"Modern" Fantasy world building

Because then you start getting into the unfun space opera shit.

why and how ? Do the "evil" race has been put to slavery, then fought for recognition and freedom ? It may have started by just big metropolis with every races welcomed. Or maybe there is several cities and countries associated with different races. Does race dictate a lot your social statue ? Or is it your wealth ?

Also, do everyone has access to the technology or is it more for the upper class ? Where is your world, technologically speaking, at that moment ?

For years Airships were little more than flying boats magically held aloft and propelled by a bound elemental, until an enterprising artificer discovered it was more efficient to build a craft with wings that could generate lift with magic only used for propulsion

>starting village is a rural town with a small population
>wizard is the fighters best friend from high school who went to college while fighter helped manage his familys farm
>rogue is traveling to a near by city and wants to make a few bucks before his bus leaves in a couple days because of missing parts
>they meet at a bar to catch up
>find out some feral goblins have been raiding some live stock
>preist in training is passing through to heal a hurt townsfolk and asks if he can help
>all decide to head out and stop this menace

My go-to is that magic ends up being harnessed as a power source. Think about what could be possible if you stop just throwing out fireballs with your ioun stone and instead tap into its raw potential energy to run a city's lights. Arcane batteries are basically my mainstay. And less pleasant societies may even just hook apparatuses up to innate casters to power things.

s
>bounded elemental
Really cool idea to bound elemental to object in a "technological world", maybe fire elemental engine or lesser fire spirit-flamethrower ? They can become the basis of energy production. Also mix of water and fire elemental, fighting each other and producing steam ?

>democratized use of necromancy to raise workers for hazardous environments (mines, dangerous machine room...)
>several league against it, mainly conservative clerics and paladins (may also be against technology in general)
>league for the rights of the undead slaves, the intelligent one (or worst, even for the soulless one "they are people ! Don't you see !" )

Yeah my idea was that Eberron style airships eventually gave way to elemental Jets though the airships still exist as passenger craft

My idea would be that devices that require a lot of power would be powered by an elemental that is bound to a containment ring and it's power would be channeled through an array to whatever needed power
Smaller less energy intensive devices would draw power from background mana like mages do

efrit-bounded slot machine

Sort of. Thing is, the more you remove the classic elements of fantasy from the setting the less it is 'classic fantasy gone modern'.

I'm not saying you have to remove the other races, but why they still exist would need to be addressed. I mean, if I understand the OP correctly we are talking modern world with magic. Now consider the total power of say the United States, but with the addition of a likely proportionate amount of magical might on top of that. Then consider a truly genocidal other race that simply will not stop. What happens?

Just address why that hasn't happened, is all I am saying.

Personally I just kill off the Elves and Dwarves and call it done. Their time has passed. Also it leads to archeology expeditions that quickly turn into dungeon crawls.

Why hasn't it happened in a traditional fantasy setting, either? I mean, most of them have stagnated at their current tech level for thousands of years or more. Why would jumping the timeline ahead a few hundred years make much of a difference? I could see if one singular group had modern technology and the rest all didn't, but if they all do, it would be very much like the Cold War, probably. Also divine intervention, too.

So FF6 then? Though as someone's who's usual frame of reference for Fantasy is Warhammer I don't know why they have to be extremely technologically stagnant.

I'm looking to build a magitek setting using 3.5e/PF/d20R for the system.

How do I make viable firearms happen that wouldn't turn melee entirely garbage?

Magical shielding, blocks fast-moving projectiles but has a limited power source and some magical effects can cause catastrophic damage if they hit the shield.

Don't make them huge damage dealers. Make them use more dice for damage, but make sure you can't add any modifiers to them. Pistols could be 2d4, 3d4 for rifles. Firearms would be a huge benefit to the masses, but if someone's got high enough strength they outdo them.

>After they defeat the goblins the group decideds to take a bit of a road trip.
>Party discusses buying tickets for the closest greyhound but the fighter says "I've got a better idea"
>Goes to the barn and pulls the tarp off a Volkswagen bus covered in dust
>"She ain't exactly new but all she needs is a good spit shine and a tank of gas and we're in business."
>The van has an 8-track of Led Zepplin in the player.

Forgot pic.

