D&D society is essentially impossible. Not because Wizards are producing expensive items with their minds or because high level Clerics can raise the dead – but because the character advancement posited in the DMG is so fast that it is literally impossible for anyone to keep tabs on what the society even is. High level characters are the military, economic, and social powerbases of the world. And they apparently rise from nothing in about 2 1/2 months. That means that if a peasant goes home to plant his crops, then when he gets back to the city with his harvest in the fall the city will have seen the rise of a group of hearty adventurers who attempt to conquer the world and achieve godhood four times while he’s gone. The city will have been conquered by a horde of Dao and sucked into the Elemental Plane of Earth and then returned to the prime material as a group of escaped Dao slaves achieved their freedom and themselves became powerful plane hopping adventurers who graduated to the Epic landscape. Then a team of renegade soldiers from the Dao army will have run off into the countryside and survived in the Spider Woods long enough to return with the Spear of Ankhut to return the city to the Dao Sultan in exchange for a gravy train of concubines and wishes. Then a squad of frustrated concubines will have turned on their masters and engaged in a web of intrigue culminating in the poisoning of the Dao Sultan with Barghest Bile and ultimately turned the city into a matriarchal magocracy run by ex-concubine sorceresses. So when the peasant returns with his harvest of wheat, he returns to a black edifice of magical stone done up in Arabian styles and bedecked with weaponry from Olympus that is all controlled by epically subtle and powerful wizards who are themselves the masters of a setting created from the fallout of the destruction of a setting that is itself the fallout of the destruction of a setting that was in turn created out of the destruction of the setting that our peasant walked away from with a bag of grain come planting time last year.

If you enjoy playing Dungeons & Dragons or similar fantasy RPGs, or if you just like reading in-depth analysis of fictional worlds, then the Tome of Awesome [pdf] is for you.The Tome of Awesome is part rules summary and analysis, part homebrew rule-fixes, part homebrew classes/skills/feats/spells, and, best of all, part fantastic overthinking of the economic, political, and sociological implications of the Dungeons & Dragons rules and default fantasy setting. It focuses on the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rules and so should fit well with Pathfinder.Some excerpted highlights include:(§ 4):The Morality of Necromancy: Black and Gray: Is using negative energy inherently evil or morally neutral like fire or cold? Is a skeleton an evil creature or just an automaton made of bone?Morality: How Black is the Night: What does Evil mean in D&D? What makes a good villain?Law and Chaos: Your Rules or Mine: "Let’s get this out in the open: Law and Chaos do not have any meaning under the standard D&D rules. We are aware that especially if you’ve been playing this game for a long time, you personally probably have an understanding of what you think Law and Chaos are supposed to mean. You possibly even believe that the rest of your group thinks that Law and Chaos mean the same thing you do. But you’re probably wrong."(§ 8.3):How does an economy function when spells like wish not only exist but can be cast a virtually unlimited number of times by creatures like djinn and efreets? How do coins work, as a practical matter, when items are priced in what amounts to literally tons of gold?(esp. §§ 10.5-10.7):A fantastic set of vignettes describing the possible motivations of various player and non-player races before and after a hypothetical large-scale war.(§ 13):Living with Yourself After a Raid: Justifying some of the apparently depraved actions common to D&D adventuring parties.Empirinomicon: Another great analysis of several common non-player races and creatures.The Constructanomicon: Why dungeons are ridiculous and what can be done about it.(§ A):Character Advancement: Power and Wealth. This one is worth a longer quote that really gives the flavor of the Tome:More information about the Tome can be found at the project homepage and The Gaming Den forum