What's the scale of the map of Westcrown? More precisely, I'm interested in the distance between Vizio's and the Safe House (straight line between the two). Thanks!
Creative Director
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What's the scale of the map of Westcrown? More precisely, I'm interested in the distance between Vizio's and the Safe House (straight line between the two). Thanks!
First of all... why do you need to know that distance? Is it because you're building a full sewer map between the two locations? (Not trying to be snarky or evasive... honestly curious).
As for the scale... we've been unofficially using something along the lines of 640 feet per inch in house, but I'm pretty sure that scale would make a city that's FAR too small to house 110,000 people like Westcrown's supposed to house. If that type of concern doesn't matter to you... 640 feet per inch should work fine.
What's the scale of the map of Westcrown? More precisely, I'm interested in the distance between Vizio's and the Safe House (straight line between the two). Thanks!First of all... why do you need to know that distance? Is it because you're building a full sewer map between the two locations? (Not trying to be snarky or evasive... honestly curious).
As for the scale... we've been unofficially using something along the lines of 640 feet per inch in house, but I'm pretty sure that scale would make a city that's FAR too small to house 110,000 people like Westcrown's supposed to house. If that type of concern doesn't matter to you... 640 feet per inch should work fine.
Thanks for the info! I'm not trying to build a complete sewer map - I just want a rough estimate as to what would be the minimum number of rolls on the sewer table that would seem logical, assuming there's 60' between each roll. So there are about 2.5 inches between the two locations, meaning 1600 feet. Divided by 60 and rounded up that's 27 rolls on the sewer table. But that assumes a straight line. Since the sewers are a maze, something like 50 rolls on the sewer table would sound plausible. 50 rolls are also about the average generated by the Sewer Generating Program so it all fits perfectly :)
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Creative Director
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SO! Part 5 of Council of Thieves has a situation where I had to finally nail down a scale for the map, so I just spent the last few hours crunching numbers and building off of the only actual concrete number we have about Westcrown—it's population total.
I assumed that Westcrown's population density is about 3,500 people per square mile, which seems to be a good number (modern Paris has a population density of over 9,000/square mile, modern Rome something like 5,500/square mile, modern Seattle and ancient Rome something like 2,500/square mile).
Assuming that a city Westcrown's size has about 3,500 people per square mile, and knowing that Westcrown's population is 114,700...
... that means that the official scale for the map of Wescrown on the inside front cover is THIS:
1 inch = 6,720 feet
So I was only off on my initial guess by a factor of 10 or so... doh.
SO! Part 5 of Council of Thieves has a situation where I had to finally nail down a scale for the map, so I just spent the last few hours crunching numbers and building off of the only actual concrete number we have about Westcrown—it's population total.
I assumed that Westcrown's population density is about 3,500 people per square mile, which seems to be a good number (modern Paris has a population density of over 9,000/square mile, modern Rome something like 5,500/square mile, modern Seattle and ancient Rome something like 2,500/square mile).
Assuming that a city Westcrown's size has about 3,500 people per square mile, and knowing that Westcrown's population is 114,700...
... that means that the official scale for the map of Wescrown on the inside front cover is THIS:
1 inch = 6,720 feet
So I was only off on my initial guess by a factor of 10 or so... doh.
Hehe. Thanks for the update! Reminds me of the story about spinach. For years they had thought it contains an extremely high concentration of iron because a food scientist made a mistake placing the decimal point one spot too far to the right, increasing it by a factor of 10. In reality it doesn't have more iron than any other vegetable. Oh well Popeye, Bluto wins this time!
HA! I might have updated too soon!
I'm still crunching the numbers, and they're still not 100% nailed down. I'm turning this whole thing into a blog post on Thursday and we'll see where we're at then!
And this is why I hated math in school!! Numbers lead to obsession! They're the work!
I assumed that Westcrown's population density is about 3,500 people per square mile, which seems to be a good number (modern Paris...
Wow. That is really sparsely populated.
Medieval Paris and London had more than 100,000 people per square mile in their most crowded sections; 30,000 people in less-crowded sections.
