Quote from: Omega;1135192Normal wild animals can be a threat too. Bears, wolves, even wild boars and the like.

Add the Hippogrifs, Griphons, Dire wolves, Giant everything, I bet even well maintained roads aren't of much use against flying threats. Long distance travel would be REALLY dangerous unless done by magic.

Quote from: Blankman;1135194Not at all necessary or even probable. Without engineers, our entire modern society would fall apart. Yet engineers don't run society.

Say, how many engineers can shoot lightning from their finger tips?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1135198Say, how many engineers can shoot lightning from their finger tips?

It's called an uzi. Anyway, Wizards  in TFT are a lot more toned down than they are in any version of D&D. A powerful wizard can get taken down by a single crossbowman, if he gets a bit unlucky.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1135197Add the Hippogrifs, Griphons, Dire wolves, Giant everything, I bet even well maintained roads aren't of much use against flying threats. Long distance travel would be REALLY dangerous unless done by magic.

Flying threats tend to also make great targets. Odds are any aerial predators would learn to avoid the roads too after a few arrows get short at or into them. Even bears learn to leave porcupines alone.

Quote from: Blankman;1135212It's called an uzi. Anyway, Wizards  in TFT are a lot more toned down than they are in any version of D&D. A powerful wizard can get taken down by a single crossbowman, if he gets a bit unlucky.

But we have guys with guns to prevent the engineers from taking over, if the wizards decided to take over how would you stop them? Your army, guards, etc don't have the firepower.

Quote from: Omega;1135213Flying threats tend to also make great targets. Odds are any aerial predators would learn to avoid the roads too after a few arrows get short at or into them. Even bears learn to leave porcupines alone.

Or they could learn that in those things there's a constant stream of tasty things...

Most individual predators don't get a second chance to learn things; and it stands to reason, flying critters probably have very large hunting ranges.  I assume it'd be a terrifying real possibility that they'd haunt an area... and ultimately get wiped out.  

The Marco Polo's of the campaign world have balls of steel and lots of dead mercenaries; the guys that follow the trailblazers?  They get decent stories.  Some of the roads and valleys in my campaign world have names like 'Griffin's Hunt' and 'Three Roc Pass' when the threats are long dead and gone.

Quote from: LiferGamer;1135223Most individual predators don't get a second chance to learn things; and it stands to reason, flying critters probably have very large hunting ranges.  I assume it'd be a terrifying real possibility that they'd haunt an area... and ultimately get wiped out.  

The Marco Polo's of the campaign world have balls of steel and lots of dead mercenaries; the guys that follow the trailblazers?  They get decent stories.  Some of the roads and valleys in my campaign world have names like 'Griffin's Hunt' and 'Three Roc Pass' when the threats are long dead and gone.

Exactly, but some of those are supposed to hunt in groups, so either in a region they learned to avoid the towns and roads or were wiped out.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1135224Exactly, but some of those are supposed to hunt in groups, so either in a region they learned to avoid the towns and roads or were wiped out.

No arguments here.

Relating to the topic in general:  The obvious one, true answer is 'whatever the GM thinks works for his setting'

The rich will travel, see things you'll only hear of, and the rest of you?  You might get to market in the nearest city once a year, or if you're called up, get the honor of serving in the lords fyrd/local militia yadda yadda yadda.  I go out of my way to avoid Flintstones worlds - where its just 20th(21st) century earth but with dinosaurs (magic), so I HAMMER the point home, for the masses, life is overall at the same level on Folia or Oerth or any number of Fantasy RPG worlds as it would be in 10th-14th century earth.

That said, depending on your rules set and the available magic, there is likely less (conventional) mystery... but more wonder.  (Greyhawk always did it for me, unfolding that map and having shit like the Land of Black Ice, Sea of Dust...)

I've always designed/planned my D&D and GURPS worlds where the rulers have (magical) access to the magical equivalent to awesome health care, long distance radio and spy satellites, and can travel, but it's limited, so the peons can't; what trickles down is knowledge and trinkets which means the maps are "Here be dragons... and here be orcs... and here be those gnome bastards..." where a lucky few have been there, but the rest of the world can treat it as something north of a rumor.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1135165But to travel 5 kingdoms away to bring those precious spices would still be needed no? If the people in the edges of civilization are in danger... Ho much more are those who go even further to do commerce?

As I understand it, back in the medieval period, taking spices and silk from China and India to Europe took 2 years and at the other end they were worth their weight in silver... or more.

Of course, the real world has less silver and gold than the D&D world. I remember looking this up to think how things would go if the world went back to silver and gold currency. Supposedly the world has mined, since recorded history, some 190,000 tonnes of gold and 1.74 million tonnes of silver. Given our 7.8 billion people, that's 223g silver and 24g gold available as currency for each person in the world. If we call it a 1:10 conversion between the two, we get basically an old pound Sterling (pound of silver) per person in the world - assuming we used gold and silver for currency and nothing else.

If this were done, most people in the world would never see a coin for most of their lives. But D&D's not like that, because it's fantasy, and Smaug in The Hobbit movie had probably the Earth's worth of gold just in his hoard. There are buckets of gold out there, and platinum, too, and nobody bothers schlepping around copper after 1st level

Which is to say, like I said to a guy earlier today wondering about the molecular weight of the hydrogen in the reactionless drive spacecraft in Classic Traveller: don't think about it too much.