I must say that the stagnation of those universes is really strange, apart from the gods that might try to stop technological advancement. Every societies with people dedicated to research will advance, and most of those settings have at least mages that spend their days studying, not to mention all of those with rogue guilds developing clever mechanisms and mad engineers that conceive cunning traps. The fact that most fantasy universe is based on technology from a non-magic world (our) leads to incoherence (people just stopped innovating ? because of what ? even constant war is an awesome reason to innovate). An idea would be to create the universe "from scratch", with well written laws of magic (which percent of the population can use it ? how it was discovered, and improved? things like that. Why people would bother developing agriculture if you can magically create food for example.

I feel like the reason for that stagnation doesn't matter. For most players, it doesn't matter. What's important is if the world is fun to play in and the story is good. You're in for some big disappointment if you put too much thought into the logic of the world only for it to go unnoticed.

make them really long to reload. You can also assume that everybody can use them, 40k style, with fighters charging while shooting. You can also assume that in your universe, melee weaponry become way more efficient than steel weapons (everybody has arcane-infused ultra sharp weapons, way deadlier than gun for example)

This might work, something similar to the Shield spell be fitted into the modern tacticool armor, powered by the bullshit magic batteries of my setting.

That's interesting. How would you handle firearms capable of burst/automatic fire, or even scattering shots?

I was learning more towards the latter, yes, where they're very common, and exceptionally easy to use.

Thanks for the responses, guys, gives me plenty to think about.

Also, would you consider allowing the occasional player to play bipedal awakened pets to be distasteful? The campaign is revolving around the party being a police taskforce.

>after a couple days of repair they wave good bye and head off after getting a home cooked meal from the fighters family and a couple wards from the wizards dad
>fighter drives 5 under the speed limit and cites "drive to arrive"
>wizard politely asks if he could change the album
>theif agrees from the back as he strechs out laying his feet across the seat and luggage
>Fighter starts insulting their taste in music and women
>wizard claims to have gotten "all the pussy."
>banter ensues
>Preist says they should just turn it off and listen to nature
>everyone starts ragging on the preist.

I wish this could be my life. Modern fantasy road tripping would be so comfy.

completely agree, that was just some meta-thinking on the state of most fantasy universes. Nevertheless, it's also really interesting to play in a world which change around you, like during an industrial revolution era. Another idea could also be a universe where you play a legacy of heroes, or just several groups at different era, not so far apart, using the older group as historical facts. You can even keep the same rule system if you go for something like charlemagne - high middle age - renaissance, seeing how the world has changed between

I'd love to play in a world that could grow, but my DM is so obsessed with the status quo that nothing changes, even when we players try to be movers and shakers.

>dwarf bard on the side of the road,holding a sign
> fighter slow down
> "to Korasum"
> everybody but the cleric look distracted
> fighter speed up, leaving the dwarf behind
> cleric at loss, asking why he didn't stop
> awkward silence
> "well, first, it was a dwarf"

>After stopping of by a gas station the group disperses to find a bit of work for some gas and food money.
>Most of the group comes back with nothing aside form a few odd jobs around town.
>Priest has been talking to some the happenings around town and finds out that there's a major excavation happening a few miles outside the town and the archeologist in charge is looking for some able bodies and sound minds.
>"So what're they digging up?" the wizard inquires.
>"Supposedly an ancient dwarven city."
>Group perks up at the mention of dwarf.
>"Sounds like a pretty big pay day, especially if the big wig doesn't notice a couple of gold pieces and vases going missing from the hall."
>"Well boys I think we found ourselves a job" the fighter says placing his boots on the table.

>bar fights with dwarven bikers
>defending a druids grow op from orc gangers
>fighting a toll troll who demands payment for crossing a bridge
>finding an owlbear poaching ring
>cleansing a haunted house for a youth group to use for fund raising
>BEACH EPISODE MUTHA FUCKA

Basically this is shaping up to be "The great american road trip with a few extra dragons in it"

>owlbear poaching ring
I'm sold out

Opening Theme: youtube.com/watch?v=VUyXIg31SqA

>How would you handle firearms capable of burst/automatic fire, or even scattering shots?
Make them area effects like blast, burst, cone or line

>Why hasn't it happened in a traditional fantasy setting, either?
Plot

No other reason.

A modern nation has the power to genocide a nation that does not exhibit the same level of power, the only thing that stops it is mercy. Or, if the other nation has that level of power, deterrence. That simplifies a few things, but it works for our discussion I think.

Take orcs. They, as is in a typical fantasy setting, are not going to stop. If the Elves or humans advance to current levels of combat power projection (nukes for example, take an extreme) why in the fuck would orcs still exist? They will not stop.

