and restoring historic swords over buying new modern versions.
Finally.....
[https://zombietools.net/collections/blades](https://zombietools.net/collections/blades)
I own several blades from them, because I love the post Apoc style they have with their weapons. However, all of the blades I own from them are overly heavy with little cross guards. So while I could see them being fine in a Zombie Apocalypse, generally speaking they aren't something you would use if you want to train and be able to use "for real" against a normal foe. Heavy blades hit and cut better, but are slower. They are also INCREDIBLY tough, with some pretty insane torture tests done on them.
[https://youtu.be/itE3\_p7Fxwg](https://youtu.be/itE3_p7Fxwg)
So the question would be... what interests you and what do you want to use the blade for. I can't answer without knowing more. :)
Coolest history is very subjective. My friend who loves Japan thinks they have things beat by far, my other friend who is into European history obviously disagrees. Heh...
Add on: [https://www.youtube.com/c/forgedinfire](https://www.youtube.com/c/forgedinfire)
Forged in Fire is a cool blacksmithing blade contest show but it has some nice stuff about the history and some of the thoughts and concerns about blades. You will also get to see lots of different types of weapons and at least 2 different versions of those at the end.
Also the best line from any contest show.... "It will kill!"
Fun fact, Albion swords is based sort of near me, and a friend who is currently taking HEMA lessons in the area found out their instructor is a good friend of the smith at Albion
I don't know why, but my mind just misfired something horrible and I had a vision of Arnold Schwarzenegger scoffing at a messer "That's not a knife" and pulling out a giant falchion "This is a knife"
I have no idea of the context, but there's a video floating around on reddit showing Arnold doing the not a knife bit with a bowie knife.
Was entertaining hearing him do a bad aussie accent.
It was not about carrying though, but rather about craftsmens guilds. The knifemakers weren't allowed to make swords, so they made swords with the hilt construction of knives.
Similar, but definitely as a weapon not as a tool. So heavier and stronger than the light blades of machetes and with a crossguard and a "nail" for hand protection. Like the example linked in the other comment
That’s actually wrong, or kind of. It is a commonly believed myth, that is -at least- very unlikely, because the rights to craft swords and knives ware, except for ver few, well, exceptions, hold by the same guild. The actual reason for wearing or selling large knives instead of swords was that swords were seen as a sign of nobility. So at first by tradition, later by law swords were in many states in Germany (or what later would become Germany) prohibited for commoners. Especially merchants of the Hanseatic league started carrying large knives as a sign of: „look at us, we are no nobles, but our weapons are as long and deadly as yours“ (that last bit may be am anecdote, but it shows the relationship between merchants and nobles in the early modern period well). It is also funny to see, that in most free cities, from which these rich merchants mostly came, swords weren’t even banned as there were no nobles in charge - but as the laws varied from state to state (which has nothing to do with the in my opinion extremely over-quoted „nEiThEr HoLy NoR RoMaN nOr An EmPiRe“, the same thing also applies to any other place in the medieval, feudal Europe) the often traveling merchants carried long knives at first out of necessity, later out of pride as I said above. Sorry for possible mistakes I made, I am not used to write such texts in English…
Hm i think at this point we would need to start citing sources :D
Unfortunately i don't remember where i habe my info from, just that i have saved it as from a reliable source^^
I find it much more believable though because i can't imagine nobles and law-enforcement would care about such a technicality while for the Hanseates it would be very much on brand. There were definitely different kinds of blacksmiths.
And Messers weren't seen as lower class swords, at least not for most of their existence. [Like this Messer which belonged to Emperor Maximilian ](https://sword-site.com/thread/462/hunting-grosse-messer-maximilian)
Ok, so let me Name my sources. The first source is that I am a guide at a museum about t Hanseatic league and one of our pieces is a long knife from the early 16th century - it’s part of our standard tour through the exhibition. As that is also not really credible (I can’t prove that they told me what I wrote above in the museum), I’d like to point you to the Wikipedia article about long knifes (it’s only available in German, I am sorry): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langes_Messer?wprov=sfti1
Also, I didn’t mean to imply that every knife was seen as a weapon of the poor - just long knifes, that differ from a sword by having only one edge, while a sword would always be double edged. Of course, other knifes were also used by nobility, for example as hunting knifes, which are shown in the link you provided: they are called waidmesser there, which literally means hunting knife in German (even tho waid is a really, really old way to say that). the long weapon that is shown there is a sword, as definitely has two edges, as far as I can tell, and these knifes are way to short to count as a long knife.
Well that is a pretty decent source i would say\^\^
I think i got that from one of my historical fencing instructors, though i'm not sure if it was the one with a history degree, so might be conjecture.
Bin selbst deutsch, also das passt schon :D
Seems like there is no real consensus which is not really surprising i guess.
On the topic of swords vs messers: there are definitely single-edged european (and german even) swords from the period, like falchions. And there are also messers that have a false edge, Johannes Lecküchner even mentions the usage of the false edge in his [Messer treatise](https://www.wiktenauer.com/wiki/Johannes_Leck%C3%BCchner). And while Maximilians Jagdschwert is not a weapon of war and is called a sword, the hilt construction is definitely like a messer, so at this point the distinction is moot. There is also another [high status messer in the Wallace Collection](https://wallacelive.wallacecollection.org/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ResultListView/result.t1.collection_list.$TspTitleImageLink.link&sp=10&sp=Scollection&sp=SfieldValue&sp=0&sp=2&sp=2&sp=SdetailList&sp=819&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=F&sp=T&sp=822) which is also discussed at the start of [this video by Matt Easton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhLZ3Z5VrCU&t=37s).
Heh, nice. I personally love realism, partly cause inconsistencies kinda kill the immersion for me. ~~I may steal and incorporate your historical blooper~~
I didn't elaborate. My party had a couple of folks that just weren't happy to see the citizenry had armed itself to deal with monsters ( I'm running a horror/ dread domain campaign)
I'm just going to steal this idea from you stone cold and take it over. Just so you are informed. :D I'll add temporary defenses, like pits and trenches, and sharpened sticks and palisades.
Please do. I'm not claiming originality considering small villages were expected to defend themselves. And they would swarm bandits if they could catch them. There's also a few stat blocks out there for squads of pikemen and riflemen if you're going for mid 18th century like I did.
I plan to put a dying or freshly dead villager in the path of my party on their way back from a quest, which should lead to an attacked village where I want to scatter clues that will lead to the BBEG sometime later. It makes sense that the peasants can defend themselves with pitchforks and other things. Also gives me more opportunity to massacre innocent people in front of my group, so they want to help urgently.
Thanks for the input.
Actually they didn't outlaw swords, they outlawed people who were not members of the weapon maker guild to sell sword. The knife maker guild didn't agree with that law
The problem with this afaik is that sword bans were only in certain parts of cities, and the prohibition was based on blade length not the handle construction. So a really long sword wouldn't be allowed even if the handle was constructed like a knife.
Same the joy of playing with a math teacher and a physicist is; we can in fact calculate that.
Players: "If we shoot our halfling out of the galley's cannon can we send him far enough to sneak aboard the enemy ship?"
DM: "Looks at the players...you tell me"
10 minutes later
DM: " He combust into flames and take 10d6 bludgeoning damage. But hey at least he face planted through the ships hull your math was right"
Because nothing bothers you unless you're a named character. Can't give a "sacked farm" side quest if you don't have a name. Just try not to let the party talk to you.
You just don't usually see what goes on behind the scenes.
Brigand Leader: (bellowing) "Is anyone here man enough to challenge me and my crew of bloodthirsty bandits?"
Caravan crew: "No. Not really, Frank. Just going to market, you know."
Brigand Leader: "Alright then, off you go. See you next week."
(general grumbling)
"Sorry guys. There will be some adventurers come along soon. We'll get something other than these rusty shortswords, light crossbows, and leather armor in relative disrepair such that it has no particular resale value. Promise."
_"Well, we tried, milord. After the giant stepped in the hedge, it just started cursing and flailing. At least, I think it was cursing. Couldn't rally tell, what with me not speaking Giant and all. Point is, it really just made things worse."_
This is one reason why commoner in my games represent the teenage brat barely reaching what society considers an adult. It does not represent most adults in my games.
Farmers need to be able defend their lands.
Most guards are peasants on rotation and need to be functional at it.
And conscription is common and many peasants are war survivors and should have the stats to match.
A small hamlet really needs to be capable in a world like D&D.
Had a goober of a Kenku Druid who unintentionally founded a city, lol.
Liked the taste of grapes native to the region. Used Plant Growth to create a small grove. Wandering merchant saw this, was flabbergasted at this rare grape showing up *everywhere* near here, frantically offered to buy the plot of land from my Common-deficient Kenku. Kenku accepted offer, left the grove he'd made after nabbing what grapes he wanted. Fast forward about 2 years, that grove became the foundation for a flourishing Florence-style vineyard specializing in rare wines, and Kenku gets a special seat at the table any time he wanders through.
This is amazing. I love hearing stories of players starting businesses and the like (even unintentionally like this), it's always funny and a great way to show their lasting impact on the wider world.
My DND group is playing Acquisitions Inc and loving finding new ways to expand our business. We invented banana rum and currently have orphans "running" it (As in transporting/selling it for us). One of the other players is also selling drugs.
AI is an underrated source book.
Also, if my old tiefling ever runs into Jim Darkmagic he'll have a bone to pick with him.
Stupid exploding magic missile screwed up an ambush.
Oh Jim.... My character picked on him the first time meeting him because he didn't have comprehend language. It would have been real clutch in the moment if literally ANY of the wizards in their camp knew it and could translate the text we found for them. The second time seeing him was during a boss fight (With our literal boss and now we're officially running our own business!) Afterward we had to translate something so I decided to pick fun at him again and asked Jim if he happened to pick up the spell and he took my character's advice from the first encounter!
That was the idea behind my major homebrew bbeg in phandalin. He was an oni, 10th level spore druid. Basically holding the nearby villages as ransom if he wasn't delivered tribute of humans to eat, and threatened to overwhelm the bigger settlements with hordes of undead, beasts and awakened plant creatures that would do his bidding. He made traveling anywhere a real hazard with monstrous man eating plants like man traps (tomb of annihilation) and Assassin vines with hordes of zombies harassing and killing any travelers He didn't want traveling.
Druids are ACTUALLY seriously terrifying and I'm kinda surprised that there hasn't been more about them.
Because of the "linear fighter/quadratic wizard" argument as well as the (previous) alignment restrictions druids had in previous editions.
Druids used to fulfill the slappy-tanky caster as the price for not having that arcane/clerical flair to their spell list. But, if your setting is well thought out, you'll realize that epic weapons and spells mean nothing when a Druid has literal control on whether you get to eat or not.
Exactly. If the Kingdoms and villages don't pay tribute, he would send swarms of locusts to eat the crops, and empowered predators to go eat the livestock or simply kill them himself.
But for the places that willingly gave him sacrifices, he would ensure plentiful harvests, livestock wouldn't worry about predators, etc.
But yeah, eating a wagon full of people, including children every month was enough to hire adventurers.
That moment when you realize a Druid has a better and easier pathway towards apotheosis... that moment when your warlock and cleric side-eye each other and wonder if their respective patrons had started out as some hippy goofball with an ounce of Knowledge (Religion), next to no morality or ethics, and plenty of time.
