NPC help - Progenitor of Magic

Hi all!

(If anybody reading happens to be players in my World of Magic campaign, please look away and instead search google for a kitten, or similar.)

So in my setting, Arcane magic was entirely discovered and pioneered by one person, named Arkis.

As is fitting for the proto-mage, they are not dead, despite the game being set some two thousand years after their discoveries. Magic's like that.

However, I need to know what class(es) I should stat Arkis as, with the only set backstory being that they _were_ a Cleric but have since lost access to all Divine magic, and that their first spell was Light - so they'd inevitably have to be a class now that has it, although I can't really think of any full arcane casters that don't have access to Light.

So, playgrounders! Given the parameters, what class(es) is/are most befitting for the original arcane-magic-user?

Also, if someone can find a neat reason why a cleric of a god of knowledge would have lost access to their divinely-granted powers, I'm listening to that too.

Arkis is TN and human, if those are factors at all in any input anybody has.

Thank you all in advance.

Why roll them as a player class when they are this millennia old historic figure? I would expect all of the arcane classes to have branched out from the thing that Arkis does, where he's just some kind of super high level proto-mage that's got elements of everything but no heavy devotion to any of the specialized tricks that make them interesting.

Is there a particular system/edition you're using?

Hadn't thought about doing it that way - Just having Arkis's class be "Arkis"

It's D&D 3.5, incidentally.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Falcos

So, playgrounders! Given the parameters, what class(es) is/are most befitting for the original arcane-magic-user?

Also, if someone can find a neat reason why a cleric of a god of knowledge would have lost access to their divinely-granted powers, I'm listening to that too.

---

Another option is a 5e Warlock, who was given the Arcane Tome and subsequent knowledge of magic by a dark patron. I don't know if the 3.5 warlocks fall under the same background mechanics. Arkis could have received the magic, but then passed it off to everyone else as though he discovered it.

Perhaps the cleric would begin questioning the god of knowledge, thinking that they were holding back? Perhaps Arkis found ancient scrolls or texts that reference non-divine magic, and when he tried to pursue it, he was deemed a heretic.

I agree in general with not having a class but instead making him a special case or his own class. He basically invented a class and allowed several classes to exist, so it makes sense he'd be outside the limits of classes. But to try a class...

A refluffed Ur-Priest to make it non-evil?
Cleric X/Ur-Priest X/Wizard or Mystic Theurge X, handwaving the requirements of having arcane casting beforehand.

I like Vogie's idea of thinking the God of Knowledge was holding back. Perhaps through experimentation or finding secret knowledge, Arkis figured out a way to sap into the god's power without permission. Through this, he not only regained some divine magic that was otherwise now lost, but also drew forth the knowledge of arcane magic.

I somewhat recommend Ur-Priest because that gives him an unexpected ace in the hole, namely some divine spells when folk would expect him to only have arcane spells. Could be useful as a surprise, if you want such for your campaign.

Alternatively, Cleric X (with lost spellcasting), then Wizard to denote how he figured it out. Not as exciting, but it makes sense. He figured out basic magic and became a wizard, then kept figuring it out until he was a level X wizard.

If you want to surprise players more, use Paladin instead of Cleric to give him martial weapon proficiency. Still lost abilities. Maybe he was LG, but upon realizing the limits his god was putting on mankind, considered the god a hypocrite and drifted to TN as he sought knowledge over what was handed to him by his deity.

Building on JeenLeens suggestion

As he's a progenitor of arcane magic how about combining features from wizards,sorcerers and maybe more exotic classes like the Sha'ir to form a custom Arkis class. And example to keep things simple is a wizard with spontaneous casting, or some automatic metamagic.

Custom class: yes, if you can call a set of features and abilities possessed by only one person ever to be a "class." But keep it simple.

I would approach it this way: as a cleric he was very familiar with casting and wielding magic. He should be of pretty good level, probably 10ish. He became curious as to how it works, "the will of the gods" not being a sufficient answer to satisfy him. So he conducted research into the nature of magic, taking extensive notes, and stumbling onto a way to make light without praying for that spell. And thanks to his excellent note taking, he was able to do it again, although the ability left him each time it was used, just as the spells he had always cast before tend to do. And he learned to do other things by arcane methods, and of course continued taking his notes. Since this is really complicated stuff, he had to develop his own special vocabulary and grammar to describe how to cast the spells he created, and thus ended up with the first spell book.

But the divine spells don't always "go away" when cast, do they? He knew he could cast Cures spontaneously, so his research continued until he found he could cast arcane spells spontaneously too. There were some limitations to doing this, most notably that, as with Cures among all the divine spells, he could only cast spontaneously a subset of the spells in his book. Fewer spells to pick from but more flexibility seemed like a good trade, at least some of the time.

So, he is both a wizard and a sorcerer in a sense, but neither one really. Because he never picked one path or the other, he has never been able to fully master either. He is level maxed at something resembling Sor 15/Wiz 15, but with certain unique abilities and limitations. By clinging to prepared casting and a large spell book, he limited his ability to hold spontaneously castable spells in his head, and by clinging to spontaneous casting he has limited his ability to learn the more complex spells even if from a book. He does not have access to the entire Sor/Wiz spell list, even at spell levels that he can reach.

Though he is venerated, and rightly so, as the inventor of arcane casting, he is not spectacularly good at it. The centuries of wizards and sorcerers that have followed him have advanced the state of the art well beyond his own abilities.*

Arcane magic consumed his time and energy to the exclusion of the worship of his god (and much else in his life). Though the gods are patient and often forgiving, as he thoroughly lost interest in his god, eventually his god lost interest in him. His ability to learn and cast divine spells (and to turn undead, etc.) were probably lost long, long before he noticed that they were gone.

* Did you know that Thomas Edison originated electronics, but never did more than dip a tow in it? After his invention of the light bulb (an invention he was first to make practical by building on work by other who never quite got it) he noticed carbon depositing on the inside of the glass, and discovered the phenomenon of electron carrying. This he expanded on and invented the first electron tube, a diode. But that's as far as Edison goes. Others quickly developed the triode and other more complex tubes, and developed complicated and useful electronic circuits which Edison himself never understood.

An Ultimate Magus would be an interesting possibility for jqavins suggestion. It might not be the best option when it comes to raw power though. He should have a good measure of wisdom too, based on his former career as a Cleric.

As for why Arkis has lost his divine spellcasting abilities? Have you ever heard what happened to Prometheus after he stole fire from Olympus and gave it to the humans? Losing your divine spellcasting wouldn't be half that bad compared to what happened to Prometheus.
Another option would be that he lost his faith when he learned that the god of knowledge was keeping arcane magic a secret. He could also have ascended to godhood which makes the whole being divine spellcasting thing obsolete. (Except if you use the rules in deities & demigods, I think. So meh.)

