K]Wrong! Killing all the goblins isn't just an Evil act, it's unthinkable to most D&D inhabitants.
I disagree strongly on the latter portion of that statement. It doesn't take much to stir people to take action--even despicable actions such as murder--in fact, all it takes is a charismatic leader. Scratch that, all it takes is a man in a labcoat. The Milgram Experiments --I think that experiment eliminates the need to further develop the argument, so I'll save bandwith and stop here.
As far as I can recall, genocide and slaughter have occurred over territorial disputes (religious differences have also spawned slaughter, too) as often or more often than for reasons of vengeance/justice. And if you ask me, retaliation of the sort seems at the least slightly more morally digestible than killing your neighbor because you like the view he has better. Ideally though, your average person won't grab a pitchfork and slaughter everyone who ever wronged him and his family. But, not everyone acts ideally, and there certainly exists a prevalence of mental disorders rendering an otherwise seemingly normal person quite capable of murderous intents.
I guess my point is, that I agree that ideally a community would seek to defend itself from a raid rather than mobilizing to wipe out the group who attacked the community, and that community would ideally not raise its following generation to slaughter those who wronged the community. History, however, is rife with instances of such wholesale violence, so I'm not going to even begin to cite examples for the contrary--I'm sure you can find numerous accounts for every tribe, civilization, community, etc. throughout history.
If such raids proliferate to become "a part of life," then I would expect it to have social ramifications. If it's not just a single raid as discussed above, a community likely will begin to attempt to train itself and its successive generations to defend the settlement. People would build walls (and likely multiple walls) around their communities, like the burghers did in the mid-to-late Middle Ages (in Europe). If those raids are conducted on people traveling from community to community, or those who wander outside the confines of the community--because, let's face it, even without a wall, it's much more tactically sound to attack a small group of people outside their own community than to attack a populated settlement--then there appears a need and a demand to protect travelers. And who can provide that protection? Armed men and women, that's who. And who can provide their wages? Ahh, the rich, the DnD Aristocrat.
Continu wrote:
Wrong! Killing all the goblins isn't just an Evil act, it's unthinkable to most D&D inhabitants.[/quote] I disagree strongly on the latter portion of that statement. It doesn't take much to stir people to take action--even despicable actions such as murder--in fact, all it takes is a charismatic leader. Scratch that, all it takes is a man in a labcoat. The Milgram Experiments --I think that experiment eliminates the need to further develop the argument, so I'll save bandwith and stop here.
As far as I can recall, genocide and slaughter have occurred over territorial disputes (religious differences have also spawned slaughter, too) as often or more often than for reasons of vengeance/justice. And if you ask me, retaliation of the sort seems at the least slightly more morally digestible than killing your neighbor because you like the view he has better. Ideally though, your average person won't grab a pitchfork and slaughter everyone who ever wronged him and his family. But, not everyone acts ideally, and there certainly exists a prevalence of mental disorders rendering an otherwise seemingly normal person quite capable of murderous intents.
I guess my point is, that I agree that ideally a community would seek to defend itself from a raid rather than mobilizing to wipe out the group who attacked the community, and that community would ideally not raise its following generation to slaughter those who wronged the community. History, however, is rife with instances of such wholesale violence, so I'm not going to even begin to cite examples for the contrary--I'm sure you can find numerous accounts for every tribe, civilization, community, etc. throughout history.
If such raids proliferate to become "a part of life," then I would expect it to have social ramifications. If it's not just a single raid as discussed above, a community likely will begin to attempt to train itself and its successive generations to defend the settlement. People would build walls (and likely multiple walls) around their communities, like the burghers did in the mid-to-late Middle Ages (in Europe). If those raids are conducted on people traveling from community to community, or those who wander outside the confines of the community--because, let's face it, even without a wall, it's much more tactically sound to attack a small group of people outside their own community than to attack a populated settlement--then there appears a need and a demand to protect travelers. And who can provide that protection? Armed men and women, that's who. And who can provide their wages? Ahh, the rich, the DnD Aristocrat.
