@@DungeonMasterpiece I would love to see a further discussion about the influence of cantrips and 1st level spells on geopolitics. Imagine how efficient a society would be thanks to the mending cantrip. Clothing, leather goods, furniture and so on... would last lifetimes. Allowing production labor to focus are many other things.
@@recursivecoin359 I should make an episode discussing how this really isn't as game changing as people say, well, at least it's about as game changing as the industrial revolution.
I never thought I would gain insight on the motivations of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia from a D&D video. The 3C Initiative has GOT to be part of the reason - a perception of a loss of control.
@@keiths81ca Which makes a little sense when you look at the terrain there, there's a reason that Russia claims it's winter who does in invading armies, when in fact it's 100% their standard MO of "burn the land to retreat back to something more defensible" that ends up beingthe deciding factor.
The very last point: in Tolkien's works, Ents vs a ruthless Istari, neither of them human, was a natural way for him to express a faction for traditional-natural resources and another faction for technological destructive exploitation. George Lucas used Ewoks and The Empire. In the video, a community of druids vs a wizard building a tower. In Princess Mononoke, an interloper faction is added and the conflict is doubled in the metaphysical. And so on. Many great variations on one single aspect of resource conflict. This kind of conflict is easy to grasp for us, but maybe not as easy to understand. Many of us choose to side with the natural-resource faction even though we live within a technological culture where each of us has a much smaller footprint on the remaining nature than the inhabitants of a culture living in nature, and the technological one has much more ways for people to grow and realise their potential. There are teaching and learning opportunities here for a well-educated group.
The reason why we side with the nature factions is that the industrial factions are simply presented as evil while the nature ones are good, a more nuanced characterization would be: nature factions as "natural" while industrial factions as "civilized" let me explain: the nature factions live happier lives but are more brutal and have morals more similar to beasts like abandoning weak children, resolving conflicts with violence, raiding, pillaging and enslaving and having strick religious practices while the industrial society has "free" citizens that are all a bit enslaved to the system, the people are unhappier and less healthy and disconnected to the ruling class while being exploited by them but having higher odds of survival, caring more for the weak and sickly and so on, this creates a more nuanced choice than: industry bad (although I would still side with nature I hate industrial society but that is my opinion and not objective reality And I wouldn't force it that way in the narrative)
I want to make one comment about the transition from stone to bronze; you said that it was the invention of bronze that prompted the shift to toolmaking and legal codes, but in fact those things both predate bronze. In fact it might be more accurate to say that the agricultural surplus provided by rivers allowed for the shift to specialized trades, which in turn lead someone to figure out how to make bronze.
As someone who routinely looks to history and its stories for influences in the games I run, this is a fantastic dive into how cultures and settlements grow, change, and even disappear. Love this stuff.
This provided a shockingly insightful and prophetic commentary on the current conflict in Eastern Europe which certainly explains the seeming inevitability of the conflict. I'd felt for a while that this war was indeed inevitable, but I didn't realize just how solid my hunch was until I saw the section regarding the Three Seas Initiative. An excellent piece, both for understanding current events and for providing insight to budding Dungeon Masters.
Came for a quest hook. Got a history lesson, A current affairs prediction came true and also some great quest hooks. The level of detail you put out is infectious haha I can't wait to fill my world with little stuff my party will probably just walk past, but, will simultaneously make the world feel more real. Can't wait!!
Human Geography is such a good field of study for a dungeon master :D If you have the option to take such a course in high school or college, do it! I don't regret taking the option :)
I'd love to see you cover Pathfinder's Golarion, specifically the inner sea. The landscape feels like it provides a lot of interesting geopolitics, like half of the landmass being divided by a massive cliff. Amazing work!
The best part of the video comes when you start talking about alternative limited resources leading to wealth. Really Inspiring Stuff. I've been making this setting that set inside a small pocket dimension, that loops on its self and is only about a season of walking long, in any direction you go, to eventually end up standing in the same spot. I just now supposed that in addition to the two parallel rivers that flow in either direction and only connect at a single whirlpool like sea their is also a lay line that intersects both rivers and bulges on the opposite end of the whirlpool sea in a rocky infertile area. The leyline (or leylines if I make more) all come to this spot of the ground and swell up in a well spring of magic. Now I have two great city states, one that makes way more food, and one that makes way more magical goods, and with two city states, I have conflict!
What you mention about wizard towers influencing politics is so interesting and makes me think of the First Law books by Joe Abercrombie. The House of the Maker is long abandoned, but it’s within city limits of a geopolitical superpower. It’s never really explained but I always assumed the wizard Kanedius built is tower within the superpower, but perhaps the superpower formed around Kanedius and his tower. Interesting stuff. Also I could be completely wrong on some details, haven’t read the books in a while ;)
As someone who makes city maps for our D&D group your videos have completely changed how I design the cities and villages as a whole. This one in particular answered a question I had on how a city can be by a river, be a trading city yet not be a economic superpower. Thank you so much for creating and sharing these ideas.