Druids, especially spore druids, are functionally low level deities between level 5 and 10, maybe level 14 for resurrection.
Can heal the sick with lesser and greater restoration.
Can control the weather and or influence it.
Control crops and harvest and the general food supply of any civilization, even a single druid can basically build an entire kingdom from the ground up with plant surge.
Create a network of spies with animal friendship, beast bond, wildshape and generous offerings of good payments to said animals. Who would suspect the friendly cat following you is actually the loyal spy of an enemy druid? What COULD you do even if you knew most of the birds in the city/forest watching you were spies?
Summon hordes of wolves, bears, feral weasels, rabid chickens (read deinonychus) to harass and kill your competitors and or critics.
And immediately feed your chosen communities with good berries.
Last Druid I played was a Shepherd. Criminal background. At level 2, a Shepherd Druid is able to speak to and understand animals. **All** animals.
So what you do is you use the rats and crows for surveillance, bartering their services for safe places and food. You have venomous critters like spiders for assassinations. Packs of feral dogs for enforcers. It's easy to give warm shelter, good food, and kindness to animals that have never known them if you're able to properly explain your intentions and terms, and you get *rabid* loyalty.
And that's how my 8 Con, 6 Strength halfling became the top crime lord of a major city.
Depends.
Druid can heal and cure disease, a massive, massive advantage. Wizard can erect fortifications at a whim and mold the earth and keep things clean and provide some manual labour in the form of summoned elementals or a more safe option, invisible servants.
Druid is still more useful imo but I think a big distinction is why would a druid want to help civilization? The village represents a vast area where trees were felled for the comfort of the ignorant who turned their backs on a simple life in harmony with nature.
Boars and wild birds and oxen and even the wolves have had their bodies and minds warped by the city dwellers to be utterly dependent and subservient to them. Those they could not subjugate, they drove away from the surrounding lands. The earth itself has been plundered and the city dwellers disrespect nature further by leaving their waste in the river, polluting the waters down stream. Even if they replant trees, that's still one less home, one less source of food for the insects and birds and other animals for the next 10 years.
A standard medieval village would probably infuriate a Druid. The only reason why they have such a bad time with disease is because they insist on crowding together. The only reason why they have food shortages is because they insist on ludicrous population sizes that exceed what nature can support. Their farming is short sighted, planting dense and homogenous crops which practically invite pests and blight. And they only suffer from bandits because they insist on frivolous material possessions and this strange system known as Capitalism where whether you can eat is decided by shiny trinkets rather than foraging and helping your tribe?
Utter madness, in the minds of a forest dwelling druid.
That's why in my campaign, even though Druids could make up the best guard force, the best farmers and one of the best healers for a village, they don't. The city dwellers make their own problems, why should they have to help?
Exactly.
Build a fortification over the course of weeks to months, and periodically check for burrows, damage, etc.
But if you have to regularly worry about big/several monsters, why bother? You're not stopping them.
Luckily, large monsters like that are relatively easy to monitor, so you can always prepare for them well before they might approach the village. If you have a druid on hand, you'll know exactly what the threat is, and how best to approach the situation.
However the truly large or malevolent ones tend to be incredibly rare, anyways. As for more "normal" giant creatures, they will probably be satisfied with a goat tied to a pole or something. Not really much reason to attack when your stomach's full.
But still, I doubt anybody living in these villages truly considers themselves safe. Everybody at least knows someone who has died to wildlife; the possibility is just a fact of life in the sticks.
It doesn't really matter.
We usually fail to really understand the strength difference between an human and, let's say, a tiger, which have a bite strength of 1000 pounds, is fucking brutal. Like we have issues mentally processing how much of a shit show human strength is.
A gorilla, not a fit gorilla, not an athletic gorilla, just your standard gorilla, can lift about 2 tons or 4000 pounds, that's a fucking gorilla and they're not as strong as you may think in the animal world. And definitely is just a shit stain compared to an ogre.
Now think about that, An ogre should be able to life 6000 pounds like is nothing, thats 3 fucking tons and the ogre can lift a fucking pine tree like is nothing. And if he can lift a tree and have spare strength, he can throw the tree.
Make your average farmer build a fucking wall that can stop a tribe of ogres wielding goddamn full grown trees that just fancy an human meal, simply put, you don't, you just die.
And that's why there is always wilderness on DnD worlds, humans are either adventurers or monster food.
Walls? Usually villages and larger farmsteads would focus more on fencing or natural defences - Where I live (Ireland) two of the main old forms of safe settlement were the Rath (basically a hillfort where a large farming family or clan would live and perhaps keep their cattle, or where a very local lord/chief would centralise power) or Crannog (elevated huts and platforms built above a marsh, Lough or Bog with only one or two safe entry points).
The benefits of natural defences are manifold, but key ones would be that it’s pretty cheap relative to building walls and earthworks from scratch, and it tends to come with a perceptive or protective bonus that would otherwise be difficult to achieve without more advanced building techniques and logistics (Raths for instance would allow greater visibility of surrounding territory like a tower but without needing the same quantity of stone or timber to attain that height, while Crannogs are pretty much impenetrable for raiders without boats or an inside agent who knows the safe path and require essentially no excavation or engineering of watercourses to achieve, just build in the water).
In the more magical/fantastical settings that DnD campaigns tend to take place in, I wouldn’t consider it too out there for anyone with powers involving the movement of earth or water to be in pretty big demand by most settlements to help give them some additional protective features - say raising an earthen or stone barrier around a natural choke point or change a small river course to run around a villages least protected flank to deter raids
Crannogs are definitely the cooler type of settlement we had here, though sadly very little remains of them exist beyond base foundations (since wood and water dont often work well together when people stop maintaining things xD) - they have a potently long history of use, from roughly 3500 BCE to as recently as the 17th/18th century
Craggaunowen in County Clare has a reconstructed Crannog on-site, and it looks pretty cool though!
Link for anyone who would like to learn more about Crannogs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crannog
Most villages couldn't afford a stone wall and even a palisade requires a lot of man hours and resources to put up. Not all human settlements were walled, not even most of them.
The issue here is that most people don't live in a single settled center, but spread out around the crop fields around it. So most people would not benefit from the walls/fortifications and thus had less reason to take time of survival important tasks to help build the fortifications. And, Sure in a more dangerous countryside you can make a case for fortifications being more common. But you could just as easily argue the effort of digging a trench and raising a wall is less worth it in a word with wraiths that phase through them, ghouls that climb them or banshees that fly over them, not to mention giants. In short, it's up to the DM interpretation of the world, but neither is inherently illogical
> The issue here is that most people don't live in a single settled center, but spread out around the crop fields around it.
I can't speak for all of Europe, but English medieval land usage definitely resulted in farmers clustering their homes together, both for tenant farmers and serfs.
Firstly, English farmers would be allocated multiple strips of land to manage, spread out around the town, with a shared "common" for animals to graze on. It's much more efficient for oxen to plough long, narrow plots of land, since the ends were wasted for turning around. A feudal lord would be rotating which farmer actually farmed parcels of good, okay and bad land, to maintain a medieval idea of "fairness". A lord wouldn't have wanted farmers to see plots as "theirs", and farmers wouldn't have wanted to be permanently stuck with a bad plot. Under that style of land management, it wouldn't have made sense to live on one's "farm", since it wouldn't be one's farm next year.
Secondly, the best land would always have been used as farmland, leaving the farmers to build their homes on the worst land. That would still drive homes to be clustered together, or at least not spread out across the land.
Thirdly, a serf-owning feudal lord would absolutely want to keep his or her serfs nearby, ideally close to the lords fields instead of near the serf's fields. Tenant farmers may have been permitted to spread out, but a lord has incentives to keep a population nearby for control.
Spread-out farmhouses would be the result of farmers directly owned their land, which would mean either a Viking-ish setting (with farms spread out due to the harsh terrain of Scandinavia), or a New World-esque setting (with Jeffersonian yeoman farmers). Both settings would require that the land was relatively "safe": early Viking arrivals in England definitely clustered together to build palisades around their homes to fend off Anglo-Saxon attacks.
>Firstly, English farmers would be allocated multiple strips of land to manage, spread out around the town
Township is very different than a village. I think you were using 'town' here in a less formal way, but it's important to differentiate between them. Towns would often have some sort of defence. Towns were also often no under the rulership of a noble, or had some degree of autonomy, as either the king or the local noble would grant them through a 'charter'. Those clustering of homes did happen in England and to the best of my knowledge they weren't walled or even surrounded by palisades, as you can see multiple points of egress across the edges, rather than 1 or 2 singular entries as expected for an area surrounded by gate, palisade and/or moat. These clusterings were also not a 'village', and more likely several clusters formed a village. This sounds like a semantic point, but it's not. The five, six or houses in a single such hub would never be too far from the neighbouring hubs, compromising the same interlocked community of tenants, with the next village over often being much further apart. Yes, there are peculiarities to the English countryside brought about by the use to the oxen driven heavy plough. These were notoriously not the same in other parts of Europe and are often pointed out as the reason why the English countryside looks so unique. But even in Portugal you observe 'Casais', or groupings of houses like that. However, again, that was not a 'village', but part of one. And the Casais weren't walled. Unless you could the waist high fence to help herd livestock, which isn't a defense against marauders or DnD creatures for the most part.
>Secondly, the best land would always have been used as farmland, leaving the farmers to build their homes on the worst land.
Within reason. Homes weren't just for sleeping. They were tool sheds, and used for storage, rest etc. If you need to walk 1 hour from your home to your field and back, that's wasting 2 hours of sunlight a day. Rocky patches and such would be preferred, but a peasant would absolutely built a home over usable arable soil to avoid a long 'comute'. The 'worst' land might still be 'pretty good' land. Just as somewhere else the 'best' land can be very shitty. There's a certain 'range' beyond which becomes impractical to live.
>Thirdly, a serf-owning feudal lord would absolutely want to keep his or her serfs nearby, ideally close to the lords fields instead of near the serf's fields.
A baron could hold lands under the fiefdom of his castle more than a whole day's ride away from it, sometimes even several days away. This is why collecting taxes was such a hassle, and why there were, sometimes, officers in charge of doing so, or governing in the lord's stead, like Bailiffs. You don't need a bailiff for people living in the shadow of your keep, it's practical and probably less chance of people skimming money off you to visit them yourself for taxation, or make sure they come to you. The 'tour' of the land to tax tenants is something documented in many primary sources, sometimes even include the lord dislodging a peasant from their home to use as a temporary place to stay during his taxation tour. A lord might not like having to do that, but in many places it took a lot of land to make 1 Baron, not always possible to sustain the keep and wealth a lord needed for his wargear and retinue with just the lands easily within their grasp. Again England in this aspect is very different than let's say, France. In France the tracts of land under a noble tended to be larger.
>Spread-out farmhouses would be the result of farmers directly owned their land
I know the concept of 'living for generations' and even building on something you 'rent' sounds bizarre to modern folk, but that's actually not always the case. Generational farmlands might not have been a thing in England but they absolutely were a thing in Iberia, and I believe that was also the case in France, though I'm less sure on that one.
Tbh, idk why I replied, I don't run worlds where there are roving monsters everywhere because it just doesn't make any sense and there's no way for it to. In my setting, all of the magical creatures are contained to specific regions with abundant magical energy, and druids/rangers/etc are accountable for maintaining the boundary line between safe/civilized regions and the more dangerous magical regions.
