the DM vs the writer
Jun. 2nd, 2020 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliWas pondering a GameLit world and how many characters would have levels. . . and questions of realism. . . .
If you define "realism" as "not making the reader notice the hand of the writer (however artfully done) in the limit," there's no way to do it except making them a dime a dozen, and that even if you make leveling much harder than it is in game. The idea that a party of adventurers can fight through six encounters in a day, and hit second level, but a shepherd can fight off wolves two or three times every winter for decades, or a caravan guard fight an encounter every month, again for decades, without leveling zeroth level -- well, you can fudge up reasons why the party can do it and the commoners can, but they are fudged up. (Their ability scores aren't that much better.)
I have read an argument that not all priests can be cleric-class because then 2.5% of the population would be clerics, and if all the classes claimed an equal representation (not an axiom I would put weight on, but grant it for argument), then 30% of the population would be leveled. To which I say, Henry VIII made it law that every man between the age of 15 to 60 years old should have a bow and arrows for it, and practice. If women can do the same in a D&D world, they would, or the kingdom would be overrun by the one where the women were thus trained. And in your typical D&D world, most of them would have a chance to use that.
And, of course, the classes would not be evenly distributed. Fighter would probably be commonest, but cleric would be close after.
If you define "realism" as "not making the reader notice the hand of the writer (however artfully done) in the limit," there's no way to do it except making them a dime a dozen, and that even if you make leveling much harder than it is in game. The idea that a party of adventurers can fight through six encounters in a day, and hit second level, but a shepherd can fight off wolves two or three times every winter for decades, or a caravan guard fight an encounter every month, again for decades, without leveling zeroth level -- well, you can fudge up reasons why the party can do it and the commoners can, but they are fudged up. (Their ability scores aren't that much better.)
I have read an argument that not all priests can be cleric-class because then 2.5% of the population would be clerics, and if all the classes claimed an equal representation (not an axiom I would put weight on, but grant it for argument), then 30% of the population would be leveled. To which I say, Henry VIII made it law that every man between the age of 15 to 60 years old should have a bow and arrows for it, and practice. If women can do the same in a D&D world, they would, or the kingdom would be overrun by the one where the women were thus trained. And in your typical D&D world, most of them would have a chance to use that.
And, of course, the classes would not be evenly distributed. Fighter would probably be commonest, but cleric would be close after.