I'm unsure if a modern city is the best base to use...
See the earlier discussion here:
CoT map discussion thread
And some more info:
http://www.fact-archive.com/encyclopedia/Paris#Density
And that's modern Paris - medieval cities were more densely populated, actually, due to the lack of suburbs (which is a modern phenomenon; high-rise apartments and other in-fill dense housing doesn't make up for this).
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Creative Director
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Wow. That is really sparsely populated.
Medieval Paris and London had more than 100,000 people per square mile in their most crowded sections; 30,000 people in less-crowded sections.
I'm unsure if a modern city is the best base to use...
See the earlier discussion here:
CoT map discussion threadAnd some more info:
http://www.fact-archive.com/encyclopedia/Paris#DensityAnd that's modern Paris - medieval cities were more densely populated, actually, due to the lack of suburbs (which is a modern phenomenon; high-rise apartments and other in-fill dense housing doesn't make up for this).
This type of response is EXACTLY why I posted, and why I'm setting this topic up as the Blog topic for Friday. I couldn't find that earlier discussion on maps and city population densities despite all my search-fu, and was hoping that something like this would pop up.
Currently, as of the coming blog post, I've revised my number upward to a population density of 10,000 people per square mile in Westcrown. That STILL might not be enough, but I think it's getting there.
It's important to realize that, while folks in Golarion use swords and wear armor, that their society is NOT an attempt to accurately mimic the real-world medieval era. The presence of magic and the fact that the Inner Sea's been civilized twice as long as the current world's been civilized are factors that could have ANY NUMBER of effects on things like population density.
Furthermore, Westcrown is hardly a healthy city. It's got an entire district that sits in ruins and is very sparsely populated... It's CERTAINLY no London or Paris—that's a city more like Absalom. Comparisons to places like Venice or maybe even Rome would probably be better.
ANYway, the numbers aren't yet in stone, and I welcome more feedback and constructive criticism.
It's important to realize that, while folks in Golarion use swords and wear armor, that their society is NOT an attempt to accurately mimic the real-world medieval era. The presence of magic and the fact that the Inner Sea's been civilized twice as long as the current world's been civilized are factors that could have ANY NUMBER of effects on things like population density.
Furthermore, Westcrown is hardly a healthy city. It's got an entire district that sits in ruins and is very sparsely populated... It's CERTAINLY no London or Paris—that's a city more like Absalom. Comparisons to places like Venice or maybe even Rome would probably be better.
Oh, I totally agree. I should have mentioned in my post above that exactly mimicking medieval Earth cities is also not the best idea, either! For example, I'd probably have choked just as much if you said "I've decided Westcrown will have a population of 100,000 people per square mile!"...
I do think 10,000 is still too sparsely populated, as that would still make the city a bit big to work with, especially if you are going to make a more detailed map in the CoT Map Folio (why cause undue pain to yourself and/or your cartographer...?!) and the lack of modern suburbs (which Westcrown surely does not have). ;)
As noted in the linked thread, Waterdeep has 30,000 people per square mile - Waterdeep would be a reasonable facimile to the aforementioned "while folks in Golarion use swords and wear armor, their society is NOT an attempt to accurately mimic the real-world medieval era" - and that doesn't seem too unreasonable when looking at all the information available (fantastic medieval cities, Earth medieval cities, modern Earth cities, etc). [From a quick look around, Rome looked to be crazy dense, as the Servian Wall (which surrounded much if not all the 7 Hills of Rome) covered only ~4 square miles, while the city of rome at it's height was over a million people. Even if we half that for those living within the walls, that's 125,000 people per square mile. We can even be more generous and use the Aurelian walls, which covered ~5.3 square miles, but that's still pretty dense...]
(Unless, of course, you envision Westcrown as being very sparsely populated/relatively empty and much like a few certain modern Earth cities - if so, then this entire discussion is moot! What you envision for your AP city's design is what's correct. But based on what I've been reading about Westcrown so far [need. more. AP. volumes. NOW!], I don't think it's that empty...)