Honestly though, I'd stick to the Greek tragedies. The gods would either kill Arkis or make an example out of him. Turn him into some hideous monster or something. A lich would fit, or maybe a dragon.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by the_david

Honestly though, I'd stick to the Greek tragedies. The gods would either kill Arkis or make an example out of him. Turn him into some hideous monster or something. A lich would fit, or maybe a dragon.

---

Per the original post, Arkis is not dead despite being about 2000 years old. So how about if the gods made him immortal as punishment? He's 2000 years old, and shows his age! He looks 2000, feels 2000, etc. That sounds like hell on earth to me.

(Nah, I'm sticking with what I first wrote.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Falcos

So, playgrounders! Given the parameters, what class(es) is/are most befitting for the original arcane-magic-user?

---

Dragon.

Seriously, he (accidentally?) turned himself into a dragon.

His "sin" was greed, specifically greed for knowledge. He gained that knowledge, but his journey twisted his soul and body into that of a jealous wyrm.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Falcos

Also, if someone can find a neat reason why a cleric of a god of knowledge would have lost access to their divinely-granted powers, I'm listening to that too.

---

In one of my settings, I had a LN goddess of Knowledge, and her divine opponent was a CG goddess of Truth.

In that world, the gathering of Knowledge is Lawful -- but spreading the Truth is Chaotic.

Perhaps the Cleric was cut off from Knowledge for the sin of sharing.

So many good responses! Let me address them all in order.

Vogie: I don't think Warlocks in 3.5 work that way, and I was trying to have him have discovered Arcane magic on his own, not have it be gifted to him - but thank you for the suggestion anyway!

JeenLeen: I am going to pass on making him an ur-priest due to wanting him not to have divine magic, but thank you for the suggestion - however, both of the aforementioned are now having me think about the idea that Arkis might resent his former patron.

jqavins: I really like this idea - an oddly fused wiz/sorc, as they are the two most popular arcane magical classes, and Arkis gave rise to both. I also hadn't thought of the idea of Arkis not being the best at arcane magic compared to the casters of today.

the_david: I hadn't thought about the idea of Arkis having his divine powers removed as a punishment - this is a good concept. :)

jqavins again: I had thought that Arkis could have accidentally made himself into a pseudo-lich while trying to ensure his knowledge was preserved for the future, but I hadn't thought about the idea that his former patron was deliberately screwing with him.

Nifft: I'm going to pass on the dragon thing, I think, but I like the idea that sharing is the sin here.

Thank you all for your inputs! Eagerly listening if anybody has any more to provide. :)

Okay, so I think what jqavins said is really solid. I'll start this by saying that I've never actually player 3.5e, so I don't know everything about how it differs from 4e and 5e, which I have played. So.

Here's the thing. What do you need his stats for? Is he the big bad boss? Is he an ally of the party? depending on these, you'll need different things. Obviously he should be powerful. But if he's the final boss, you don't have to worry about any class features other than attacks. Now as for the spell list thing, just give him his own spell list. Why should he draw from any spell list if he is the first mage? Perhaps even give him some totally original spells not found in the books to make it feel as if he really has been around for 2000 years doing magic.

That was all mechanical. For the story elements, the idea that he lost divine powers from a god of knowledge seems silly. If he was pursuing knowledge he should have been rewarded by his god. A god of knowledge should reward all knowledge seekers. If he perhaps turned his back and intentionally forgot about his cleric past, that might make some sense, but I don't think it works as a punishment in this context. As for his long life, accidentally becoming a demi-lich seems good. He could have accidentally created a spell which did something he wasn't sure of and it did it to him. I also really like the idea that he is no longer the best mage, but he should be the most versatile, unrestricted by spell lists.

I need his stats because he's going to be an NPC they meet, and depending on party actions, he could be either enemy, ally, or completely apathetic.

Also, because I like fleshing out all of my significant NPCs with as much fluff and crunch as possible, to reduce the moments where a player asks me something and I go "Uhhhhhhh..."

As for the cleric thing, I'm toying with a few different ideas as to why/how he lost his powers, but so far jqavins has had the best suggestion, in "his studies consumed him and he probably didn't notice the lack until they were long gone".

I also really like the idea that he's no longer - or perhaps never was, except for when he was the only one - the most powerful mage, but his spell pool is exceedingly broad. I'm definitely writing that one in.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jqavins

Though he is venerated, and rightly so, as the inventor of arcane casting, he is not spectacularly good at it. The centuries of wizards and sorcerers that have followed him have advanced the state of the art well beyond his own abilities.

---

Although I like that (and have some Edison-Tesla ranting I'm holding back,) I don't think it's great for D&D. Pretty much every edition is founded on some Romanesque empire collapse where things were much better in the past but now adventurers go around scrounging up special stuff that nobody really knows how to make anymore. If you do a plane trotting 3.5 kind of thing then it's maybe the least like that that these games ever really get, but I think the premise really just gets obscured and hidden away in a corner.

Some of the settings out there are doing the whole progress shtick, but most of them are post-post-apocalyptic because that just makes sense.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Falcos

I need his stats because he's going to be an NPC they meet, and depending on party actions, he could be either enemy, ally, or completely apathetic.

---

If he's lived for 2000 years and that's not a common thing, then he's probably kind of tough to kill, like, generally. Since he could be an enemy you're probably not thinking invulnerable style immortality, which means anybody that wanted to kill him without huge magics would just go for assassination. He has presumably survived several such attempts, so he's got some kind of contingency or just generally doesn't put himself in risky situations.

One of the best ways to have a potential enemy do that, is by having an illusion do all of the strutting around town stuff, while the real body is just chillin in a wizard tower (or wherever.) Since he probably invented that school of magic it makes sense that he'd keep himself in multiple places at the same time.

Quote:

---

Also, because I like fleshing out all of my significant NPCs with as much fluff and crunch as possible, to reduce the moments where a player asks me something and I go "Uhhhhhhh..."

---

When you really get good at that it will just turn into "I know I've got that in my notes somewhere..."

One of the beautiful things about tabletop games, is that nobody else has the answers to those questions. Flesh out the fluff a bit, but don't be afraid to just make up something that's close enough. If you get comfortable with a little silence and act decisive about this, they'll never know exactly what you needed to think about, and you just need to train yourself not to go off on impulses that you can't keep working with.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zorku

Although I like that (and have some Edison-Tesla ranting I'm holding back,) I don't think it's great for D&D. Pretty much every edition is founded on some Romanesque empire collapse where things were much better in the past but now adventurers go around scrounging up special stuff that nobody really knows how to make anymore. If you do a plane trotting 3.5 kind of thing then it's maybe the least like that that these games ever really get, but I think the premise really just gets obscured and hidden away in a corner.