Every city is a trading city. A small town is the trading place for the farms around it, a bigger one is the trading place for a region and so it goes.
@@DungeonMasterpiece And this is the beauty of Geopolitics, a too often overlooked portion of politics. Just a cursory glance at it made me actually predict this right after the whole Crimea incident. I just want to say, you're one of my favorite D&D guys to listen to because you bring such a fresh and different perspective. Thanks.
@@bilbarcooks4681 Ukraine is an important strategic zone which Putin desires as a buffer to NATO first and foremost. There is also cultural bias and ideology at play. Putin feels that with Joe Biden as sitting president he has free range to annex that space and create a point of control over that '3 seas' network. There is also the meddling that NeoCons such as the Bushes and Rumsfeld initiated which took that territory away from Russia. Remember that he has made a couple of plays to recover it already. Add what Clinton/Obama and the NeoLibs did there (establishing corrupt energy companies- per Joe and Hunter, bio weapons labs, etc.) and he's definitely going to seize the opportunity to reclaim it before the Balkan states can consolidate under a western benefitting trade network. You can find his speeches about this - he's not some brutal dummy. He has perhaps miscalculated the west, but we'll see. Remember that until Trump was in office, NATO was actually quite depleted depending on US forces for the majority of their combat effectiveness. Putin respected Trump because of his strong personality, not necessarily a polite respect, but at the very least that of a cunning predator carefully considering its prey. Biden's complete fumbling of the Afghanistan withdrawal was basically his green-light to march. And yes it was entirely on the Biden administration for botching that. Although it was Trump's decision to withdraw, the manner in which the US forces did so was entirely on Ol' Sleepy Joe.
I really, really like your example of druids at the end. Adding the geopolitical angle to your typical "don't defile nature!" story makes it much more interesting and compelling.
This is an excellent video. Taking it a step further, in high fantasy and SF "rivers" don't need to be rivers: a network of portals or space gates will have population centres and infrastructure surrounding each node, whether it be graving yards for the Imperial Space Fleet or /Gymnasia of the Magisters/. I have a setting where flying landmasses travel around predictable courses at a speed of about 20km/day. Their rulers spend most of their time dominating the trembling serfs below, but they also buy and sell trade goods. The flying mountains combine city, bulk transport and centre of power. One point that jarred. Circa 10 minutes, you talk about self-sufficient nations becoming rivals and mutual antagonists. That's not always true - they need to have significant areas of competition or disagreement, and they also need to have significant contact. Han Dynasty China had very little problem with Rome, and vice versa, because central Asia was in the way. I've no doubt they would have warred if they had been neighbours. In contrast, after the entente cordiale, Britain and France got on reasonably well. They were right next to each other and had a millennium of war and mistrust, but for the last 100 years they have allied. No significant areas of competition that were not outweighed by trade and mutual obligation (Brexit? - headshake). So what I'm getting at is that competition of ideas or for resources is a *necessary* condition. East/West, Prussia/France, Wizards/Druids etc
Wouldn't portal networks and river networks combine? You can have a system of hubs, the biggest hub is of both portals and rivers, and then you get smaller hubs of either rivers and portals.
Lot to chew on with this video! Very cool world building resource in these videos. What are your thoughts on how certain fantasy/sci-fi settings use a "mcguffin" resources to this same effect: eg: Spice in Dune, or Vibranium from Wakanda in the Marvel universe.
Not to forget, Rivers are also part of the available natural borders between nations, making defending borders easier and cheaper since one only needs guard posts at bridges, not along the entire border. One of the reasons for China's expansionistic hostile policies, demanding ownership over all the territories they are claiming, is to secure the springs of all the rivers that flow through china and to ensure that their borders are entirely oceanic or mountainous and therefor easy to defend.
Just found your channel, and i love it! Been a DM myself for going on 4 years now, and your advice really resonates with how I run my games. You have given me a few tips that actually helped streamline my prep a bit more! Keep up the fantastic advice, you gained a sub!
Johannesburg is the only major city in the World not a major waterway. This is because they discovered 'a river of gold along a prehistoric beach' under the soil. So whether made of water or gold, every major city has a river.
Thanks Baron, this is very cool to think about, once you design the landscape and resources, the cities and nations and conflicts can almost place themselves :) Yeah I really like the idea about basing trade around what rare fantasy resources might be available and where. Jems for magic and Platinum for trade would also be highly valued in a dnd world.
Just stumbled across the channel and really enjoyed this video. Thank you. Nice to see my home town of Brisbane represented too. Expanding on this topic, would love to hear your take on fantasy trade and travel routes (including the use of airships). Cheers!
More of a suggestion than criticism; You talked a lot in this video about how to derive conflict from a map, but not really about how to generate quests/hooks from that map derived conflict. Could you cover that in a future video? Thanks!
