Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd
I think this approach is particularly valuable in a transitional sort of game, where you are shifting away from pure Dungeon Fantasy to a more detailed setting, because it offers a *reason* for the more video-gamey rules that are different in Town. What maintains the anti-monster barrier that makes Town a Safe Zone? How do the tax collectors at the dungeon gate always know how much loot we found to claim the King's Share? Why is the Royal Guard invincible when arresting PKers, and yet not able to clear the dungeons themselves? Because the Very High Urbanity level in Town lets the local sages cast and maintain these otherwise prohibitively expensive buff spells for free....
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Which resonates with Real Life, making it easier for players to get a handle on it. In modern cities, you have running water, grocery stores, electricity, cell towers everywhere, roads that aren't dirt tracks, cops who show up if things get rowdy, SWAT teams that show up if things get too rowdy for the beat cops, etc., etc., etc. And the high concentration of population makes it easy to maintain a barracks or armory full of troops in wartime, while the relatively small area makes things like SAM batteries plausible. You can generally count on not being overrun by barbarians or rogue elephants, or easily taken over by evil overlords. But out the bush, not so much . . . in the movies, at least, you have bears, outlaw bikers, farms where people put bodies in wood-chippers, secret terrorist bases, UFO landings, and nobody to hear you scream. I'm exaggerating of course (plenty of bad stuff in cities), but people generally find it plausible that urban power bases are a Thing That Exists.
There's a good reason for "City Boy" jokes.