---

Not the settings I've played in, which admittedly were all homebrews by various friends. None have ever been post apocalyptic. And there are established rules for making up new spells. I have a character in one game who made up a spell for the specific purpose of using it to make a custom item. Progress happens. If the Sor/Wiz smurging crippled him in that he can't learn eighth and ninth level spells, he obviously didn't create any, so all of those would have been created after him.

More responses! Huzzah!

I think even if it feels awkward, I'm going to wind up having progress marched on - the core of the setting is that Arkis created a great school of magic so that knowledge could be spread and proliferated, and it would feel odd to have that concept in the setting and NOT have progressed from Arkis's time.

As for Arkis's immortality, I was thinking that Arkis mainly survived assassination attempts by dint of staying under the radar. Nobody knows that Arkis is Arkis, they just think that they're a caster from the Academy.

And my memory is _generally_ good enough that I don't run into "Got that in my notes somewhere". Even if I ran into it, I'd still prefer it to the "uhhhhh" response.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jqavins

Not the settings I've played in, which admittedly were all homebrews by various friends. None have ever been post apocalyptic. And there are established rules for making up new spells. I have a character in one game who made up a spell for the specific purpose of using it to make a custom item. Progress happens. If the Sor/Wiz smurging crippled him in that he can't learn eighth and ninth level spells, he obviously didn't create any, so all of those would have been created after him.

---

Not post-apocalyptic. Pose-post-apocalyptic. As in, there was a collapse and people were living bleak lives in the ruins of that civilization, but they have all died off at this point and maybe just some of the elderly elves or dwarves actually remember the empire of old. To everyone else, those stories are mytholological... except in that you can sometimes find a intact ruin from that age and wander into it to find some slippers of spider walking or whatevs.

So, in those worlds you play in, why is it that you find artifacts and relics in dungeons, instead of just spending your gold on whatever fashionable item is being mass produced by the bustling economy of the golden age you're in the midst of?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Falcos

And my memory is _generally_ good enough that I don't run into "Got that in my notes somewhere". Even if I ran into it, I'd still prefer it to the "uhhhhh" response.

---

I'm kind of a god of remembering where I learned things from (or maybe that's just part of autism...) but there are limits to that. At this point I know how many towns most likely exist on the periphery of any one city of a certain size and how many thorps are spread around between those and how much wilderness disrupts that orderly pattern. I can't spit out ideas fast enough to make every location interesting and noteworthy; nobody can do that, which is why narrative structure is always so ignorant of how many settlements there are in a country. A story cares about the most interesting locations and maybe a small selection of other locations just for establishing how we got to the interesting parts. That's not because people in the real world hadn't fleshed out their little villages enough, it's because there's only so much you can expect anyone to remember, or pay attention to in the first place.

Like, some time, try to actually draw a complex that occupies 1 square mile and then describe the purpose and contents of every room. 1 mile² was way too much. If you're absurdly dedicated then you managed to fill the entire space, but you probably have to guess at what's in the 37th kitchen, unless you made every kitchen identical and boring. I do some programming as a hobby (with a little proper training,) so I routinely create things that are too big to keep in my head all at once. As soon as you start using a system to organize things it becomes really easy to go past what you can remember.

Narratives are different though. If you're making a story then it's got an order to it, you know which parts follow from each other, and the twists that don't follow from what's happened so far are probably memorable moments.

I don't know what kind of focus you take with fleshing things out, but if the narrative is the bones, you'll run out of room for remembering flesh pretty quick.

I'm kind of an odd duck in that my mind automatically sorts things into music, and therefore, I have a pretty good system for fleshing out.

If I set up eight characters, each of them is a musical note to me, on a scale, at the most bare-bones.

Then, given time to flesh out, each of those notes becomes a song, and I can't remember the note without remembering the song. This is what I'm currently trying to do with Arkis.

This process is lengthy and difficult, but once complete, I have a musical scale that allows me to link each of the characters together narratively, and each of them is a song, and I'm no more likely to forget any particular detail about them than I am likely to forget the next line in a song I know by heart. (With the odd exception of gender, which is a continual stumbling block to my memory.)

I do run into issues if I make each song too long, but that's a different matter.

...Does all of this make sense?

This is looking to shape up to Homebrew territory, to me. We have the following ideas for actual class:

1, Zorku, post #2: Proto-mage with elements of all the Arcane casters, but not really being devoted to any particular type. Keeping to just core, because non-core Arcane casters either have no meaningful effect or would be nearly impossible to use, you have Bard, Wizard and Sorcerer. My thinking is to be mostly Bard-based casting, using Bard slots and spells known for the basic casting, as well as having a fairly basic version of Bardic Music. And then they also get a spellbook, as Wizard, but with the change of only one automatic spell per level and getting their Known Spells from spontaneous casting into the book for free. Prepare from book, spontaneous known spells able to use prepared slots for other things. And the Bardic Music proto-ability is used as Metamagic fuel for automatically-learned metamagic to push the highest castable spell level to full caster progression.

2, JeenLean, post #5: Some sort of ur-Ur-Priest/mystic theurge thing that created Arcane magic by messing with Divine magic they stopped being granted, either before or after going Arcane. If we take this as the basis for a PRC representing the character classing out of Cleric, then the class would progress Divine casting at, say, 2/3, but let you cast Arcane spells from the slots and allow you to continue to use said slots as Arcane slots if you lose access to the Divine spells for any reason. Wording would be harsh, but I think it would work best as a spellbook class, using a rapid spell research mechanic to be able to copy any Arcane spell from any class into said book at, say, twice the cost of a Scroll of that spell, with the research time being about in line with that. As well as a set of basic guidelines for freeform spell creation that makes overall simple spells with clear, bold, repetitive statements of "DM APPROVAL NEEDED" all across the feature, but that goes for all possible ideas involving spell creation. Granted, it'd also be important for the other idea due to being the First Mage either way, but for a PRC built around creating Arcane magic from no experience in using it, it's a thing more useful to this idea.

Just wanted to put down my thoughts about the two actual ideas one could build a class from real quick.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Falcos

I'm kind of an odd duck in that my mind automatically sorts things into music, and therefore, I have a pretty good system for fleshing out.

If I set up eight characters, each of them is a musical note to me, on a scale, at the most bare-bones.

Then, given time to flesh out, each of those notes becomes a song, and I can't remember the note without remembering the song. This is what I'm currently trying to do with Arkis.