Rivers are awesome! There are some in my setting that I can't wait to use in games. For example a river that splits human kingdom and ork plains, but the river freezes every winter. Because orks have less food and require firewood, they raid humans across the frozen river.
River city image at 1min - Is that Brisbane, Australia?? If so then a bit of a random surprise to see an image of my hometown pop up on an American DnD video! 😂
Hmmm didn't get notified of this one. Weird. Using resources and land masses to set up conflict is solid advice, I like the analysis and discussion. Something centering around artificial scarcity and distribution could also be fascinating, so much history to pull from. Keep up the good work.
as a DM with zero background in politics and economics (and sometimes baffled by the, im my pov, often nonsensical actions of nationstates - am biologist) your content is a goldmine, both for another lense to view my factions interactions but also to peak personal interest in a topic i had little interest in so far. the added russia bit, nice touch :)
It gave me an idea for all fantasy races to coexist: have them have different main foods. Dwarfs and humans can be similar, with dwarfs being slightly more on the carnivorous side and being able to better handle a lack of electrolytes in the died. Elves would be meso-fungivores, who's died consist of 50-70% of mushrooms and lichens, with an inability to digest starch. Merpeople and goblins could be detritivores, feeding on dead and decaying organisms, with some occasional predation. Oh, and they'll also be an organisms that is an autotrophe, using both salt and seismic energy (small seism happen all the time) to produce their own food, with oxygen as a by-product, but be very sensitive to sun-light (it actually kills them). They would allow for caves to develop rich ecosystems and the Underdark peoples are willing to defend with their lives if need be.
Extremely helpful insights into the influence of geography on cultural development and politics. A trade relationship like those mentioned could inspire even simple quests of protecting people from bandits who arise from people displaced by the economy.
As usual a fantastic video. Just watched it today with my wife as we were discussing the Ukraine and the impact on shipping of oil and the fact that super tankers and where they have to travel to deliver Russian oil.
You combine twin interests of mine: geopolitics and ttrpg. Very cool. Oh, and I dig the use of (I think it's) Trumpet Voluntary for your bumper tune. 🤘 rock on
I think building a quest around these mundane resource concerns is just as cool. Sending the heroes to deal with an illegal river blockade, for example, can lead in all kinds of directions. Was the blockade put in place by rebels trying to get leverage against exploitation? Was it sponsored in secret by a competitor state? Is it part of a larger guerilla warfare effort that's a prelude to a more overt war? Or, maybe the heroes are sent to find the resources in newly acquired land. Call me old fashioned but I find the mundane stuff efficient.
I mean, I could have just made a 10 second video that said "Civilizations use rivers for agriculture and trade, and need mountains surrounding them to stay safe. When they don't have that, they go to war." and closed the video.
I just wanted to say I really like this video and how you describe the world building potential of rivers. Would love content that’s like this for other geographical features. Something that can help make our homebrew worlds have realistic influences on cultures and settings. It would be great to have a reference to help me know what geographical influences there are for different nations I have in my homebrewed world!
This is amazing content! I got d&d plot ideas, map ideas, a history lesson, a political/geographical lesson, and real world elements used to contextualize fantasy world elements! Brilliant! 👏💖🤩
Great video! Read a book called Internal Combustion by Edwin Black. It's about a variety of things, but one of the things he touches on are how the rivers became important for the shipment of wood, and charcoal when it was developed. The Lords of Coal were the cartel ran by the Crown, and the Rival cartel The Hostmen of Newcastle. But yes there are a lot of plots that can be extracted from the map. City near a forest? Deforestation may bring conflict with local Druids? and Rangers.
@@DungeonMasterpiece I guess it's alright since I get everything I need to done and on time. I'm just curious about the uploads, do you start processing before bed? Do you live in Europe or South Africa? Is it some esoteric algorithm game?
4:03 and by this, what anthropologies really mean is working about 150 days of the year with an average work week of around 30 hours a week. Contrasted with like the 60+ hours of work week necessary needed to survive in the modern world or the 20 hours a week needed for hunter-gatherers.
To be clear, these figures are widely debated. In good climates, that might have been the case, but if those weather patterns were consistent, people likely wouldn't have Considered all the extra effort to conduct agriculture instead of hunting and gathering.
Wishful thinking and made-up numbers. Truth is, if you work less you're gonne be less skilled and fall behind in the labour market. In the past, if your tribe worked more than others, your tribe would become dominant and wipe out the other tribes.
You know, it's not a one-to-one, but how no one mapped Lay Lines in Rifts always bugged me. There are a whole bunch of 'can freely fly... within x distance of a lay line.' It make magic more powerful, and magic can summon food and water. Some people can even teleport freely up and down a lay line. And this isn't some exclusive, rare, or only high level ability. It makes sense that people don't want to settle on Nexus (where lay lines meet), because it can dump monsters on you, but so long as your a decent distance from them a Lay Line becomes a nature economic channel. But outside of explicitly high magic nations most people avoid lay lines, and their something you stumble on, rather than integrated into trade and economics, and they absolutely should be for many of the same reasons rivers are.