Merchant caravans in the Middle Ages really did pay taxes/fees to noble landholders in order to pass through their "ancestral" lands. It looks like a viable need for the Aristocrat class has emerged. They have the money and the land. Land has value not just because it can produce crops, but because it can provide safe passage for travelers. Granted, in your Iron Age setup, there won't be much traveling--even in the Middle Ages, regular people rarely traveled farther than 25 miles from their places of birth--but I tend to think DnD does borrow significantly from Antiquities, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (the latter in regards to economics). But "standard" DnD does seem to emphasize the existence of merchant caravans; in fact, I'm sure it appears in the DMG under "Random Adventure Ideas," and it probably appears more than once. If you expand your readings beyond the Core Three (which I think you have) you even might note that in Races of the Wild (or is it Destiny) halflings are relegated to a culture based entirely on traveling caravans. What's more, the default make-up of a DnD community lists halflings as the third most populous race. If most of the halfling race is nomadic, and the minority actually reside in a permanent settlement, I think a strong case can be made for halflings being one of the most populous races by default, and of course any DM/worldmaker can fiddle with that configuration, but that's not what this discussion is about, right?
So, that at least provides a springboard for why Aristocrats exist in the first place (it should be noted that the landed nobles of the Middle Ages occasionally charged such exorbitant prices that some merchants would circumvent travel in the land altogether). But there ought to be a little more. I'd venture to suggest that the social class system in DnD is not as oppressive as historically our civilizations' class systems have been. Remember, DnD does assume equality as often as possible anymore; despite contemporary society still struggling with the issues of equality of the sexes, DnD society is assumed to have resolved that social issue. In that case, what would have been considered a crime in the society of the European Middle Ages, may be acceptable in DnD society for a price. Poaching game off the noble's land, for example, was often met with death; in DnD, the nobles could easily charge a fee for the right to hunt game on their lands which translates to income for doing virtually nothing.
But, in DnD, who has the money to pay for the right to hunt? People make a silver piece a day. Actually, unskilled laborers make a silver piece a day. There might be another group that earns only a silver piece a day, but the group escapes me. Under the Craft skill, untrained laborers and assistants earn a silver piece per day. Trained laborers--that is, those in the Crafts or Professions--earn 1/2 their individual check result in gold pieces per week. Level 1 NPCs have a 13 in their career's primary ability score (I forget where I should cite this from, because it may not be in the DMG; I would bet it's printed in Arms & Equipment or the Stronghold Builder's Guide, as well as other places) as well as skill focus in the requisite skill, and max ranks. So, your average trained worker gets a +7 to his skill check (4 ranks, +1 ability score, +3 skill focus). Taking a 10, he scores a 17, and earns an average of 8.5 gp a week. Of course, that assumes he has a project to work on, like a painting for the noble, or a statue for his garden.
What should be noted is that historically, much of the medieval population (I think estimates put the "serf" class and its analogues as 95% or greater of the population at the time) of our world compare to what DnD considers to be unskilled laborers and even worse. DnD seems to assume that this class breakdown is not the norm. There are plenty of other options beyond unskilled laborer. In fact, commoners--who, at level 1, make up 91% of the population of a given community--have access to craft and profession as class skills. In addition, DnD posits that places like inns/taverns exist in many of the world's communities. If that's the case, the world economy of DnD is far more developed than our Iron Age or Middle Ages world. It competes with the economy of our Renaissance world. In fact, I think it may surpass it in some aspects. The result, is that there will be an appreciable section of the economy capable of buying "stuff."
I'm not familiar enough with the sections on running a business in the DMG2, so I can't make a reasonable comment on it, or your thoughts upon it.
As far as using metal coins go, and attempting to transport them, you've neglected at least two very important possibilities: Heward's Handy Haversacks and Bags of Holding. Adventurers, at the very least, could transport vast sums of metal currency. However, I agree that at a point, coins become less than ideal for purchases. The Epic Level Handbook makes a few suggestions, most of which don't have to be restricted to epic-level play. First among them are favors. By that I mean, paper notes worth a favor from an institution, power structure, or great figure. For example, one could trade a favor for a True Resurrection (which requires a 25,000 gp material component on top of the standard costs for a minimum 17th level character casting a 9th level spell) for a suit of +5 full plate, or a +3 weapon--and you'd have change left over. I think even the core DMG mentions something about bank notes to represent money, and gems are described as a convenient substitute for hauling around piles of coins.
