The "hero economy"

[stormhierta]

Assuming a 4E "Points of Light" world where only heroes have a decent chance of defending the populace from the countless evils out there, what would define such a world?

Magic items, available fairly early, can feed and host a group of adventurers without problems. So, what can a population really offer these adventurers to have them defend them against the darkness? Someone once suggested that of a normal population, about half would spend their time gathering herbs and rare materials which can be given to adventurers for magic item creation in exchange for killing monsters, saving villagers or whatever, and the rest would be farming and crafting to support the internal economy of a village.

What are your views on the kind of society and economy that would spring up around the basis of "Points of Light" and 4E-style heroes?

[virgil]

It's hard to not imagine these 'heroes' taking a more sedentary lifestyle and becoming self-imposed feudal lords/tyrants, the population of that particular Point of Light working themselves by their decree and for their needs. Forays into the Wilderness are done in 5 minute shifts once a day to renew their own gear and gain XP, because it's not like darkness is leaving.

The PCs are the only hope a Point of Light has alot of times, because if they can be defeated by the town guard, then the town guard can stop the monsters and they aren't in any true danger. Hence, the economy only exists as trade with the local lord, because the lord simply takes what he wants from the population because there isn't a thing they can do to stop him; and if they do stop him, they won't have anyone to stop their Point of Light from being snuffed out.

[JonSetanta]

Someone once suggested that of a normal population, about half would spend their time gathering herbs and rare materials which can be given to adventurers for magic item creation in exchange for killing monsters, saving villagers or whatever, and the rest would be farming and crafting to support the internal economy of a village.

Que brief montage of uplifting music and hopeful villagers, all striving to help those PC do-gooders.
It helps create an emotional bond.

... before the BBEG slays them near the middle of the movie.

This is all assuming the region is helpful, of course. Some might be too distrustful, self-sufficient, violent, or powerful to care.

[virgil]

If the Point of Light is actually tough enough to survive on its own, without the help of adventurers, then I would suspect all outsiders are considered dangerous vagabonds. Crazy enough to enter the wilderness, strong enough to come out; which exempts them from the social contract. When you can choose to banish yourself without forfeiting your life, then you are a person who can live free of consequences, and that is a dangerous person to have around.

That could explain why merchants buy and trade at such horrific rates, they don't like you, don't trust you, and don't expect repeat business from you anyway (either dead or off to the next town).

[Lago PARANOIA]

If the merchants mistrust and dislike you because you're so powerful, why do they attempt to piss adventurers off with ridiculous prices? I mean, wouldn't that lead to PCs ghetto-stabbing their asses and taking their stuff? And if they are strong enough to fend off adventurer burglary, why the double-standard?

I know you're not allowed to attack merchants in recent iterations of D&D because they have blue circles around them, but how do you possibly justify this from an in-game perspective?

[Lago PARANOIA]

I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer on how you can have a medieval agrarian society and have Points of Light. Would someone, for the love of fuck, answer me that?

[virgil]

Why does any isolated town under siege treat outsiders like crap? Remember, this is for the idea of a Point of Light being self-sufficient enough to not need the protection of an adventurer, and what's required for that to happen is for them to be very dangerous in numbers. It also means they don't rock the boat and agitate the Wilderness. Adventurers need to tread lightly or get treated like any other monster that comes out of the Wilderness, overrun by a hardened mob fighting for survival. Stabbing a merchant for price gouging is going to set them off fast.

Because medieval agrarian societies are a sacred cow in fantasy RPGs? I'm sure its origin is borne by the fact that feudalism discourages serfs from ever leaving the estate, creating a level of isolationism that's analogous to Points of Light.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Adventurers need to tread lightly or get treated like any other monster that comes out of the Wilderness, overrun by a hardened mob fighting for survival. Stabbing a merchant for price gouging is going to set them off fast.

Yeah, and after looting the merchant's corpse they go off into the Darknyzz and tell the peasants to kiss their tight-little asses.

In other words, it would play just like any other raid PCs do before they face retaliation. The question then becomes why would merchants want their businesses to become targets when they could have avoided some of it by charging fairly.

Because medieval agrarian societies are a sacred cow in fantasy RPGs? I'm sure its origin is borne by the fact that feudalism discourages serfs from ever leaving the estate, creating a level of isolationism that's analogous to Points of Light.

The point is you can't have hamlets and villages because they're surrounded by on all sides by monsters that want to kill they ass. And the people can't fight back, because if they could it wouldn't be points of light.

It's not even a question of whether peasants would even fucking revolt being sent to work in medieval death camps. They can't even live there without dying in a couple of months.