If the orcs have an equal amount of power (so everyone advances) then you are stuck with the problem still...because orcs will not stop. Deterrence doesn't really work with them. Not as described in the 'typical fantasy setting'.

Something has to give. Someone won that war, and won it for the last time.

Or, there is something else going on.

Now we could take the cheap way out and just say 'uh, orcs are not really like that in this setting' but I think it would be cooler if we could come up with another reason why it didn't happen than that. Something that fits the stereotypical setting and yet seems plausible.

Maybe there is a big bad that has taken over the orc lands and holds them in check because of deterrence. Something like the old Cold War maybe.

You change nothing and remember that HP are not meat points.

A guy doesn't get to be 20th level and then is able to survive being stabbed twenty times without taking any real damage. But rather he invokes plot armor and isn't really hurt those first twenty times.

Same with guns. The first twenty bullets didn't hit him, they ate away his plot armor.

A bullet should do about twice the 'damage' as a sword, in my opinion, as it takes a bit more plot armor to convince me that the guy didn't get hit.

Next, make a arbitrary ruling that only melee weapons can be magical. Something like it must be wielded by a living hand when it makes contact or something.

Most fantasy settings in campaigns, if the creator realizes it or not, are on a cycle of rise and collapse. The world collapses (to make new dungeons and lost whatevers) just as things get good.

My headcannon for these kinds of worlds is that the world DID evolve, but that's not how people view the past. Like, you know, this is how a medieval dude imagined Alexander the Great. It's normal for people to imagine the past similar to the present.

Of course it's just headcannon directed to calm my own autism.

So whats the setting summary? Or this thread general worldvuilding ideas to be utilized elsewhere?

Really interesting point of view. Indeed, a fantasy world brings easily doomsdays or whatever on the table, and truly terrifying events. Which lead to the cycle.

as OP did not really specified more stuff after the first post, I guess it's now a worldbuilding focusing on technology included in fantasy setting thread

What system?
What are cities like?
Where are we going?
What kind of food do we discover along the way?

Maybe next thread should include a prompt, probably something about the nations of the world. I don't imagine that democracies would be too terribly common in that type of setting.

You got to figure that eventually in every setting the PCs are going to drop the ball eventually.

I've run games based on the idea 'the previous party failed, now you guys are living the hell'. Worked out OK. Guys played as rebels (we would call them insurgents now) in a land taken over by the bad guy mages. Re-connecting with Gods whose temples were thrown down, that sort of thing.

>What system?
Given that this is a sort of setting with guns and sword fighting I'd imagine something like Ubiquity. It's able to pull of the anime/hollywood action movie feel that it invokes.
>What are cities like?
Cities would probably be hubs of technology that is pretty far ahead of those in the countryside (i.e. everyone in the country still uses pay phones and smart phones are common in cities)
>Where are we going?
Wherever the road takes us man.
>What kind of food do we discover along the way?
Bullete meat probably.

I think if we wanted it to work, we might say something like city states remained the norm. That would help prevent the over all power level of any given nation rising to the point where we have nukes floating around.

It would also allow the more chaotic bad guys to possibly stick around as they might be used as pawns to play off against other city states.

Kind of a magitech points of light sort of thing maybe.

>several orc fastfood along the way
>they serve spicy mushroom stew with meat
> huge variety
> most old clerics speak against those place, saying that it's unhealthy and gross
> they prefer the good ol' tavern, teens don't know what is good

Probably something like later Greek kingdoms where it's a series of City-States that banded together to form a nation.

>Orcs invading west end of the Elven countryside
>Bow/Arrow aren't very efficient
>Bring in Drawf Engineers to collaborate with Elf Mages
>R&D to find more efficient projectile firing system using mana crystals for power
>Human governments catch wind of this
>They want a piece of the pie
>Dwarf Engineer starts leaking information to the Human governments for large amounts of gold
>Needs someone to "steal" documents and details of the research
>Hires your party
Can't wait til you get to have a modern fantasy version of the Manhattan Project.

>operation parchment holder

So orcs are basically the same level as autistic people. It honestly makes sense.

"We have to Wienlund Empire (Nazis) from casting the Meteor Spell! (Dropping the A-Bomb)"

In the textbook sense? No.

In a democratic representative federal republic? I don't see why not.

Mostly because I see republics as an after effect of WWI because beforehand constitutional monarchies were still in vogue.

