Scale of Westcrown's Map?

[James Jacobs]

Westcrown's population is 10,000 per square mile. Its scale is 1 inch = 1 mile.

City maps have, unfortunately, a LONG tradition in RPGs of being unrealistic in a number of ways, mostly because they're usually designed by someone who doesn't have the time or interest in making that city particularly realistic combined with the fact that city maps are the hardest maps to design and they have their own traditions of lazy shortcuts when it comes to showing off buildings. That, and the type of city map that the vast majority of gamers prefer (a bird's eye view that shows individual buildings) is fundamentally flawed for really big cities, because at a scale where you could see those individual buildings the map would be the size of a parking lot or something.

The whole topic of city maps is a constant struggle and pet peeve of mine, and every time a city shows up in an adventure I'm developing it stresses me out and gives me headaches and panic attacks, to be honest. I try to make it fit with my own desires to see things like scale and population density and logical layout of streets and all that work, but often, especially when you're working with a city map designed by someone who can't draw (this happens most of the time, alas), the task is close to impossible.

I've been increasingly relying upon Wes Schnider (whose city maps are EXCELLENT) and several other designers/artists who are talented at drawing city maps, actually, and generally giving those maps to adventure designers to design their adventure rather than let them design their own city. That seems to help a lot.

But the simple fact that cities are fantastically complicated combined with the fact that NO ONE IN THE WORLD can know exactly how magic and similar fantasy tropes might impact the design, look, population density, health, function, size, and realities of cities means that it's kind of pointless to get too bent out of shape when a RPG city map doesn't match the realities of a real-world city map from ancient Rome, medieval Paris, or modern New York.

[Makarnak]

James Jacobs wrote:

Westcrown's population is 10,000 per square mile. Its scale is 1 inch = 1 mile.

City maps have, unfortunately, a LONG tradition in RPGs of being unrealistic in a number of ways, mostly because they're usually designed by someone who doesn't have the time or interest in making that city particularly realistic combined with the fact that city maps are the hardest maps to design and they have their own traditions of lazy shortcuts when it comes to showing off buildings. That, and the type of city map that the vast majority of gamers prefer (a bird's eye view that shows individual buildings) is fundamentally flawed for really big cities, because at a scale where you could see those individual buildings the map would be the size of a parking lot or something.

The whole topic of city maps is a constant struggle and pet peeve of mine, and every time a city shows up in an adventure I'm developing it stresses me out and gives me headaches and panic attacks, to be honest. I try to make it fit with my own desires to see things like scale and population density and logical layout of streets and all that work, but often, especially when you're working with a city map designed by someone who can't draw (this happens most of the time, alas), the task is close to impossible.

I've been increasingly relying upon Wes Schnider (whose city maps are EXCELLENT) and several other designers/artists who are talented at drawing city maps, actually, and generally giving those maps to adventure designers to design their adventure rather than let them design their own city. That seems to help a lot.

But the simple fact that cities are fantastically complicated combined with the fact that NO ONE IN THE WORLD can know exactly how magic and similar fantasy tropes might impact the design, look, population density, health, function, size, and realities of cities means that it's kind of pointless to get too bent out of shape when a RPG city map doesn't match the realities of a real-world city map from ancient Rome, medieval Paris, or...

I didn't mean to imply that I was criticizing the design or planning at all (and certainly wasn't wanting to give anybody panic attacks). Mostly, I was curious to find out how the city of Egorian was envisioned: i.e. as a crowded hive, or an immaculate (dys, or 'Dis')topia.

I also wasn't wanting to compare it to a real city (modern or historical), but rather to another city in the campaign setting. Such as, why is Westcrown's population so much higher than Egorian if the capital moved there, and Westcrown is declining? Part of it is the geek anthropology that folks love so much (for good or ill) and part is interest in running the setting and getting a handle on the style.

Since Cheliax is not a hell on 'earth' I was also a little curious how other GMs (and maybe if I'm lucky, the world designer) viewed the differences between the cities, especially given the disparity in population density.

That being said, they're both excellent maps :) and, as I'm relatively new to Golarion, a fascinating setting. Thanks!

[gallowbraid]

I myself as a GM have had the same question....and have spent some time thinking on such. A few things to bear in mind ...

1. Not every single individual who resides in a city is going to live inside the castle walls, unless the city imports absolutly everything. There have to be farms, dairies, mines and all other sorts of support structures in place for a city to thrive. Historicly only the well to do actually lived inside the castle walls, the less well off serfs and peasantry lived outside the walls and entered only for daily business and for safety in an attack.
2. Based on historical castles towers when placed on walls for defense were generally close enough together to allow for overlapping fields of fire.using game mechanics i would think that this distance would be less than the first range increment for a longbow or 100 feet or so.
3. Civil engineering was not as well developed as it is today,certainly the major concerns were taken into account but most of the time cities were not designed with future compatibility in mind so streets were generally under-designed. In a number of ancient but still living cities roads are too narrow for modern vehicles as they were meant for either foot traffic or at best 2 way traffic of either horses or possibly charios and small carts.

Bearing theses things in mind, I used the most likely location that I could find for the old temple of erastil along with the map for the bastards of erebus lair and found that it fit perfectly once rotated a bit. This gave me a rough estimate for 100 feet,since the old church and the tailors shop are roughly 100 feet apart. When I printed out the westcrown map the line from one to the other was 1/4 of an inch(actually 17/64 of an inch for precision) for a total of ~400 feet to the inch making westcrown 4100' north south and an average of around 700' east west. If we assume that the average building in westcrown is 2 stories high that would give it an overall floorspace of around 1/2 of a square mile(allowing that the noble quarters are considerably more elaborate)..all we have to do is accept that roughly 25-30% of the peasantry live outside the walls everything falls in line nicely.

P.S..
I did not read all of the posts listed and so missed the post of Mr. jacobs as to the dimensionality of westcrown and I do not wish to argue or slight anyone in any way.
However, the map located in the council of thieves map folio was the map I used and the scale given allows for each resident of westcrown to take up well over 100 square feet at that scale even if the idea of a portion of the population living outside the walll is discounted. I would have linked the copies and scans to show my work but I don't want to risk infringing on any copyrights.