A bank need not be a material plane concoction; in fact, I think a bank that can produce bank notes would likely be a planar invention that may have been built on a material plane. But, that strays too far from what is conceived as "standard" DnD and thus what is central to the discussion. Go back to the aristocrats. One of them could easily expand his lands to gain income via the same methods over a much larger area. The feudal system acts even more like a pyramid scheme, with the lord or king at top. Each vassal skims off the top of the profits raked in by the vassals beneath him. Eventually, one gets rich and recognized enough that merchants and other come to posit their gold in his coffers in return for bank notes equal to the worth of their investments. Throw in interest rates and all that bank-stuff, and you've got yourself an institution that can, after all, back its own paper note.
Gems do have an intrinsic value. A lot of them are spell components as you've said. But just as in the real world, there is a demand for precious, shiny things. Granted, average people don't have the same buying power that many of us do today. But some people do. DnD nobles don't seem to resemble their real-world contemporaries in that the term "chair" as the head of a company derived from the fact that medieval lords were often the one person who had a chair to sit in during meetings in his home. People are going to want gems to decorate things, to make jewelry. Maybe gems are part of the raw materials used in crafting magic items--it is, after all, a staple of fantasy for magic swords and the like to be gem-encrusted. In short, not my strongest point, but gems are ample substitutes for gold.
And if it's of any consequence, I remember reading (I believe either in the PHB or the DMG) that the DnD economy is silver-based, not gold-based. If so, that would likely spur the demand for a bank/moneychanger even more than reasons I've tried to postulate.
Despite all this thinking, the economy in DnD boils down to a system much like hit points. It ain't perfect, but it strives to maximize simplicity while still making an approximation of the real-world phenomenon it represents. If you ask me, the issue derived from how the economy of DnD works based on the craft/profession skills and NPC wages takes second seat to, how does the economy function with adventures recovering valuable lost relics from lost treasure hordes and subsequently liquidating these artifacts and piles of coins in the local economy?
Eh, the sun is the original input of energy into our system, the earth. And yes, it's very important. And yes, life on the surface can benefit from that energy much more easily than others. But no, that doesn't make life without direct sunlight impossible or even entirely impractical.
Case in point: there is life on the bottom of the ocean. Granted, it's not as diverse as life on the surface, but it's there. Geothermal energy is your friend down there. There are organisms that can extract energy from the mineral deposits brought about by ocean-floor volcanic activity. And there are creatures that live among and feed upon them. I can recall crustaceans in particular, but I'm certain there are species of fish at those depths. The sun only penetrates the ocean waters so deeply, and yet there are benthic feeders and abyssal creatures. And don't forget, the ocean bottom and its ecosystem is vastly undefined. It was only recently that a giant squid was captured for the first time on film alive--and wherever the niche of these creatures exists, that niche enables them to grow bigger than busses--and it's quite possible these giant squids are abyssal in habitat. The point is, then, if organisms can exist deriving energy from geothermal sources on the ocean floor, can't they then do the same from geothermal sources underground? The description of the Underdark does posit the existence of massive underground caverns, and even lakes, too.
As I understand it, the subterranean world conceptualized by DnD is supposed to be much larger and less isolated than our own world's cave systems. Regardless, if those undergound lakes and caverns exist in mammoth proportions, surely geothermal activity will make an appearance. And if energy is there, some creature will find a way to exploit it--especially if it means exploiting an energy source without having to compete or run from predators. Hell, the water source doesn't even have to be connected to a populated surface marine or freshwater habitat. Ever seen fish develop in isolated, tiny ponds that only develop during superfluously rainy seasons? They get there, because other animals unwittingly transport eggs into the pond, where they hatch (plenty of animals can reproduce without fertilization, though the resultant offspring is always or else nearly always female; I forget the case). It's not that much of a stretch to imagine that happening in these underground caverns. A bear wanders into a large cave, looking for shelter, and discovers a lake. It tries to catch a fish or two, and in the process, sheds fish eggs that had embedded themselves in the animal's fur during previous exposure to water. Even a sentient being could be the host; that sentient being could even willingly transport eggs (or other forms of the life-cycle) into these aquatic habitats.
