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[Faces of Mu]

Got a few questions that the beached whales event raised for me:

I imagine that seafare, and hence whaling, is not an everyday and commonplace event in the DF world if there is going to be dangerous creatures planted in the sea.

Many RPGs seem to assume ppl get around like they do IRL even though there's plenty of random encounters and dangers awaiting people in the wilds. How often do RPGs send you on a quest to save the girl who got lost on the mountain top? Even though your characters are lvl 30 and die several times fighting hordes of tough creatures on the way up, you find the girl in tip-top shape as if it was a pleasant stoll through daisies for her? And THEN what do you find out? SHE DID IT WITH A TERMINAL ILLNESS!! (see Lufia and Star Ocean)

Realistically, how would societies and cultures evolve in a world where a multitude of sentient threats exist just outside town?
Wouldn't towns be like pockets of air in a malevolent ocean?
How can civilisations grow and advance when life is so vulnerable and so much effort and resources are used just to defend themselves?

I remember the rough living and warrior-centred cultures seen in the movie Apocalypto (I don't care how well the movie portrays history, just wanted a clear and recent reference). How would the primitive South American cultures have evolved if there were goblins and trolls and undead and unicorns to contend with? How would have Spain and the rest of Europe evolved with these threats and challenges?

How do people and societies (let alone single adventurers!) survive against almost impossible odds in DF? How is it plausible now, and what changes do you think could be made to make it more so?

[Armok]

Thats why the middle ages stretch over tens of thousands of years in fantasy worlds instead of a few hundred in reality, maybe?
But seriously, this is very god questions that usually is explained by "a wizard did it", witch is not valid for DF. So Toady, how are you gonna solve this?

[Necro]

They use elves as a buffer race.
At least I would do that.

[Captain Mayday]

A solid wall of Elves a mile high. On fire.

[Captain Mayday]

More seriously, though, I picture it as developing something like this, at least for humans.

Tribes abandon the nomadic lifestyle, settling down in areas where they are less likely to be savagely destroyed by monsters.
Cities begin to grow, clustered around the main areas, for protection. Outlying towns are built, building some sort of community fortification. This could be an official town building, fortified against invaders.
Given the sheer numbers of ancient ruins around, I figure this would have been largely successful until the countries began to turn on each other.
After this initial growth, followed by the bloody culling of various nations, new towns would be established by sending a group who would immediately erect a motte fort (a wall of tree trunks).
This would give them a safe place to build the central building, and they could then build a small village within the motte. This would obviously lead to most towns being protected in this manner, and so most towns would be built on hills.
After a while, the town walls would be rebuilt with stone, to encompass a larger area. I don't see any reason for a town to exist without a wall, to be honest.

I also imagine that all citizens would be trained in the use of bows, since the town would need to be defended at the walls.

[THLawrence]

There is also the issue of food. Farming during the middle ages took up massive plots of land. Nearly everybody was a farmer. For every person in the town who isn't farming you will need several farmers. These farmers will have to be protected and they won't have walls around them because one field would cover the area of a small town. There are a few possible fixes to this:

1.) Farm plots are much smaller. On the order of the plots currently if DF. 10x10. These plots would produce much more food then IRL. Then the farm plots could be placed in town.

2.) Have the people eat less. Since this is a game the people don't need to eat 3 times a day. Have them eat once every several days. This has also been done in DF.

3.) There typically isn't any reason for the creatures to attack farmers. A unicorn isn't going to go on a bloody rampage through the farmers house without good reason. Because of this the good areas and calm areas would be settled first. As space ran out they would move to the harsher areas. It would be these pioneers that would be pushing into the evil terrain. A subsequently get slaughtered. Then they would ask the bold adventurer to come and save them. Most wild animals won't attack without provocation or the chance for an easy meal. They will go after kids but not adults and will avoid towns altogether. In a fantasy realm the same would be true for most of the new creatures. Simply put most creatures won't go on a rampage and the quiet areas will be settled first. There may be some towns in the harsh terrains but they will be the ones having trouble and will often be where most of the adventures occur. After all lets face there will be more adventures where there are undead hoards, rampaging dragons, goblin armies and all manner of horrors then there will be where unicorns are grazing and frolicking.(That was a bit of a rant)

4.) The farmers are rather tough and can take on a random creature or two. As well they will have adventurers to back them up. They won't be as easy to kill as is often believed. Creature problems will only occur when the creatures are organized and/or very strong. Thus where adventures come from.