> project finally done
> elven kingdom almost fallen to the orc
> humans nuke without a consensus the orcs and the elvens, fearing for their borders.
> dwarves cannot accept that
> cold war between dwarvs and humans
> elves become refugee, seeking asylum in all the kingdoms
> meanwhile, the evil cult behind the orc invasion try to create its own mana nuke

It could be very much like how Krogans are handled in Mass Effect.
>Krogans expand exponentially
>Very agressive, will destroy anyone in there way
>Introduce disease that decimates the population
>Society now has to focus on reproduction instead of war and expansion to survive
Would some sort of disease placed upon Orcs and inhibit rates of reproduction work within a fantasy setting? I think if it's a "modern" fantasy setting then there must be someone that has solved the "orc problem".

I like it

>Humans begin developing weapons of mass destruction
>Society undergoing mass anti-Elf hysteria
Considering that you could use magic to slightly alter yoru appearance it would be neat to see actual Elf spies that can just hide in plain sight with accusations being thrown left and right of anybody being a spy.

I think in terms of world building what would be a "modern" fantasy setting that having an evil cult manipulate an entire race behind the scenes doesn't seem very good or plausible but you definitely be a cool thing to do for a campaign! Sort of like the Nazi -> Hydra transition.

op should post a map next time. Doesn't have to have kingdoms labeled or anything or lands designated. but a map could help a good bit.

I can totally see a major World War occurring. Several even, especially with racial and martial/magical divides creating a more naturally segregated world

Several wars occurring, yes. World Wars occurring, no. People tend to forget that the reason that WWI occurred in the first place was because Otto Von Bismarck basically created a scenario where everyone what both ready to kill each other and unable to fight one another. The second that he was kicked out of office because he pissed off the Kaiser everything went to hell. Before that wars were common but never truly spiraled out of control as much as WWI did.

the point of firearms is to make all melee garbage instead of focus on making them balanced switch focus making combat be about guns and the advantage of D20 systems have already a good focus on melee fighting

Why don't we focus on making some nation states to help set the tone of the setting?

>The Divine Throne of Ocannus the Brilliant is a Theocratic nation state that exists along the equator as the Sun Palace is situation in geosyncronous orbit held in place by massive chains
>The reason for this is supposedly the founder expressing "godhood" such that a vast array of arcane machines was needed to regulate his powers.
>Below the Throne in the captial city of Ocannus the Consensus of Wisdom rules in his place being made up primarily of members of the Clergy in the highest positions with lay persons of various fields and expertise filling various adminstrative roles.
>While accepting of various technological advances they are highly conservative in regards that only those baptized and ordained by the government are allowed to practice and study magic treating foreign users with suspicion and placing heavy restictions upon their ability to use inside the main cities.
>In truth, the purpose for all of this is the appeasement of the creature that inhabits King Ocannus's body which is both held in check by the various machines and wards but also in that the clergy bind themselves in pacts with it.

There is so much you could do with melee combat in a modern fantasy setting that getting rid of it all together would be quite unfun (Just imagine the shit you can come up with!).

This is where I usually turn to Destiny for this sort of thing. You have suits that look like cloths but are in fact advanced forms of power armor (Titans more obvious then Hunters and Warlocks obviously) You have modern guns and then you have enemies that can strait up ignore bullets because they have semi-divine powers that tell reality only niggas brave enough to shank me can hurt me on top fo the fact that you have weapons that can burst into flame or shoot ilghtning or be enveloped in dark energy.

I think if we treat magic and technology at the speed that Destiny does everyone can have their cake and eat it too.

You could go the Witcher way with melee and even ranged weapons. I imagine that there are magical creatures and fauna all around right? Maybe there exists old(some even ancient) schools of martial arts, orders of knights, mercenary companies and more recently biotech firms that try to push the limits of physical potential using alchemy/magically potent drugs/carved runes on bare flesh/replacing limbs with those of magical creatures. Add in the fact that an enchanted weapon's magical field extends no further than the weapon itself means that enchanting every bullet becomes prohibitively expensive.

Defensive runes capable of taking a few mundane hits before buckling but are ignored by enchanted weapons(and their magical fields) means both ranged and melee weapons would have a place.

Indeed, just because you can handle normal people with regular weapons doen't mean the supernatural threats can be taken out the same way. Which annoys me because people bring up the idea that they would have been exterminated or something rather than evolving or making way for something that can adapt to the way people do things.

