Temperate forest - small, unmagical, creative, potentially arboreal, fast-living
Temperate grassland - large, slightly magical, intelligent, winged, long lifecycle
Tropical rainforest - very small, magical, telepathic, winged, average lifespan
Tropical savanna - large, unmagical, fierce, humanoid, fast-living
I'm assuming that each race can hold its own in its own core terrain (forested mountains/low-latitude forests, steppe, rainforests, savanna) and that all have access to similar agricultural technology if they care to use it. My question is who will ultimately end up with intermediate terrain, like the eastern US (except much of the South), most of Western Europe, or the Cerrado.
(Yes, I know the answer is "whoever I want to". I'm throwing this out here to see if your conclusion differs from what I want to happen and what I need to tweak to make that happen.)
After that happens, the "creative" race is going to face off in a series of brutal wars against the fierce race but will ultimately win to control the entire world.
A bit more info on lifecycles.
Forest folk - adult at 6, venerable at 34 (+2d10 years)
Savanna folk - adult at 9, venerable at 37 (+2d10 years)
Rainforest folk - adult at 10, venerable at 60 (+4d10 years)
Grassland folk - adult at 18, venerable at 150 (+6d10 years)
Basically, it's the problem of elves (namely why do they still exist), but there are enough other advantages handed to the "elves" - full flight at, in 4e terms, flying move 35 (this is part of why the setting seems incapable of conversion), a temperament more inclined towards large stable states, and a preference for agriculturally productive habitat rather than comparatively barren forests - that I thought it was worth a second look. On the other hand, they don't have 10,000 years of civilization on everyone else, or exclusive and irreplicable modes of production, or even powerful magic.
The potential for a major technological discovery rises by the decade (in setting) - in external history I haven't come up with and dated any that would shake the world to such a degree, although grassland folk did invent the state around -100 (for reference, I was considering setting a game in 4400, early middle ages) and alphabetic writing around 1400. Someone invented temperate-zone agriculture, probably around -2500, and it was reinvented for the tropics rather later. Unfortunately by well-documented historic times racial distribution may well be set; it's harder to hide a whole continent from a flying race to the point of agriculture developing completely separately.
Form a realistic standpoint the whole "City in the Forest" concept is unsustainable.
This actually depends on numbers. A smaller population would require less resources, so it entirely possible for it to occur. Larger scale would require more food, but nutrients could be found in highly concentrated forms in the natural environment.
And then there is the possibility of trading for extra food.
This actually depends on numbers. A smaller population would require less resources, so it entirely possible for it to occur. Larger scale would require more food, but nutrients could be found in highly concentrated forms in the natural environment.
And then there is the possibility of trading for extra food.
Cities, by definition, require a large, dense population that produces a huge excess of food (to feed the cityfolk who produce no food at all). Unless elves or what-have-you can get food from the forest at a far more efficient rate than humans, they will never be able to devote enough of the population to other tasks to develop cities. Trade is more plausible, although it would have to be extremely lucrative to support a city in a hostile environment.
Population growth is all about food. Thus it will come down to the races' willingness to replace thier natural habitat with large expanses of farmland. Form a realistic standpoint the whole "City in the Forest" concept is unsustainable.
Pretty much, although the difference in reproduction speed also seems relevant.
I've never seen rainforest folk as willing to put more than a token effort into agriculture, but they are the safest from overrunning because their environment is so hostile to intensive agriculture.
Savanna folk take to agriculture well; at first I thought they were too prone to fighting to be able to depend on fixed areas, but after looking at a bit of history there seems to be no violence level high enough to destroy subsistence agriculture.
Grassland folk invented agriculture; they took to it quickly enough, although rather slower than humans would because of their long life cycle and reluctance to clear farmland occupied by their own kind by murder.
Forest folk are a big unknown, as I just now moved them to their current niche. If they can't get beyond slash-and-burn farming, they're probably doomed. If some are willing to live in the alien environments of cultivated fields, well...?
Another factor that would influence individual areas, if not the totality of the world, would be whether agriculture developed in the area or was brought in by an invading horde of farmers.
