Pastoral Ideal
You guys ever see the 1981 John Boorman film Excalibur? It’s the one with “O Fortuna,” and it’s notable here because of the cheesy flower bloom effect at 0:17. In Arthurian legend, there’s this theme of the land mirroring the king. In the despair of the Grail Quest, Camelot falls into disrepair. A gloom pervades the land, the shining armor clouds over, and all the unpleasant imagery of Browning’s bog comes into play. That changes in a big way when things are going well for Arthur. Just check out the sweet lighting effects in Boorman’s wedding scene. You could put an eye out with all that gleaming plate mail!
What does any of this have to do with GMing? Well, there are a couple of ways you can use Ye Olde Times in your campaign. If you want to join The Dung Ages crowd, you get to show a world filled with pestilence, poverty, and tyranny. You get to play up the past-as-dystopia angle, making your campaign world a grim and gritty place where one untended wound is enough to kill (unless of course your alchemist can invent a magic potion). On the other hand, a Ye Goode Olde Days approach allows for high romance. There you get noble sovereigns, contented peasantry, and a sense of ineffable longing for some lost golden age of the past.
In either case, I think it’s important to remember that neither approach is somehow more “realistic.” Different eras and different locations might skew more Dung Ages or Good Olde Days. The Romans bathed. Renaissance England not so much. And if you’re running a fantasy game with a fictional history, you’re free to set the tone in either direction.
For my money though, Boorman’s play between these tropes is useful because of its fluidity. You aren’t bound to stick to one style. In that sense, GMing is less about historical accuracy than serving your narrative. Like any good tactician, a GM uses the landscape to their advantage: heroic cavalry crest a hill bathed in morning sunlight while the forces of evil gather beneath looming clouds. The Dragon’s Lair is choked with weeds and thorns. The mad king rages while the storm cracks all around. These moments work so well because the fantasy genre is all about externalizing internal conflict. Once you realize that, the setting becomes a paintbrush, and you get to fill in the details with all the happy little trees (or not-so-happy little trees) you can imagine.
So for today’s discussion, what do you say we talk about our own “landscape paintings?” When you’re running a game, do you try to skew to the High or Low Fantasy aesthetic? Do you try and combine them? And if so, is it at the service of realism or storytelling? Tell us exactly how unwashed and malodorous your campaign world is down in the comments!
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I usually try to stick to the general principle that the closer you are to a major city, the better things are. When people live together in a large group, they’re much less vulnerable to monster attacks than isolated villages, and the general standard of living is higher as a result. Of course, this isn’t always the case; lots of people living in close proximity also creates challenges for hygiene and waste disposal, so the dynamic flips completely when it comes to things like a plague spreading throughout the land.
I usually don’t go for a strict sense of realism because with magic added in to the setting, things tend to diverge from historical conditions pretty hard. Magic makes it easy to add in things that function as equivalents to modern technology pretty easily, to the point where most cities can be expected to have a facsimile of indoor plumbing. While the more rural areas may not have the ability to maintain such fancy amenities, I do assume that at least basic hygienic necessities are cheap and easily available. Not everything is sparkling clean, but people also aren’t the Monty Python peasants unless they’re in an extremely remote location or they just want to be.
The plumbing is an important point. I’m willing to bet that ancient Rome was much sweeter-smelling than Elizabethan England.
Whenever I DM, I try to play up a General feel of high fantasy to really sell the contrast of things whenever the group goes to different countries, or even just different parts of the country.
Like right now the party is in the main capital of a small but prosperous nation. They’re known for two things: the big ass sword sticking out of their city and the fact they have one of the best colleges for magic and general education, so pretty much everyone in town not only knows how to read and write, but also have a fairly solid grasp of how magic works so they can both use it in their daily lives and protect themselves from those who would abuse it.
This is in stark contrast to a pastoral fishing villages only about a days journey south where yes, they do have a temple dedicated to the god of knowledge there, but everyone still acts very superstitious around even their own clerics and generally perceive magic as trickery and witchcraft. Additionally only people like the merchants, priests, and the town chief really know how to read. While most of the adults know enough about numbers to figure out how much money they should have and can write their names, reading isn’t really a skill you need when the only person with books are the priests, who’s job it is to read out said books to the masses.