It's not that much of a stretch to imagine a parasite developing a life cycle to specifically enable such an occurence. There are parasites that develop in abysmal places in greaty quantity to be picked up by snails/slugs. They develop in the GI tract, resisting digestion until the snail/slug is consumed by a fish or other predator. The parasite continues to develop until the fish is caught by a human and consumed. The parasite reaches full maturity, and embeds itself in the human host's muscles or lungs. Or even, the parasite may live in the GI tract of the human host, and later sheds eggs in the human's feces to develop into the next generation. If that happens in our world, there's no reason to believe such a convoluted life-cycle couldn't exist as a mechanism to bring life to the Underdark.
If sentient races made their way to the Underdark, I'll be damned if they didn't bring a harvestable food source with them. I'd imagine there'd be plenty of subterranean aquatic fare--the likes of which would probably resemble hagfishes, lampreys, and other disgusting fish as well as filter-feeders and the like extracting energy from geothermal activity--in addition to the standard "mushrooms and fungus" excuse. And don't forget the worms and insects! Most, if not all, of the Underdark races are ruthless and murderous, right? So, plenty of infighting, murdering, warring, etc. Death makes fertilizer on the surface, and certainly underground. These races might even make it a practice to use the bodies of everyone--not just those killed as a result of war, political intrigue, and the like--as a food source for the various fungi.
Come to think of it, I just read in the paper within the past month a relevant article; 9 new species were discovered living in a cave. The species made up an entire ecosystem; iirc, the cave was once connected to the Dead Sea (I'm probably incorrect about the location, but the rest of the details should still be accurate), and had somehow been separated from it. The water remained, and so did the inhabitants. As a result, they evolved and survived. So, this underground habitat isn't just a possibility, it's reality.
What's to say cannibalism isn't an option for the nonsentient, or even sentient races? The way cannibalism works, is that the cannibal is consuming a creature with the same make-up of proteins and organic material. What this means, is that the cannibal gets the exact arrangement of nutrition it needs. So, cannibalism requires feeding less often--assuming the species is capable of it, since some species develop nervous disorders. In addition, many species--especially aquatic organisms--stop feeding once they reach sexual maturity. At that point in life, the organism's only goal is to reproduce, and many die immediately afterwards. Consider then, organisms that exist as juveniles as parasites on other species (even the sentient races), only to be shed in that organism's waste products. The parasite then undergoes a development cycle (possibly as a chrysalis) into an adult--an adult who no longer feeds, but seeks to reproduce.
If all else fails, Create Food and Water is a third-level cleric spell that produces enough food for 15 people (at minimum caster level) for a day. Purify Food and Drink is a cleric/druid orison.
As far as biodiversity goes, biologists estimate our world's speciation to be about 2 million on the low end. Other estimates go much higher. I haven't counted, but I'm going to estimate there are less than a 1,000 "monsters" available in DnD sourcebooks. Plenty of those monster entries are extant animals, insects, and the like; so, those should already be accounted for in the world's biodiversity and don't cause much of a problem. Many entries are Outsiders, meaning they (likely) eat at a whole 'nother restaurant. Plenty of others are constructs (they don't eat, let alone breathe), plants (photosynthesis helps, even if the monstrous versions are carnivorous, too), or Undead (according to the Libris Mortis, some of them do in fact eat, but iirc they do not require food on the same order of magnitude that the living do). Some monsters even use alternate food sources; the Xorn, for example, eats precious metals or minerals. Dragons, as I recall, can even digest treasure if the need arises. Other entries are sentient races capable of cultivating their own food. The end result, is that all the monster entries available for v.3.5 represent a fraction of one percent of the world's total species. I don't think that's going to have a major impact on a DnD world's ecosystem.