A very well thought out argument taken in a fun way. Sounds like someone has been watching Peter Zeihan. We'll know for sure if we see a future video about the population demographics of dwarves and how that impacts their foreign policy.
So I've just recently found your channel by a fluke of algorithmic luck. I showed this video to my players, and they don't know if they should be scared or excited. My games already had a lot of political intrigue, but it was more game of thrones style. Now it threatens to get in to the nitty gritty. You sir just got a new subscriber!
RP gaming needs a video game simulator that takes care of all of this in the background so our players can focus on the important things like killing things and taking their stuff.
Looks like I'll be making my quests by studying maps now. PS: Do you wear pants while filming these vids and if you do is it the pants belonging to the jacket or shorts/ joggers?
This is exactly why I've always been one to design bottom up. As in the real world, everything from the creation of towns, economics, resources, military operations, etc. occurred due to the existing geography.
Wow, I didn't know Chile was such an important source of heavy metal. Guess I gotta expand my horizon a bit, I mostly listen to german and skandinavian metal...
This is why I recommend using real maps and just altering the coastlines to look different. Then change the place names and insert monsters and demi-humans. Now you know just where mountains, rivers, cities, and natural resources make sense, AND you've got as much history as you want.
what a thoughtful introspection into the matter. Some of what you point out seems a little obvious, when you say it. But if I stop to ponder, I'm not sure I always think about stuff like this when working out how some society fFunctions. It's only obvious after hearing it. I guess what I mean is, thank you fFor this very well conceived video!!
This is by far the most sophisticated d&d related talk ever. Cheers 🍷
That's an extremely high compliment
@@DungeonMasterpiece
I would love to see a further discussion about the influence of cantrips and 1st level spells on geopolitics.
Imagine how efficient a society would be thanks to the mending cantrip. Clothing, leather goods, furniture and so on... would last lifetimes. Allowing production labor to focus are many other things.
@@recursivecoin359 I should make an episode discussing how this really isn't as game changing as people say, well, at least it's about as game changing as the industrial revolution.
He is not referenced to as “Dungeon Master” instead as “Sir Dungeon Master” 🧐 🍷. 👏👏
@@naturalsoul1019 🤣🤣
I never thought I would gain insight on the motivations of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia from a D&D video. The 3C Initiative has GOT to be part of the reason - a perception of a loss of control.
It has been the MO of Russian rulers since Grand Duchy of Moscow.
@@keiths81ca Which makes a little sense when you look at the terrain there, there's a reason that Russia claims it's winter who does in invading armies, when in fact it's 100% their standard MO of "burn the land to retreat back to something more defensible" that ends up beingthe deciding factor.
Crimean gas reserves
This Video Combines Two Of My Favourite Things: Anthropology, And Role-Playing Games. Phenomenal Work.
The very last point: in Tolkien's works, Ents vs a ruthless Istari, neither of them human, was a natural way for him to express a faction for traditional-natural resources and another faction for technological destructive exploitation. George Lucas used Ewoks and The Empire. In the video, a community of druids vs a wizard building a tower. In Princess Mononoke, an interloper faction is added and the conflict is doubled in the metaphysical. And so on. Many great variations on one single aspect of resource conflict.
This kind of conflict is easy to grasp for us, but maybe not as easy to understand. Many of us choose to side with the natural-resource faction even though we live within a technological culture where each of us has a much smaller footprint on the remaining nature than the inhabitants of a culture living in nature, and the technological one has much more ways for people to grow and realise their potential. There are teaching and learning opportunities here for a well-educated group.
The reason why we side with the nature factions is that the industrial factions are simply presented as evil while the nature ones are good, a more nuanced characterization would be: nature factions as "natural" while industrial factions as "civilized" let me explain: the nature factions live happier lives but are more brutal and have morals more similar to beasts like abandoning weak children, resolving conflicts with violence, raiding, pillaging and enslaving and having strick religious practices while the industrial society has "free" citizens that are all a bit enslaved to the system, the people are unhappier and less healthy and disconnected to the ruling class while being exploited by them but having higher odds of survival, caring more for the weak and sickly and so on, this creates a more nuanced choice than: industry bad (although I would still side with nature I hate industrial society but that is my opinion and not objective reality And I wouldn't force it that way in the narrative)
I want to make one comment about the transition from stone to bronze; you said that it was the invention of bronze that prompted the shift to toolmaking and legal codes, but in fact those things both predate bronze. In fact it might be more accurate to say that the agricultural surplus provided by rivers allowed for the shift to specialized trades, which in turn lead someone to figure out how to make bronze.
