| STANDARD DND The rules and story elements in the D&D game are built around a set of core assumptions about the world. Here are some of the most important. THE WORLD IS A FANTASTIC PLACE. Magic works, servants of the gods wield divine power, and fire giants build strongholds inactive volcanoes. The world might be based on reality, but it’s a blend of real-world physics, cultures, and history with a heavy dose of fantasy. For the game’s purposes, it doesn’t matter what historical paladins were like; it cares about what paladins are like in the fantasy world. THE WORLD IS ANCIENT. Empires rise and empires crumble, leaving few places that have not been touched by their grandeur. Ruin, time, and natural forces eventually claim all, leaving the D&D world rich with places of adventure and mystery. Ancient civilizations and their knowledge survive in legends, magic items, and the ruins they left behind, but chaos and darkness inevitably follow an empire’s collapse. Each new realm must carve a place out of the world rather than build on the efforts of past civilizations. THE WORLD IS MYSTERIOUS. Wild, uncontrolled regions abound and cover most of the world. Citystates of various races dot the darkness, bastions in the wilderness built amid the ruins of the past. Some of these settlements are “points of light” where adventurers can expect peaceful interaction with the inhabitants, but many more are dangerous. No one race lords over the world, and vast kingdoms are rare. People know the area they live in well, and they’ve heard stories of other places from merchants and travelers, but few know what lies beyond the mountains or in the depth of the great forest unless they’ve been there personally. MONSTERS ARE EVERYWHERE. Most monsters of the world are as natural as bears or horses are on Earth, and monsters inhabit civilized parts of the world and the wilderness alike. Griffon riders patrol the skies over dwarf cities, domesticated behemoths carry trade goods over long distances, a yuan-ti empire holds sway just a few hundred miles from a human kingdom, and a troop of ice archons from the Elemental Chaos might suddenly appear in the mountains near a major city. ADVENTURERS ARE EXCEPTIONAL. Player characters are the pioneers, explorers, trailblazers, thrill-seekers, and heroes of the D&D world. Although nonplayer characters might have a class and gain power, they do not necessarily advance as PCs do, and they exist for a different purpose. Not everyone in the world gains levels as PCs do. An NPC might be a veteran of numerous battles and still not become a 3rd-level fighter; an army of elves is made up of soldiers, not fighters. THE CIVILIZED RACES BAND TOGETHER. The character races in the Player’s Handbook all drew closer together during the time of the last great empire (which was human-dominated). That’s what makes them the civilized races—they’re the ones found living together in the towns and cities of civilization. GOBLINS, ORCS, GNOLLS, AND KOBOLDS—along with plenty of other races in the Monster Manual—were never part of that human empire. Some of them, such as the militaristic hobgoblins, have cities, organized societies, and kingdoms of their own. These are islands of civilization in the wilderness, but they are not “points of light.” MAGIC IS NOT EVERYDAY, BUT IT IS NATURAL. No one is superstitious about magic, but neither is the use of magic trivial. Practitioners of magic are as rare as fighters. People might see evidence of magic every day, but it’s usually minor—a fantastic monster, a visibly answered prayer, a wizard flying by on a griffon. Powerful and experienced practitioners of magic are far from commonplace. GODS AND PRIMORDIALS SHAPED THE WORLD. The primordials, elemental creatures of enormous power, shaped the world out of the Elemental Chaos. The gods gave it civility and permanence, and warred with the primordials for control of the new creation. The gods eventually triumphed, and primordials now slumber in remote parts of the Elemental Chaos, rage in hidden prisons, or float, lifeless, through the Astral Sea. GODS ARE DISTANT. Gods exist, though most of them maintain a distance and detachment from the everyday happenings of the world. Exarchs act in the world on behalf of their gods, and angels appear to undertake missions that promote the agendas of the gods they serve. Gods are extremely powerful, compared to mortals and monsters, but they aren’t omniscient or omnipotent. They provide access to the divine power source for their clerics, paladins, and other prayer-using followers, and their followers pray to them in hopes that they or their exarchs will hear them and bless them. CIVILIZATION The D&D world is a wide and wondrous place, filled with monsters and magic. However, most people live in relatively safe communities, and even bold adventurers need safe havens. Such areas are points of light in a dark world, and they share common traits. VILLAGE Most settlements are agricultural villages, supporting themselves and nearby towns or cities with crops and meat. The citizens of a village are involved in food production in one way or another—if not tending the crops, then