This process is lengthy and difficult, but once complete, I have a musical scale that allows me to link each of the characters together narratively, and each of them is a song, and I'm no more likely to forget any particular detail about them than I am likely to forget the next line in a song I know by heart. (With the odd exception of gender, which is a continual stumbling block to my memory.)

I do run into issues if I make each song too long, but that's a different matter.

...Does all of this make sense?

---

I heard of someone doing this by picturing a room. I never heard about somebody doing this with music. There's probably a name for this, but I just don't remember.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zorku

Not post-apocalyptic. Pose-post-apocalyptic. As in, there was a collapse and people were living bleak lives in the ruins of that civilization, but they have all died off at this point and maybe just some of the elderly elves or dwarves actually remember the empire of old. To everyone else, those stories are mytholological... except in that you can sometimes find a intact ruin from that age and wander into it to find some slippers of spider walking or whatevs.

So, in those worlds you play in, why is it that you find artifacts and relics in dungeons, instead of just spending your gold on whatever fashionable item is being mass produced by the bustling economy of the golden age you're in the midst of?

---

Post apocalyptic, post-post apocalyptic, or post-post-post-post-post apocalyptic, it still assumes some sort of apocalypse in the past, which has never been the way in any of my settings. And they are not in some golden age, either. They are in an age of slow but steady progress, with new spells, new items, better metallurgy, etc. It's not a golden age now any more than it ever was. Powerful magic items are scarce now and always have been because the super powerful mages who create them are scarce and are not all interested in crafting anyway. "Artifacts" are creations of the gods who don't give them to the mortal realm more then once every century or two (or are made by people and creatures of similar power who don't coma along often and see above about the mages.) So things are largely as they've been for centuries, with a bit of progress here and there. And over millennia the progress adds up, to leave the inventor of arcane magic behind.

Morphic Tide: I like your second idea - I think it's what I'll go for.

the_david: It's a kind of synesthesia - I've never met or heard of anybody else who has audio synesthesia, though. (If any of you read this, I'd love to chat about it!)

jqavins: You've hit the nail on the head - this is a setting based around a great academy of arcane magic, where it's learned and taught and spread and propagated. I can't imagine any way this WOULDN'T be an age of progress.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Falcos

...Does all of this make sense?

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by the_david

I heard of someone doing this by picturing a room. I never heard about somebody doing this with music. There's probably a name for this, but I just don't remember.

---

Memory Palace.

You can certainly get better at recalling lots of information that way, especially how things are connected. I haven't really seen this brought up as a DM thing, since the DMs of old found note taking to be sufficient and never really tried to transcend it, but if this fits your expectation for how much prep work to do and you're only fleshing things out with the kinds of details you know how to encode into your memory palace, then there shouldn't be any major problems there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jqavins

Post apocalyptic, post-post apocalyptic, or post-post-post-post-post apocalyptic, it still assumes some sort of apocalypse in the past, which has never been the way in any of my settings. And they are not in some golden age, either. They are in an age of slow but steady progress, with new spells, new items, better metallurgy, etc. It's not a golden age now any more than it ever was. Powerful magic items are scarce now and always have been because the super powerful mages who create them are scarce and are not all interested in crafting anyway. "Artifacts" are creations of the gods who don't give them to the mortal realm more then once every century or two (or are made by people and creatures of similar power who don't coma along often and see above about the mages.) So things are largely as they've been for centuries, with a bit of progress here and there. And over millennia the progress adds up, to leave the inventor of arcane magic behind.

---

That's really weird. How do you get a Medieval Europe without without there having been a Roman empire? How do you get into an iron age without there having been a bronze age?

If there's no collapse then the setting should have civilization basically everywhere, and any time a powerful mage passes away their apprentice can just step in and take ownership of all their powerful artifacts and go on continuing their work and business. You wouldn't have anything that was ever abandoned or lost, and the mercantilism would be through the roof.

...or everything moves at a sloth's pace and people are only just figuring out how to organize armies for the first time while they've advanced wildly further than that with their metallurgy and arcane arts. Are you doing a "The Invention of Lying" kind of thing?

It's not just that things are like they've been for centuries. If there hasn't been a collapse then things are as they've been for a million years, and it's weird to so utterly lack anyone willing to make power plays for so long.

But I must just not understand something about this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zorku

But I must just not understand something about this.

---

I suspect we're each failing to understand things, probably multiple ones.

Quote:

---

That's really weird. How do you get a Medieval Europe without there having been a Roman empire?

---

The fall of Rome was only apocalyptic for Romans, albeit that includes most of Europe and a good chunk of Asia to some degree. But the Roman age wasn't exactly golden for most of its subjects. So suppose there's a Europelike region on an Earthlike planet where Rome never was. You'd never end up with a time that looks just like medieval Europe without the dissemination of the Latin language and Christianity, but it wouldn't by force be radically different in other ways.

Quote:

---

How do you get into an iron age without there having been a bronze age?

---

Who says there wasn't a bronze age? People were trying things and/or making accidental discoveries when they learned how to make stuff out of bronze, and likewise when they learned how do get iron from ore. What has that got to do with Rome or anything else collapsing?

Quote:

---

If there's no collapse then the setting should have civilization basically everywhere...

---

Our world had "uncivilized" areas for centuries after Rome and still has a vanishing few today. Are you suggesting that civilization must inevitably reach everywhere if it has not collapsed somewhere?

Quote:

---

and any time a powerful mage passes away their apprentice can just step in and take ownership of all their powerful artifacts and go on continuing their work and business.

---

Often, but sometimes there is no apprentice, maybe there are no powerful artifacts, maybe the apprentice is incompetent, etc.

Quote:

---

You wouldn't have anything that was ever abandoned or lost

---

Unless somebody, um, abandoned or lost it.

Quote:

---

and the mercantilism would be through the roof.

---

As it is in many fantasy worlds.

Quote:

---

...or everything moves at a sloth's pace

---

The pace of a figurative sloth is a matter of opinion, but yeah, things move slowly. That's been my suggestion from the start.

Quote:

---

and people are only just figuring out how to organize armies for the first time...

---

Huh?

Quote:

---

while they've advanced wildly further than that with their metallurgy and arcane arts.

---

Or the organization of their armies has for centuries kept pace with the (slow) advancement in martial technology, just as the organizations of armies always have in the real world.

Quote:

---

Are you doing a "The Invention of Lying" kind of thing?

---

I've never seen the movie, and if "The Invention of Lying" refers to anything else I have never heard of it. So I can't answer this. (But I'd bet heavily that actual lying was invented even before talking.)

Quote:

---

It's not just that things are like they've been for centuries.

---

No, things are very nearly like they were a century ago. And pretty nearly like they were five centuries ago, though some things are better. And many things are a lot than better than they were two millennia ago when Arkis (Remember Akis? This is a thread about Arkis) was inventing arcane magic. And the arcane arts are infinitely better than they were 2.1 millennia ago.