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Creative Director
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I do think 10,000 is still too sparsely populated, as that would still make the city a bit big to work with, especially if you are going to make a more detailed map in the CoT Map Folio (why cause undue pain to yourself and/or your cartographer...?!) and the lack of modern suburbs (which Westcrown surely does not have). ;)
We're pretty much locked in with there not being an accurate top-down view of Westcrown, alas, because we've already locked in the population of the city in the campaign setting. At 114,700 people, there's really no way to make that a small enough city that can ever really hope to be something that you'll be able to see individual buildings on in a four-panel poster map. Even though that's what we're doing. And even though that might mean streets that look like they're 300 feet wide or wider.
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Creative Director
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(Unless, of course, you envision Westcrown as being very sparsely populated/relatively empty and much like a few certain modern Earth cities - if so, then this entire discussion is moot! What you envision for your AP city's design is what's correct. But based on what I've been reading about Westcrown so far [need. more. AP. volumes. NOW!], I don't think it's that empty...)
One thing I should note... population densities in the real world are VERY wide ranging. You've got Paris up at like 70,000+ people per square mile down to my home town of Point Arena at like 400 or so per square mile. With a range as wide-reaching as that, I'm not too concerned that 10,000 people per square mile is unreasonalbe. I'll consider the 30,000 per square mile... although that would mean that Westcrown's more densely populated than New York City which seems a little weird...
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Director of Brand Strategy
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One thing I should note... population densities in the real world are VERY wide ranging. You've got Paris up at like 70,000+ people per square mile down to my home town of Point Arena at like 400 or so per square mile. With a range as wide-reaching as that, I'm not too concerned that 10,000 people per square mile is unreasonalbe. I'll consider the 30,000 per square mile... although that would mean that Westcrown's more densely populated than New York City which seems a little weird...
New York City occupies a huge area, though, and only Manhattan is extremely densely populated because of all the high-rises. Other boroughs like Brooklyn, Queens and especially Staten Island bring the average for the whole city down quite a bit. Looking at these tables (4th down) shows that Manhattan is twice as dense as the next dense borough (even orders of magnitude greater in the 18th century) and almost ten times denser than the least dense (in present day). With that much variety, the city as a whole has a much lower density than people would assume. At it's peak, though, Manhattan had a density of over 100k/sq. mi. Even at 30k, as was suggested, Westcrown would be only half as dense as current day Manhattan. Whether they count the giant patch of uninhabited area that is Central Park is unclear to me, but if they do, that means the city's even more densely populated.
Edit: I also just noticed that Manhattan is also the smallest borough by 50% from the next largest (Bronx) and 20% from the largest (Queens).
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I'll consider the 30,000 per square mile... although that would mean that Westcrown's more densely populated than New York City which seems a little weird...
I'll bet you a dragon's hoard that New York has more ethnicities than Westcrown.
And quite possibly more taxi cabs as well.
Toss up on who has more tieflings though.
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Creative Director
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Also... to make the problem even MORE complicated... there's the fact that Westcrown has to be a certain size in order for the adventure to be logical. If we make the population density TOO high, then all of a sudden the city itself is only a few hundred feet across and a lot of the logistics of the adventures (particularly the last two) fall apart.
At a population density of 10,000 per square mile, the scale actually works out really well for those logistics, so I'm willing to hand wave "realism" there and point out, again, that Golarion is not like Earth, and that if on Earth we can have Los Angeles and Paris representing a range of numbers in excess of 60,000, there's certainly a nice comfortable margin of error.
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Creative Director
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IN RELATED NEWS!
If you are a game designer who:
1) Is a great writer who has creative ideas AND a strong grasp of grammar and spelling...
2) Can draw clear and crisp maps of cities that will impress the editor with your artistry...
3) Have a professional level of knowledge about city planning and urban lore...
4) Can hit deadlines...
Please please PLEASE shoot me an email with proof of your skills!