Another fun thing about playing in a high fantasy verse is when you go somewhere that is high fantasy but on a different twist. Naturally there is a land of orcs that practice a more shaman style magic and are more dedicated to warfare, and their technology and magic reflects that: they are one of the few nations with an absurdly powerful navy that relies on shamans to bring winds and fuel their iron clads, and just as well even their common warrior is armed with a magic weapon because their industries go into warfare. They even have some of the best healers precisely because a wounded warrior is better than a dead one, and it behooves them to put them back onto the battlefield.
Conversely their peasantry basically live in the dung ages and most who work the fields are serfs at best or slaves at worse because the orcs don’t give a hoot about using their considerable innovations in magic and technology for welfare when it can be put into warfare. It’s high fantasy in a different flavor because you have these warriors armed with some of the best gear that even adventurers would pay top coin to get, until you go to their lands and see that these people are pretty much living your standard grimdark setting. Just as well the aforementioned highly educated nation can only afford to do so because their fairly small and made a huge alliance with the god of knowledge, so all of their resources goes into civil projects focused around the main city.
In short, when you start in a high fantasy, it’s easier to see and explain why some areas are low fantasy. It also gives players a sort of barometer for if they’re in a place that is equal to their level or not. One city might only be able to offer at best, standard adventuring gear and supplies, such as mundane weapons and armor and maybe healing potions. An appropriate place for low level adventurers. But a more high fantasy town could provide enchanting services thanks to attracting more skilled craftsmen, or merchants who can identify magic items for the party at a modest fee, as well as able to sniff out magical counterfeits. Shows the group in a somewhat indirect fashion that they are encountering higher level areas now.
Sounds to me like a gameplay choice. The transition from high to low as you move out from cities is meant to give players information about available services rather than evoking some specific mood.
I wonder if you can do both at the same time though?
Poor Snowflake. Not even a few weeks, and she’s already on the menu (unless she’s a celestial summoned mount rather than a permanent creature, and thus un-harvestable for munchies). And Paladin is the one that needs to worry.
Welcome to Handbook-World, where the setting is made up and internal consistency don’t matter.
Uncrumples a piece of paper
“Things you don’t want to hear from the Cleric.”
Cheer up, random, unnamed, dirt and dung covered peasants! Sure, you might make a few gold coins per year, are the first target of goblin, orc, ogre, giant and other monster raids, have to deal with random encounters without the adventurer gear/skill, but… Uhhh…
Yeah, it sucks to be commoner in Pathfinder. Just look at their earnings in silver per day/week, and compare it to the earnings of a adventurer (who can retire for life as early as lvl5).
It does kind of make me wonder how self-sufficient the peasantry is. In addition to their meager earnings, are the also farming a half-acre and making many of their goods at home?
Don’t eat the rich! They might get ideas and make ‘eat the X’ institutionalized.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/286000/Tooth_and_Tail/
Stick to eating the monsters instead. Dragon steaks are delicious!
Gives a new meaning to the term REDwall.
As a DM my biggest weakness is I’m not very descriptive when it comes to environments. Horrible/wonderful sensations/smells/tastes/pains I’m great at. The party is veeeeeeery aware of how bad the average Elven settlement smells.
On the subject of eating the rich, let’s talk aboot how much money the average adventurer is lugging around. While we have an instinct to think of 1GP = $1, I’d actually say 1GP = $300. An unskilled laborer makes 2SP/8 hour workday. US minimum wage is $7.25/Hour, meaning a US minimum-wage-earner makes $58/workday. That puts the value of a silver close to $30.
You may notice that many costs are inflated. That’s because most D&D worlds hover around the 1200s-1400s technologically. (Plate is a thing, printing presses aren’t. People are just barely figuring out gunpowder sometimes, maybe if you squint) That means no manufacturing, no globalism, and supply-routs are aggressively local. This drives up tons of prices so the average person can’t afford most manufactured goods.
Tacking a random weather chart to my screen is what helped me. It’s suddenly a lot easier to remember that the environment is a thing when there are rules for it.
This isn’t really something I’ve considered as a DM. Granted I’ve only been at this for a year and a bit. I’ve kinda glossed over the plight of the common man in my main campaign, so I suppose that it’s more skewed towards high fantasy in that most people are content enough to not want to revolt against the bourgeoisie. I don’t think in my main campaign that it would make sense to have the party focus on the trials and tribulations of the peasantry as their main quest involves stopping a mad man who has co-opted a necromantic culture to unlock the secrets of the fifth element which has the potential to destroy the world.