Quote:

---

If there hasn't been a collapse then things are as they've been for a million years...

---

Humans have been around for about 200,000 years, not a million. And from the dawn of humanity to the rise of the first civilization things were a whole heck of a lot different. As of that time there had never been a collapse, yet many things had advanced. Science (by which I mean the understanding of the natural world, with or without the scientific method we know and love) and technology synergistically advance each other, and their progress accelerates exponentially. (By which I do not mean "really fast," but rather that their rate of advancement is proportional to their state.) So the glacial advancement of the first 190,000 years is not typical of the next 10,000, which is in turn not typical of the next 5,000, etc. Was that too much of a digression? The point was supposed to be that things did change in those first 190,000 years, but changed a lot faster in the next 9,000 (up to 1,000 years ago). The rise and fall of Rome and other such powerful civilizations make the pace of advancement jagged, and may well accelerate it over all, but is far from necessary to allow it.

Quote:

---

and it's weird to so utterly lack anyone willing to make power plays for so long.

---

Now here, I concede, you have an excellent point. To go thousands of years without any culture rising to great power does, I have to admit, seem highly unlikely. And if they're not still around and in charge, then they must have fallen. But I don't see why that has to be anything apocalyptic (except from their own point of view.) And if everything they built, barring knowledge that had already spread from them, were burned away without a trace it would not preclude there being a medieval-ish society after, it would not preclude there being powerful mages here and there leaving behind a few epic magic items each century, or gods dropping an artifact or two. So yeah, I grant that there may well have been a society that fell in the past, or a few such, but I still don't see any reason that it is mandatory or important.

But I must just not understand something about this.

Quote:

---

Now here, I concede, you have an excellent point. To go thousands of years without any culture rising to great power does, I have to admit, seem highly unlikely. And if they're not still around and in charge, then they must have fallen. But I don't see why that has to be anything apocalyptic (except from their own point of view.)

---

Gonna scootch this one out of order and up to the front.
*I'm still encountering it and writing this in the original order, just because I'm doing this in spare moments and don't have quite enough time to revise the entire post.

That's exactly what I mean when I say apocalypse. The word apparently has to apply to the entire material plane before it 'counts' in your eyes, but that's never what I meant when I started talking about post-post-apocalyptic settings. Everything I've been writing about the rate of advancement (again, in this post, earlier for me, but that you haven't read yet,) makes more sense if people out on the periphery of the collapse recover first, because they are the least hard hit by it, salvage the jewels of that now dead civilization, and then use that momentum to become powerful nations themselves. Since fantasy settings are mainly poised just a pinch before the Renaissance, or sometimes in the earlier centuries of it (and most often in an anachronistic blend of lots of centuries to snag lots of elements the author was a big nerd about,) we're probably not at the big forward momentum stage, during play. If you've got a bunch of novels for this setting then those dark ages stagnate for a long damn time, because nobody wants to switch genres yet they want ripe grounds for still more anthology material... but that strains verisimilitude less than never having had someone around to build those ruins and then a relatively sudden implosion of the system that kept track of all that crap.

Since this bit of text from you set off my epiphany on this bit of confusion, go ahead and consider any block of text answered, if our different meanings for apocalypse are really the only misunderstanding there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jqavins

I suspect we're each failing to understand things, probably multiple ones.
The fall of Rome was only apocalyptic for Romans, albeit that includes most of Europe and a good chunk of Asia to some degree. But the Roman age wasn't exactly golden for most of its subjects. So suppose there's a Europelike region on an Earthlike planet where Rome never was. You'd never end up with a time that looks just like medieval Europe without the dissemination of the Latin language and Christianity, but it wouldn't by force be radically different in other ways.

---

Yeah, I never meant that you had the trumpets of heaven sounding and 4 horsemen doing, uh, horsemen things.

Quote:

---

Who says there wasn't a bronze age? People were trying things and/or making accidental discoveries when they learned how to make stuff out of bronze, and likewise when they learned how do get iron from ore. What has that got to do with Rome or anything else collapsing?

---

So you had cities that figured out how to make bronze tools, but they never formed conquering armies? You don't have a Rome that collapsed so there's nobody spreading their tech around before the money goes away and everyone mostly forgets how to read the language and run the tools?

Quote:

---

Our world had "uncivilized" areas for centuries after Rome and still has a vanishing few today. Are you suggesting that civilization must inevitably reach everywhere if it has not collapsed somewhere?

---

I'm still pretty lost on what's going on, but it sounds like you've just got these indefinitely stable city states? Like nobody ever conquers someone else, so there are no roads, and the cities just gradually work through an era of advancement without actually applying any of it?

Quote:

---

Often, but sometimes there is no apprentice, maybe there are no powerful artifacts, maybe the apprentice is incompetent, etc.
Unless somebody, um, abandoned or lost it.

---

You just up and lose the light of creation in a treasure chest at the bottom of a dungeon that nobody put there in the first place?
...I get that sometimes people don't draft up a will because mortality is an unpleasant thing to face, but people with mansions and lots of property have a bunch of people really eager to inherit that stuff. Why is nobody interested in inheriting the archmagi's tower and artifacts? I get why farmhands wouldn't concern themselves with it, but are there no nobles aware of the dude that went off and built a tower near some town in their barony?

Quote:

---

As it is in many fantasy worlds.
The pace of a figurative sloth is a matter of opinion, but yeah, things move slowly. That's been my suggestion from the start.
Huh?

---

People conquer, war drives innovation and arms races, and then those empire builders put the kinds of roads in place that allow you to kind-of conduct trade along paths other than rivers and coasts. If you take one of those pieces away I don't understand how you can have any of the others. Well like, divine intervention and other magics I suppose, but you haven't really hinted at that sort of explanation so it feels like a leap.

Quote:

---

Or the organization of their armies has for centuries kept pace with the (slow) advancement in martial technology, just as the organizations of armies always have in the real world.

---

In the real world they constantly kept swelling empires and then there would be an apocalypse, and the rinky dink border peoples that weren't so sure about being part of the last empire go on to make their own empires in the next age. You can sometimes build up armies to no avail as you fail to gain an edge over your rivals, but if there are never any apocalypses then everyone's got a really long history with each other, and it becomes easy to convince the enemy of your enemy to help in ruining your enemy.
But why is everyone on such equal footing? You run into stalemates some of the time, but a lot of the time one group just flat out has an advantageous set of resources to leverage against their neighbors.

Quote:

---

I've never seen the movie, and if "The Invention of Lying" refers to anything else I have never heard of it. So I can't answer this. (But I'd bet heavily that actual lying was invented even before talking.)