This isn't an open call or anything, just a semi-desperate stab in the dark at a mythical author with three skill sets that I am not convinced ever existed at once in the same human body.
Also... to make the problem even MORE complicated... there's the fact that Westcrown has to be a certain size in order for the adventure to be logical. If we make the population density TOO high, then all of a sudden the city itself is only a few hundred feet across and a lot of the logistics of the adventures (particularly the last two) fall apart.
For an adventure, the above is the most important factor. Everything else is purely secondary (since population densities and "realism" can easily be justified and manipulated). Thumbs up on your decision.
(And it's nice to see that the later adventures actually require the designers to know the city's scale. I've always said that city maps without a scale are crap! Scales and distances just really are that important in an RPG, especially D&D. Really.)
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Creative Director
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(And it's nice to see that the later adventures actually require the designers to know the city's scale. I've always said that city maps without a scale are crap! Scales and distances just really are that important in an RPG, especially D&D. Really.)
They are indeed important. They're not ALWAYS important, though.
Nice blog on Westcrown's scale and population density. I dig that kind of attention to detail. Plus he resisted the temptation to title the post:
"Give us an Inch and We'll Give you a Mile"
Maybe this can help or just add to the complication, but shouldn't the population density per mile and the size of the city be based on the city's "better days" population?
This previous number would be the one that would generate the required size of the current city. This could give a little play with this unspecified (I think ?) number.
So while I think that 20 square miles is loony huge for a fantasy city of only 115,000 people and that density is too sparse - for multiple reasons (no such thing as suburbs which is a modern invention, no LRT or other transit, no 'city center'/zoning/other modern urban design considerations, no Eberron-like magic tech, etc) - I still can't say that it's "unrealistic", as we simply don't know what a fantasy city would be like. So, uh... looks fine!
(But, OTOH, I've never bought the "magic can be like technology, so society will be much like 2009 Earth!" either, unless those assumptions have been explicitly detailed (Eberron again). Westcrown's given information so far seems to make no such assumptions.)
(And it's nice to see that the later adventures actually require the designers to know the city's scale. I've always said that city maps without a scale are crap! Scales and distances just really are that important in an RPG, especially D&D. Really.)They are indeed important. They're not ALWAYS important, though.
Just one GM's opinion here, but EVERY RPG map that hasn't had a scale has resulted in a player asking about our creating a situation where such a scale was necessary.
The lack of a scale on a map is my #1 All-time GM pet peeve!
(Loved the blog btw.)
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Creative Director
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Maybe this can help or just add to the complication, but shouldn't the population density per mile and the size of the city be based on the city's "better days" population?
This previous number would be the one that would generate the required size of the current city. This could give a little play with this unspecified (I think ?) number.
Too late for that. We've already established that the modern day population total for Westcrown is 114,700 in the Campaign Setting and various other resources.
@Lee Gordon:
The only major problem with that is that the Dospera is more than half abandoned, so I imagine that the Spera has more of the population, its famed for its middle classes and priests, but I'd say most bar the more truly desperate and poor actually live there.
Looking at population densities by Parego looks a lot better to me, and it should help DMs create different feels for the regions.
That was a fantastic post.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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Looking at population densities by Parego looks a lot better to me, and it should help DMs create different feels for the regions.That was a fantastic post.
Indeed. That's much of what I was getting at with the link to New York City's density by borough. The type of housing, socieoeconomics, public spaces, and available land in city districts play a huge role in a cities population distribution and can really throw off the average for a metropolis as a whole.
Well, I just saw that Cologne hat 40.000 inhabitants around the year 1500, on an area of roughly 5 square kilometers, or about 2 square miles - so, obviously, 20.000 inhabitants per sqm. I´d guess that the population density in the northern italian cities was even higher at that time, and perhaps Paris and London also.
Westcrown with its ruined area and the higher class quarter is probably well served with 10.000 per square mile - these areas reduce the overall density considerably, I´d think.
