Quote from: Daztur;786053Middle Earth in Tolkien is absolutely post-apocalyptic which explains the very low population density but it doesn't seem THAT dangerous as long as you're not poking your nose in scary places, which is why Bree exists and why the dwarfs were able to travel around for years and years and years without dying before the start of the Hobbit. Dangerous, sure, but not so dangerous that you can't have prosperous unwalled villages in some areas.

One thing a lot of people forget about Middle Earth is that the shire only exists as this cheery, safe, prosperous place because there is an elite order of warriors dedicated day and night to keeping Hobbits safe in their little bubble. So in a lot of fantasy settings we get shires, but not the 200 rangers dedicated to the protection of each.

It's worth noting that the dwarves pre-Hobbit were pretty much penniless wanderers who traveled in largish groups and skulked and ran from anything scary. And Tolkien doesn't go into detail about their sometime home in the Blue Mountains, but one gets the impression it's not exactly the thriving, bustling, rich community we get in most fantasy RPG settings.

Quote from: Daztur;786053Same goes for the American West (and in a lot of ways D&D can really feel like a Western), which was again post-apocalyptic due to the massive die-off that hit America as a result of the Colombian Exchange etc. This resulted in a lot of small, unwalled and fairly prosperous villages with massive areas of wilderness in between. Again, certainly dangerous but no so dangerous that you can't have prosperous unwalled villages.

Good point - something like Quail Valley in VolK looks VERY like a Western movie setting. I think this is pretty much the default for American RPG fantasy.
It occurs to me though that the main reason IRL that Western settlements were not fortified was that the inhabitants had rifles, a more powerful deterrent than any palisade. Without some equivalent advantage over likely threats (whether Red Indians or Orcs), Western-type townships seem very unlikely to me.

Quote from: S'mon;786063It occurs to me though that the main reason IRL that Western settlements were not fortified was that the inhabitants had rifles, a more powerful deterrent than any palisade. Without some equivalent advantage over likely threats (whether Red Indians or Orcs), Western-type townships seem very unlikely to me.

Well, that, and the American West didn't have the overwhelming number of trees that made colonial seaboard stockades not only feasible but quite a good idea.  You need to clear the trees from about two acres of forest (on a very rough average) to provide a stockade around a space as small as an acre, and an acre is a very teensy town.

That being said, in line with Haffrung's cogent comment, you hit upon another distorting fact about the American West: it was at the end of a high-tech supply chain.  The western settlers didn't have to rely on weapons they cobbled together themselves: they were heavily armed with modern guns right out of the workshops of Springfield, MA, and Hartford, CT, hauled out by railroad lines from which few in the west were more than a few days ride away.  The settlers didn't have to solely rely upon themselves, but had the well-armed federal cavalry around and about -- and in cases of dire threat, large armies dispatched by the national government.

Quote from: S'mon;786063Good point - something like Quail Valley in VolK looks VERY like a Western movie setting. I think this is pretty much the default for American RPG fantasy.
It occurs to me though that the main reason IRL that Western settlements were not fortified was that the inhabitants had rifles, a more powerful deterrent than any palisade. Without some equivalent advantage over likely threats (whether Red Indians or Orcs), Western-type townships seem very unlikely to me.

The repeating rifle was a match or more for skilled bowmen, but of course once it hit the market Indian silver was as shiny as anyone else's (and Americans' propensity for selling anything, legality notwithstanding, goes back to colonial times).

Natives in some areas had cliff dwellings that served well as fortresses. In the woodland east, warfare was a pretty continual business; tribes unable to hack it got forced out to the west (if not wiped out).

I'd say  it's not so much what you've got as what you do with it to make the other guys reluctant to attack you. Anyone with a couple of revolvers could wreak a load of carnage on Main Street, but what was in it for him? Likewise somebody with less fancy gadgets in an old-time American Indian (or medieval European) homestead.

I guess I have not seen "most published D&D settings," because what I do recall is mostly well in line with its context as far as amount of fortification.

Quote from: Haffrung;786055One thing a lot of people forget about Middle Earth is that the shire only exists as this cheery, safe, prosperous place because there is an elite order of warriors dedicated day and night to keeping Hobbits safe in their little bubble. So in a lot of fantasy settings we get shires, but not the 200 rangers dedicated to the protection of each.

It's worth noting that the dwarves pre-Hobbit were pretty much penniless wanderers who traveled in largish groups and skulked and ran from anything scary. And Tolkien doesn't go into detail about their sometime home in the Blue Mountains, but one gets the impression it's not exactly the thriving, bustling, rich community we get in most fantasy RPG settings.

I wasn't thinking the Shire so much as Bree. Bree seems a very D&D sort of town in my experience (not much in the way of higher authority, far as fuck from anything else, rough and tumble but not really a war zone or fortified) as well as close as you can get to a Western town in Middle Earth.

It's just the sort of town that you're complaining about being highly unrealistic, but it's something that does make sense if and only if it's on a frontier and/or post-apocalyptic (and Middle Earth is certainly post-apocalyptic as are most D&D settings) while also not being in an especially dangerous location.