Quote from: LiferGamer;1135226No arguments here.

Relating to the topic in general:  The obvious one, true answer is 'whatever the GM thinks works for his setting'

The rich will travel, see things you'll only hear of, and the rest of you?  You might get to market in the nearest city once a year, or if you're called up, get the honor of serving in the lords fyrd/local militia yadda yadda yadda.  I go out of my way to avoid Flintstones worlds - where its just 20th(21st) century earth but with dinosaurs (magic), so I HAMMER the point home, for the masses, life is overall at the same level on Folia or Oerth or any number of Fantasy RPG worlds as it would be in 10th-14th century earth.

That said, depending on your rules set and the available magic, there is likely less (conventional) mystery... but more wonder.  (Greyhawk always did it for me, unfolding that map and having shit like the Land of Black Ice, Sea of Dust...)

I've always designed/planned my D&D and GURPS worlds where the rulers have (magical) access to the magical equivalent to awesome health care, long distance radio and spy satellites, and can travel, but it's limited, so the peons can't; what trickles down is knowledge and trinkets which means the maps are "Here be dragons... and here be orcs... and here be those gnome bastards..." where a lucky few have been there, but the rest of the world can treat it as something north of a rumor.

Flintstones worlds, LOL. But yes, nothing breaks immersion as inordinate amounts of current year standards of living inserted into a medieval-esque world.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1135219But we have guys with guns to prevent the engineers from taking over, if the wizards decided to take over how would you stop them? Your army, guards, etc don't have the firepower.

No, guys with guns exist for lots of reasons, but preventing engineers from taking over is not really high on the priorities list. Almost all the guns were invented by engineers, if they wanted to take over, they would have kept the guns for themselves. But "engineers" are not a coherent group in the sense of wanting to take over the world anyway. There's no reason for Engineer A from Country X to feel more kinship with Engineer B from Country Y than other people from Country X. The same thing would be true for Wizards in a fantasy world.

And yes, most of the time, the firepower to take out Wizards is there, if you want/need to. Apart from other Wizards, as I said in TFT, even a mighty Wizard can be taken out by a lucky shot from a crossbowman. And a lightning bolt is more on the level of a powerful crossbow bolt, hitting one target and probably doing some massive damage, but after a few of those, your Wizard is out of oomph even if they've managed to avoid being killed in the mean time.

It varies wildly by setting. But in most sea travel is not much more dangerous than IRL and sea trade is perfectly viable with the occasional ship loss. Travelling to market in civilised realms is similar too - somewhere like Cormyr it is probably a lot safer than IRL!

In a wasteland setting like the Wilderlands or Arnor you will definitely see less routine long distance travel, and merchants will travel in convoys a la the 1e monster manual.

In Traveller, gold might be as common as in a D&D campaign because of asteroid mining, in the setting I'm working on, I have a D&D World in a Traveller setting using the T20 roles and D&D 3.5 and I thought why not wed these two settings together, thus was born the World Gaia, a copy of Earth transported from a parallel universe to the Alpha Centauri system, it has a 476 day year which is split I to 16 months, it is orbited by Ares - a fantastical version of Mars, and there are two other worlds orbiting the second star in a similar fashion, Aphrodite with Hermes as is moon. Aphrodite is a more primitive dinosaur planet with bronze Age technology and amazons, Hermes is full of thieves and merchants and is quite modern, Ares is a desert world with advanced ruins but reproducible technology equivalent to the late 19th century.

When gauging the effects of magic on travel and commerce keep in mind we do have a real world example, moving good by land versus sea. Transporting goods by sea is a least an order of magnitude more efficient in the medieval and ancient world.

As for information usable for a RPG campaign on medieval trade and travel there is no better source than Harn. Particularly the Pilot Almanac which is a product, and Harn Mercantylism which is free to download.
https://www.lythia.com/harnworld/guilds-trade/harnmaster-mercantylism/

Ars Magica has some useful campaign material for medieval life across its various editions.

What I do in my Majestic Wilderlands is start with various Harn rules for economics and then layer any use of magic on top of that. The main effect of which allow players to move good further and quicker and thus make more of a profit initially. The problem invariably are the capital costs which are considerably more than even a large ship. And also require skills that are much harder to find. Hence why  mundane means of transportation has been driven out by magical equivalent in my settings.

The problem of long distance trip in any medieval setting is the gang mentality fostered by feudalism and local attitudes. In a setting emulating the medieval period the forces requiring cooperation at a national level are nearly non-existent. The king or sovereign at first is the person with the largest "gang".  But as the medieval period progresses and the economy grows more sophisticated, kings and sovereign start to assert their authority at the national. Especially now they have more allies to make it happen.

The alternative is the Byzantine or Roman model.  In the eastern Roman Empire, the central authority never disappeared so long distance travel was a tad easier then in the fragmented west. So if your setting still has a roman style empire or a function remains of one then the limits of long distance travel are the limits of the technology (mundane or magical) of the times.

Anyway this came up in the last year while running the Majestic Wilderlands using my Swords & Wizardry variant. So I used the open content of Adventuer, Conqueror, King mixed in some of my own ideas, some material I learned from Harn and created Merchant Adventures.