It also took a specific area that had access to trade for copper and tin. There aren’t many places where that’s easy to do.
As someone who routinely looks to history and its stories for influences in the games I run, this is a fantastic dive into how cultures and settlements grow, change, and even disappear. Love this stuff.
This provided a shockingly insightful and prophetic commentary on the current conflict in Eastern Europe which certainly explains the seeming inevitability of the conflict. I'd felt for a while that this war was indeed inevitable, but I didn't realize just how solid my hunch was until I saw the section regarding the Three Seas Initiative. An excellent piece, both for understanding current events and for providing insight to budding Dungeon Masters.
Came for a quest hook. Got a history lesson, A current affairs prediction came true and also some great quest hooks.
The level of detail you put out is infectious haha I can't wait to fill my world with little stuff my party will probably just walk past, but, will simultaneously make the world feel more real.
Can't wait!!
The Vespine Gas drop got a smirk out of me.
Human Geography is such a good field of study for a dungeon master :D
If you have the option to take such a course in high school or college, do it! I don't regret taking the option :)
I'd love to see you cover Pathfinder's Golarion, specifically the inner sea. The landscape feels like it provides a lot of interesting geopolitics, like half of the landmass being divided by a massive cliff. Amazing work!
The best part of the video comes when you start talking about alternative limited resources leading to wealth.
Really Inspiring Stuff.
I've been making this setting that set inside a small pocket dimension, that loops on its self and is only about a season of walking long, in any direction you go, to eventually end up standing in the same spot.
I just now supposed that in addition to the two parallel rivers that flow in either direction and only connect at a single whirlpool like sea their is also a lay line that intersects both rivers and bulges on the opposite end of the whirlpool sea in a rocky infertile area.
The leyline (or leylines if I make more) all come to this spot of the ground and swell up in a well spring of magic.
Now I have two great city states, one that makes way more food, and one that makes way more magical goods, and with two city states, I have conflict!
What you mention about wizard towers influencing politics is so interesting and makes me think of the First Law books by Joe Abercrombie. The House of the Maker is long abandoned, but it’s within city limits of a geopolitical superpower. It’s never really explained but I always assumed the wizard Kanedius built is tower within the superpower, but perhaps the superpower formed around Kanedius and his tower. Interesting stuff.
Also I could be completely wrong on some details, haven’t read the books in a while ;)
As someone who makes city maps for our D&D group your videos have completely changed how I design the cities and villages as a whole.
This one in particular answered a question I had on how a city can be by a river, be a trading city yet not be a economic superpower.
Thank you so much for creating and sharing these ideas.
Every city is a trading city.
A small town is the trading place for the farms around it, a bigger one is the trading place for a region and so it goes.
Super interesting concept. Your concerns for Russia sadly seem to have been completely on point ☹️
Yeeeep........ *Sigh*
@@DungeonMasterpiece And this is the beauty of Geopolitics, a too often overlooked portion of politics. Just a cursory glance at it made me actually predict this right after the whole Crimea incident.
I just want to say, you're one of my favorite D&D guys to listen to because you bring such a fresh and different perspective. Thanks.
@@jorgedasilva7665 thank you very much!! I'm glad you enjoy it!
The three seas initiative didn't actually include Ukraine though.
@@bilbarcooks4681 Ukraine is an important strategic zone which Putin desires as a buffer to NATO first and foremost. There is also cultural bias and ideology at play. Putin feels that with Joe Biden as sitting president he has free range to annex that space and create a point of control over that '3 seas' network. There is also the meddling that NeoCons such as the Bushes and Rumsfeld initiated which took that territory away from Russia. Remember that he has made a couple of plays to recover it already.
Add what Clinton/Obama and the NeoLibs did there (establishing corrupt energy companies- per Joe and Hunter, bio weapons labs, etc.) and he's definitely going to seize the opportunity to reclaim it before the Balkan states can consolidate under a western benefitting trade network.
You can find his speeches about this - he's not some brutal dummy. He has perhaps miscalculated the west, but we'll see. Remember that until Trump was in office, NATO was actually quite depleted depending on US forces for the majority of their combat effectiveness. Putin respected Trump because of his strong personality, not necessarily a polite respect, but at the very least that of a cunning predator carefully considering its prey.
Biden's complete fumbling of the Afghanistan withdrawal was basically his green-light to march. And yes it was entirely on the Biden administration for botching that. Although it was Trump's decision to withdraw, the manner in which the US forces did so was entirely on Ol' Sleepy Joe.
I really, really like your example of druids at the end. Adding the geopolitical angle to your typical "don't defile nature!" story makes it much more interesting and compelling.