They'd need some serious digestive enzymes, possibly multiple stomachs, to break down all that starch. If they don't have great sharp wood-busting teeth, they could pulp the wood. Different trees could have different tastes, and they could flavor their cooking with sap, among other things.
And if you don't like the heavy duty digestive systems, they could use another creature or living thing, like yeast, worms, bugs, moss, etc. to start breaking down the wood so that it would then be digestible to the intelligent race.
Ooh, and they could ferment some of it to create wood alcohol, which would blind or kill races with lesser digestive systems.
I could see a fantasy version of the idea being taken to more of an extreme as a way to explain something such as the stereotypical elven forest-city. Homes and other buildings could be built with flat tops upon which gardens were planted. Some buildings could even be built with 'garden rooms' in which food was grown. Honestly, it wouldn't be much different from how some people grow marijuana in a RL city. It can't be grown outside for various reasons (most of them being legal reasons,) so people have found ways to grow it inside, and -with some methods- without soil.
Also, with magic, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to simply have some of the buildings created out of living material. A house built into the base of a very large apple tree or tomato plant might be possible with magic. The smurfs lived inside of mushroom houses, so why not use a similar idea? The plant would have a dual purpose: 1) food; 2) shelter.
edit: more on the urban farming idea: In such a culture, food could be something which was an individual responsibility instead of something which is collected as a community. What I mean is that each household would have to provide for their own nutritional needs, and each household could have their own 'garden room.' Instead of going to the market to buy food like most cultures do (and like many modern day IRL cultures do) each family would grow what they need to eat. This method would probably tend to impact how such a society would be in other areas of their life too. Since they would be more independent when it came to basic needs, there may not be quite as much cultural unity between the culture as a whole. This is simply one idea though, and there's no reason that what I am saying is the only way it would or could turn out.
It could actually turn out the opposite way, and perhaps the government would expect each household to contribute to the community food supply; it could be similar to a form of communism. Each household would be expected to produce X amount of food; depending upon how involved the government was in this process, the government might also mandate what type of food your household in particular was required to produce. There are several different ways to make the idea work. It just depends what you want to do.
The first and obvious one is that cereals (i.e. wheat, corn, rice, rye, millet - the grasses that agricultural humans rely on for most of their food) grow in full sun, not in the shade of large trees. This is why RL indoor marijuana farmers use grow lights that consume huge amounts of electricity. This is also why slash-and-burn farmers slash the trees and burn them. Not only does that create lots of fertilizing ash, but it also lets in sunlight so cereals can grow. Now, that could theoretically be overcome by elves (although not by my forest types because magic in my world is limited to mental effects), although elven farming would be more time-consuming and less efficient than the plow farming practiced in Eurasia (although perhaps similar to the hoe farming of other parts of the world).
The second one is definitional - a settlement that exists to produce food is a "village", no matter what its size (some Russian villages of tsarist times reached over 2000 inhabitants), while a "town" or "city", even if under 2000 inhabitants, takes in food from the surrounding countryside and produces manufactured goods and services (especially including the "service" of government). Nice idea for a very large elf village, though.
Edit: Also, I'm assuming that food production requires 80-95% of each family's time. The idea of urbanization works better as the amount of time needed for food production goes down, although then they'd have to seriously worry about the escape of mutant super-productive food crops to humans (who would probably use it to, in a few centuries, increase their numbers by an order of magnitude instead of spend all their time on other pursuits).
I'm not trying to push you one way or the other; just some ideas.
Ideas are what I wanted when I started the thread.
I wasn't quite intending for it to be a redux of the elf urbanization problem, but eh.One of the main reasons that the elf food problem caught my eye is because it's actually very similar to some of the problems we have in the real world today with food shortages and the cost of getting food from point A to point B in some areas. That's one of the other benefits of urban farming; there is less distance between the population and their food, so it takes less effort to get one to the other.
I imagine that the problems we have today due to our large population would probably be something which elves encounter fairly early in their development since (stereotypically) they tend to care about being surrounded by nature; trees; etc far more than most cultures. As such, and due to them being one of the 'older races' in most settings, I would imagine that they would be at a stage where they've found some sort of solution to those problems.