Any of these could help fix the problems of what to do with the farmers. The first 2 have been implemented in DF and the third one would be useful. The fourth one may not be implemented.

[Explorer]

I suppose that main roads between towns and cities would have to be regularly patrolled by soldiers. Most farms would lie directly along those roads. Probably almost all of the space along roads between towns would be farms (I think Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series described this sort of thing pretty well). There would have to be inns every so often to give travelers a safe place to eat and sleep.
These roads would be relatively safe to travel on, and the danger only really starts when you start to take little trails that branch off or just run off into the complete wilderness.

[ October 13, 2007: Message edited by: Explorer ]

[Funkadelic Jive Turkey]

I imagine survival would be much the same as IRL. All the supernatural stuff are still just that, supernatural. Evil civs like goblins just replace the lack of infighting amongst a single species (namely human history). And DF has shown me that most fantasy creatures aren't much more dangerous than RL ones. (Like I've any less to fear from a pack of large felines than I do from lizardmen?)

I guess the larger baddies are substantially scarier but they're rare enough that I don't imagine they've much influence on development.

[AlanL]

It seems the major dangers to travel are things like big cats and bears etc. People had to deal with those critters in real life too. I don't think I've seen much in the way of settlements in sinister maps in DF. Then again, DF tends to be more "realistic" than your average fantasy game.

[Misterstone]

I don't think the question should be "how would mankind survive if goblins were real and lived in large populations around the world".  The real question should be:  how would the goblins stay alive?  Mankind has been pretty ruthless at taking out other species and spreading civilizations around.  And I believe many archaeologists hold to the theory that we took out at least one or two other species of hominid along the way.  Seriously, how would the goblins cope?

I suppose one way to answer this is to look at how cities and civs are spread out in DF- humans live on the plains, goblins and kbolds live in the mountains.  Don't see a lot of human settlements (or any?) in the mountains...

[Necro]

But the the goblins are in many ways superior to humans. They breed really fast, and they are also strong and intelligent.

[Turgid Bolk]

Exactly what Funkadelic Jive Turkey said...this is something that annoys me about a lot of D&D based games. A lot of DMs throw the whole monster manual at you, as if all those creatures existed in the same world. But the monster manual is just a bunch of ideas for creatures to include in a setting. So if you play in an actual setting, you would rarely or never see most of those monsters. In fact, pretty much the only people who would ever see some of those would be adventurers, who make a habit of finding dangerous places, while your average farmer might hear a story now and then but would never see a dragon or unicorn or whatever.

DF handles this well, I think. The wilderness isn't that dangerous, most of the world is pretty safe. For the occasional lion or whatever, every town has some guards and militia. If you're an adventurer, then sure the world seems filled with danger because you're always going to the most dangerous ruins and caves, &c. The only people who travel are merchants, and they always bring a guard or three to protect them.

So, in short, each race survives pretty easily, it doesn't seem much more difficult than it is in real life. Probably the biggest threat to existence is war, particularly with goblins, but each race seems pretty well-equipped for that (except for elves, which I assume will get some means of defense in addition to their archers). As for other fantasy settings, some of that stuff really is ridiculous.  

[Keizo]

This topic is reminding me of the set of features I am most looking forward to in future versions of DF: War powers, including sending out scouting parties and organized battles/invasions, and having more complex relationships with surrounding civs. This is the stuff that some of the most well-known and entertaining novels of high fantasy are made of. Be it a "crappy" Drizzt novel or LOTR itself, the whole story revolves around war. 90% of real life drama also revolves around war. I am drooling for war in DF, because I know it will likely be executed just like the rest of DF was, and that is extremely promising in itself.

Back on topic, I completely agree that a fantasy world with monsters etc. is livable. It may seem like the sheer variety of goblins, kobolds, giants, and other baddies are all determined to wipe humanity off the face of the earth... but just the way we humans cannot seem to coexist, the way I always envision a fantasy environment is that all of those "evils" simply can't coexist either. I imagine goblins killing each other more often than they would target dwarves, and giant lions finding a goblin soldier just as tasty as a human. I often wish in my PnP games that more things like this occured: somehow evil fighting evil is more compelling than the standard "goblins invade human fort" scenario.