So the American fantasy baseline is a strangely cheery and prosperous post-Apocalyptic wasteland. Pretty weirdly specific baseline and one I don't care for myself but not TOTALLY unrealistic.

In an area that is not on a clear military frontier, you can have internal affairs that are not readily addressed with fortresses and armies - and hence more suited to the employment of small groups of resourceful adventurers.

Likewise, if adventure is to be found in unsettled wilderness, you won't be meeting much in the way of towns at all. The original D&D booklets gave me the impression of something like the weird wasteland in Arthurian tales, and of course that brings up the fact that the subject of the game is myth-rooted fantasy, not quotidian economics.

Quote from: Ravenswing;786392Well, that, and the American West didn't have the overwhelming number of trees that made colonial seaboard stockades not only feasible but quite a good idea.  You need to clear the trees from about two acres of forest (on a very rough average) to provide a stockade around a space as small as an acre, and an acre is a very teensy town.

Please replace 'palisade' with 'adobe wall' if you prefer.
Those modern Afghan fortified steadings/farmhouses seem like a good example of what you get in a really dangerous location, and the walls will stop AK47 bullets.

Quote from: Phillip;786411Anyone with a couple of revolvers could wreak a load of carnage on Main Street, but what was in it for him?

Death. Compare the Viking Sagas like Njall's Saga - one bunch of Vikings could go attack out a smaller bunch of vikings, set fire to their steading and usually wipe them out without losses. In the Old West Clanton/McCoy family feuds involved bushwhacking more than frontal assaults, because the weaponry created high mutual vulnerability.

Getting back to the lack of fortification in the Old West - the danger level generally just wasn't that high. The Apaches, if still around, might hit an isolated farmhouse, but they weren't likely to raid the town and suffer the losses that would involve. Bandits might rob the bank, but probably wouldn't try to level the town. Whereas in a Quail Valley type setting the local orcs could well raid town & aim to burn it down, with good prospect of success.  The fantasy village should really look more like an Iron Age settlement, not 1880s Arizona or 1930s rural England.

Interesting Western aside, most gunfights resulted in 0 casualties, and even the big 'massacres' are often, like... 10 people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Old_West_gunfights

Now, genocide against Indians is a different matter.

For the curious, my map-so-far is here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/803826/Gedwil2.png

(It's 6060 x 3700 pixels, so...)

Scale is 1 hex= 2.5 mi; the hatched green hexes are farmland in strongly seasonal climate (cleared woodlands), the medium green with tufts in it is farmland in more maritime climate (cleared grassland). Little house icons are villages.

And I just found out Hexographer doesn't bind 'ctrl-S' to 'save' so almost all the details on that png are... gone.

Oh my fucking God.

2-3 hours of work.

(facedesk)

Update:
AAAAH. Thankfully, since I exported the map and Hexographer DOES have an 'overlay on an image' function, I was able to very quickly recreate the details.

Quote from: Ravenswing;785984I'd say that very few settings -- and certainly fewer published settings -- have thought this through.

If you have wandering monsters and orc raids routinely rampaging through the countryside -- deep within the notional borders of nations, and powerful enough to require PCs to kill -- then the nations' ability to produce the food and luxury goods that the players rely on having in affordable abundance is seriously compromised.

If, by contrast, you have a countryside militarized enough to handle or cordon off such threats, a lot of PC plotlines go away ... and, incidentally, the PCs' ability to push around or intimidate schmuck villagers should be sharply reduced.

Most settings I've seen tend to have orcs and whatnot off in the borderlands... usually where there's some kind of Keep set up with the intention of holding them at bay.

Quote from: RPGPundit;787583Most settings I've seen tend to have orcs and whatnot off in the borderlands... usually where there's some kind of Keep set up with the intention of holding them at bay.

Same with the Majestic Wilderlands, Orcs tries dwell beyond the frontier of settlement or live in undesirable territory like mountainous terrain. There is one case of a region occupied by orcs that once a realm (an elven forest). But that just a special case of a frontier.

In the Elphand Lands, the individual realms are smaller many of them with a small amount of wilderness (a day's walk usually). This creates corridors where orcs and other "Monsters" can use to get around.

The reason for this is that population density is low due to the fact that the region is a mix of human, elven, dwarven, gnome, and halfling realms. All "friendly" with each other but also keeping to themselves.  Compared to the land area of the region this causes the population to clump together in a way that leaves large gaps between the various edge of settlement or control.

Think northern Russia in the early medieval times.

I deliberately contrived this to make this region the bog standard D&Dish/Forgotten Realmish area of my setting. Kept chipping away at the backstory over 30 years until made sense with the history of the rest of the setting and with real world demographics.

I will add that medieval russia and eastern european is a great source for making plausible demographics for a D&Dish setting. You don't have use their culture per say but rather read up why their settlements were the way they were. Basically clumps of settled lands with miles of true wilderness in between.

Then mix with the culture of your choice and you have a plausible D&Dish setting with orcs and other monster running amuck.