For me, taking Witcher/Destiny and Blood/souls style magic would be perfect because it doesn't require figuring out how to fit D&D magic into a modern era. Most of that stuff could just be the metaphysics of magic in that setting that is explained as something too big that even you, the PC wizard would not be able to pull off on a whim such as fucking with time and space or whatever.

Since it seems like many people want to actually modernize a setting instead of discuss general world building principles how's about in the next thread we take an already existing setting, file off the serial numbers so to speak, and then modernize it by exploring its history.

For example we can take say...Thedas from Dragon Age, file off the names and such and move the setting forward technologically and socially and see where it takes us. Or maybe WHFB, if the End Times didn't happen and see if we can't end with President Nagash.

Advancing Nirn may be very interesting, taking into consideration the more Kirkbride-y elements.

Maybe. I tend to see it as a situation where interlocking complex treaties put things in motion that were unable to be stopped. The reality of mobilization times also meant that if you didn't start mobilizing when your enemy dead you could e defeated out of hand.

Looked at that way, a WWfantasy isn't that hard to imagine.

I see no reason to get rid of it. It would disappear for the commoner, sure. He has something like maybe 3-6 hp, those are functionally meat points.

But when you have to beat your way through a hundred hp a sword can come in to play a bit easier. It would functionally be a hero vs hero thing though.

Of course but the thing to keep in mind that these treaties had Bismarck's hand in it in some fashion. Left to it's own devices Europe probably would have persisted the way it had for hundreds of years, constantly at war.

That's the simulationist way of looking at it, but since this is a game, I think making all combat choices fun is more important.

Guns being for mooks and swords for the elite would be a pretty good paradigm. May not be completely true and more an exaggeration, but it would be believed by most of the people and would have some pretty interesting cultural impacts.

Really we're kind of trying to wrap our heads around the possible tropes that such a setting would entail because no-one's ever codified this type of setting before. Really the reason why we're discussing this genre in terms of fantasy settings is because we understand the general principles of magic, technology, adventure trope those settings have.

I mean it's not like swords aren't absent from modern day action fiction and pulp adventure in general.

I'd only support this if something like what I said here was in play. These people can tell whatever (in-universe)stories they want about some rando chucklefuck picking up a sword and going ham on the enemies of "insert relevant city-state here" to save the world, but on the (in-universe)battlefield, there's a damn good reason why melee warriors stand besides everyone else and why no one with a functioning brain would demand they use different weapons.

I just think if you want to stay true to the idea of 'typical fantasy setting' with modern tech...you almost have to keep some of the medieval weaponry around that is common in fantasy. Don't you? At least to me.

By the way, just what is modern? I mean, are we going full modern? Stop at say WWII?

I like the cyberpunky aspects that would creep in with modern and magic together. But, I know I keep harping on it, but the full military power that modern brings is I think a problem.

Although I guess we could say that military tech just didn't advance that far - the collusion of magic and tech stunted some breakthroughs on the tech side.

But what about monsters? Giants to Dragons to just about most anything big and scary. An M60 machine gun would do a serious world of hurt on any of that stuff, if needed bring out a jeep with a 50 cal. Plot armor is fine for people/heroes, but it just seems a bit out of place for big monsters.

How is it they didn't overun everything during medieval fantasy times yet didn't get extincted during modern fantasy times?

What if there is a size problem with enchanting things? So a bullet maybe not so much, unless very expensive. But an arrow is much easier.

Keep those rangers in the game.

>Guns being for mooks and swords for the elite would be a pretty good paradigm.

The more I think about this the more I like the vision of the thing. Guy who is 'support guy' carries an M60 around laying down support fire on mooks while the rest of the squad engages with M4's. Then X monster pops up (or enemy special guy squad, whatever) and he drops the machine gun to unsling his bow while the rest of his team draw swords.

>I just think if you want to stay true to the idea of 'typical fantasy setting' with modern tech...you almost have to keep some of the medieval weaponry around that is common in fantasy. Don't you? At least to me.
THIS
I swear, it seems like most of this thread wants to drop most of the fantasy from the "modern fantasy". I think that other than firing more rapidly/with better range, guns in a fantasy game shouldn't be all that different from the likes of crossbows. Explosives would be pretty hardcore, but so are fireballs. Getting gutted with a claymore's not going to be THAT much more desirable to being blasted with a heavy machine gun.