This is an excellent video. Taking it a step further, in high fantasy and SF "rivers" don't need to be rivers: a network of portals or space gates will have population centres and infrastructure surrounding each node, whether it be graving yards for the Imperial Space Fleet or /Gymnasia of the Magisters/. I have a setting where flying landmasses travel around predictable courses at a speed of about 20km/day. Their rulers spend most of their time dominating the trembling serfs below, but they also buy and sell trade goods. The flying mountains combine city, bulk transport and centre of power.
One point that jarred. Circa 10 minutes, you talk about self-sufficient nations becoming rivals and mutual antagonists. That's not always true - they need to have significant areas of competition or disagreement, and they also need to have significant contact. Han Dynasty China had very little problem with Rome, and vice versa, because central Asia was in the way. I've no doubt they would have warred if they had been neighbours. In contrast, after the entente cordiale, Britain and France got on reasonably well. They were right next to each other and had a millennium of war and mistrust, but for the last 100 years they have allied. No significant areas of competition that were not outweighed by trade and mutual obligation (Brexit? - headshake).
So what I'm getting at is that competition of ideas or for resources is a *necessary* condition. East/West, Prussia/France, Wizards/Druids etc
DMing ancient Nethril by chance?
Wouldn't portal networks and river networks combine? You can have a system of hubs, the biggest hub is of both portals and rivers, and then you get smaller hubs of either rivers and portals.
Lot to chew on with this video! Very cool world building resource in these videos.
What are your thoughts on how certain fantasy/sci-fi settings use a "mcguffin" resources to this same effect: eg: Spice in Dune, or Vibranium from Wakanda in the Marvel universe.
Not to forget, Rivers are also part of the available natural borders between nations, making defending borders easier and cheaper since one only needs guard posts at bridges, not along the entire border.
One of the reasons for China's expansionistic hostile policies, demanding ownership over all the territories they are claiming, is to secure the springs of all the rivers that flow through china and to ensure that their borders are entirely oceanic or mountainous and therefor easy to defend.
Just found your channel, and i love it! Been a DM myself for going on 4 years now, and your advice really resonates with how I run my games. You have given me a few tips that actually helped streamline my prep a bit more! Keep up the fantastic advice, you gained a sub!
Welcome aboard!
Me a Chilean that lives in a mining town watching this video 😮
Me as an American, who lives in an old textile river town, who is validated by this comment 🤩
Johannesburg is the only major city in the World not a major waterway. This is because they discovered 'a river of gold along a prehistoric beach' under the soil. So whether made of water or gold, every major city has a river.
Who knew that three months later a video about fantasy gaming would help explain real world stiuations
🙃🙃🙃🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦
Thanks Baron, this is very cool to think about, once you design the landscape and resources, the cities and nations and conflicts can almost place themselves :) Yeah I really like the idea about basing trade around what rare fantasy resources might be available and where. Jems for magic and Platinum for trade would also be highly valued in a dnd world.
Just stumbled across the channel and really enjoyed this video. Thank you. Nice to see my home town of Brisbane represented too. Expanding on this topic, would love to hear your take on fantasy trade and travel routes (including the use of airships). Cheers!
This is just a really sneaky way to teach me geography. PROCEED.
Came for the excellent commentary, stayed for the beautiful photo of the brown snake @0:50
Wow. This is hands down one of the best D&D DM advise videos I have ever seen.
Just discovered this channel. Please keep it up! It's a beautiful combination of multiple points of interest.
Glad you are enjoying it!
One other great functions of Rivers is defense.
True. This is why the plains indians used rivers as the border of their hunting ranges
More of a suggestion than criticism; You talked a lot in this video about how to derive conflict from a map, but not really about how to generate quests/hooks from that map derived conflict. Could you cover that in a future video? Thanks!
Rivers are awesome! There are some in my setting that I can't wait to use in games. For example a river that splits human kingdom and ork plains, but the river freezes every winter. Because orks have less food and require firewood, they raid humans across the frozen river.
I just discovered your channel a few days ago; fantastic stuff! I particularly appreciate your not underestimating your audience.
Had to double take for a second there "did he just slip in vespene gas without so much as a wink?"
Yes, he did.
River city image at 1min - Is that Brisbane, Australia?? If so then a bit of a random surprise to see an image of my hometown pop up on an American DnD video! 😂
I have family all over the globe. Ww2 diaspora does that.
This is the content Im looking for. It’s tying many of my separate interests together.
At one point in this video I said “… wow…” out loud. Thanks for this!
Hmmm didn't get notified of this one. Weird.
Using resources and land masses to set up conflict is solid advice, I like the analysis and discussion. Something centering around artificial scarcity and distribution could also be fascinating, so much history to pull from. Keep up the good work.
March 2022: This video has aged well.. perhaps too well.. (eastern-european politics wise)
Yeaaahhhhhhhhh......
as a DM with zero background in politics and economics (and sometimes baffled by the, im my pov, often nonsensical actions of nationstates - am biologist) your content is a goldmine, both for another lense to view my factions interactions but also to peak personal interest in a topic i had little interest in so far. the added russia bit, nice touch :)
Very well presented ! Have been doing this in my homebrew world since the distant past of it's creation (1984...)