supporting those who do by shoeing horses, weaving clothes, milling grain, and the like. They maintain trade with nearby settlements. Villages pop up within areas protected by the local rulers, or on land with a defensive geographic advantage such as a river. Some villages support and surround military fortresses and outposts, and others crop up as boomtowns when valuable resources are discovered. Villages can also become isolated over time, as kingdoms crumble. A village’s population is dispersed around a large area of land. Farmers live on their land, which spreads them widely around the village center. At the heart of the village, a standard set of structures cluster together: essential services, a marketplace, a temple or two, some kind of gathering place, and perhaps an inn for travelers. VILLAGE TRAITS ✦ Population: Up to about 1,000. ✦ Government: Noble ruler (usually not resident), with an appointed agent (a reeve) in residence to adjudicate disputes and collect taxes for the lord. ✦ Defense: The reeve might have a small force of soldiers; otherwise the village relies on a citizen militia. ✦ Commerce: Basic supplies are readily available, possibly an inn. Other goods available from traveling merchants. ✦ Organizations: One or two temples or shrines, farmer associations, few or no other organizations. TOWN Towns are major trade centers, where important industries and reliable trade routes allowed the population to grow. As many as half of a town’s citizens are part of a thriving middle class of artisans. Towns rely on commerce—the import of raw materials and food from surrounding villages, and the export of crafted items to those villages as well as other towns and cities. Towns grow in places where roads intersect waterways, or at the meeting of major land trade routes. A town might also grow in a place with a strategic defensive location or near significant mines or similar natural resources. A town’s population is centralized in an area surrounded by defensible walls. Its population is more diverse than that of villages—during the time of the last human empire, merchants and artisans of all races mingled together in the towns and cities, whereas villages remained more homogeneous. TOWN TRAITS ✦ Population: Up to about 10,000. ✦ Government: Noble ruler in residence, with an appointed lord mayor to oversee the administration and an elected town council representing the interests of the middle class. ✦ Defense: Sizable army of professional soldiers as well as the noble’s personal soldiers. ✦ Commerce: Basic supplies are readily available, though exotic goods and services are harder to find. Inns and taverns support travelers. ✦ Organizations: Several temples might hold political as well as spiritual authority, merchant guilds, some other organizations. CITY Cities are overgrown towns and function in the same way. Their larger populations require more support from both surrounding villages and trade routes, so they’re rare. They typically appear in areas where large expanses of fertile, arable land surround a location that’s friendly to trade, almost always on a navigable waterway. Cities are walled like towns, and it’s possible to identify the stages of a city’s growth from the expansion of the walls beyond the central core. These internal walls naturally divide the city into wards, which have their own representatives on the city council and their own noble governors. In some cities, shrinking populations since the fall of the great empires have left wards abandoned and in ruin. Cities with more than 25,000 people are extremely rare in the current age, but they stand as monuments of civilization and vital points of light in the D&D world. CITY TRAITS ✦ Population: Up to about 25,000. ✦ Government: Noble ruler in residence, with several other nobles sharing responsibility for surrounding areas and government functions. One such noble is the lord mayor, who oversees the city administration. An elected city council represents the middle class, and might hold more power than the lord mayor. Other groups serve as important power centers as well. ✦ Defense: Large army of professional soldiers, guards, and town watch. Each noble in residence has at least a small force of personal soldiers. ✦ Commerce: Almost any goods or services are readily available. Many inns and taverns support travelers. ✦ Organizations: Many temples, guilds, and other organizations, some of which hold significant power in city affairs ORGANIZATIONS Temples, guilds, secret societies, colleges, and orders are important forces in the social order of any settlement. Occasionally, their influence stretches across multiple cities, echoing the wide-ranging political authority that crumbled with the fall of empires. Organizations can also play an important part in the lives of player characters, acting as their patrons, allies, or enemies just as individual nonplayer characters do. When characters join these organizations, they become a part of something larger than themselves, which can give their adventures a context in the wider world. RELIGION Temples and religious orders are among the most important and