Even as top predators, I can't imagine these monstrous beings throwing the ecosystem too far out of whack. You may be on to something, yes, that adjustments need to be made to our standard conceptualizations of a working ecosystem. The fact remains, however, that just like this is Dungeons & Dragons, not Logistics & Dragons; the system is Dungeons & Dragons, not Flora & Fauna. I think all that's really necessary is to realize producers and first-order consumers tend to outnumber the higher-level carnivores that prey upon them. When they don't, the predator species dies out almost completely, followed by a boom in the first-order consumers, followed by a boom in the population of predators, followed by a decline in the first-order consumers, and then a decline in the predators, and so on; it's a cycle, look at graphs of the populations of snowshoe hares compared to lynxes in a region to see a visual.
Oh, and don't forget, competition begets biodiversity. So, if these monsters are competing, there's even more reason for there to exist different species. If there are too many predators to be supported, then that's when such predators become likely to prey upon sentient beings and alternative food sources. If there aren't enough predators, then the lower-level consumers flourish. The bottom line: you don't have to retool DnD too much to establish a believable ecology, because the way it works by default provides what adventuring and versimilitude require.
I think that's everything I feel like addressing for now, though I have a feeling I've forgotten a few points I intended to make.
Bob, the thing is that Aristocrats don't own anything. Noone owns anything because property righs aren't guaranteed by anything. If some guy announces that he owns a piece of land and wants people to pay for hunting or travel rights across it, he needs to be a bad dude who can actually beat up people who attempt to use that land without his permission. Thereisn't a national authority that will back up the rights of investors to evict tresspassers.
An aristocrat doesn't have the military oomph to beat a caravan or a hunting party. For him to collect rents or fees from that land, therefore, he has to appeal to another authority that does have that military power. The whole idea that property rights are somehow inviolate, that's completely modern, and totally wrong. Property rights are respected only because it's in the modern social contract. The ancient social contract didn't have that - so landlords collect rents and fees only by force of arms.
So an aristocrat can collect money only on the authority of "My dad is a powerful wizard, and if you don't bribe me, I'll ask him to set your whole caravan on fire." That's it. And honestly, that doesn't mean that he controsl anything. Aristocrats only make money as the face men for extortion rackets and gifts from wealthy and influential family members. If an aristocrat attempts to have soldiers to collect those duties for him, he just invited an armed force to occupy his lands and take money from people - they'll take his money and take over in a snap.
Nasty brutish and short. That's life in the D&D world. There is no contract law, there is no big government that ensures the smooth transition of wealth and power from hand to hand according to lawful contracts. Even in Lawful societies, command goes to those of "merit" where merit is defined as "the ability to beat the crap out of anyone who says otherwise".
The economic cycles you are familiar with simply don't apply. The black hat and cane millionaire simply cannot exist in the D&D world.
BobtheMighty: I'll leave everything else to K, but the biology i can handle. (For the curious, i'm a PhD student in Evolutionary Biology interested in macroecology, diversity patterns, and morphology. I have worked on Deep-Sea biodiversity before.)
Deep-Sea diversity: Its actually quite diverse. Not quite comparable with a tropical reef, but beats virtually any other shallow marine habitat. At least at bathyal depths. Abyssal diversity is hugely depressed. The pattern of diversity with depth is unimodal with a peak in the lower bathyal (around 3000m) and a long tail on the shallower end.
The energy supplying virtually all of this diversity is still solar. Phytodetrital material sinks through the water columns (during which its remineralized by bacteria - an exponential decay process) and is thought to be the primary source of food material to most of the deep-sea. (The crash in abyssal diversity is arguably attributable to severe resource shortage - food gets so scarce that populations fail to support each other. Recently Rex et al. (2005 in American Naturalist) proposed that most abyssal biodiversity was a sink effect with a lower bathyal source, maintained by a flow of propagules from the lower bathyal. Very few species (in a number of faunal groups, including Gastropods and Bivalves) are thought to have sustained populations in the abyss. (Obviously, bacteria and interstitial organisms like nematodes are probably still doing fine).
Cold Seeps and Hydrothermal Vents do provide areas where chemosynthesis is the primary energy input, but these are relatively small isolated communities, usually much smaller than the average apartment bedroom. This is not a major source of energy for the Deep-Sea, just a localized supply to specific communities that grow up around them. Such locations are also incredibly rare.