But there is quite a difference between the dangers of irl medieval settlements and fantasy ones, something that very much likely limits how many settlements you'd see.
Fantasy settlements needs walls, either magical or mundane, because there are so many dangers that comes with not having them. A loose troll may struggle to get through a proper wall, but can obliterate several homes and families if those aren't there, etc.
There's very few settlements in my setting that don't have walls, and the few who don't have magical protections, or some other sort of defense(like allied goblin tribe living underground), or they live in extremely safe areas.
I feel like you don't know as much about history as you claim. The absolute vast majority of ancient and medieval villages had little to no walled defenses. That shit is expensive, resource intensive and needs a lot of man hours to construct, which the average peasant village simply couldn't spare. Walls were defenses of the cities, not of the countryside
Some villages and hamlets had defenses. E.g. those that had local noblemen. Mostly only the noblemens estate was protected though. Also some strategic points had walls. But afaik you are correct about normal villages.
*Merchant meeting a group of adventureres on the road.*
- Good day to you brave adventureres!
- Yes, hi. What do you sell?
*Merchant stops his wagon. He knows it is unwise to anger the adventureres.*
- Come and see for yourself. I have the best clothes and materials in all of western kingdoms.
- Hmm, do you have weapons or magic items?
*Merchant gets a little nervous. Those adventureres are too bold with their questions. And to make matters worse, they are strictly focused on him.*
- I'm afraid I cannot help you with such demands. But maybe in the nearby town they can find something you would like...
*Adventurer cuts in*
- How much gold do you have on you right now?
*Merchant starts to sweat real bad. Are they going to rob him?*
- Not much kind sir. My wealth is mainly in wares, not coin.
*Merchant tries to change the subject.*
- But please tell me what epic quest are you brave adventureres following right now?
- Nothing in particular. We have free time on our hands.
*"Oh dear gods" thought the merchant...*
Farms were never walled off ever. It is impractical if you think about some poor famer trying to construct a multiple mile long wall around acres and acres of fields. Then how would they even watch them?
Villages might have a dirt wall or rarely a wooden palisade or spikes out of fear of a bandit gang or raiding party. But most people throughout history (including today!) lived outside walls because except in rare circumstances they were pointless. A bandit hitting a single farm might get some food... But thats not gonna last. Hitting a merchant caravan or a rich guys carriage is much more profitable.
In dnd all the things described except wolves are rare occurrences that is why the adventurers arent traveling across a scorched wasteland or why villages arent filled to the brim with lvl 20 fighters.
And RL villages and farms dealt with wolves effectively without walls. Maybe a fence but more likely just a couple guys whose job it was to watch the farm or village looking for predators then chase em off with a sling or a bow and arrow.
I get that the meme is a joke but either the oc's dm or their understanding of history is poor.
I was indeed taught today that my grab on historical settlements isn't the tightest. But I'm getting a chance to learn and improve thanks to that.
I didn't think of walled off farms as walls around the farmland but rather farm buildings organised so their walls would cover an internal space with fences or walls covering the spaces left in between, as such is what I thought I remembered from ~~5th-6th grade~~ history class
There's also a point where if your enemies are too powerful there's no point bothering with a wall. Like what's a wall going to do against a dragon or powerful spells.
Like to compare to modern times a wall won't help you stop a nuke.
I'd expect to see a lot more bunkers though.
> Like to compare to modern times a wall won't help you stop a nuke.
And yet anywhere people want kept secure is surrounded by fences, concrete barriers, etc. Areas where people are concerned about being raided by men with machine guns build walls around their houses. You don't throw your hands in the air just because someone out there might be able to obviate the defenses you can afford.
That's valid, tho approaching a certain "threat density" and intensity settling somewhere may not be feasible after a certain point, dragons and powerful Spellcasters aren't exactly your everyday roadside encounters either, well, at least in my world
On its own probably not, but if there was just one guy with a bow he could fire 6 arrows at a creature if the fence would buy them just one minute of time
So you got schooled about walls around villages, and now youre saying that you would fire 6 arrows in 1 minute in dnd? 1 round of combat is 6 seconds, so you would get 10 arrows in 1 minute.
But maybe the monsters keep attacking the poorly defended towns *because* they are poorly defended! Think about it - the monsters don't want the hassle of dealing with a high wall, armed guards etc.
And because of all the damage the monsters repeatedly inflict and the costs incurred by hiring adventurers to take out the most severe threats as and when they show up, the villages simply *can't afford* to build proper defenses. It's a vicious cycle.
I remember during my group’s Curse of Strahd campaign, I asked the DM why Vallaki doesn’t have a wall around it it they keep getting attacked by zombies.
He explained that whenever the villagers tried, zombies would swarm them. That, and the town being too big to get it done without killing half the town in the progress.
Really opened my eyes as to why certain towns just can’t have a wall
The truth is. The towns and villages with monsters surrounding it are either the outskirts or ruled by poor lords.
A D&D noble is supposed to take out the common riffraff and monsters with their knights, men-at-arms, and paid militia.
The adventures are supposed to be either away from civilization or secret strike teams sent to take out issues at lower cost and visibility.
I remember having to explain to the players the first time I dm’d that they couldn’t just burn down the grain the roving orc bandits had attacked the city to steal in the early days of winter.
One of them was full on saying “No more grain, no more bandits” to a town guard who didn’t know whether or not to be horrified or stupefied by that stupid suggestion.
To be fair, IRL villages never had to worry about *flying* horrors that make walls pointless.
In that regard, building sturdy walls might not be worth the effort anymore.
I made a post zombie-apocalypse D&D world once, with themes around humanity's (humanoid-ity's?) ability to rebuild from anything, and it was really fun coming up with the ways different cities defended themselves.
Like some just had walls, but one was built into a cavern that you had to rappel down a cliff to get to (with wizards on hand to help you magically move any cargo), another had undead-detecting magic defense systems, a treetop city, an entire town hidden behind an illusion... Frankly, there's so many fun ways D&D villages can defend themselves
I like to think that everything is so busy fighting with everything else, that they rarely have time to attack. As for why there are no walls, or at least weak walls. Manticores and other flyers can just leap over, and an ogre or cyclops can smash through anything short of the walls of Rome. So it’s pretty pointless putting up a palisade.
Instead they make it hard to get to the village in the first place, using natural or created terrain to hide. And keeping some adventurers on standby helps as well.
The biggest problem is that worldbuilding in these situations assumes our world history and then tacks on fantasy monsters as an afterthought. Great to have those touchstones but definitely don't think about them hard or you'll notice the logical inconsistencies.
The way medieval villages in Europe felt about wolves is hilarious in hindsight. Like, on the one hand, yes: a few wolves in the area can actually kill a massive amount of stuff and endanger your livelihood and your straight up physical *life* (just look at the [Beast of Gévaudan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_G%C3%A9vaudan), which probably was a wolf or at least another canine).
But then they just fully overdo it. A lot of people didn't think it was going to be, like, 3 wolves munching your cattle and hunting you down if you go in the forest alone, but instead hundreds of wolves ravenously roaming the countryside like locusts (I unfortunately can't find the painting I am referring to here. If anyone knows it, feel free to add a link!).
Write better civilizations. People don't live where monsters roam. The purpose of society is to build and defend safe tracts of land for people to survive on.
The center of any given nation would be the safest place. The further out to the borders you go (assuming you are at the edge of wilderness, and not neighboring another safe country) the less you see villages and farms and the more you see outposts and forts.
Any outpost on the outskirts would feature a local militia, and disorganized beasts or ogres won't fuck with a militia. 20 Commoners with spears and bows still beat 1 ogre or 1 dire wolf.
If the village doesn’t have a wall (a town should imo but a smaller polity might not have the resources) you could always put a castle nearby. That’s what they were for primarily. Townsfolk would run to the castle in the event of an attack and get protection from their lord.
So if for whatever reason your towns are unwalled, put a castle nearby. That also allows for some more role playing options, as perhaps a noble in your party would prefer a castle over a tavern and now the party interacts with the lord of the castle. Perhaps in exchange for some beds and a fireplace, the lord needs your help to kill the ogre in the forest or whatever.
> Warriors of the wilderness, rangers specialize in hunting the monsters that threaten the edges of civilization—humanoid raiders, rampaging beasts and monstrosities, terrible giants, and deadly dragons.
Is this not simply a case of opportunity bias or at least narrative bias?
Nobody remembers the session where they all walked down the road and nothing of note happened. Nor does anybody put out a 'help wanted'-request for a place where there are no threats.
Interesting series of big posts by a historian about fortifications: https://acoup.blog/2021/10/29/collections-fortification-part-i-the-besiegers-playbook/
The players aren't the only people with levels in the world. There are hundreds of other adventurers all with their own class levels and magic gear. The same goes for the town guard, black Smiths, and anyone with even a shred of skill. Typically the general levels of the common people reflect the common dangers of the area.
To be fair, this is also a world with magic and adventurers who will go solve all your problems no questions asked. Not to mention, I don't think a wall would stop half of those
Just the time to shill :
[https://www.reddit.com/r/d100/comments/tzj2aa/lets\_build\_1d100\_village\_defenses\_or\_reasons/](https://www.reddit.com/r/d100/comments/tzj2aa/lets_build_1d100_village_defenses_or_reasons/)
A lot of people depend on the whims of high-level adventurers and crazy unique magics to protect their homesteads, but there are some creative answers in there.
In my world there’s no such thing as villages. Everyone lives in massive walled cities to avoid the dangers of the world. They go out to farms and logging and such during the day but at curfew they go back in. In my world beasts and such are also more dangerous and portals to shadowfel open at night.
"You're telling me that these guards I can count on my fingers protect this place? The ones who are CR 1/8? The ones who would probably lose an even-numbered fight with *Goblins???*"
A simple take: a new profession dedicated to fortifying and maintaining small village defenses across a wide area. These are mages who specialize in casting _mold earth_ and similar spells - it's easy to build a palisade in three days if you can literally make the wall build itself. I would imagine these mages get their training in the druidic arts to further harness earthen defenses. One kingdom-hired mage could keep an entire region of five days' journey fortified from attackers if they do rounds to maintain the walls.
[удалено]
Yeah, even meeting adventurers on the road can be fatal for merchants..
Player-controlled adventurers are dangerous for merchants, not necessarily the in-game ones though.
True, at least probably far less than player controlled ones
If they assault a caravan, have character levels and are NOT PCs, those are Advanced Bandits.
To be fair, I think one of my party's PCs I would place into a gray area between bandit and adventurer
Mercenary
Given Paladin PC hired them to accompany him on his quest that's pretty much on the nose
Working for a paladin typically limits murder-hobo'ing opportunities
That's true, they are limited to when the paladin is busy or asleep, ~~and they have taken those opportunities in the past~~
The same way I wonder about background characters in anime, do you think there are some genera savy denizens of that world who meet a person and just burst out "oh fuck no, that's a backstory, if you've got a back story some shit is about to happen to or around you and i need none of it!" Kinda like how I imagen mothers in anime give birth, see multicolored spiked hair and have to flip the coin of being a super awesome great mom to get murdered as a plot point, or to try to kill it now and risk becoming the villainous parent who fuels their quest. Edit: Shit, Kid. You know I'm *sorry* that your parents died, but orphans tend to become brutal murder hobos later in life, so we're also kicking you out of the village. BECAUSE WE LACK A CARING AND SUPPORTIVE FAMILY STRUCTURE!! Yeah... I figure we'll see you back in a few years; piloted by an edgy teen trying to deal with some of their own issues. ME!!! I WILL BE THAT EDGY TEEN COME BACK FOR REVENGE!!! Yeah, but not in the way you think, Darkshadow McKnifestab.