But I had started a second campaign, where the goal of the party is to escape capture by either leaving the island nation they lived in, being pardoned of their crimes, or some other way to stop the pursuit that I haven’t thought of. There, with the party going from place to place and having to gather resources, having a lot of side quests makes sense and I plan on exploring the needs of the average folk more in depth.
Scope is an interesting point to consider. When you’re focused on the big power players of the setting, and when the world is at stake, it seems logical to let other considerations take a back seat.
Even there though, I can’t help but remember the Sword and Sandals genre. You always have the people of Thebes or whatever reacting to the approaching kraken. And even Superman will pause his mission to save a single person in need. That back and forth between the high and the low can help to ground the epic-scale conflicts, and to make their outcome that much more important.
… impressive Wall Of Text you conjured up there 😉
I‘d put the topic down to „overthinking overload“ I‘m glad if nothing major goes south just managing the rules aspect of the game.
But generally I guess providing lighthearted scenery for a bunch of non-evil murderhobos is the flavor I‘m aiming for.
That’s not a bad place to be. The mechanics are the backbone of the game, and they deserve attention.
But even though we’re talking about games, they aren’t just games. We’re talking about environmental storytelling, Using descriptive language to help your player instantly understand the mood of the place.
For example, suppose you’ve got a city slum. Consider the following examples:
For example, suppose you’ve got a city slum. Consider the following examples:
It’s not just “a city slum.” It’s a way to cue your players about the nature of the setting.
I‘m kinda handicapped in that regard: My sources are Endlish (Fantasy Novels, Rule Books, APs) and my players are German.
My sandbox setting has pretty much all of your examples and yeah, I do try my best to communicate the flavor of the places.
„The woods you entered look like the only times they have ever been touched by an axe is when one of the forrest giants has died of old age and fallen over on a Dwarfen Adventurer.“
right after the party came past a row of stone pillars announcing „no trees will be cut in this wood“ in draconic.
I think I know that forest:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/silly-superstition
So… it is perhaps likely my name gives it away, but I run a dark, gothic fantasy. There are evil overlords, there is the darkness both within and without, and when you’re running a setting like that, that means there really have to be GOOD things worth defending.
It becomes really important to showcase everything good in a world where everything seems to go so bad.
Curiously on the topic of the comic itself… one of my more recent characters motivation for adventuring was to become a monster after forces destroyed his home town and killed pretty much everyone. Considering they were an Aether/Fire kineticist, they were about halfway there, but just watching everyone they knew get shot and beaten to death, well… it left them with a lot of questions about what evil actually is.
Truly, there are great rewards to be have in following the path of monstrosity. They are called “templates.”
I favor high fantasy over low, when it comes to personal taste. Gothic fantasy elements may be involved, or even the main focus, but I still lean away from realism.
What does that look like in practice? Are you thinking Castlevania?
What is a PC? A miserable pile of hitpoints! Now roll for initiative!
I’d like to +1 this. Completely accurate, can confirm.
Sorry for making this reply far too late, but I actually was thinking of Castlevania, since that was something I had long before dnd, so I got really into that aesthetic, when it came to adventuring in tabletop form.
