Your Fantasy Map is Already Full of Quest Hooks

This is by far the most sophisticated d&d related talk ever. Cheers 🍷

You're killing it with these videos, I think a lot of folks think of rivers as barriers when in truth they're highways

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.

Super interesting concept. Your concerns for Russia sadly seem to have been completely on point ☹️

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.

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.

This Video Combines Two Of My Favourite Things: Anthropology, And Role-Playing Games. Phenomenal Work.

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 :)

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

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 ;)

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!

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.

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!

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.

Me a Chilean that lives in a mining town watching this video 😮

The Vespine Gas drop got a smirk out of me.

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.