---

Yeah, that's basically it. It's an intentionally weird set up so that they can tell the very anachronistic story in a familiar time period where the drama will be much more relatable.

Quote:

---

No, things are very nearly like they were a century ago. And pretty nearly like they were five centuries ago, though some things are better. And many things are a lot than better than they were two millennia ago when Arkis (Remember Akis? This is a thread about Arkis) was inventing arcane magic. And the arcane arts are infinitely better than they were 2.1 millennia ago.

---

I thought you were talking about your own worlds.

Quote:

---

Humans have been around for about 200,000 years, not a million.

---

If they don't build empires and they just do their tech at a slow and steady pace then they should really only be entering a bronze age after that long, if they've even really figured out agriculture yet. We've got a whole bunch of not homo-sapiens running around though, and where at least a few of the races have 500+ year life spans you tend to stretch the time scale anyway.

But hey, if you explicitly have humans existing for exactly as long as our species has actually been around, then I'll go ahead and dial in to a much harsher reality setting.

Quote:

---

And from the dawn of humanity to the rise of the first civilization things were a whole heck of a lot different. As of that time there had never been a collapse, yet many things had advanced. Science (by which I mean the understanding of the natural world, with or without the scientific method we know and love) and technology synergistically advance each other, and their progress accelerates exponentially.

---

I don't really expect it to pre-industrialization, but I will note this and try to take it into consideration for your world in future interactions.

Quote:

---

The point was supposed to be that things did change in those first 190,000 years, but changed a lot faster in the next 9,000 (up to 1,000 years ago). The rise and fall of Rome and other such powerful civilizations make the pace of advancement jagged, and may well accelerate it over all, but is far from necessary to allow it.

---

I don't think it needs to be jagged to accelerate, just that you need unifying factors for people to exchange ideas. If everything becomes strongly united fairly early on then you're looking at China, and the leadership has a fairly high probability of selecting policies that result in stagnation, but some probability of becoming a super empire that's very advanced very early on, and not a lot of room for options in between. If you do not have powerful unifying factors then you have a lot of city states that can offer very little resistance as soon as one empire shows up to start consuming them (even if there's not all that much integration after they have been conquered,) and those things move slow. I mean, they're great for quickly plucking all the low hanging fruit of philosophy, but they're not really fit for an iron age. If you have the kind of semi-united kingdom states where ideas can bounce around at a decent pace, but no one person can halt everyone from exploring options, then you probably had some kind of empire in the area that collapsed a few generations back.


-snip-

Quote:

---

And if everything they built, barring knowledge that had already spread from them, were burned away without a trace it would not preclude there being a medieval-ish society after, it would not preclude there being powerful mages here and there leaving behind a few epic magic items each century, or gods dropping an artifact or two. So yeah, I grant that there may well have been a society that fell in the past, or a few such, but I still don't see any reason that it is mandatory or important.

---

It's important if you've got a lot of adventurers seeking these things out in ruins. You could run a much more social oriented campaign and not need this sort of context, or you can provide some alternate explanation. "I forgot to file a will with the county clerk," is, from my perspective, a very weak alternate explanation.

e: Oh, and the "I don't think I understand something here" line isn't facetious. It's kind of a way to say "this looks really silly but I think you've probably got better reasoning than that, so I'm interested to hear it." You could potentially mean the same thing by parroting it back at me, but usually that's meant with more of a "shots fired" sort of mocking tone, and I'd like to state that that was not my intent.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zorku

Oh, and the "I don't think I understand something here" line isn't facetious. It's kind of a way to say "this looks really silly but I think you've probably got better reasoning than that, so I'm interested to hear it." You could potentially mean the same thing by parroting it back at me, but usually that's meant with more of a "shots fired" sort of mocking tone, and I'd like to state that that was not my intent.

---

It's a bit late, so I'll post more tomorrow. I need to say tonight that I knew just what you meant, and I used the same words to mean the same thing, and to emphasize that I recongnize we are making exactly the same sort of effort to uderstand one another. My re-use of your words was meant to tie back to both your original use and to my opening words of the post. I apologize if it seemed otherwise.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK, it's now lunch hour the next day.

Yes, I see that some of the disagreement comes down to the difference of:

Zorku	Joe
Apocalypse = decline and fall of a major world power.	Apocalypse = global (or at least large region-wide) cataclysm.

Some of it also comes, I think, to these other differences:

Zorku	Joe
Dungeons and ruins are around every corner.	Dungeons and ruins may be oddities.
Dungeons and ruins are ancient (but only moderately so?).	Dungeons and ruins may be recent, ancient, or something in between.
Very high level mages are somewhat common.	Very high level mages may be extremely uncommon.
Very high level mages routinely create epic* magic items.	Very high level mages may or not have any interest in crafting items.
Therefore, epic magic items are abundant.	Therefore, epic magic items may be extremely scarce.
Creation of many dungeons and magic items implies a past period of tech (including the magical arts) that is far greater than in the current age in which those things are sought out.	No such "golden age" is required to support such scarcity.

* "Epic" here is used in the usual slang sense, not the game system-specific meaning.

There are still some things you've stated, or seemed to state in my reading, that I just don't understand.

Quote:

---

So you had cities that figured out how to make bronze tools, but they never formed conquering armies?

---

Sure they did. And they may even have conquered lots of land and become regionally dominant, for a while or they still are. It's just not really important whether they did or didn't become really dominant, or whether they did or didn't ever collapse.

Quote:

---

You don't have a Rome that collapsed so there's nobody spreading their tech around

---

The empire isn't necessary for the tech to be developed, and the collapse isn't necessary for the tech to spread. Tech is developed to support both war and peaceful activities, and the tech spreads through trade whether the power collapses or not.

Quote:

---

before the money goes away and everyone mostly forgets how to read the language and run the tools?

---

Illiteracy and ignorance of the tech were ubiquitous throughout history - before, during, and after the age of Rome.

Quote:

---

I'm still pretty lost on what's going on, but it sounds like you've just got these indefinitely stable city states? Like nobody ever conquers someone else...

---

No. Some may last hundereds of years. A very few may last thousands. In general, a city will be build up, they're thrive for a while or a long time, and may well decline, through conquest, local catastrophe (e.g. plague, drought, demon invasion, what have you). But the existence of some conquering power, if such there was, doesn't mean that the conquorer was a superpower in any sort of golden age.

Quote:

---

so there are no roads...

---

Huh? Roads between citied are only built to be used by conquerors?

Quote:

---

and the cities just gradually work through an era of advancement without actually applying any of it?

---

Huh? The only application of new tech is conquest?