[JonSetanta]

You can't kill merchants because the "popo come get ya".
It happens in my home city every day.
Last Sunday alone, 18 people died very senseless and violent deaths. I guarantee citizens nor police enjoy the presence of those kinds of criminals, and any RPG citizen should be same (unless we've involved some bullshit alignment system or whatever)

In this instance, the ever-so-valiant town guard cleans up.
They could be anything from conscripted peasants to near-epic ex-heroes; you won't know which until either you've killed them and made off with the merchant loot, or one of them effortlessly plants a sword in your face.

Bigger the region, more powerful the guard, until you end up with FOR THE GLORY OF AMN in your anus every time you decide to murder someone within city limits, and they'll be sure to remember your face any other time you (ruffian PC) decide to try it again.
They probably won't shout a warning the second time either.

You could also have survivor bias in PoL setting; monsters are so abundant that only the strongest towns and regions survive.
Therefore you have town guards that can put Beowulf to shame, and merchants decked out with enough magical protection to show up many archwizard.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You could also have survivor bias in PoL setting; monsters are so abundant that only the strongest towns and regions survive.
Therefore you have town guards that can put Beowulf to shame, and merchants decked out with enough magical protection to show up many archwizard.

This is going back into the classic silliness of the magic item shop Izchack bullshit--the merchant actually has to be sitting on their ass not actually earning anything but also strong enough to take on moderately-sized PCs.



But the bigger question is, if you routinely have cities full of badasses then why the fuck do you have Points of Light? You have people strong enough to take on the people who regularly venture out into the Darknyzz... so uh, why are they huddled in cities rather than, you know, kicking ass and spreading their empire?

[Crissa]

Perhaps they are, Lago.

The adventurers didn't spring forth from a void, either. They had to have been born and raised somewhere. Same for most of the monsters. If high-level types can walk through and leave a trail of damage in their wake, then that'll happen both ways.

The moment the guard leaves their town to spread their empire is a moment that whatever level stuff they could have handled could walk in from the other direction.

-Crissa

[stormhierta]

This is exactly my problem - we can assume that the society that exists is NOT agrarian since having large fields is equal to instant-death by the evil shit out there. So how does a community survive?

I'm personally leaning more and more towards the fact that there WON'T be any "magic merchants" and the only way you can actually BUY a magic item from someone would be if they need what you are offering MORE (for example, hiring a group of adventurers to kill that dragon since you can't do it alone).

We can assume, since the "heroes" are Level 1 at some point, that the entire population cannot be Paragon Level badasses. What I am left with is the following (to my ears only logical explanation):

1. The world went to fuck and back. Thus the Darkness.
2. The Points of Light are built around ancient magic/technology that provides some form of defenses. These might vary from place to place.
3. Only being able to keep small farms leads either to underground farming (mushrooms), fishing and/or hunting. All of these three are somewhat dangerous (or fucking insanely dangerous), so one can assume that only the "best" survive doing it. Which leads to...
4. There are a number of experienced people in each Point of Light, unlike the Heroes, these people are "invested" in their PoI - most probably by having an extensive family, owning land and so on. This takes me to...
5. We are most probably looking at meritocracies, ie the "best survivors" are those who can feed their families the best and thus attain the highest positions in town. This leads to...
6. Dynasties. If one family consistently has better education, better protection, better equipment, they are naturally predisposed for being better survivors later, which means that they generally continue their forefathers legacy.

However, this ALL requires the existence of said "magical areas of defense" as a means to explaining the world. Faults to my logic?

[Thymos]

Why not just have the points of light be on the outskirts of the human Empire.

The inside can be stable but all that means is that heroes aren't needed there.

On the outskirts though there would be Points of Light. Of course some valuable, magical things would have to be there for most people to come to those towns, maybe the magic outside the towns could function sort of like a gold rush. These towns would of course be partially funded by the empire because they are somewhat holding back the darkness, and by funded I mean merchants would bring food and what not.

To stop PC's from simply killing the merchants 2 things in tandem would work. 1. Have there be a bunch of Sheriffs like in the wild west, roaming the darkness by themselves, holding off the occasional monster, not able to go in, and most importantly able to defeat the heroes if they care about the magic items the merchant has to sell. If the heroes get high enough to kill the sheriff there would be no point since nobody has anything they want anyways.

[erik]

I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer on how you can have a medieval agrarian society and have Points of Light. Would someone, for the love of fuck, answer me that?

Something like a very, very large circle of protection/forbiddance magic perhaps. A magical analog to the barrier cities from the Final Fantasy cgi movie. Occasionally someone invites a vampire in or does something stupid and the adventurers have a fight inside human lands.

Otherwise it is going back out to the deadly wilds where they need to procure supplies to keep the fields going, possibly expand fields or connect towns, escort diplomats, or even destroy whatever is causing the rest of the world to be so fubar if there is a direct and correctable cause. Plenty of possible hooks.