Most deep-sea organisms are also much smaller than shallow-water equivalents, with a few notable exceptions (Giant Squid, Giant Isopods). The few instances of gigantism are highly mobile organisms which in some instances are known to have huge geographic ranges. (Individual isopods cross the atlantic from off Cape Cod to off Cornwall potentially multiple times per year).
Thus we can draw two conclusions: (1) Geothermal energy is not going to be sufficient for the standard dnd underdark environment - its too infrequent and small in scope. Further, it doesnt correspond to any of the known underdark areas (and at this point they've detailed quite a few), and would require organisms specially adapted to processing sulfur compounds. (2) Most underdark organisms should be much smaller than any surface 'equivalents', and those that are large must be continuously moving in search of new food resources. Clearly, this fails to describe anything with permanent settlements (with the possible exception of Illithids).
Total Biodiversity: The OoM estimates for earth's biodiversity are as follows: Mammals 10^5, with over 1/4 of those being bats. Fish (Teleosts) 10^6. Insects 10^7, and thats probably being a little generous. Nematodes 10^8. Bacteria 10^9. Of those, only mammals include any top predators on land, and most mammals are not predators at all. Further, most predators are small, very few are large (tigers and bears being the large end of predator size).
(Top aquatic predators include sharks, some fish, and a variety of invertebrates - but many of these are rather small since the community they are a top predator in has no organisms larger than your hand other than them).
1 billion species, when 99.99% of them are bacteria, isn't saying much. There are maybe a few 100 thousand species with backbones, most of them are small. Very few of them are larger than humans, and most of those already appear in the monster manual. (Admittedly, there is more than 1 species of whale and so forth, but meh). I would put the number of organisms with backbones weighing more than 100kg in the 100s, and most of those are aquatic (whales and sharks most likely). Few organisms without backbones get that large (the Giant Squid being the only animal i can think of offhand) because of energy constraints and the physical demands of being large.
So the dnd monsters really do suppose a very strange ecosystem dynamic. They're introducing a lot of large predators into the system. This does require explanation.
Competition does not beget biodiversity. Two perfect competitors (require all the same 'resources' for a broad definition of resources) cannot coexist in the same environment for long. One will outcompete the other and drive it to extinction. Basic ecological theory. Rather, the more ways there are of avoiding competition, the more species there can be. Competition along one niche axis just applies a pressure to both species to diverge in how they use that resource, and partition that axis so that there is minimal overlap. Competition can drive evolution, but it does not increase biodiversity per se. (Ultimately, biodiversity is a function of the amount of energy available, the amount of boxes (distinct ways of living) into which that energy is partitioned, and so forth. It has nothing to do with the characteristics of the organisms except that organisms evolve into those 'boxes'. (This is an iterative process - obviously the existence of some organisms provides for the existence of some boxes, but its not an infinite generating sequence because energy is reduced every step removed from direct energy input you get. Species must maintain sufficient population size to breed and not suffer the deleterious effects of inbreeding.)
Speaking of reduction in energy - thats why canabalism doesnt work. Digestion requires energy, and is not perfect. Thus energy is lost (not released by digestion) and used (to digest) when consuming anything. A species whose primary food source is itself goes extinct quickly. This is why external energy input is needed - any closed ecosystem (no external energy supply) is doomed to running out of energy.
"Even as top predators, I can't imagine these monstrous beings throwing the ecosystem too far out of whack."
Thats the thing, i can't imagine them doing anything but, and my training is mostly as an ecologist. Top predators exert huge impacts on their environment - humans are only the most gratuitous example, eg Pisaster (a starfish) completely structures the NW coast's (of the US) intertidal ecosystem all by itself. And it gets to be about as big as a soccer ball.
Just because you can't imagine it doesn't mean anything. You aren't even an expert in the field, and i'm not convinced my opinion holds much weight. But it certainly has more evidence behind it. My best guess is that over-saturating the world in top predators leads to an "everything you know is wrong" result in what ecologies are like. What i can't imagine is what these ecosystems *should* look like, because they're going to be so alien compared to real world ecosystems as to make extrapolation virtually impossible.