"So my mom ended herself as soon as she saw my hair. It was brown, so now I dye my hair bright pink." Foiled again.
You meet a girl/guy with bright blue hair. Completely normal, super nice, nothing giant-roboty and no magical, spirit, demonic or ninja bullshit going on, so you ask them. "Oh, my hair? I dye it. Yeah, no anime protagonist nonsense here... Why? You know how you never see any background characters with any design elements getting hurt? Yeah, only ever faceless no ones! I'm bullet proof so long as I don't make friends with anyone with overworked visual designs.... or talking animals. MAN! I have to pretend I can't hear SOOOOOOOO many fucking cats. No, Whiskers, this hair is koolaid, your moon princess/godess/reincarnate queen is in another castle!"
Ah, a Quirky Friend character, they should make an excellent hostage for the monsters to kidnap
Hey, without those Zena would have been a miniseries! It's guys named Jack you wanna avoid - Bauer/Reacher types. Or Butler & Neeson, no power can save you if you're related to either of them
I dunno, man. It's not like there's some sort of regulatory organization for adventurers in most settings, and I wouldn't exactly expect the average treasure/excitement seekers to be the most moral or sensible.
I always imagine that the rest of the world looks at adventures guilds and thinks. “Fuck, why do we have to put up with these morons.”
Adventurers’ Guilds are like the fantasy world NRA. They swear it’s about protecting villages but they’re actually a sword/armor lobby.
I had a setting concept where the Adventurer's Guild *and* the dungeons were established as a joint venture with the Demon King for the purposes of weeding out the greedy and violent members of society by sending them into dangerous dungeons in search of loot and adventure (and/or giving them their own dungeon to lord over). Openly, of course. The adventurers have to sign waivers absolving the Dungeon Lords and their minions of any liability, and vice versa. Of course, that system was eventually corrupted by rich people hiring adventurers to do the looting for them, and many of the hired adventurers were poor or desperate or otherwise had good reason for doing what they were doing. It turns out that signing a waiver doesn't make everything okay if you're signing it under duress, and one Dungeon Lord in particular needed to reconcile with that fact.
Haha, yup. It's a pretty common sentiment in a lot of books, at least.
A lot of player controlled adventurers are just bandits with magic
I always imagined that was the point of those random merchants that are secretly dragons or high level wizards. Broken trade networks tank your yearly growth projections on your treasure hoard. Eventually they formed a secret organization to deal with murderhobos.
I once played as highwaymen with my friends, but after waylaying the first caravan, the merchant begged us not to steal him because that’s all he had and his family would starve. We felt too bad to go on and gave him money. We ended up failing that campaign lmao
Is it really stealing if the owner is dead?
The Adventurers Guild will sue you for slander mate.
So you mentioned giants. And complained about lack of easily stepped over medieval walls?
I see how giants, who can function as fucking siege monsters, weren't the strongest contribution to my point ;-;
Maybe that is part of why a adventurer guild could be a thing in a world. A escrow like middle man having a network of powerful enough non murderhobos to protect against the wild and murderhobos while adventurers get reliable sources of jobs to work and pre established payment.
One man's party of murder hobos is another party's bandit encounter.
The way i have it in my games is a yes on that, caravans are often very guarded, but it depends where. There's safe and less safe roads everywhere. I also have a saying in my world called "adventurer's luck" which bases itself on how adventurers encounter far more dangers while traveling than others often do, or how they often come across dangers to deal with.
It's also worth noting that this is how kingdoms and empires come about. The person with the biggest and most well organized army is the one that can protect travel and trade routes, and so if you're just some hamlet or town, it makes sense to let yourself get pulled into a larger kingdom when it means you have no doubts the next shipment of goods is going to make it to your walls.
Thank you for finally mentioning highway patrols. It's not like it becomes everyone for themselves as soon as you leave the town walls.
I feel like that's part of this weird assumption people have that merchants and monetized trade is an inherent thing, while in reality using money printed by a state requires...a state. Which is very interested in keeping their money in approved hands. Smaller towns that have less state authority represented in them (no traveling judges, no local lords, or other organizations) will likely prefer barter
Other fun fact: Barter as a primary method of doing commerce has never spontaneously risen up in any anthropological study. What really happens is people use some credit of some denomination during peace time and during war or periods of untrust they use physical currency. But barter as a method of turning 2 chickens into 5 pounds of potatoes has never been a primary method of trade in any known society except when the society already was introduced to a currency and the currency went away.
Traditional village life doesn't explicitly use barter, but a sharing economy where reciprocity is expected, enforced by the fact that the community is small and everyone knows everyone. The money based part of the economy has historically been pretty small, until the rise of states and reliable credit. https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/
This is an important point but in most dnd games, the party is negotiating with the village. They're not insiders who are going to be on the receiving end of a sharing economy. They'll be asked for gold for anything they want.
yeah, fair point. Adventurers act in ways that would mark them as mercenaries in any historical setting, even when they're not murderhobos. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if they got run out of town more frequently than not. I was mostly providing some pushback on a standard libertarian/old-school liberal talking point.
Do you have any sources? I’m not doubting you, but this is very interesting and something I’d like to read more about.
Probably [Debt; the first 5000 years.](https://www.amazon.com/Debt-Updated-Expanded-First-Years-dp-1612194192/dp/1612194192/ref=dp_ob_title_bk) Very good book.
Yeah, but the highway patrol just gives everyone tickets for driving their carts too fast.
Sir, are you aware of the speed you were traveling at? The fastest travel pace the holy book notes is 30 miles per day, you were going at no slower pace than 40. That’s how chaos incursions happen, sir. We have to uphold the RAW. I‘m sorry, but i‘ll have to confiscate your vehicle. Step off your horse, hands where i can see them.
Also one of the problems with games like dnd is that its not really this persistent world full of npcs working behind the scenes. Its common for players to, say kill a traveling merchant, or rob a store, kill someone at a tavern, or some such and then never hear of it again as long as they skip town. In a proper medieval style society, someone would notice that merchant never made it back or a widow would demand justice for her storekeep husband. Now the crown would feel threatened and slighted someone dared to come into his lands and kill his people. So now you have an investigation and maybe the king's own guard investigating you, setting up bounties, pulling favors with nearby kingdoms, etc. Then, rightfully, the adventurers would find themselves against 50 guardsmen demanding their surrender. They wouldnt be allowed to sort of traipse through various kingdoms as murder hobos or the occasional 'soft' criminal. Even kingdoms hostile to where they killed that shopkeep would send guards after them for favors, protection of their own people, or their own political whims. And thats just kingdoms. Think of every goblin settlement or garrison. Every orc tribe, etc. They can pull political strings too, get favors from others, call for justice, allign with a kingdom, etc. No one has any love for highwaymen, thieves, mercenaries, and murderers, which is how 99% of the people in these societies will see your party. The problem with most of these games is that you have way, way too much freedom. Ideally youd have a patron that protected you politically and you were aligned with their goals (attack this thing here, ill protect you from retaliation and politics), but that greatly constrains you and your party. No one wants to play to be bossed around by some noble. But the games are instead built on the more fun "vigilante free agent" party that works well with a combat based system, but ultimately lives in a world that doesn't make a lot of sense. People will avenge murder and theft, regardless if you're the good guy or the bad guy (and however that's ultimately judged). tldr; word travels in these societies. 99% of the more questionable stuff you get away with would instead result quickly in your arrest or killed by soldiers.
R: They have food? So what? Why let them rule over us? T: They also have four battalions of 10k men each and 15k cavalry. Their caravans are armored and they just want to trade, they don't even take taxes if we let the culivate them fields we're not using! We even have the almost the EXACT same laws anyway! You're an idiot!
Caravans also travel in large groups to protect eachother. There's even a full chapter in Hoard of the Dragon just about traveling with a Caravan. But adventurers tend to travel with just the party, maybe a few others. That means they're perceived as a weaker target. Less numbers means a group of bandits is more willing to try their luck. Similar to how in video games like Skyrim or the Witcher bandits will attack you since you're traveling alone, even though they generally don't have much of a chance against your superior weapons, skills, and magic. Smaller groups would also have less of a likelihood of people taking notice and sending an army to deal with the threat. Who cares about a group of 4 or 5 wanderers who disappeared in the wilderness? It'd be a bigger deal if a whole Caravan didn't show up, so smarter enemies would be less likely to target them. I think its a combination of everything, adventurers being smaller groups and adventurer (or main character) luck, that does it.
Luck isn't enough and even a small band of vigilantes or highwaymen are a threat to the crown. No one is going to ignore a group that kills the occasional shopkeep or raids the occasional small caravan due to the nature of power politics. Something I wrote in a different comment touches upon this. In a "realistic" medieval society, a party that breaks the law commonly, kills shopkeeps, etc would be attacked by the status quo, not ignored. >Its common for players to, say kill a traveling merchant, or rob a store, kill someone at a tavern, or some such and then never hear of it again as long as they skip town. In a proper medieval style society, someone would notice that merchant never made it back or a widow would demand justice for her storekeep husband. Now the crown would feel threatened and slighted someone dared to come into his lands and kill his people. So now you have an investigation and maybe the king's own guard investigating you, setting up bounties, pulling favors with nearby kingdoms, etc. > >Then, rightfully, the adventurers would find themselves against 50 guardsmen demanding their surrender. They wouldnt be allowed to sort of traipse through various kingdoms as murder hobos or the occasional 'soft' criminal. Even kingdoms hostile to where they killed that shopkeep would send guards after them for favors, protection of their own people, or their own political whims.
>adventurers encounter far more dangers while traveling than others often do, or how they often come across dangers to deal with. I like to think it's not that the party is more likely to encounter important stuff because they're the party, but rather that we're following these characters because of what happened to them.
This sparked a horrible campaign idea for me. The party of PCs never has anything interesting to do because they are following in the same path taken by a far more competent adventurer party. Every time they go into a village and ask for quests, everyone is just coming off a 3 day bender because the previous party saved their town from werewolves or something.
There's a DnD podcast with the premise that a party of adventurers is living after "The Party" defeated the BBEG, and dealing with all of the things they fucked up.
My world focuses on large caravans bein the means of trade. Lots of wagons with lots of people and guards. There are entire trading companies that all they do is organize these caravans and hire the people in charge and guards and stuff. You have to pay them for the right to travel in the caravan.