[Korwin]

I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer on how you can have a medieval agrarian society and have Points of Light. Would someone, for the love of fuck, answer me that?

Something like that?
But humanity as a whole is dieing there.

Basically at night demons come and you need to be behind warded areas, if not you are dead.

[MGuy]

I think Warhammer fantasy has something like that. More theocracy like though. Chaos and evil is everywhere. If you're not under the protection of the empire you're screwed.

[Surgo]

I think virgileso's first post is the way to go, on a larger scale than what you may be talking about.

The PCs (or at least, the (anti)heroes) are the feudal lords, tyrants, whatnot. The population in any given point of light basically exists to...keep them happy. Whatever that means for the given stationary feudal lord/tyrant/adventurer mafia.

I don't know much about 4e -- are the magic items that feed, mentioned in the original post, available in large enough quantity to supply an entire 'Point of Light' (which I'll define here to be an area consisting of the feudal lord's castle and its surrounding area containing the serfs whose existence is based on keeping him happy)?

[virgil]

I don't think I explained the second scenario well enough. The merchant isn't alone without anyone knowing for certain he's dead until the adventurers come out covered in his blood, he's within earshot of the town guard when doing business with the adventurers; so if they start crap, the angry mob forms faster than you can say 'Frankenstein'. Just because the people in the Point of Light can survive on their own when stationary with marked borders, doesn't mean they stop being a Point of Light and start spreading; because the moment they start trying to expand, their defenses weaken and the Wilderness takes advantage of this weak point.

Ultimately, from the point-of-view of Team Monster, the Point of Light setting is their Points of Darkness. They have a nice stable culture of Team Monster, and don't enter the hamlet because it's dangerous; but they don't make a group effort to wipe it out because it's just a dot on the map they can just walk around it.

Now, that's the only way I can imagine a PoL setting that isn't ruled by an adventurer feudal lord.

[tzor]

I would suggest looking at the Gygaxian model of adventure; the gold rush model. Heros aren't the ones with gold (although they have that) but the ones that save the day. the villages will do everything to pamper this rare resource ... and charge them for doing so. Just like in the California gold rush a favorite dish was steak and oysters (they combined the two most expensive things on the menu) so too is the desire to get adventurer's coin and service.

Never the less, a lot of people confuse monsters with war; most monsters could not care less about humans corn crops; smart ones know that fattened humans taste better. Most monsters are nocturnal. It is a far cry from the city of Baron Munchausen, even in the points of light model.

[JonSetanta]

But the bigger question is, if you routinely have cities full of badasses then why the fuck do you have Points of Light? You have people strong enough to take on the people who regularly venture out into the Darknyzz... so uh, why are they huddled in cities rather than, you know, kicking ass and spreading their empire?

Humanoid regions would be strong enough to survive the harshness of a region and no more, and sometimes that's not enough.
They would venture out and kick ass but doing so leaves their homes undefended.
Mercenaries, ah I mean PCs, are those addendums to society that aren't really needed to protect a region, and probably couldn't if asked or needed, but if there's spare cash lying around they sure are handy for "taking out that ogre camp" or "slay the dragon" even though the monsters aren't particularly bothersome in whichever remote shithole they poop on treasure.

As for power creep issue, there are always more monsters, and they adapt to the environment... in this case the environment being artificially created by humanoid threads, adapting to items, magic, weapons, etc.
Either they breed recombinant like Pokemon out in the evil dark squalor of dungeons, or some fucking vengeful bastard keeps farming new types to harass people.
Humanoids would be striving hard with new technologies and occupations just to stay afloat in a PoL setting; their monsters are simply born with the means and intent to take humanoid lives.

[mean_liar]

I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer on how you can have a medieval agrarian society and have Points of Light. Would someone, for the love of fuck, answer me that?

All it takes is one supreme badass that no one wants to fuck with.

In 4e, well... just having a well-trained archer cavalry familiar with a caracole would probably be enough.

[Josh_Kablack]

Here I thought this thread was about this kind of Hero Economy {Ok, sound}

[erik]

Here I thought this thread was about this kind of Hero Economy {Ok, sound}

Damn you. Since youtube has started putting commercials in front of some videos I just muted it and changed tabs for 30 seconds to read other things... came back afterwards and was very confused for a few moments.

[RandomCasualty2]

I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer on how you can have a medieval agrarian society and have Points of Light. Would someone, for the love of fuck, answer me that?

Yeah, you pretty much don't. Unless they went and built the great wall of China around all their farmland or something.

[Lago PARANOIA]

All it takes is one supreme badass that no one wants to fuck with.

No, it doesn't. This doesn't happen in stories with omnipotent supreme badasses like in Superman or Dragonball, why the hell would it happen in D&D?