You make a lot of good points though, and a large elven city would probably be a very artificial forest. That's actually how I see it too. There would be a forest there, but it would be largely manipulated, and it would be highly planned out. It would probably take a whole team of government officials and city planners to make sure that new trees were planted where they needed to be in order to allow 'nature' to coexist with the city. I imagine that in the end it would turn out similar to a corn field with everything planted in rows, but on a much much larger scale.
I'm not really sure if any of this helps you out, but hopefully it does. If nothing else, it has given me some good mental images from which to build part of my campaign world.
I've tended to be cynical in the past about elves because human populations denser than hunter-gatherer bands, in all but the very richest environments, seriously altered their environment - IIRC, the only environment where hunting and gathering produced a complex society was the Pacific Northwest, which was also isolated by California and the Great Basin from agriculturalists.
Now you're giving me the idea of an elf settlement at the forest edge that is in the traditional treehouse style, but the elves themselves live off cereal farming in clear (or cleared) land.
Are the different races capable of breeding with each other? That may be a factor as well.
They could lounge around all day in their highly elevated and fancy tree houses as their slaves who are below them (both figuratively and literally since the slaves wouldn't live in the trees) worked all day.
I too think it's a little crazy that anything can breed with anything in D&D. I know it's a fantasy game, and I know that crazy things can happen, and, yes, I know that 'reality has no place...," however, I still do think that there should be some amount of logic to the world. A half-elf/half-human makes more sense to me than a half-kobold/half-storm giant.
It was a question that could have changed my thoughts depending on how you answered though. If some of the races were able to breed with each other then it may be possible for some of them to be bred out of existance or for two of the races to merge into one over time.
I haven't done a study of what would suggest slavery as a solution rather than simple extermination, though.
And yes, it's an excellent question - IMO cross-breeding would solve a lot of these conflicts if it made sense, and would still have the effect of making the various races see the others as potential partners rather than only competitors. Maybe that calms down a lot of the potential conflicts in D&D.
Think Genghis Khan.
Elves dependant on Forest can be pushed into extinction by forest fires and climate change. Survivors might adapt to Horse/Deer/Bison riding on Savanna's or retreat to Wet Jungle/Bayou becoming "Vayn" - Vine People.
Similarly People pushed out of Savanna by other nomads might retreat to the Marshes and become "Wiche" or Salt People.
My own world has both of these peoples who have been pushed to dwelling on the fringes of Human Dominated lands.
It sounds like yellowdingo's setting has a race that was out-humaned by humans (who started out as savanna creatures and expanded). Interesting.
The Vaguir (they who wander) passed through the Polar Pass at the destruction of their own lands and down into the Game rich plains on the other side of the world. They were Followed into the Plains of the DragonsHead Peninsula by the Seguir (they who follow) displacing the Peoples who dwelled there - the Wiche (the Salt People) were forced into the Marshes along the western Coast, and the Vayn (the Vine People) into the Jungle canopy of the Primordial Forests of the East (for the Jungle floor was home to many Humanoids).
Cultural Changes
The Vayn and Wiche both adapted to their situation and became users of Natural Poisons to take Game and Enemies. The Vaguir changed from a technological Settled Theocracy to a Nomadic People who are opposed to anyone attempting to unify them - Wizards and Clerics are put to death, Sorcerers are only slightly tolerated and Druids Ignored unless they become a threat. The Seguir on the Otherhand still love tools and technology. They settled in some places where the Vaguir went and established villages and Communities. In the Far south, There are even Seguir Kingdoms.
Mapping the Movement of Tribes
That Pretty much provides you with Two huge Arrows (Marking the Cataclysm) comming through a Polar Pass and Fanning out across a Plain that begins in the Northern Tundra and ends somewhere past the equator (Somewhere near 4000 square miles). Two Smaller Tribes are Displaced east and west to the fringes of this "Nomadic Paradise" (I mapped this world on a D20 - the Peninnsula occupies two Adjacent Triangles about 4000 miles per edge).