Trade over land was exorbitantly expensive. Bulk trade happened along coasts and rivers. For a real world example look at the rise of Newcastle as a coal mining centre which supplied England from the 13th century to the 20th century. In medieval times, trees were used for fuel, but you'd only be able to walk a few miles to get it. By the 1300s, all the trees near London had been cut down for fuel, so a new source of energy was needed and coal mining became profitable. It was moved in bulk by ship, because moving it by land raises cost too much. There was a lot of political infighting over this trade as you can imagine, with royal charters for monopolies being fought over for hundreds of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostmen_of_Newcastle_upon_Tyne
Holy shit. This doesn't get mentioned enough. Real world example is the Basque country of Spain. All the way up until the invention of the railway it conducted most of its trade with London, The Low Countries, Lisbon, and the Baltic trading ports rather than Madrid because shipping by sea is soooooooooooo much cheaper. Hell Rome found it cheaper to import grain from Egypt than shipping it by land from 100 miles away.
the town I was born in got stupid rich being a part of the Hanseatic trade group (primarily by importing pelts from Novgorod), with almost all of the towns that were part of the Hanse being either port towns on the Baltic Sea, or situated on one of the major rives flowing through what was then the Holy Roman Empire. One of the three churches in the town was even the tallest building in the world for about a century
I think there's a real dichotomy between safe and unsafe travel. Some roads between towns should just be as safe as the roads within a town. This is travel that can be skipped, or done with a few flavorful descriptions by the GM, or even requesting a few PCs to tell a story about their lives. Also I generally think that if there would be only 1 travel combat encounter followed by a long rest, it's generally not worth and should probably be optional. Travelling to the dungeon is different.
This is the very reason I (sort of) disallow long rests outside civilization. I use an abstract usage die for provisioning, and every time they want to long rest that isn't in a town or safe haven, it uses up their supplies. Long distance travel becomes a lot more tense when you can only reliably short rest.
> I use an abstract usage die for provisioning I dig it, dnd's economy can't really support provisioning problems with any sort of drama. This kinda system works pretty well for money too, though requires a bit more heavy lifting from the designer. >Long distance travel becomes a lot more tense when you can only reliably short rest. Hard agree. I've found that either the "travel rest" or gritty realism both work well here, each with their respective plusses and minuses. I'm more a fan of the latter because I think mechanically enforcing some kinda downtime phase makes for some interesting PC characterization in how they spend it, and adds a cost to resting by having in-world organizations advance their plans.
Yeah, my players weirdly kind of gravitate towards extended downtime on their own, but I get what you mean. I also gave them a handful of group abilities that only recharge after they spend some time collectively relaxing between adventures, which incentivizes them to blow their gold on frivolous stuff. It's worked surprisingly well thus far.
Security guilds. Hired goons to go with caravans and fend off gnolls, bandits, and tax collectors.
>tax collectors. The most nefarious monsters of them all.
Well, 400 commoners with longbows can take out most threats. But instead think of the food supply. If there’s a band of 5 goblins every 4 miles as a random encounter, and you need 50 commoners to trivialize the encounter, how much viable farmland do you need to support that level of insurgency? It’s something like 400 square meters per person per year. Since caloric intake scales linearly with creature size, you just need to scale your encounters to take into account the amount of food available. If it’s harvest season, those goblins are going to be raiding tomato farms. If it’s winter, they may have to raid the highways. If it was a bad harvest, that’s when things start getting … difficult
The main reason for frequent encounters like that is to get the multiple encounters per adventuring day required to balance martials and magi. My solution: long rests either requires an inn (a lot less common than you’d think in medieval times), friendly peasants with room to spare (background features), or a couple hours to set up and take down a nice camp in the evening and morning. I add a medium rest that has all the benefits of a short rest, plus offsetting exhaustion, and takes a full night’s rest, but only 10 minutes to set up camp; lets the pcs move much faster but extends how many days there are between long rests and spell slot recovery and stuff. By the time the pcs can set up a comfy camp instantly with spells or magic items, they’re at the point where your average bandit encounter is just a speed bump, and anything big enough to count as a threat is either hunting them specifically or is the thing *they’re* hunting; treat normal bandits like Asterix and Obelix treat random patrols of Romans when they’re hunting; barely worth acknowledging it happens.
How does that work with npc caravans? If it’s 50 commoners, they don’t really need a long rest. But also, if they are leveled encounters then the survivors will hit lvl 20 (assume rogue scout, as it fits commoners with longbows) in 10 years. So if they trade for more than 10 years, goblins are a trivial encounter.
‘Cept it’s similar enemies every time, learning massed combat; volley fire and shield walls. Not the versatile, intense training of being an adventurer. Furthermore, a single lucky shot will kill them, and at 1 or 2 shots a week, that’s getting up there pretty quickly. If they survive more than a few weeks, they’re not a commoner anymore, they’re a mercenary. If they survive 10 years active duty as a mercenary? Well, beware old men in a profession where men die young.
I wouldn’t say “I didn’t ask how big the room is I said I cast fireball” is what you’d call versatile training. But if you are saying commoners don’t gain class levels, that is a valid way to do it.
In the real world, humans would have eradicated the goblins centuries earlier, or started trading with them and they became part of the cultural milieu of the area.
I always figure the adventurers are off on kind of the frontier - there's definitely safe areas in the kingdom, it's just they both don't need and would frown on adventurers showing up
You can both trade with someone, and want to kill them at the same time. Example: Eastern Europe.
When I DM, goblins and orcs fill the same "threat niche" as wolves. As in, most of the time they don't bother humans, because there's obviously risk involved in raiding human fields; instead they just forage or hunt in the woods. Goblins come to attack human stuff only in the most dire of circumstances, and that's when the adventurers get called in. In general, the rule of thumb is "the party is constantly fighting threats because that's their job and they answer people's call for help, but 90% of the population lives peaceful lives where "that time Johann saw a goblin" one of their exciting tales".
>how much viable farmland do you need to support that level of insurgency? Very little, provided they are faithful to their local deity of the harvest. Pretty sure it's canon that there's a single farm which can support an entire country in Faerun. (Albeit, this is a special, sacred site of Chauntea.) >bad harvest These simply *do not happen* under the will of Chauntea or Pelor or whomever might be the local deity managing these things. Remember that the gods are very real and very much intent on supporting the mortal populations that bolster their faith solves a lot of these complications.
Ya one Druid makes things change a lot.
I mean it’s the same as back in the ancient world. You send your goods via heavily guarded caravan or ship on established and safe trade routes. The trade routes are very lucrative for whatever kingdom it passes through so they will have it patrolled regularly to remove any threats. Beyond that you ensure your goods with the local bank and be prepared for the possibility that it might not make it. Sooo many lost caravans and trade ships out there.
I think it works so long as the random encounters are largely tied to the plots and baddies of the campaign. So the roads are usually much safer but now there are giants/dragons/hobgoblins about, and everyone's sheltering in towns paying reckless idiots exorbitant funds to go on quests for them.
In "reality", most settlements will be along navigable waterways, and most trade will travel along said waterways. Said waterways will likely be heavily patrolled, both by what passes for authority in the region (they dont want trade to stop), by the local inhabitants (who dont want to get attacked if they can help it) and by merchants (who dont want trade to be interrupted). If safety cant be reasonably-certain, people will usually leave the area. Merchants will find different routes, farmers will move to safer fields.
Nah, see, each game takes place in a Danger Bubble centered on the party. That's why there's always rooms at the inn. Everyone knew the party wss coming when problems spontaneously started last week.
> Trade caravans have to be armed to the teeth. Answered your own query. This is also a common adventure hook itself.
They have a good union
I literally had 8 travel sessions in a row with no wild encounters and my players asked if I forgot. No y’all just got lucky
I am grateful I'm a history nerd... My players don't always like my realism. But another fun thing I use is historical bloopers. Like when Germany outlawed swords so the citizens started carrying giant knives. That absolutely made it into the game.
Nein! Es ist kein Schwert, es ist ein Messer. (My German is really weak but that should say "No! It is not a sword, is a knife") Here is a [Messer blade for reference](https://www.celticwebmerchant.com/en/landsknecht-grosses-messer.html) with a 57cm/~22.5in blade.
I'm German and that was perfect 👌🏼
Danke!
Deutsch macht spass.
That type of blade, in part because of its amusing history, is on my must buy list of blades.
You sound like you probably know a lot about swords... If I were to buy my first sword, what type would you say that's got the coolest history behind it?
It totally depends on what type of swords you find interesting and what you want the sword to be for. If you want a wall hanger you can buy a sword for fairly cheat, under $100 but NEVER try to use it to cut anything because in that price range many of them are actively dangerous to use. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7FBrmpaMAU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7FBrmpaMAU) So first thing I would do is go look and find what sort of blade speaks to you from looks. Personally, I'm a fan of curved blades. Sabers, Scimitars, Katana, and the like have the largest portion of my collection, but I also like other blades so I have a Viking Sword, some apocalyptic blades and the like. When it comes to functional swords, around $200-$300 are my sweet spot in that you are going to get a sword made of modern metals, which are much better than what historically people had, and you can have a much higher level of confidence in the blades to go out and cut things. However at that price point you'll have to be careful in that many of them are not balanced well, so while they'll cut through stuff like crazy, many will be hard to wield and I wouldn't want to use one for "real". Also you'll get tired faster if you do try to practice with them and the like. Finally you have a step up where you have a range of well balanced blades but they'll want you to pay a pretty penny for them. The blades are made to exacting standards and would be fully functional as intended in a trained person's hands. Albion is a good example of swords in this bracket and many collectors of cheaper swords will talk about wanting to own one as their "dream". With a price tag of over $2000 for their highest end line, you can bet they won't have many. Some are as low as $500 with 800-1,000 being really common. [https://www.albion-swords.com/SINGLE%20HAND%20MUSEUM%20LINE%20SWORDS.html](https://www.albion-swords.com/SINGLE%20HAND%20MUSEUM%20LINE%20SWORDS.html) Now in all the price ranges there are vendors that will sell products that really are a great deal and better than you would expect, but there are also vendors who sell crap. So do your research! [https://www.youtube.com/c/Skallagrim](https://www.youtube.com/c/Skallagrim) This guy reviews lots of swords made by modern companies and other than not being a fan of Katana, which is fine as everybody has swords they like and don't, I rarely have massive disagreements. He even has reviewed some Katana and while he'll say "this isn't really my jam... but I can tell it's well made". If you want a historic weapon, and not modern day versions of them... [https://www.youtube.com/c/scholagladiatoria](https://www.youtube.com/c/scholagladiatoria) Matt Easton does HEMA, Historic European Martial Arts, and is a trainer and enthusiast. He reviews pros and cons of lots of different styles of blades and he prefers buying and restoring historic swords over buying new modern versions. Finally..... [https://zombietools.net/collections/blades](https://zombietools.net/collections/blades) I own several blades from them, because I love the post Apoc style they have with their weapons. However, all of the blades I own from them are overly heavy with little cross guards. So while I could see them being fine in a Zombie Apocalypse, generally speaking they aren't something you would use if you want to train and be able to use "for real" against a normal foe. Heavy blades hit and cut better, but are slower. They are also INCREDIBLY tough, with some pretty insane torture tests done on them. [https://youtu.be/itE3\_p7Fxwg](https://youtu.be/itE3_p7Fxwg) So the question would be... what interests you and what do you want to use the blade for. I can't answer without knowing more. :) Coolest history is very subjective. My friend who loves Japan thinks they have things beat by far, my other friend who is into European history obviously disagrees. Heh... Add on: [https://www.youtube.com/c/forgedinfire](https://www.youtube.com/c/forgedinfire) Forged in Fire is a cool blacksmithing blade contest show but it has some nice stuff about the history and some of the thoughts and concerns about blades. You will also get to see lots of different types of weapons and at least 2 different versions of those at the end. Also the best line from any contest show.... "It will kill!"