It gave me an idea for all fantasy races to coexist: have them have different main foods. Dwarfs and humans can be similar, with dwarfs being slightly more on the carnivorous side and being able to better handle a lack of electrolytes in the died. Elves would be meso-fungivores, who's died consist of 50-70% of mushrooms and lichens, with an inability to digest starch. Merpeople and goblins could be detritivores, feeding on dead and decaying organisms, with some occasional predation.
Oh, and they'll also be an organisms that is an autotrophe, using both salt and seismic energy (small seism happen all the time) to produce their own food, with oxygen as a by-product, but be very sensitive to sun-light (it actually kills them). They would allow for caves to develop rich ecosystems and the Underdark peoples are willing to defend with their lives if need be.
Extremely helpful insights into the influence of geography on cultural development and politics. A trade relationship like those mentioned could inspire even simple quests of protecting people from bandits who arise from people displaced by the economy.
As usual a fantastic video. Just watched it today with my wife as we were discussing the Ukraine and the impact on shipping of oil and the fact that super tankers and where they have to travel to deliver Russian oil.
When the river picture at 0:57 is your home city, Brisbane, Australia...
You combine twin interests of mine: geopolitics and ttrpg. Very cool. Oh, and I dig the use of (I think it's) Trumpet Voluntary for your bumper tune. 🤘 rock on
Oh, this answers a lot of my questions about a previous video of yours I commented on. Thanks!
"vespene gas" Ha! Nice Starcraft reference there.
I think building a quest around these mundane resource concerns is just as cool. Sending the heroes to deal with an illegal river blockade, for example, can lead in all kinds of directions. Was the blockade put in place by rebels trying to get leverage against exploitation? Was it sponsored in secret by a competitor state? Is it part of a larger guerilla warfare effort that's a prelude to a more overt war? Or, maybe the heroes are sent to find the resources in newly acquired land. Call me old fashioned but I find the mundane stuff efficient.
nothing is as simple as it seems.
I always love your take on things and how much detail you implement.
A lot of this data has very different context 3 months later.
I was just thinking this very same thing today. "That's exactly what Russia doesn't want..."
...15 seconds in and my brain is like...SETTLERS OF CATAN
That games teaches you so quickly who are your friends.
Random story idea: factions fighting over the building of a "panama canal". Pro-trade to increase. Con-ecological impact.
Pro trade increase for who? #monroeDoctrin2point0
Or a country that controls a good trading route doesn't want it built, because it would make the commerce go through another country instead.
I knew the word count was padded when my man said, "fish can be caught for their caloric and protein benefits."
I mean, I could have just made a 10 second video that said "Civilizations use rivers for agriculture and trade, and need mountains surrounding them to stay safe. When they don't have that, they go to war." and closed the video.
I just wanted to say I really like this video and how you describe the world building potential of rivers. Would love content that’s like this for other geographical features. Something that can help make our homebrew worlds have realistic influences on cultures and settings. It would be great to have a reference to help me know what geographical influences there are for different nations I have in my homebrewed world!
great discussion on geopolitcs inspiration for world building.
That was very well put together, definitely gave me some ideas.
This is amazing content! I got d&d plot ideas, map ideas, a history lesson, a political/geographical lesson, and real world elements used to contextualize fantasy world elements! Brilliant! 👏💖🤩
Great video!
Read a book called Internal Combustion by Edwin Black.
It's about a variety of things, but one of the things he touches on are how the rivers became important for the shipment of wood, and charcoal when it was developed.
The Lords of Coal were the cartel ran by the Crown, and the Rival cartel The Hostmen of Newcastle.
But yes there are a lot of plots that can be extracted from the map.
City near a forest? Deforestation may bring conflict with local Druids? and Rangers.
I'm glad my sleep schedule is so messed up so I could catch this as soon as it dropped.
Not sure that's a good thing or a bad thing hahah
@@DungeonMasterpiece I guess it's alright since I get everything I need to done and on time.
I'm just curious about the uploads, do you start processing before bed? Do you live in Europe or South Africa? Is it some esoteric algorithm game?
@@Barquevious_Jackson I record after dinner, edit that night, and post in the wee hours in the evening.
@@DungeonMasterpiece dayum the all nighter workflow
These are some fantastic insights! Thanks!
Apolo likes to give the gift of prophecy to the most unexpected people
Going through Worlds Without Number world building and these videos are helping come up with new things rather than "I want that land!".
4:03 and by this, what anthropologies really mean is working about 150 days of the year with an average work week of around 30 hours a week.
Contrasted with like the 60+ hours of work week necessary needed to survive in the modern world or the 20 hours a week needed for hunter-gatherers.