K: I disagree. Note the historical precedent I mentioned. The nobility really did charge people to cross over their land; it's not a modern property issue. It did in fact happen. Also, you don't have to be able to beat your opponents over their heads to be leader. In some times and places, it certainly helps. But leaders can and are chosen for other reasons and via other methods. It may very well be that the Aristocrat NPCs' ancestors had combat classes (I should note at this point that Aristocrat NPCs aren't entirely helpless in combat, either, which it seems like you're construing them to be) and originally they did hold power by the sword. Now that I think of it, the original noble classes in our world usually were the fighting class. The situation did not persist, however. With time, nobles began to consider their feudal land grants (which where inheritable) to be their very own, and they found ways to get out of martial service--usually in the form of payments. Honestly, it is a natural progression for the aristocracy to exist as non-martial ruling class. And I don't see a problem with it, and I don't feel like exhausting any more words on the subject. If you still disagree, I can recommend a few history books that will articulate my points just as well.
Squirrelloid: I'm not sure how to address your post, because you seem to bounce back and forth between prentiousness and humility. Normally, I wouldn't bother acknowledging a post that I found the least bit condescending. However, the internet is infamous for misconstruing the intent of a message, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Your credentials, be they legitimate, are certainly worthy of praise, but I believe this is a forum because it encourages open discussion where people can come to be equals. While I will give your arguments their due weight, I expect you to do the same of me. Furthermore, I don't think it's necessary for you to make suppositions about my own credentials. Also, I'm very tired as I write this, so it may not be as developed as my previous set of responses. I apologize, but I'll must what I can. That much aside, I'll address your statements.
First, thanks for the information about deep-ocean biodiversity; I was unsure, at best. Though as I understand it, the ocean-floor is still vastly unexplored, so our knowledge/perceptions of it may change greatly.
I'm aware that the primary energy supply is the sun, which I mentioned/alluded to. I was unsure of what depths it could reach, convection currents notwithstanding. My thoughts on biology/biodiversity are to be represented as a unified whole rather than a handful of separate arguments trying to make my point, so I don't think it should be approached as the latter.
As for geothermal activity, I disagree with your extrapolation to a DnD Underdark habitat. Granted, geothermal activity at abyssal depths is not the norm. However, I vaguely remember a hypothesis (or maybe the statement is well-founded enough to be accorded theory status) postulating that some exorbitant percentage of the world's geothermal (plenty or all of which are subterranean) hotspots are yet undiscovered. By exorbitant, I mean 90+% of these hotspots have not been located. If that's the case, there very well may be reason to believe geothermal energy is a viable source for Underdark inhabitants. On our own surface society, haven't there been serious talks about utilizing geothermal energy? DnD doesn't have technology like our modern society, but it does have magic, which can likely reproduce many of the same effects. If it's absolutely necessary, I can try to locate a geology textbook that might have what I'm thinking of printed in it, but I would bet the search would be fruitless.
I've never read the FR Underdark supplements, so I think in that regards you've pretty much stalled my geothermal position in its tracks. However, I wasn't even thinking of FR as the "standard" conceptualization of DnD; if anything, I'd accord it status as the Greyhawk setting. Now, I edited it in after you've replied, but I was glancing through the newspaper when I was reminded of an article from just a few weeks ago. The article detailed finding 9 new species existing in a working ecosystem in, get this, an aquatic habitat in a cave. I think the cave system had once been part of the Dead Sea, if I remember the geography correctly, and had been separated from the Dead Sea some time ago. The organisms trapped inside evolved and survived in their cavernous habitat. So, there is a precedent for subterranean ecosystems. I don't know how well this applies to subterranean fish, but I distinctly recall that fish are valued as a food source because they feed so low on the food web (usually as first-order consumers) thus making higher concentrations of energy available to the organisms who in turn, eat them.