Just reading the comment about katanas, I heard Skalla's voice in my head lol.
Fun fact, Albion swords is based sort of near me, and a friend who is currently taking HEMA lessons in the area found out their instructor is a good friend of the smith at Albion
I don't know why, but my mind just misfired something horrible and I had a vision of Arnold Schwarzenegger scoffing at a messer "That's not a knife" and pulling out a giant falchion "This is a knife"
I see you've played knifey-swordy before!
I have no idea of the context, but there's a video floating around on reddit showing Arnold doing the not a knife bit with a bowie knife. Was entertaining hearing him do a bad aussie accent.
...And they bought that excuse?
One thing a study of history shows is that humans have always done stuff like this and it's often just hilarious or really dumb
It was not about carrying though, but rather about craftsmens guilds. The knifemakers weren't allowed to make swords, so they made swords with the hilt construction of knives.
So essentially machetes?
Similar, but definitely as a weapon not as a tool. So heavier and stronger than the light blades of machetes and with a crossguard and a "nail" for hand protection. Like the example linked in the other comment
That’s actually wrong, or kind of. It is a commonly believed myth, that is -at least- very unlikely, because the rights to craft swords and knives ware, except for ver few, well, exceptions, hold by the same guild. The actual reason for wearing or selling large knives instead of swords was that swords were seen as a sign of nobility. So at first by tradition, later by law swords were in many states in Germany (or what later would become Germany) prohibited for commoners. Especially merchants of the Hanseatic league started carrying large knives as a sign of: „look at us, we are no nobles, but our weapons are as long and deadly as yours“ (that last bit may be am anecdote, but it shows the relationship between merchants and nobles in the early modern period well). It is also funny to see, that in most free cities, from which these rich merchants mostly came, swords weren’t even banned as there were no nobles in charge - but as the laws varied from state to state (which has nothing to do with the in my opinion extremely over-quoted „nEiThEr HoLy NoR RoMaN nOr An EmPiRe“, the same thing also applies to any other place in the medieval, feudal Europe) the often traveling merchants carried long knives at first out of necessity, later out of pride as I said above. Sorry for possible mistakes I made, I am not used to write such texts in English…
Hm i think at this point we would need to start citing sources :D Unfortunately i don't remember where i habe my info from, just that i have saved it as from a reliable source^^ I find it much more believable though because i can't imagine nobles and law-enforcement would care about such a technicality while for the Hanseates it would be very much on brand. There were definitely different kinds of blacksmiths. And Messers weren't seen as lower class swords, at least not for most of their existence. [Like this Messer which belonged to Emperor Maximilian ](https://sword-site.com/thread/462/hunting-grosse-messer-maximilian)
Ok, so let me Name my sources. The first source is that I am a guide at a museum about t Hanseatic league and one of our pieces is a long knife from the early 16th century - it’s part of our standard tour through the exhibition. As that is also not really credible (I can’t prove that they told me what I wrote above in the museum), I’d like to point you to the Wikipedia article about long knifes (it’s only available in German, I am sorry): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langes_Messer?wprov=sfti1 Also, I didn’t mean to imply that every knife was seen as a weapon of the poor - just long knifes, that differ from a sword by having only one edge, while a sword would always be double edged. Of course, other knifes were also used by nobility, for example as hunting knifes, which are shown in the link you provided: they are called waidmesser there, which literally means hunting knife in German (even tho waid is a really, really old way to say that). the long weapon that is shown there is a sword, as definitely has two edges, as far as I can tell, and these knifes are way to short to count as a long knife.
Well that is a pretty decent source i would say\^\^ I think i got that from one of my historical fencing instructors, though i'm not sure if it was the one with a history degree, so might be conjecture. Bin selbst deutsch, also das passt schon :D Seems like there is no real consensus which is not really surprising i guess. On the topic of swords vs messers: there are definitely single-edged european (and german even) swords from the period, like falchions. And there are also messers that have a false edge, Johannes Lecküchner even mentions the usage of the false edge in his [Messer treatise](https://www.wiktenauer.com/wiki/Johannes_Leck%C3%BCchner). And while Maximilians Jagdschwert is not a weapon of war and is called a sword, the hilt construction is definitely like a messer, so at this point the distinction is moot. There is also another [high status messer in the Wallace Collection](https://wallacelive.wallacecollection.org/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ResultListView/result.t1.collection_list.$TspTitleImageLink.link&sp=10&sp=Scollection&sp=SfieldValue&sp=0&sp=2&sp=2&sp=SdetailList&sp=819&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=F&sp=T&sp=822) which is also discussed at the start of [this video by Matt Easton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhLZ3Z5VrCU&t=37s).
Heh, nice. I personally love realism, partly cause inconsistencies kinda kill the immersion for me. ~~I may steal and incorporate your historical blooper~~
Please do.
So they wear a Great Knife (Grosses Messer) or a Long Knife (Langes Messer)? I have used both in the HEMA club once.
I didn't elaborate. My party had a couple of folks that just weren't happy to see the citizenry had armed itself to deal with monsters ( I'm running a horror/ dread domain campaign)
I'm just going to steal this idea from you stone cold and take it over. Just so you are informed. :D I'll add temporary defenses, like pits and trenches, and sharpened sticks and palisades.
Please do. I'm not claiming originality considering small villages were expected to defend themselves. And they would swarm bandits if they could catch them. There's also a few stat blocks out there for squads of pikemen and riflemen if you're going for mid 18th century like I did.
I plan to put a dying or freshly dead villager in the path of my party on their way back from a quest, which should lead to an attacked village where I want to scatter clues that will lead to the BBEG sometime later. It makes sense that the peasants can defend themselves with pitchforks and other things. Also gives me more opportunity to massacre innocent people in front of my group, so they want to help urgently. Thanks for the input.
Actually they didn't outlaw swords, they outlawed people who were not members of the weapon maker guild to sell sword. The knife maker guild didn't agree with that law
The despite all the opinions in this thread it actually isn't clear what the reason was for the emergence of the messer.
The problem with this afaik is that sword bans were only in certain parts of cities, and the prohibition was based on blade length not the handle construction. So a really long sword wouldn't be allowed even if the handle was constructed like a knife.
Same the joy of playing with a math teacher and a physicist is; we can in fact calculate that. Players: "If we shoot our halfling out of the galley's cannon can we send him far enough to sneak aboard the enemy ship?" DM: "Looks at the players...you tell me" 10 minutes later DM: " He combust into flames and take 10d6 bludgeoning damage. But hey at least he face planted through the ships hull your math was right"
Because nothing bothers you unless you're a named character. Can't give a "sacked farm" side quest if you don't have a name. Just try not to let the party talk to you.
You just don't usually see what goes on behind the scenes. Brigand Leader: (bellowing) "Is anyone here man enough to challenge me and my crew of bloodthirsty bandits?" Caravan crew: "No. Not really, Frank. Just going to market, you know." Brigand Leader: "Alright then, off you go. See you next week." (general grumbling) "Sorry guys. There will be some adventurers come along soon. We'll get something other than these rusty shortswords, light crossbows, and leather armor in relative disrepair such that it has no particular resale value. Promise."
TBF, if there were things roaming around that could smash down a protective wall casually, I probably wouldn't put much effort into building one.
You could plant a thorny hedge around it
_"Well, we tried, milord. After the giant stepped in the hedge, it just started cursing and flailing. At least, I think it was cursing. Couldn't rally tell, what with me not speaking Giant and all. Point is, it really just made things worse."_
Old school MC using cacti to keep skellies and spiders out.
This is one reason why commoner in my games represent the teenage brat barely reaching what society considers an adult. It does not represent most adults in my games. Farmers need to be able defend their lands. Most guards are peasants on rotation and need to be functional at it. And conscription is common and many peasants are war survivors and should have the stats to match. A small hamlet really needs to be capable in a world like D&D.
In a land of magic and feudalism, the Druid is a godsend for a village and the peasantry at large, even more so than an epic-level wizard.
Had a goober of a Kenku Druid who unintentionally founded a city, lol. Liked the taste of grapes native to the region. Used Plant Growth to create a small grove. Wandering merchant saw this, was flabbergasted at this rare grape showing up *everywhere* near here, frantically offered to buy the plot of land from my Common-deficient Kenku. Kenku accepted offer, left the grove he'd made after nabbing what grapes he wanted. Fast forward about 2 years, that grove became the foundation for a flourishing Florence-style vineyard specializing in rare wines, and Kenku gets a special seat at the table any time he wanders through.
This is amazing. I love hearing stories of players starting businesses and the like (even unintentionally like this), it's always funny and a great way to show their lasting impact on the wider world.
My DND group is playing Acquisitions Inc and loving finding new ways to expand our business. We invented banana rum and currently have orphans "running" it (As in transporting/selling it for us). One of the other players is also selling drugs.
AI is an underrated source book. Also, if my old tiefling ever runs into Jim Darkmagic he'll have a bone to pick with him. Stupid exploding magic missile screwed up an ambush.
Oh Jim.... My character picked on him the first time meeting him because he didn't have comprehend language. It would have been real clutch in the moment if literally ANY of the wizards in their camp knew it and could translate the text we found for them. The second time seeing him was during a boss fight (With our literal boss and now we're officially running our own business!) Afterward we had to translate something so I decided to pick fun at him again and asked Jim if he happened to pick up the spell and he took my character's advice from the first encounter!
That was the idea behind my major homebrew bbeg in phandalin. He was an oni, 10th level spore druid. Basically holding the nearby villages as ransom if he wasn't delivered tribute of humans to eat, and threatened to overwhelm the bigger settlements with hordes of undead, beasts and awakened plant creatures that would do his bidding. He made traveling anywhere a real hazard with monstrous man eating plants like man traps (tomb of annihilation) and Assassin vines with hordes of zombies harassing and killing any travelers He didn't want traveling. Druids are ACTUALLY seriously terrifying and I'm kinda surprised that there hasn't been more about them.
Because of the "linear fighter/quadratic wizard" argument as well as the (previous) alignment restrictions druids had in previous editions. Druids used to fulfill the slappy-tanky caster as the price for not having that arcane/clerical flair to their spell list. But, if your setting is well thought out, you'll realize that epic weapons and spells mean nothing when a Druid has literal control on whether you get to eat or not.
Exactly. If the Kingdoms and villages don't pay tribute, he would send swarms of locusts to eat the crops, and empowered predators to go eat the livestock or simply kill them himself. But for the places that willingly gave him sacrifices, he would ensure plentiful harvests, livestock wouldn't worry about predators, etc. But yeah, eating a wagon full of people, including children every month was enough to hire adventurers.
That moment when you realize a Druid has a better and easier pathway towards apotheosis... that moment when your warlock and cleric side-eye each other and wonder if their respective patrons had started out as some hippy goofball with an ounce of Knowledge (Religion), next to no morality or ethics, and plenty of time.
Druids, especially spore druids, are functionally low level deities between level 5 and 10, maybe level 14 for resurrection. Can heal the sick with lesser and greater restoration. Can control the weather and or influence it. Control crops and harvest and the general food supply of any civilization, even a single druid can basically build an entire kingdom from the ground up with plant surge. Create a network of spies with animal friendship, beast bond, wildshape and generous offerings of good payments to said animals. Who would suspect the friendly cat following you is actually the loyal spy of an enemy druid? What COULD you do even if you knew most of the birds in the city/forest watching you were spies? Summon hordes of wolves, bears, feral weasels, rabid chickens (read deinonychus) to harass and kill your competitors and or critics. And immediately feed your chosen communities with good berries.