Having it be mostly allied city-states is pretty good. As for the monsters, just blame them on inexplicable and uncontrollable magical phenomena. The kind of shit you can really only weather through while hoping you make it out the other side. Things like magical eclipses, dimensional rifts, meteors carrying more of the buggers, deep-sea earthquakes releasing untold horrors that proceed to mate with monsters thus spawning ever more powerful offspring, They drop down from the moon, etc. We need to remember that this is also a magical setting(s) that should have natural magical phenomena.

What if magic protection was common? Common as in 'most super elite, read PC, have it'. Say you could, as a few anons suggested, protect yourself from non-magical damage pretty easily.

But along with that we said that magic attacks would cut right through that protect, does nothing.

So a non-magical bullet does almost no damage to the guy who can afford the protective stuff. So bullets do like 1 hp if you have the protection.

But you can enchant a sword pretty easily, or an arrow for that matter.

So you get in a position where PCs are vulnerable to bullets, but not so much it is instant death and not so little they are literal tanks that ignore infantry platoon rifle platoon fire. Guns are still best for taking out mooks. But for other PC class stuff, you got to take out that enchanted word.

>By the way, just what is modern? I mean, are we going full modern? Stop at say WWII?

Personally I'd say that anything from the 19th - Right Now is pretty much fair game. I don't care too much for the whole cyberpunk/transhumanism thing either.

>Although I guess we could say that military tech just didn't advance that far - the collusion of magic and tech stunted some breakthroughs on the tech side.

I would almost say that science and magic complemented one another and helped lead to modern breakthroughs, helping technology prove concepts that they could replicate (i.e. using electricity as a power source, helping facilitate the combustion engine, ect.)

>But what about monsters? Giants to Dragons to just about most anything big and scary. An M60 machine gun would do a serious world of hurt on any of that stuff, if needed bring out a jeep with a 50 cal. Plot armor is fine for people/heroes, but it just seems a bit out of place for big monsters.

>How is it they didn't overun everything during medieval fantasy times yet didn't get extincted during modern fantasy times?

I'd think about it in terms of the situation in places like Australia and the sorter parts of Africa, certainly things like Hyenas, Lions, and Elephants are dangerous to the population but the government probably doesn't have the resources or manpower to kill every dragon on gods green earth.

Another factor is that things like elephant rampages are rare mainly due to the fact that they just mind their own business and stay in their one territories, they usually don't hunt near human settlements unless they are desperate.

It would just be nice to come up with a rational for why standard fantasy setting monsters are still around.

Any ideas? Otherwise you are most likely right.

I'd break that down to the reason why regular protection, like bullet-proof vests, isn't common it's expensive and pretty situational.

That seems needlessly complicated to me. I guess this just isn't the thread for me. There are countless games out there where being shot isn't an immediate death sentence for most non-mook characters. Why can't this mentality just blend with the concept of people also having swords and hammers without needing to invent subsytems and pointless rules about what can and can't be enchanted.

I mean lions, tigers, and bears are still around.

Well with bows and arrows, you could just go and pick some of them back up, tear them out of the enemies corpse. That along with being bigger and having more room for charms and fetishes might make it more cost effective. That's not even getting into the kinds of magical trees you can carve the bows and arrows out of.

It's kind of the problem when you get simulationists and everyone else in the same room. And really you don't honestly as the real world doesn't really follow that same logic.

What kind of monsters? If humanoid, why aren't races that are deemed "too violent" just wiped out in the real world?
And for nonhumanoid, there are tons of animals in the real world that were once seen as monsters. Maybe those are just the natural fauna for the setting.

>I'd think about it in terms of the
It may just be that the solution is that figure out specific stuff to keep, and then come up with varied reasons as might apply to each. Along with new monsters perhaps.

So dragons figured out they need to stay away from humans. Undead just happen and don't care about non-magic stuff anyhow. Demons more of the same. Some large animal level predators have marked territory in areas that aren't really cared about. Other stuff is extinct.

I'd image it would also be a bitch an half to actually catch a dragon, they burn a village, eat some livestock, and fuck off back to it's lair. You can't really prepare an effective response in that timeframe.

Maybe dragons are very periodic.

I would also imagine dragons being somewhat aquatic. They would have a lot of food sources in fishes.

Another possibility would be that dragons realise that humans are dangerous. Maybe not enough to kill them but enough to scar them. So they don't see the point in risking crippling themselves unless they really have to.