Quote from: S'mon;1038856Yeah - even IRL villages in dangerous areas had palisades, towns and cities had stone walls. In modern Afghanistan a typical single-family farm/steading often resembles a small fort. Settlements IMCs have always been fortified since my very first GMing age 11, and I routinely have to sketch a wall round the village in umpteen published adventures.

Only towards the end of the Bronze Age along with the advent of civilizations, and city-states, with armies. Then settlements were also relocated to hilltops and high ground so enemies could be spotted before they became hazardous. That would be human enemies, on horses.

In Northern Europe Late Neolithic and early Bronze age settlements were typically sited in river valleys close to rivers, rich hunter/gatherer resources and fishing grounds, and later were typically situated on hillsides overlooking especially fertile valleys where grain and crops grew naturally well. These early settlements typically lacked walls, and while there is lots of evidence of hunting and early agrarian practices, almost none of these early settlements had evidence of large scale conflict or violence. Most people walked at this time as there is little evidence of having domesticated mounts, although early Europeans did have herd animals as well as pets. This changed after the 3rd millenium B.C. with the invasion of the aggressive horse clans from the East.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1038909Only towards the end of the Bronze Age along with the advent of civilizations, and city-states, with armies. Then settlements were also relocated to hilltops and high ground so enemies could be spotted before they became hazardous. That would be human enemies, on horses.

In Northern Europe Late Neolithic and early Bronze age settlements were typically sited in river valleys close to rivers, rich hunter/gatherer resources and fishing grounds, and later were typically situated on hillsides overlooking especially fertile valleys where grain and crops grew naturally well. These early settlements typically lacked walls, and while there is lots of evidence of hunting and early agrarian practices, almost none of these early settlements had evidence of large scale conflict or violence. Most people walked at this time as there is little evidence of having domesticated mounts, although early Europeans did have herd animals as well as pets. This changed after the 3rd millenium B.C. with the invasion of the aggressive horse clans from the East.

In a setting like the "Savage North" of the Forgotten Realms, you have an area that has been lived in for thousands of years, with the more recent human settlements still present for several centuries. All of this is being done in an area with aggressive barbarians (humans and orcs) and many other less numerous but more powerful creatures like giants (including trolls and ogres) and dragons (there are three detailed as being within a few miles of Red Larch). I can't see dealing with that for centuries without having settlements that can actually defend themselves against such hostiles.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1038909Only towards the end of the Bronze Age

Obviously I was talking about culture/tech roughly similar to that in D&D and similar RPGs, so iron age+, with horses etc.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1038930In a setting like the "Savage North" of the Forgotten Realms, you have an area that has been lived in for thousands of years, with the more recent human settlements still present for several centuries. All of this is being done in an area with aggressive barbarians (humans and orcs) and many other less numerous but more powerful creatures like giants (including trolls and ogres) and dragons (there are three detailed as being within a few miles of Red Larch). I can't see dealing with that for centuries without having settlements that can actually defend themselves against such hostiles.

Not a lot you can do about winged dragons, except have bows handy for the small ones, and usually they are rare enough that a dragon attack can be treated as a natural disaster. IMCs villages have palisades for protection against the ubiquitous orcs/goblins/hobgoblins/bandits.

Quote from: GRIM;1038737That the societal, technological, religious and other implications of magic, gods, multiple intelligent races and so on is never really thought through to its logical conclusion.
Nor is life in a world beset by hungry, nasty megafauna ever really thought through.
Nor the implications of alignment being a real and actual thing, rather than a matter of perspective.

A lot of things

The extravagant setting of Vampire Hunter D resembles what I think a logical D&D world would look like. The wilderness is full of extremely deadly monsters and humans live in walled settlements. Civilization is powered by super-science and black magic. Monster hunting is an established profession.

The only thing about this topic that gets my goat is the notion that there is a typical D+D setting. Even if you rely exclusively on commercial products there is a lot out there to chose from. And if you can be bothered to spend 2 hours thinking before you launch a campaign, the game can go any any direction you like. There is a lot I don't like about the tone and implied setting that seems to have gotten locked in through the 3E-5E era. But that era also coincides with the OSR, which has provided a vast diversity of alternatives. And my shelves are groaning with things written in the pre-3E period, when there was also a lot of diversity.

I think we can generalize the critique to it seeming that D&D worlds act like the heroes and the monsters they face are rare and unusual things that have come in from the far and away to bother otherwise sleepy, picturesque towns, but then make clear that they aren't.

Looking back at the LBBs, it doesn't appear that this is emergent from the game (although lack of specifically mentioning whether towns have walls means little, given how space-constrained the books are). Underworld and Wilderness page 24 (under creating baronies) does indicate that the existence of keeps is sufficient to keep monsters away from the 2-8 villages within 20 miles of the keep, so that might be something.
[block]
Clearing the countryside of monsters is the first requirement. The player/character moves a force to the hex, the referee rolls a die to determine if there is a monster encountered, and if there is one the player/character's force must remove it. If no monster is encountered the hex is already cleared. Territory up to 20 miles distant from a stronghold may be kept clear of monsters once cleared -- the inhabitation of the stronghold being considered as sufficient to maintain the monster-free status. Within each territory there will be from 2-8 villages of from 100-400 inhabitants each. [/block]*
*Edit: okay, what am I doing wrong here?

Overall, however, I think it might just have been how the average post-wargaming era (cue Gronan and discussing marketing to 10-14 y.o.s) gamer thought of medieval towns.

Thenkew, thenkew.  I just flew in from Simmerya, and boy are my arms tired.  Take my lich, please.

Also the understanding of how a castle was actually a place from which to project force, rather than a hole to hide in.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1039005Thenkew, thenkew.  I just flew in from Simmerya, and boy are my arms tired.  Take my lich, please.

Also the understanding of how a castle was actually a place from which to project force, rather than a hole to hide in.

Since palisade forts in the old west were usually a rest spot and staging ground for the cavalry, I always assumed as a kid that motte-and-bailey forts (which looked similar) were used the same way.

Quote from: Dave R;1038795Another one:  low Strength, high Dexterity archers.  Wouldn't happen.  Real archers were known for their strength, which came from and was required for practicing drawing their bows.  To the extent that you can distinguish English longbowmen and Mongolian archers by their skeletons.

Yeah, well, this could be rectified by making minimum STR requirements for effectively using a longbow. But I don't think that requirement would need to be extremely high, either. Just on the high end of average, maybe.