Quote:

---

You just up and lose the light of creation in a treasure chest at the bottom of a dungeon that nobody put there in the first place?

---

You hide your stuff away for safe keeping, then die or otherwise go away while no one around knows what you've got. Or, your stuff is either inherited or seized by someone who doesn't fully understand it and tosses it in a closet. Or, your stuff is lost in a great battle, rolls along a stream bed, and gets lost in the deepest, darkest corner of a cave for millennia. Etc. If said stuff is sufficiently durable it may be found hundreds or thousands of years later. If your stuff is written material (of any sort, including spell books and treatises on magic or other tech) it may well rot and be lost. Or, your stuff passes to someone who knows exactly what to do with it, contributing to the general pace of advancement.

Quote:

---

People conquer, war drives innovation and arms races, and then those empire builders put the kinds of roads in place that allow you to kind-of conduct trade along paths other than rivers and coasts. If you take one of those pieces away I don't understand how you can have any of the others.

---

Because war never was the only reason for innovation or road building.

Quote:

---

I thought you were talking about your own worlds.

---

Originally, we were all talking about Falcos's world with Arkis in it. You stated (or seemed to me to state) that Falcos's world must be post-post apocalyptic becase basically all fantasy worlds are. I disputed that, saying that the worlds I've created and the worlds I've gamed in that my friends have created weren't like that, and we were off on this adventure of "How can that work?" and "Why shouldn't it work?"

Incidentally, I still don't understand the difference between a world after the apocalypse and a world after-after the apocalypse.

Quote:

---

If they don't build empires and they just do their tech at a slow and steady pace then they should really only be entering a bronze age after that long...

---

Zorku	Joe
Innovation is driven (almost?) exclusively by war.	Innovation is driven by war, hunger, trade, industry, pleasure-seeking, curiosity, and more.

Quote:

---

It's important if you've got a lot of adventurers seeking these things out in ruins.

---

Zorku	Joe
Adventuring is a somewhat ordinary career choice so, there are adventurers running around looking for, and finding, dungeons to explore all over the place.	Adventurers are freaks and fools who (almost) invariably die young. Successful adventurers are miraculously lucky.

Well, it's now past 1:30 and I'm going to be working late to make up all the time it took to write this. Oh well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jqavins

It's a bit late, so I'll post more tomorrow. I need to say tonight that I knew just what you meant, and I used the same words to mean the same thing, and to emphasize that I recongnize we are making exactly the same sort of effort to uderstand one another. My re-use of your words was meant to tie back to both your original use and to my opening words of the post. I apologize if it seemed otherwise.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK, it's now lunch hour the next day.

Yes, I see that some of the disagreement comes down to the difference of:

Zorku	Joe
Apocalypse = decline and fall of a major world power.	Apocalypse = global (or at least large region-wide) cataclysm.

Some of it also comes, I think, to these other differences:

Zorku	Joe
Dungeons and ruins are around every corner.	Dungeons and ruins may be oddities.
Dungeons and ruins are ancient (but only moderately so?).	Dungeons and ruins may be recent, ancient, or something in between.
Very high level mages are somewhat common.	Very high level mages may be extremely uncommon.
Very high level mages routinely create epic* magic items.	Very high level mages may or not have any interest in crafting items.
Therefore, epic magic items are abundant.	Therefore, epic magic items may be extremely scarce.
Creation of many dungeons and magic items implies a past period of tech (including the magical arts) that is far greater than in the current age in which those things are sought out.	No such "golden age" is required to support such scarcity.

* "Epic" here is used in the usual slang sense, not the game system-specific meaning.

There are still some things you've stated, or seemed to state in my reading, that I just don't understand.

---

The table looks good except in every case where you assign a frequency to my side. I only rely on there being enough dungeons for your adventurers to delve into them, and I'm much more concerned with why the treasure is down there instead of in the hands of rich nobles. There are no doubt plenty of nobles that readily buy up magical items any time they get the chance, but your adventures are probably only very rarely about relieving said nobles of their possessions.

If you have a lot of adventurers in your world then there probably needs to be a similar amount of pre-this-civ ruins for them to take interest in, but there's some decent wiggle room depending on what exactly your typical adventuring band does.

Quote:

---

Sure they did. And they may even have conquered lots of land and become regionally dominant, for a while or they still are. It's just not really important whether they did or didn't become really dominant, or whether they did or didn't ever collapse.

The empire isn't necessary for the tech to be developed, and the collapse isn't necessary for the tech to spread. Tech is developed to support both war and peaceful activities, and the tech spreads through trade whether the power collapses or not.

---

Except that without war there are huge delays. You can see that in America right here in the modern era. We propelled ourselves to the moon when we had someone to worry about being more advanced than, but we cut the funding to the superconducting super collider when we became more interested in what was putting breakfast on the table. Over a decade later, someone on the other side of the world finally built a weaker version of it, but so far, it looks like it wasn't powerful enough to present us with the kinds of mysteries we were expecting to start working on.

I'm not saying that there's no advancement without war, just that a lot more of the people with influence over it take interest when they think of themselves as being in a competition.

Quote:

---

Illiteracy and ignorance of the tech were ubiquitous throughout history - before, during, and after the age of Rome.

---

Well if we're talking about advancement through the ages, I just presume that we're ignoring all of the peasants that can't read or write. It's when the nobles lose* a language that you know there's a long depressed period setting in.

*I don't mean that it's necessarily lost to time or even locked away to wait for archaeologists, but that you're simply not sending most of the nobles to school to gain literacy in that language anymore. Honestly I'm thinking more of Cuneiform and the incomplete Etemenanki Ziggurat, when the fall of an empire fractured a once unified culture, but the specifics are probably not all that important.

You get stuff like the industrial revolution in a somewhat more mysterious way, since that had almost nothing to do with academy-folk, but it's also the funky exception in history.

Quote:

---

No. Some may last hundereds of years. A very few may last thousands. In general, a city will be build up, they're thrive for a while or a long time, and may well decline, through conquest, local catastrophe (e.g. plague, drought, demon invasion, what have you). But the existence of some conquering power, if such there was, doesn't mean that the conquorer was a superpower in any sort of golden age.

---

It seems like my preface about our differing meanings for apocalypse sorts this one out, but while we're here, what happens to those cities when they're... over? Is there a ghost town left over? Do they just not have a mayor until some other power adopts them? What do you actually picture there?

Quote:

---

Huh? Roads between citied are only built to be used by conquerors?

---

All of the big empires made roads that lasted a long time, because having runners to deliver the mail that keeps your bureaucracy going is a very high priority. Other types of nations might upgrade from deer trails to something that can accommodate a wagon, but that thing is going to be riddled with potholes and turn into a quagmire after any decent rainstorm. It's possible to move goods by land, but it was never the primary way of moving stuff. You had some kind of waterway to utilize or you were some hinterlands community that nobody cared about. Good roads are built for mail.