Tough question, well done. You see in my setting, the one i made for my group, i usually go, i would say, for the middle point. Depending on the world, and there are many of them, you can find low and high sometimes even in the same kingdom. First people ruins are always HF and magitech, humans usually build LF, but not always. Do you remember Gondor in the Return of the King? Tall buildings, really tall for medieval construction. In our games you can find that kind of cities, with tall medieval towers yet similar to New York in some way. Fantasy medieval NY is a type of architecture you can find either because humans build it or someone help them. First people cities as i said are more magitech, just is one the world i introduce them they got four small cities. One was a giant flying city on the skies, another was build under an scorching desert, the third was made inside a volcano and the final one, and only the players visit was build on the middle of the ocean. It was… think a magitech stargate’s Atlantis, tall spires of cristal and metal full of tech marvel and magic. And that is leaving aside Creed Worlds. Their landscape? Ravnica 😀
Now for the social too a middle point. People like Paladin will not be rare, shining jerk in golden armor, but peasants wanting to take back guild street and wanting to defeat the system, like those peasants, have their space too. As a rule of thumb, if the game present a good and light kingdom expect lots of shit just waiting to appear. If the kingdom look like the Dung Age expect to see lots of hidden hope just waiting to get released. And that if i go for obvious things. Also, like the Witcher, i use many modern ideas on a fantasy world. Class struggle was something imposible in our medieval times, riches and nobility came from god and blood. It took a lots of time to get peasants getting rich enough, and the nobles to get poor enough, to have them getting nobility and status by their money. In my game there could be already rich burgers but still isn’t the time to buy titles, or maybe nobility doesn’t come from blood and god but from weapons and armies. Post-modern medieval times is how many of that worlds function 🙂
Obviously i and our DM always point towards the storytelling direction. Realism isn’t a priority for us. Why to be realistic on a fiction? Who can say that what we do isn’t realistic if it’s a fictional world? And as the creator of the setting let me give you a small lore snippet: It’s realistic because it doesn’t reflect our world. I don’t make fantasy!France of fantasy!England. An steampunk empire can have some British Empire vibes but i don’t go for counterparts 🙂
Side, but important note: Congrats Laurel those two peasants, i really like them. The boy… i don’t know, maybe is his I-have-enough-of-this-shit face, but i am fond of the young shitted lad. And the girl, she kinda looks like the cousin of you avatar here at the HBoH, but with blue eyes. She looks great in any case. Good work, not many artist make characters that caught my eye in such way and just by their look in one page 😀
I think this is an important point: These elements are present everywhere, but whether they’re the subject of narrative attention depends on the tone the GM is trying to convey in the moment. It’s the difference between building a world (something you might do when writing a setting book) and running a game (which changes from scene to scene).
That things hidden in the dark waiting for their turn to show up, they are there, they may show up or the party may remain in blissful ignorance. One or two time we have use that, having a party in a game more light and fun and then other party in the very same setting showing all the problems and dark things. The clash between the ignorant and idealistic party and the cynical and knowing party is great 🙂
And ripping the head out of your old pc has a certain charm too 😛
Can we replace “and when you’re running a fantasy game with a fictional history” with, “when you’re running a fantasy game where you’re making up the history” or “when you’re running a fantasy game with a thematically-neutral history”?
Because I feel like, when you ask me this question after I’m playing Dark Sun or Shadow of the Demon Lord or The Witcher RPG that this question is kind of answered without that much particular choice on my part. Who’s going to say, “I ran Ravenloft with bright imagery and visual themes redolent of high Arthurian romance”?
Or, if I’m playing canon Ars Magica or Maelstrom: Domesday, it’s more a question of what story I plan to tell (and the players wander into); it could be one about thankful kings getting their daughters rescued from faerie lords, but then the players could choose to end up outside the walls of Damietta while the bloody flux runs through the camp of the Crusaders besieging the city. I mean, “not mention the Albigensian Crusade while the characters are wandering through the south of France in the early 13th Century” is a choice, I guess, but one I think is kind of a cop-out, even if the wandering is part of a higher fantasy quest.
Finally, I think the very medieval-inspired binary gives short shrift to less medieval fantasy settings like Planescape or Eberron where there’s all sorts of dark and light and weird, but it’s not dung farming or brave knights on horseback.
I’d wager that a great many Ravenloft campaigns end with a sunrise:
https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Castlevania-season-2-finale-ending-explained.jpg
There’s a consistent tone within the setting, but knowing when and how to break that tone for dramatic effect is part of the GM’s art. For me, today’s blog is less about the medieval binary than tone in general. It’s just that the treatment of “dung ages vs. romance” is an especially good illustration of the principle.
You used the phrase “happy little trees” without linking to Bob Ross? I’m afraid I have to report you to the Internet Police.
The Bob Ross is silent, like the “z” in pterodactyl.
I almost always go in the High Fantasy direction. Often into “We can’t even see the ground from up here Fantasy” territory. I’m all about the magic, monsters, exploring, and weirdness (with a healthy dash and sprinkle of supernatural and cosmic horror respectively).
Floating castles. Vanishing mist shrouded isles. Faerie lands with trees that go up and maybe down forever. Mid-air rivers that twist and turn and loop-de-loop. Lava falls. Cities built entirely into the side of cliffs. Icy forests in the middle of a jungle. Dinosaurs in the pseudo-medieval Japanese desert. The north pole being entirely made of dangerously charged and randomly firing magic crystals.