To be clear, these figures are widely debated. In good climates, that might have been the case, but if those weather patterns were consistent, people likely wouldn't have Considered all the extra effort to conduct agriculture instead of hunting and gathering.
Wishful thinking and made-up numbers. Truth is, if you work less you're gonne be less skilled and fall behind in the labour market. In the past, if your tribe worked more than others, your tribe would become dominant and wipe out the other tribes.
Found this on accident, fucking love it!
I never felt so intelligent when talking about my make belief quests, thanks.
Very good video full of great info. Thanks!
Fantastic stuff! I’ll re watch it later and take notes!
Glad you are enjoying it!
@@DungeonMasterpiece Yes! Your stuff is really great quality!
Got it. So an evil mage shouldn’t be killing a whole town worth of people, they should freeze the town’s main river solid.
You know, it's not a one-to-one, but how no one mapped Lay Lines in Rifts always bugged me. There are a whole bunch of 'can freely fly... within x distance of a lay line.' It make magic more powerful, and magic can summon food and water. Some people can even teleport freely up and down a lay line. And this isn't some exclusive, rare, or only high level ability. It makes sense that people don't want to settle on Nexus (where lay lines meet), because it can dump monsters on you, but so long as your a decent distance from them a Lay Line becomes a nature economic channel.
But outside of explicitly high magic nations most people avoid lay lines, and their something you stumble on, rather than integrated into trade and economics, and they absolutely should be for many of the same reasons rivers are.
Any suggestions on books to read about geopolitics? Watching your vid got me interested about it for DnD and just plain exploring the subject.
that reference to vespen gas :D
England built a canal system (artificial river) system which made industrial revolution possible.
Greenwood compares Cormyr to medieval France / Arthurian England, so it must have several notable cities
I thought this was going to be a dnd video, not a history of the entire world. you tricked me into learning how dare you
I would note that you're saying this five months in advance of everything that has happened so far in Russia and Ukraine. Well done, sir.
I really didn't want to be that correct.... 🙃🇺🇦
@@DungeonMasterpiece unfortunately these things are easier to predict than they are to stop.
@@jlaw131985 here's hoping we can find a quick end to this hostility and brutality as fast as possible.
@@DungeonMasterpiece one hopes that those who have the ability to stop it realize how much Russia is losing by continuing.
A very well thought out argument taken in a fun way. Sounds like someone has been watching Peter Zeihan. We'll know for sure if we see a future video about the population demographics of dwarves and how that impacts their foreign policy.
Man, you are so smart that inspires me
Kickass channel dude.
So I've just recently found your channel by a fluke of algorithmic luck. I showed this video to my players, and they don't know if they should be scared or excited. My games already had a lot of political intrigue, but it was more game of thrones style. Now it threatens to get in to the nitty gritty. You sir just got a new subscriber!
Great video.
Great videos! Could you give some bibliography for those who want go deeper in this field ?
Questhook: We require more vespene gas.
RP gaming needs a video game simulator that takes care of all of this in the background so our players can focus on the important things like killing things and taking their stuff.
Looks like I'll be making my quests by studying maps now.
PS: Do you wear pants while filming these vids and if you do is it the pants belonging to the jacket or shorts/ joggers?
I wear whatever you imagine I'm wearing.
Did he make a StarCraft reference I herd there? Vespene gas?
Nice that Alan Tudyk is into GM stuff.
This reminds me of an old video game called Masters of Magic.
This is exactly why I've always been one to design bottom up. As in the real world, everything from the creation of towns, economics, resources, military operations, etc. occurred due to the existing geography.
I'm just excited to see my hometown of Davenport on the river-system map of the United States of America.
You get a subscribe just based on my first time seeing one of your vids.
Wow, I didn't know Chile was such an important source of heavy metal. Guess I gotta expand my horizon a bit, I mostly listen to german and skandinavian metal...
I can't blame you for that 😜
wow, i think i learned more about Russia's current politics from a random youtube video then from the news. WtH
yeeep....... Glory to Ukraine!
This guy is going to be the next samwise Gamghee.
This is why I recommend using real maps and just altering the coastlines to look different. Then change the place names and insert monsters and demi-humans. Now you know just where mountains, rivers, cities, and natural resources make sense, AND you've got as much history as you want.
Fantastic stuff. Best rpg channel on the Internet!
Glad you enjoy it!
what a thoughtful introspection into the matter. Some of what you point out seems a little obvious, when you say it. But if I stop to ponder, I'm not sure I always think about stuff like this when working out how some society fFunctions. It's only obvious after hearing it. I guess what I mean is, thank you fFor this very well conceived video!!
As a Chilean I got surprised.
Would have been funny to watch this if you wore wizard robes.
Well, this was prescient. Which I suppose is the point.
so prescient i get tankies in the comments now calling me a "hack" and a "rube" lol
Of course, I really wish i was wrong on this one..... :/