Quote:

---

Huh? The only application of new tech is conquest?

---

I said they weren't applying the tech because I didn't think anyone ever conquered anyone, which I thought because you gave me this impression that there's never any collapse. This was the kind of question I asked you to ignore because our apocalypse definitions were so different.

Quote:

---

You hide your stuff away for safe keeping, then die or otherwise go away while no one around knows what you've got. Or, your stuff is either inherited or seized by someone who doesn't fully understand it and tosses it in a closet. Or, your stuff is lost in a great battle, rolls along a stream bed, and gets lost in the deepest, darkest corner of a cave for millennia. Etc. If said stuff is sufficiently durable it may be found hundreds or thousands of years later. If your stuff is written material (of any sort, including spell books and treatises on magic or other tech) it may well rot and be lost. Or, your stuff passes to someone who knows exactly what to do with it, contributing to the general pace of advancement.

---

This doesn't do anything for explaining to me why there are relics in dungeons. It's a start to explaining why the goblins didn't open the chest and use what was inside of it, but unless dungeons are at the bottoms of caves and caves a practically vacuum cleaners when it comes to magical rings, I don't get why an adventuring party would ever find more than maybe one ring, if they were lucky.

Quote:

---

Incidentally, I still don't understand the difference between a world after the apocalypse and a world after-after the apocalypse.

---

Mad Max is after the apocalypse. Somebody becoming a kind and stitching together several communities of people that have no living memory of what came before the apocalypse is after after the apocalypse.

Postapocalyptic has come to refer to a very specific genre, so post-postapocalypse is referring to an era where things have moved on enough that you're no longer telling postapocalypse stories in it. The silly linguistics behind the name are a big part of the charm that attracts people enough to make use of it.

Quote:

---

Zorku	Joe
Adventuring is a somewhat ordinary career choice so, there are adventurers running around looking for, and finding, dungeons to explore all over the place.	Adventurers are freaks and fools who (almost) invariably die young. Successful adventurers are miraculously lucky.

Well, it's now past 1:30 and I'm going to be working late to make up all the time it took to write this. Oh well.

---

I expect a noteworthy portion of the nobles that weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth to be retired adventurers. Basically all the folks that get knighted for heroic deeds instead of being born to a knight and sent off the knight school to get their knight degree. Doesn't have to be knights, and they're a bit of a curiosity, but there are a handful of them anywhere that's suitable for adventurers.

I do kind of expect most adventurers to die in hideous ways as they venture into death traps that some bored and very evil wizard left lying around, especially at low levels, but as they become higher level and come into some significant wealth, they start to refuse adventure if there's no possibility of resurrection and no BBEG to threaten everything they hold dear.

I have come to very strongly doubt that we'll ever come to any resolution on this, so I only want to give my own spin on the last point.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zorku

I expect a noteworthy portion of the nobles that weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth to be retired adventurers. Basically all the folks that get knighted for heroic deeds instead of being born to a knight and sent off the knight school to get their knight degree. Doesn't have to be knights, and they're a bit of a curiosity, but there are a handful of them anywhere that's suitable for adventurers.

I do kind of expect most adventurers to die in hideous ways as they venture into death traps that some bored and very evil wizard left lying around, especially at low levels, but as they become higher level and come into some significant wealth, they start to refuse adventure if there's no possibility of resurrection and no BBEG to threaten everything they hold dear.

---

I see PCs and PC types as exceptional. Really exceptional. Most of the methods for rolling up the (six, if we're talking D&D) attributes tend to give results at least one standard deviation above the mean for each one, which means much better than one standard deviation for the six together. They all start out having class abilities better than run of the mill folks, by virtue of having achieved level one in something, as opposed to their level zero friends and families. They usually have the benefit of experienced players telling them what to do, and they thus do things like band together into parties. Most people, in my way of looking at things, who decide to head out for adventure and seek their fortunes will end up meeting a couple of nasties - goblins, bandits, whatever - and die before reaching level two. Or what they encounter is a press gang and they end up in an army or on a ship and have a somewhat decent chance of survival, if not adventure and wealth. Or they give up and go home. For every one who becomes the next Dread Pirate Roberts there are thousands and thousands that Roberts actually killed (or who go home defeated.) And we sit around tables role playing the exceptions.

So, as I see it, PCs are not "one in a million," but one in tens of thousands of the population. And plenty of them die young anyway, so high level successful ones are one in million (give or take.) That alone accounts for a lot of our differences, I think. If the party finds one epic weapon in a dragon lair or some such, it's probably the only one (or one of only a very small handful) within a thousand miles. So I don't need to worry about where "all these" things came from or how they got where they are; mostly they aren't.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jqavins

I have come to very strongly doubt that we'll ever come to any resolution on this, so I only want to give my own spin on the last point.

I see PCs and PC types as exceptional. Really exceptional. Most of the methods for rolling up the (six, if we're talking D&D) attributes tend to give results at least one standard deviation above the mean for each one, which means much better than one standard deviation for the six together. They all start out having class abilities better than run of the mill folks, by virtue of having achieved level one in something, as opposed to their level zero friends and families. They usually have the benefit of experienced players telling them what to do, and they thus do things like band together into parties. Most people, in my way of looking at things, who decide to head out for adventure and seek their fortunes will end up meeting a couple of nasties - goblins, bandits, whatever - and die before reaching level two. Or what they encounter is a press gang and they end up in an army or on a ship and have a somewhat decent chance of survival, if not adventure and wealth. Or they give up and go home. For every one who becomes the next Dread Pirate Roberts there are thousands and thousands that Roberts actually killed (or who go home defeated.) And we sit around tables role playing the exceptions.

So, as I see it, PCs are not "one in a million," but one in tens of thousands of the population. And plenty of them die young anyway, so high level successful ones are one in million (give or take.) That alone accounts for a lot of our differences, I think. If the party finds one epic weapon in a dragon lair or some such, it's probably the only one (or one of only a very small handful) within a thousand miles. So I don't need to worry about where "all these" things came from or how they got where they are; mostly they aren't.

---

I don't think we have all that different of an idea of how many adventurers there are, but rather, I expect the NPC archmage to get his hands on dragon horde items sometimes, various nefarious types to do similarly, and for most of the treasure to remain lost in places that just haven't been explored in the last five generations, and probably won't be explored in the next five generations.

Perhaps a reason a cleric of the god of knowledge would have their powers stripped away is spreading misinformation. What if arcane magic in this setting is merely a perversion of existing divine magic, meaning that the entire school was founded on a lie.