All that kind of stuff is way more my jam than “You walk into town and step into the thin soup of horse droppings coating the street as people wheeze and oh look you can see that beggar child’s ribs. Oh look they’re stolen your coin purse and the city guard is about to cut them down in the street and keep the money for themselves!”
You ever read much Roger Zelazny? I always dug the Amber series for this level of weirdness. Of course, even as I imagine Castle Amber, I do seem to recall the book starting with an amnesiac stumbling through grimy streets on boring-old-Earth.
Oh, but my dear Commoner, you CAN eat the Rich if you really want to.
You just either need to join in a Demonic Cult and Sacrifice others for Magic Power, or become a Bandit.
Both Choices really upgrade your Stat Block. This does require you to throw away your morals, and you may End your Life on an Adventurers Blade, but lets be real.
I mean you can toil cradle to the Grave, so the Rich live in Luxury while you, have barely enough not to starve in your shit coverd hut.
Well that is if you don’t die of Disease. Or Monsters. Or being conscripted into a Nobles Army. Or get murdered by the so called “Adventuring Heroes”, because they REALLY wanted those three copper Pieces of yours.
OR you can take the Second option. Become an Outlaw, take your Life into your own Hands! Sure, you will probably die anyway. But at least you can have some fun while doing it! Rob some Merchants, live the good, for at least some Time!
People will fear you and Respect your, or at least your Dagger. And hey, if you are lucky and hit it big, you just might be able to retire in a Nice city. And this also upgrades your Stat Block, so you’re at least have a fighting chance against Weak Monsters, instead of just being Prey.
And hey, if you go the Cultist Route, you might just become a powerful Warlock and even a BBEG at some point.
So what do you choose?
Thinking it off that angle, theres no wonder, that there are so many Bandits, and Cultists out there in so many Fantasy Settings.
There is another way. It just requires A LOT of blogging.
https://davethecommoner.wordpress.com/faq/
My first foray into DMing has been decidedly high-fantasy, but that was also because I had decided the small country i was running my campaign in would be very high-magic type of country and I also decided that some of her neighboring countries may not be. I am the kind of person that leans heavy-magic so i wanted to keep this little start that way.
The small starting country is really magic-steeped to the point of most commoners can be expected to know at least a cantrip or two (divine or arcane split was never my strong point, even have a pretty decent number of kinteticicsts here). Farming towns use magic to enhance crop yields, messages are sent magically from town to town, the second largest city has magical lamps lit by little ‘lamplighter dragons’ at dusk (reflavored fairy dragons). highest 3 orders of the military are special mount paladin types: pegasus, griffin, and good dragon. Basically no banditry in this particular kingdom, and good trade.
of course the BBEG is an evil dragon from the next country over who covets the land, remembers when this stupid little nation was founded, the gall! and believes it to be hers by right.
Weirdly, the abundance of magic isn’t quite what I think of when I think “high fantasy.” It’s just on my mind on account of a Dark Suns article I recently read…
https://www.cbr.com/dungeons-dragons-dark-sun-setting-explained/
…But the notion that “everyone and everything has some supernatural power” doesn’t necessarily mean fantasy utopia. I guess it’s the old problem of trying to talk about subgenres. I kind of wish I’d taken the time to define my terms in the blog. :/
Love those lamplighter dragons though. That mess straight up screams fantasy no matter how you slice it.
This hasn’t come up in any of the campaigns I’ve been a part of, but I would be remiss if I didn’t bring to attention the digital board game Armello. In it the king is succumbing to a magical malady of madness, and as his condition becomes worse and worse the central castle where he’s located starts to grow giant thorns followed by a swirling purple cloud of doom and finally a perpetual swarm of angry crows. Now this would be great on it’s own as a set piece, if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s also a gameplay element of sorts. As the turn count gets higher the spawn rate of these giant purple crow monsters called banes grows as well until the map is more of a warzone than a kingdom. It was always a really cool way of combining story, visuals, and gameplay all together into one thematically appropriate package.
Really cool character art in that Armello thing. And from what you describe, a visual reminder of “it’s the end game and shit is getting serious” seems spot-on for the kind of effect that setting can give.