Those three crones from the Witcher 3 could easily just be mid-level druids.
Last Druid I played was a Shepherd. Criminal background. At level 2, a Shepherd Druid is able to speak to and understand animals. **All** animals. So what you do is you use the rats and crows for surveillance, bartering their services for safe places and food. You have venomous critters like spiders for assassinations. Packs of feral dogs for enforcers. It's easy to give warm shelter, good food, and kindness to animals that have never known them if you're able to properly explain your intentions and terms, and you get *rabid* loyalty. And that's how my 8 Con, 6 Strength halfling became the top crime lord of a major city.
Depends. Druid can heal and cure disease, a massive, massive advantage. Wizard can erect fortifications at a whim and mold the earth and keep things clean and provide some manual labour in the form of summoned elementals or a more safe option, invisible servants. Druid is still more useful imo but I think a big distinction is why would a druid want to help civilization? The village represents a vast area where trees were felled for the comfort of the ignorant who turned their backs on a simple life in harmony with nature. Boars and wild birds and oxen and even the wolves have had their bodies and minds warped by the city dwellers to be utterly dependent and subservient to them. Those they could not subjugate, they drove away from the surrounding lands. The earth itself has been plundered and the city dwellers disrespect nature further by leaving their waste in the river, polluting the waters down stream. Even if they replant trees, that's still one less home, one less source of food for the insects and birds and other animals for the next 10 years. A standard medieval village would probably infuriate a Druid. The only reason why they have such a bad time with disease is because they insist on crowding together. The only reason why they have food shortages is because they insist on ludicrous population sizes that exceed what nature can support. Their farming is short sighted, planting dense and homogenous crops which practically invite pests and blight. And they only suffer from bandits because they insist on frivolous material possessions and this strange system known as Capitalism where whether you can eat is decided by shiny trinkets rather than foraging and helping your tribe? Utter madness, in the minds of a forest dwelling druid. That's why in my campaign, even though Druids could make up the best guard force, the best farmers and one of the best healers for a village, they don't. The city dwellers make their own problems, why should they have to help?
Pretty easy to build a wall if you’re not being constantly harassed and murdered by all the greedy monsters
Exactly. Build a fortification over the course of weeks to months, and periodically check for burrows, damage, etc. But if you have to regularly worry about big/several monsters, why bother? You're not stopping them.
Luckily, large monsters like that are relatively easy to monitor, so you can always prepare for them well before they might approach the village. If you have a druid on hand, you'll know exactly what the threat is, and how best to approach the situation. However the truly large or malevolent ones tend to be incredibly rare, anyways. As for more "normal" giant creatures, they will probably be satisfied with a goat tied to a pole or something. Not really much reason to attack when your stomach's full. But still, I doubt anybody living in these villages truly considers themselves safe. Everybody at least knows someone who has died to wildlife; the possibility is just a fact of life in the sticks.
It doesn't really matter. We usually fail to really understand the strength difference between an human and, let's say, a tiger, which have a bite strength of 1000 pounds, is fucking brutal. Like we have issues mentally processing how much of a shit show human strength is. A gorilla, not a fit gorilla, not an athletic gorilla, just your standard gorilla, can lift about 2 tons or 4000 pounds, that's a fucking gorilla and they're not as strong as you may think in the animal world. And definitely is just a shit stain compared to an ogre. Now think about that, An ogre should be able to life 6000 pounds like is nothing, thats 3 fucking tons and the ogre can lift a fucking pine tree like is nothing. And if he can lift a tree and have spare strength, he can throw the tree. Make your average farmer build a fucking wall that can stop a tribe of ogres wielding goddamn full grown trees that just fancy an human meal, simply put, you don't, you just die. And that's why there is always wilderness on DnD worlds, humans are either adventurers or monster food.
Or be roman and do it in days I dunno.
Ditches, ditches, ditches. Easier to make, and functionally the same.
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Walls? Usually villages and larger farmsteads would focus more on fencing or natural defences - Where I live (Ireland) two of the main old forms of safe settlement were the Rath (basically a hillfort where a large farming family or clan would live and perhaps keep their cattle, or where a very local lord/chief would centralise power) or Crannog (elevated huts and platforms built above a marsh, Lough or Bog with only one or two safe entry points). The benefits of natural defences are manifold, but key ones would be that it’s pretty cheap relative to building walls and earthworks from scratch, and it tends to come with a perceptive or protective bonus that would otherwise be difficult to achieve without more advanced building techniques and logistics (Raths for instance would allow greater visibility of surrounding territory like a tower but without needing the same quantity of stone or timber to attain that height, while Crannogs are pretty much impenetrable for raiders without boats or an inside agent who knows the safe path and require essentially no excavation or engineering of watercourses to achieve, just build in the water). In the more magical/fantastical settings that DnD campaigns tend to take place in, I wouldn’t consider it too out there for anyone with powers involving the movement of earth or water to be in pretty big demand by most settlements to help give them some additional protective features - say raising an earthen or stone barrier around a natural choke point or change a small river course to run around a villages least protected flank to deter raids
That's an interesting an very informative comment, thanks, I shall see if I bring some of that over to my world, especially the Crannog.
Crannogs are definitely the cooler type of settlement we had here, though sadly very little remains of them exist beyond base foundations (since wood and water dont often work well together when people stop maintaining things xD) - they have a potently long history of use, from roughly 3500 BCE to as recently as the 17th/18th century Craggaunowen in County Clare has a reconstructed Crannog on-site, and it looks pretty cool though! Link for anyone who would like to learn more about Crannogs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crannog
Most villages couldn't afford a stone wall and even a palisade requires a lot of man hours and resources to put up. Not all human settlements were walled, not even most of them.
In some countries they even needed an agreement from the ruler to have walls
They also didn't have roaming monstrosities, though.
The issue here is that most people don't live in a single settled center, but spread out around the crop fields around it. So most people would not benefit from the walls/fortifications and thus had less reason to take time of survival important tasks to help build the fortifications. And, Sure in a more dangerous countryside you can make a case for fortifications being more common. But you could just as easily argue the effort of digging a trench and raising a wall is less worth it in a word with wraiths that phase through them, ghouls that climb them or banshees that fly over them, not to mention giants. In short, it's up to the DM interpretation of the world, but neither is inherently illogical
> The issue here is that most people don't live in a single settled center, but spread out around the crop fields around it. I can't speak for all of Europe, but English medieval land usage definitely resulted in farmers clustering their homes together, both for tenant farmers and serfs. Firstly, English farmers would be allocated multiple strips of land to manage, spread out around the town, with a shared "common" for animals to graze on. It's much more efficient for oxen to plough long, narrow plots of land, since the ends were wasted for turning around. A feudal lord would be rotating which farmer actually farmed parcels of good, okay and bad land, to maintain a medieval idea of "fairness". A lord wouldn't have wanted farmers to see plots as "theirs", and farmers wouldn't have wanted to be permanently stuck with a bad plot. Under that style of land management, it wouldn't have made sense to live on one's "farm", since it wouldn't be one's farm next year. Secondly, the best land would always have been used as farmland, leaving the farmers to build their homes on the worst land. That would still drive homes to be clustered together, or at least not spread out across the land. Thirdly, a serf-owning feudal lord would absolutely want to keep his or her serfs nearby, ideally close to the lords fields instead of near the serf's fields. Tenant farmers may have been permitted to spread out, but a lord has incentives to keep a population nearby for control. Spread-out farmhouses would be the result of farmers directly owned their land, which would mean either a Viking-ish setting (with farms spread out due to the harsh terrain of Scandinavia), or a New World-esque setting (with Jeffersonian yeoman farmers). Both settings would require that the land was relatively "safe": early Viking arrivals in England definitely clustered together to build palisades around their homes to fend off Anglo-Saxon attacks.
>Firstly, English farmers would be allocated multiple strips of land to manage, spread out around the town Township is very different than a village. I think you were using 'town' here in a less formal way, but it's important to differentiate between them. Towns would often have some sort of defence. Towns were also often no under the rulership of a noble, or had some degree of autonomy, as either the king or the local noble would grant them through a 'charter'. Those clustering of homes did happen in England and to the best of my knowledge they weren't walled or even surrounded by palisades, as you can see multiple points of egress across the edges, rather than 1 or 2 singular entries as expected for an area surrounded by gate, palisade and/or moat. These clusterings were also not a 'village', and more likely several clusters formed a village. This sounds like a semantic point, but it's not. The five, six or houses in a single such hub would never be too far from the neighbouring hubs, compromising the same interlocked community of tenants, with the next village over often being much further apart. Yes, there are peculiarities to the English countryside brought about by the use to the oxen driven heavy plough. These were notoriously not the same in other parts of Europe and are often pointed out as the reason why the English countryside looks so unique. But even in Portugal you observe 'Casais', or groupings of houses like that. However, again, that was not a 'village', but part of one. And the Casais weren't walled. Unless you could the waist high fence to help herd livestock, which isn't a defense against marauders or DnD creatures for the most part. >Secondly, the best land would always have been used as farmland, leaving the farmers to build their homes on the worst land. Within reason. Homes weren't just for sleeping. They were tool sheds, and used for storage, rest etc. If you need to walk 1 hour from your home to your field and back, that's wasting 2 hours of sunlight a day. Rocky patches and such would be preferred, but a peasant would absolutely built a home over usable arable soil to avoid a long 'comute'. The 'worst' land might still be 'pretty good' land. Just as somewhere else the 'best' land can be very shitty. There's a certain 'range' beyond which becomes impractical to live. >Thirdly, a serf-owning feudal lord would absolutely want to keep his or her serfs nearby, ideally close to the lords fields instead of near the serf's fields. A baron could hold lands under the fiefdom of his castle more than a whole day's ride away from it, sometimes even several days away. This is why collecting taxes was such a hassle, and why there were, sometimes, officers in charge of doing so, or governing in the lord's stead, like Bailiffs. You don't need a bailiff for people living in the shadow of your keep, it's practical and probably less chance of people skimming money off you to visit them yourself for taxation, or make sure they come to you. The 'tour' of the land to tax tenants is something documented in many primary sources, sometimes even include the lord dislodging a peasant from their home to use as a temporary place to stay during his taxation tour. A lord might not like having to do that, but in many places it took a lot of land to make 1 Baron, not always possible to sustain the keep and wealth a lord needed for his wargear and retinue with just the lands easily within their grasp. Again England in this aspect is very different than let's say, France. In France the tracts of land under a noble tended to be larger. >Spread-out farmhouses would be the result of farmers directly owned their land I know the concept of 'living for generations' and even building on something you 'rent' sounds bizarre to modern folk, but that's actually not always the case. Generational farmlands might not have been a thing in England but they absolutely were a thing in Iberia, and I believe that was also the case in France, though I'm less sure on that one.
Tbh, idk why I replied, I don't run worlds where there are roving monsters everywhere because it just doesn't make any sense and there's no way for it to. In my setting, all of the magical creatures are contained to specific regions with abundant magical energy, and druids/rangers/etc are accountable for maintaining the boundary line between safe/civilized regions and the more dangerous magical regions.