When I rattled off that estimate of total species, that may have actually been the estimate assigned to Kingdom Animalia, not total speciation of the earth. I have an inkling that the high-end of that estimate stands at 80 million. I believe the last biologist I spoke to placed his personal estimate around 4 million species, for what it's worth. I'm aware of the breakdown of species in our own world; however, I've interpreted it differently. I tend to think the make-up makes it quite possible for a few hundred animal species to be introduced, or rather, to develop simultaneously. To hark back to the monster entries, I'm quite certain that plenty of monsters are medium or smaller. I could be wrong. You can also look at the Organization entries for larger monsters, too. I don't think there are many Gargantuan or Colossal monsters that work in groups.
Plenty of those larger predators have intelligence scores, which means they very well may be able to accomodate for the feeding patterns required of a larger predator.
I'm going to jump to biodiversity now. I'd rather not go through and have to formally cite everything I've referenced (I didn't plagiarize anything, don't get me wrong on that ), but I will make one exception to that. From Animal Diversity: 3rd Edition. Hickman, Cleveland, Larry Roberts and Allan Larson. McGraw Hill: New York, NY, 2003. "Simply sharing food or space with another species does not produce competition unless the source is in short supply relative to the needs of the species that share it" (41). That works for both of us. ". . . strongly competing species cannot coexist indefinitely" (41). Once again, that works for both of us. "To coexist in the same habitat, species must specialize by partitioning a shared resource and using different portions of it [character displacement]. Character displacement usually appears as differences in organismal morphology or behavior related to exploitation of a resource" (41). Not my exact words, but the meaning is mostly there. I could hunt for a more direct answer, maybe (that statement was paraphrased from a lecture by a biologist--Steve Edinger, if credit is due), but unless I mistakenly used biodiversity (I assumed it to refer to the varied species in an environment), my statement was indeed correct.
You did mention competition causing differentiation along a given niche. Should I mention guilds? or Darwin's finches? Maybe I've mistakenly used the term biodiversity, or interpreted differently, but I'm using it to refer to diversity of species in an ecosystem. In that case, what we're both saying does lend itself to increased biodiversity as new species evolve to coexist and exploit resources.
As for cannibalism. . . I'm aware that there's a reduction in energy, of course. But I did not cite cannibalism as the primary method of feeding, just an alternative. And cannibalism really does provide the consumer with the nutrition he needs, even better than alternative food sources. Refer back to my earlier statement considering my arguments on biodiversity and the like to be one cohesive argument, rather than separate arguments working independently for the same end. Also, refer to something I hinted at in my post: druids. Fully 5% of all small communities are home to a druid of level 1d8 + community modifier. In other words, the DnD ecosystem has access to inputs that really can provide more energy than is put into them; that's something that's not physically possible in our world. Druids could certainly account heavily (both above and below ground) for supporting/stablizing ecosystems that just wouldn't normally work in our world. I know druids do need energy in the form of food to stay alive, but it doesn't take much experience to cast goodberries, and clerics need level 5 to produce food for 15 while consuming food for one. As a result, the "closed-system" dynamic has to be thrown out the window.
Interestingly enough, your mention of a top-predator species was that of a keystone species. Maybe all top predators are keystone species; I don't recall.
The last paragraph of your post seemed more of a character attack than an argument. . . I'll leave it as I very much believe DnD presents enough extraneous factors (e.g. magic, multiple sentient races) along with a few real-world dynamics (e.g. that aquatic cavern ecosystem) to speculate that the ecosystem doesn't need much retooling to be easily believable.
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), but I will make one exception to that. From Animal Diversity: 3rd Edition. Hickman, Cleveland, Larry Roberts and Allan Larson. McGraw Hill: New York, NY, 2003. "Simply sharing food or space with another species does not produce competition unless the source is in short supply relative to the needs of the species that share it" (41). That works for both of us. ". . . strongly competing species cannot coexist indefinitely" (41). Once again, that works for both of us. "To coexist in the same habitat, species must specialize by partitioning a shared resource and using different portions of it [character displacement]. Character displacement usually appears as differences in organismal morphology or behavior related to exploitation of a resource" (41). Not my exact words, but the meaning is mostly there. I could hunt for a more direct answer, maybe (that statement was paraphrased from a lecture by a biologist--Steve Edinger, if credit is due), but unless I mistakenly used biodiversity (I assumed it to refer to the varied species in an environment), my statement was indeed correct.