I try to go high fantasy, typically.
Also not particularly dung-ish, or my players will never willingly touch anything.
Prestidigitation is a very important spell in some settings.
I’m probably weird in this regard, because all of my Pathfinder campaigns have ended up in more of a “science fictiony fantasy” area than either of the standard medieval tones.
The first one (“The Dark Island”) didn’t have anything necessarily sci-fi, but the second half had a strong “abandoned mad scientist lab” theme to it, even though all of the “science” was magic.
The second one (“Grayshot”) is full of firearms and (magically-controlled) nanites, but also barbarians, devil-worshipers and Lovecraftian monstrosities. Two powerful factions run on alchemy more than magic. The firearms tone is not that they are necessarily new, but the main firearms faction is the first faction to have industrialized and standardized gun production and training, which has given them a massive advantage. It helps that the Wizard and Alchemist PCs (and their players) are very invested in taking apart any science thing they encounter and rebuilding it for their own use. The city also has pretty good infrastructure, including a running gag about how great the (probably magically-run) postal service is.
The new one (“Black Stars”) is a mash-up of the Second Darkness and Iron Gods APs, so sci-fi is a given there. Crashed UFOs, sinister aliens, ancient conspiracies and laser guns.
If I had to squeeze each of them into a high/low category based on idealist/cynical tone… Grayshot is definitely low fantasy (political disputes, large slums, lots of crime groups that function more like governments than the real one, gladiator matches, the morally grey force for order in the town is both tyrannical and quite possibly for the best), Dark Island might be too (desperate survival away from civilization, swamps, undead, cannibalism, and black ooze everywhere) and Black Stars is probably high (basically Indiana Jones chasing cultists around the world for ancient alien ruins, no ambiguities here!).
Laurel and I have been enjoying the new She-Ra lately. Gotta love that magitech scattered across the setting.
That’s my point really. Almost any setting you point at will have a little of column A and a little of column B. I think that what you focus on tends to shift in response to the narrative moment. The overgrown hangar bay is full of insane robots: a vestige of the evils that brought First Ones civilization to its knees. The ancient rocket finally launching and breaking atmo gives that feeling of hope. Both locations exist side by side, but they’re useful for different beats.
This reminds me of a conversation I had on Discord once when someone mocked the “eat the rich” line.
Friend 1: “Come now, [Friend 2] the poor are too skinny for us to eat, and without our cannibal cult what are we going to do every Friday? Play Monopoly?”
Friend 2: “‘The poor are too skinny’? Your Honor, for Exhibit One I would like to present my last trip to Walmart.”
Friend 1: “Wait fuck this is America, you’re right. The poor eat McDonald’s.”
Me: “If anything the rich are more likely to be thin in this country.”
Friend 2: “Talk about paradigm shifting without a clutch. We can’t go all the way down to the really poor, though, because that loops back around to being skinny. We need like, ‘eat the lower-middle class’.”
Friend 1: “Ehhh. The lower middle class is iffy because some of them are reasonably well educated so they try really hard to be healthy. Listen, the specifics don’t interest me as long as we get good sacrifices and [Me] remembers to bring the soda it’s all good.”
Friend 2: “Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!”
Friend 1: “Uruk-hai noises that sound like I’m dying of a terrible cough or something”
As for your actual question, we tend to go for “idealistic tempered by what’s believable.”
Have your friends ever played Cultist Simulator? They hit the mood of the Order of the Bloody Cup so well 😀
As a creative practice, GMing is crazy to me since “what’s believable” is something you negotiate with your audience in real time. That’s a luxury you don’t get when you’re trying to futz with worldbuilding in other media.
Generally, the tropes for inner city, suburbs, and rural are just as much active back then as they are now: Inner city has all the major conveniences at your fingertips, but also high prices and crowding/hygiene issues, but even in a successful city, slums are still a thing and with it organized crime.
Rural areas have few conveniences, but also eschew the politics and social problems in favor of hardwork and physical labor. Unfortunately a rural area is more prone to banditry and other environmental hazards, even as simple as “we didn’t get enough rain, crops are going to fail, we’re going to starve this winter” A run of these circumstances can make it look like you really are dealing with dung farmers.
Suburbs theoretically have the best of both worlds, but likewise have to be wary of problems from the city and urban regions spilling over onto them (though usually not to the same scale)