influential organizations in the world. They’re likely to have a direct influence on characters who use the divine power source, even though clerics and paladins operate as free agents, independent of these hierarchies. Though the worship of the pantheon of gods is universal, there are no worldwide hierarchies devoted to these gods. A temple to Bahamut in one city is unconnected to Bahamut’s temple in the next city, with each having different rites and differently nuanced interpretations of the god’s commands. Most temples are dedicated to more than one deity, and a temple where Bahamut’s altar is next to Moradin’s might paint a different picture of the Platinum Dragon than a temple where he’s worshiped alongside Erathis. In the first, his protective aspects might be emphasized—he and Moradin stand together to shield the community. Beside Erathis, he might be more of town—or will be soon—to take it off their hands. The same applies to exotic mundane goods as well: No one in the village makes silk rope or has much use for it, but merchants making their way between major cities carry it all the time. Traveling merchants are also a great way to introduce adventure hooks to the characters as they conduct their business. Since they make their living traversing roads that are not as safe as they used to be, merchants hire competent guards to keep their goods safe. They also carry news from town to town, including reports of situations that cry out for adventurers to get involved. These merchants can’t provide specialized services, however. When the characters are in need of a library or a dedicated sage, a trainer who can handle the griffon eggs they’ve found, or an architect to design their castle, they’re better off going to a large city than looking in a village. These services are less important in the economy of the game than magic items and other goods, so you shouldn’t feel as though you have to compromise your common sense for the sake of game play. Of course, it’s natural for characters to travel far beyond their native villages as they pursue adventure. When they’re in the City of Brass, they should be able to buy even the most expensive magic items readily. If it doesn’t interfere with the flow of your game, it’s fine to expect that characters will travel to larger cities to do business as they reach higher levels and deal with larger sums of money. THE MAGIC ITEM ECONOMY Most of the time, characters find magic items on their adventures that are above their level. These are exciting items, and the characters have a strong incentive to keep these items and use them. As characters attain higher levels, the items they find might replace items they already have—the fighter finds a +3 flaming sword and no longer wants his +2 magic sword. When this happens, the characters ordinarily sell those items—it’s slightly more beneficial to do that than to use the Disenchant Magic Item ritual, because the characters don’t have to pay the component cost. A merchant, agent, or fence buys items from the character at one-fifth the items’ value, in the hope of selling them at a significant profit (usually, above the items’ value). Buyers are hard to find, but the profit to be made makes it worth the merchant’s risk. Characters can use the monetary treasure they find, as well as the gold from selling items, to acquire new magic items. They can’t make items above their level, and can’t often afford items more than a few levels above theirs. It’s to their benefit to use the Enchant Magic Item ritual for items of their level or lower, rather than buying these items from merchants, agents, or fences, because of the 10–40 percent markup over items’ value that these sellers charge. OTHER ORGANIZATIONS Organizations don’t always have religious underpinnings, of course. Knightly orders are formed with noble patronage. Like-minded scholars with interests in related subjects gather in colleges. Inns in different towns create informal networks and aid societies to help travelers. Merchants and artisans form guilds to protect their interests in city governments and supervise the training of apprentices. Criminal organizations of all kinds operate in the shadows and alleys of settlements. Military organizations can support any character, particularly characters who use the martial power source—fighters, warlords, rangers, and rogues. These characters might be veterans of a city’s guard or watch, a Noble’s personal retinue, or a mercenary company that travels from city to city as its services are needed. Knightly orders, too, charge their members to travel the countryside in pursuit of the orders’ goals, which squares nicely with the adventuring life. Criminal gangs, guilds, cults, and secret societies are prominent enemies, particularly in campaigns centered in urban areas. Characters might pursue a single villain and bring her to justice, only to find themselves the target of assassins from the villain’s criminal guild. Suddenly, they’re involved in a bigger adventure than they thought, dealing with a criminal underground that considers them deadly enemies. |
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