A Thousand Points of Light

There's a type of fantasy setting called a thousand points of light. The premise is that civilization is huddled in towns and villages, or behind city walls, and out there is a dangerous world, with monsters roaming around, and dark forests you don't go into, and all sorts of nastiness. The PCs are heroes, who go out into this dangerous world and fight the monsters and collect the treasure and return with stories of their heroic deeds.

I was discussing a pacifist character that we've played from time to time, and even have the write-up for her. We recently redesigned her for 13th Age.  She has an Str of 3, and a Con of 5, and not a single attack ability, spell, or weapon. She's a cleric, and she heals and buffs, and raises the dead, but she is definitely not a combatant.

And a few game masters said that she'd probably not be welcome at their table, and the reasons given were pretty straightforward:

• She's not pulling her weight (by doing damage in combat)
• The players tend towards murder hobos and she'd not do well there.
• She'd get torn apart by the monsters because the world is dangerous.

Great. Wonderful.

Ignoring things like Frodo Baggins, and Willow, and Phillipe the Mouse (Ladyhawke for you heathens), the 'helpless individual who travels with the heroes' is a thing that is almost as old as storytelling.

And then there's the other reasons for having someone who's a non-combatant going on adventures. They're friends and want to tag along, or they're family, and they don't have anywhere else to be -- maybe you're orphans or something. Or maybe you were hired or tasked to guard them with your life (escort quest).

But, all that aside.

How the hell is civilization surviving when anything outside of the city is in dire peril or so dangerous normal people are going to be slaughtered if they set foot out there? How are the towns and villages (unless walled, and even then...) surviving against the monsters?

What about trade? What the hell do merchants do? What about farmers? Do their crops get torn up in the middle of the night, or their homes broken into and entire families devoured on a regular basis?

In other words, how the hell is civilization still around?

And if the answer is 'well, it isn't that bad', then why hasn't civilization reached out and beat down these threats, and consolidated territory? Like, we're talking Great Wall of China degrees of construction to keep the horrors at bay and keep lands safe.  (Wall of Stone, anyone?  It isn't like the wall's going away, and you can build on and around it.)

So, it's one or the other. Either it's too dangerous, and civilization's not going to make it, or it isn't that dangerous, and civilization's going to push out.  Especially if you're dealing with heroic mortals. The PCs are not the only people out there with class levels and magic. (Like we say for Shadowrun: No matter how good you are, there's going to be someone better than you.)

I don't know.

I think it's lazy.  'Of course there's monsters out there' ... without thinking about the ramifications of having such things stomping around so close to people. Seriously, if your source of food is in dire threat, you send people out to crush the threat.

I ran a game of Pathfinder, and when the PCs got to a certain level, I kept trying to fit the CR into the territory they were in.  What I got was a group of Gargantuan Trolls walking around (think of the movie The Troll Hunter, and you're not far off). I looked at them, and I thought ... there's no way anything would survive one of these things walking around, let alone a pack/family.

They would crush anything that came near them. Possibly even literally. A town? There'd be no survivors.  The local ecosystem would be devastated in weeks. These things would be a walking, regenerating famine in the making.

Now, if you have a society hammered down - a city, a bunch of satellite towns and villages, a barrier beyond the farmer's fields, and forays out beyond the wall from time to time - then sure. You've got the monsters on the other side of the wall, small ones closer to the wall, because of said forays, and more dangerous the further you get from the wall.

But that's not a thousand points of light in the darkness.  That's a kingdom. One that's doing well, and can probably expand territory over time.  With new walls further out like rings to represent how far they've expanded since the beginning.

Solid world building, and kind of cool, in my books.

Because in my books ... yeah, if the world is so dangerous normal people can't ever expect to survive, then ... well, they didn't. There's no civilization, because there's nobody to sustain civilization.

So, what's your thoughts?