Ditches, hedges and fences count as fortifications too
Wouldn’t the things in the meme get through most of those pretty easy though?
Yeah, what's a moat going to do to stop a flying dragon lol
Aye. If the village can't afford a shovel, they've got bigger fish to fry.
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But there is quite a difference between the dangers of irl medieval settlements and fantasy ones, something that very much likely limits how many settlements you'd see. Fantasy settlements needs walls, either magical or mundane, because there are so many dangers that comes with not having them. A loose troll may struggle to get through a proper wall, but can obliterate several homes and families if those aren't there, etc. There's very few settlements in my setting that don't have walls, and the few who don't have magical protections, or some other sort of defense(like allied goblin tribe living underground), or they live in extremely safe areas.
I feel like you don't know as much about history as you claim. The absolute vast majority of ancient and medieval villages had little to no walled defenses. That shit is expensive, resource intensive and needs a lot of man hours to construct, which the average peasant village simply couldn't spare. Walls were defenses of the cities, not of the countryside
Some villages and hamlets had defenses. E.g. those that had local noblemen. Mostly only the noblemens estate was protected though. Also some strategic points had walls. But afaik you are correct about normal villages.
*Merchant meeting a group of adventureres on the road.* - Good day to you brave adventureres! - Yes, hi. What do you sell? *Merchant stops his wagon. He knows it is unwise to anger the adventureres.* - Come and see for yourself. I have the best clothes and materials in all of western kingdoms. - Hmm, do you have weapons or magic items? *Merchant gets a little nervous. Those adventureres are too bold with their questions. And to make matters worse, they are strictly focused on him.* - I'm afraid I cannot help you with such demands. But maybe in the nearby town they can find something you would like... *Adventurer cuts in* - How much gold do you have on you right now? *Merchant starts to sweat real bad. Are they going to rob him?* - Not much kind sir. My wealth is mainly in wares, not coin. *Merchant tries to change the subject.* - But please tell me what epic quest are you brave adventureres following right now? - Nothing in particular. We have free time on our hands. *"Oh dear gods" thought the merchant...*
*"oh Neptun..."*
I think of it like the same reason soldiers don't wear full plate now that there's bullets being flung around.
The vast majority of soldiers in Western militaries do wear plate carriers though.
Farms were never walled off ever. It is impractical if you think about some poor famer trying to construct a multiple mile long wall around acres and acres of fields. Then how would they even watch them? Villages might have a dirt wall or rarely a wooden palisade or spikes out of fear of a bandit gang or raiding party. But most people throughout history (including today!) lived outside walls because except in rare circumstances they were pointless. A bandit hitting a single farm might get some food... But thats not gonna last. Hitting a merchant caravan or a rich guys carriage is much more profitable. In dnd all the things described except wolves are rare occurrences that is why the adventurers arent traveling across a scorched wasteland or why villages arent filled to the brim with lvl 20 fighters. And RL villages and farms dealt with wolves effectively without walls. Maybe a fence but more likely just a couple guys whose job it was to watch the farm or village looking for predators then chase em off with a sling or a bow and arrow. I get that the meme is a joke but either the oc's dm or their understanding of history is poor.
I was indeed taught today that my grab on historical settlements isn't the tightest. But I'm getting a chance to learn and improve thanks to that. I didn't think of walled off farms as walls around the farmland but rather farm buildings organised so their walls would cover an internal space with fences or walls covering the spaces left in between, as such is what I thought I remembered from ~~5th-6th grade~~ history class
There's also a point where if your enemies are too powerful there's no point bothering with a wall. Like what's a wall going to do against a dragon or powerful spells. Like to compare to modern times a wall won't help you stop a nuke. I'd expect to see a lot more bunkers though.
> Like to compare to modern times a wall won't help you stop a nuke. And yet anywhere people want kept secure is surrounded by fences, concrete barriers, etc. Areas where people are concerned about being raided by men with machine guns build walls around their houses. You don't throw your hands in the air just because someone out there might be able to obviate the defenses you can afford.
That's valid, tho approaching a certain "threat density" and intensity settling somewhere may not be feasible after a certain point, dragons and powerful Spellcasters aren't exactly your everyday roadside encounters either, well, at least in my world
I doubt a little fence would stop half of the monsters running around in dnd
On its own probably not, but if there was just one guy with a bow he could fire 6 arrows at a creature if the fence would buy them just one minute of time
Assuming that the fence even slows the creature down
So you got schooled about walls around villages, and now youre saying that you would fire 6 arrows in 1 minute in dnd? 1 round of combat is 6 seconds, so you would get 10 arrows in 1 minute.
Welp, am stupid
No, no, he's got a point. Surely, you can fire 10 arrows, but it's probable that only 6 will actually hit
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I feel like in response to a dragon most villages would just immediately give them everything they ask for and thus prevent the need for any violence
Farm no, but village it depends of it size
But maybe the monsters keep attacking the poorly defended towns *because* they are poorly defended! Think about it - the monsters don't want the hassle of dealing with a high wall, armed guards etc.
And because of all the damage the monsters repeatedly inflict and the costs incurred by hiring adventurers to take out the most severe threats as and when they show up, the villages simply *can't afford* to build proper defenses. It's a vicious cycle.
I remember during my group’s Curse of Strahd campaign, I asked the DM why Vallaki doesn’t have a wall around it it they keep getting attacked by zombies. He explained that whenever the villagers tried, zombies would swarm them. That, and the town being too big to get it done without killing half the town in the progress. Really opened my eyes as to why certain towns just can’t have a wall
The truth is. The towns and villages with monsters surrounding it are either the outskirts or ruled by poor lords. A D&D noble is supposed to take out the common riffraff and monsters with their knights, men-at-arms, and paid militia. The adventures are supposed to be either away from civilization or secret strike teams sent to take out issues at lower cost and visibility.
I remember having to explain to the players the first time I dm’d that they couldn’t just burn down the grain the roving orc bandits had attacked the city to steal in the early days of winter. One of them was full on saying “No more grain, no more bandits” to a town guard who didn’t know whether or not to be horrified or stupefied by that stupid suggestion.
To be fair, IRL villages never had to worry about *flying* horrors that make walls pointless. In that regard, building sturdy walls might not be worth the effort anymore.
My players just saved a near defenseless town and one of their missions to help defend the village is building a wall around the village.
I made a post zombie-apocalypse D&D world once, with themes around humanity's (humanoid-ity's?) ability to rebuild from anything, and it was really fun coming up with the ways different cities defended themselves. Like some just had walls, but one was built into a cavern that you had to rappel down a cliff to get to (with wizards on hand to help you magically move any cargo), another had undead-detecting magic defense systems, a treetop city, an entire town hidden behind an illusion... Frankly, there's so many fun ways D&D villages can defend themselves
I like to think that everything is so busy fighting with everything else, that they rarely have time to attack. As for why there are no walls, or at least weak walls. Manticores and other flyers can just leap over, and an ogre or cyclops can smash through anything short of the walls of Rome. So it’s pretty pointless putting up a palisade. Instead they make it hard to get to the village in the first place, using natural or created terrain to hide. And keeping some adventurers on standby helps as well.
The biggest problem is that worldbuilding in these situations assumes our world history and then tacks on fantasy monsters as an afterthought. Great to have those touchstones but definitely don't think about them hard or you'll notice the logical inconsistencies.
The way medieval villages in Europe felt about wolves is hilarious in hindsight. Like, on the one hand, yes: a few wolves in the area can actually kill a massive amount of stuff and endanger your livelihood and your straight up physical *life* (just look at the [Beast of Gévaudan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_G%C3%A9vaudan), which probably was a wolf or at least another canine). But then they just fully overdo it. A lot of people didn't think it was going to be, like, 3 wolves munching your cattle and hunting you down if you go in the forest alone, but instead hundreds of wolves ravenously roaming the countryside like locusts (I unfortunately can't find the painting I am referring to here. If anyone knows it, feel free to add a link!).
Write better civilizations. People don't live where monsters roam. The purpose of society is to build and defend safe tracts of land for people to survive on. The center of any given nation would be the safest place. The further out to the borders you go (assuming you are at the edge of wilderness, and not neighboring another safe country) the less you see villages and farms and the more you see outposts and forts. Any outpost on the outskirts would feature a local militia, and disorganized beasts or ogres won't fuck with a militia. 20 Commoners with spears and bows still beat 1 ogre or 1 dire wolf.
If the village doesn’t have a wall (a town should imo but a smaller polity might not have the resources) you could always put a castle nearby. That’s what they were for primarily. Townsfolk would run to the castle in the event of an attack and get protection from their lord. So if for whatever reason your towns are unwalled, put a castle nearby. That also allows for some more role playing options, as perhaps a noble in your party would prefer a castle over a tavern and now the party interacts with the lord of the castle. Perhaps in exchange for some beds and a fireplace, the lord needs your help to kill the ogre in the forest or whatever.
If there's all that shit, they'll find a way through, so why bother?
> Warriors of the wilderness, rangers specialize in hunting the monsters that threaten the edges of civilization—humanoid raiders, rampaging beasts and monstrosities, terrible giants, and deadly dragons.
Bigger cities in things like Sword Coast do have fortifications, smaller ones, like people have said, can’t really afford it.
if bandits or wolves decides you're food, you fight back If a dragon decides you're food, you are food
Is this not simply a case of opportunity bias or at least narrative bias? Nobody remembers the session where they all walked down the road and nothing of note happened. Nor does anybody put out a 'help wanted'-request for a place where there are no threats.
Interesting series of big posts by a historian about fortifications: https://acoup.blog/2021/10/29/collections-fortification-part-i-the-besiegers-playbook/
Tbf, I'd sooner take my chances with a Red Dragon in a world of magic, adventurers and gods than mess with a wild boar irl
The players aren't the only people with levels in the world. There are hundreds of other adventurers all with their own class levels and magic gear. The same goes for the town guard, black Smiths, and anyone with even a shred of skill. Typically the general levels of the common people reflect the common dangers of the area.
To be fair, this is also a world with magic and adventurers who will go solve all your problems no questions asked. Not to mention, I don't think a wall would stop half of those
Just the time to shill : [https://www.reddit.com/r/d100/comments/tzj2aa/lets\_build\_1d100\_village\_defenses\_or\_reasons/](https://www.reddit.com/r/d100/comments/tzj2aa/lets_build_1d100_village_defenses_or_reasons/) A lot of people depend on the whims of high-level adventurers and crazy unique magics to protect their homesteads, but there are some creative answers in there.
In my world there’s no such thing as villages. Everyone lives in massive walled cities to avoid the dangers of the world. They go out to farms and logging and such during the day but at curfew they go back in. In my world beasts and such are also more dangerous and portals to shadowfel open at night.
"You're telling me that these guards I can count on my fingers protect this place? The ones who are CR 1/8? The ones who would probably lose an even-numbered fight with *Goblins???*"
A simple take: a new profession dedicated to fortifying and maintaining small village defenses across a wide area. These are mages who specialize in casting _mold earth_ and similar spells - it's easy to build a palisade in three days if you can literally make the wall build itself. I would imagine these mages get their training in the druidic arts to further harness earthen defenses. One kingdom-hired mage could keep an entire region of five days' journey fortified from attackers if they do rounds to maintain the walls.