Stefan
Yup, also, really the civilised regions are way closer to rennaisance italy than medival times in many ways, so I'd say there is a notable middle class, however a good point there is that Westcrown probably is way poorer than say Egorian, then again its mentioned as bringing great money to Cheliax, so maybe its decay is more of a spiritual thing.
I just wonder that Dospera got too big a chunk in that analsis, otherwise really interesting well-thought out stuff, but I would have gone more like 45% Dospera, 50% Spera, and given Rego Crua is much smaller and the Spera probably has plenty poor people of its own, that still packs Crua much denser with the lower classes.
There are a couple of factors that no-one's mentioned here so I thought I'd chip in.
I'd like to challenge the concept that because there are no skyscrapers the population density shouldn't be compared to Manhattan. There's a couple of things to consider here. Firstly, a lot of Manhattan is actually relatively low rise - 4 stories or so. Also, a lot of the buildings are office space which doesn't have much of a parallel in a mediaeval world.
One of the largest features in the population density in a mediaeval city was the wish to stay within city walls. In Edinburgh the city walls were quite tight and as the population increased they built upwards, creating great leaning tenements. No one wanted to build outside the city walls, as the danger of exposing yourself to the English if they invaded was too large. So much so that the pub at the city walls was called the End of the World.
When the industrial revolution happened there was an influx to the city and caused a spike in population which resulted in even higher population densities. There are stories of ten people sharing one room. So if you combine the idea of a 6 or seven story tenement building with 10 people to a large room then you quickly find a population density that could easily be larger than Manhattan and would almost certainly be larger than modern Paris.
The principle in that case would be that people want to stay inside a predefined boundary for protection, and that poverty means that the number of people in a building is significantly larger than today. Now both of those can be affected by a magical society. When you can build walls using magic then the cost of expanding your defenses to surround a larger populated area is no longer as prohibitive, so you can give people more living space. Equally, you can consider whether the magical equivalent of an industrial revolution has really brought the majority of your population into your cities or not.
I hope that clarifies why I'd consider the population density of Paris and Manhattan in the modern day to not necessarily be reasonable upper limits on the population density of a fantasy city, and also a couple of reasons why a high magic society might circumvent that logic.
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Creative Director
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...wrote some interesting observations...
Good points about skycrapers and the like... but still, I think that comparing Westcrown to New York or Paris is the wrong comparison anyway. New York and Paris are two of the most important cities in the world. Westcrown might have USED to be a city like that... but that was 100 years ago. Today, it's a shadow of its former glory, and the fact that it STILL has over 100,000 people living there's certainly testimony to its one-time power and New York-level glory.
But again. 100 years ago. A lot can happen in a century.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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...wrote some interesting observations...Good points about skycrapers and the like... but still, I think that comparing Westcrown to New York or Paris is the wrong comparison anyway. New York and Paris are two of the most important cities in the world. Westcrown might have USED to be a city like that... but that was 100 years ago. Today, it's a shadow of its former glory, and the fact that it STILL has over 100,000 people living there's certainly testimony to its one-time power and New York-level glory.
But again. 100 years ago. A lot can happen in a century.
The city planners, if there were any, would have built the city to accommodate the larger population of its glory days though, leaving the current city populated well below its maximum. If Ne York lost a ton of it's population, without losing any habitable land, the population density would decrease. But I think you've already got that covered with the number you're going with, since it's well below what a major city could hold if pushed to its limits.
I agree, but I'd say that population density doesn't really have a lot to do with whether a city is important or not but instead it will depend on other factors - like being scared to step outside the city walls because you'll get eaten. That could make even a very small city have a high population density.
So ancient Rome had a high density because of rampaging barbarian hordes and Manhattan has a high density because of the river. LA has a low density because there's bags of room and no incentive to stay close to one place.
In the case of Westcrown the fact that it used to be larger than it currently is would certainly suggest a lower population density. Perhaps it might be worth taking the idea of it's population at it's height (say double the current population), give it a really high population density (more than Paris?) and then use that to figure out the current density (in that case perhaps 40,000 per square mile). If you combine this with derelict regions on the map it will give reasonable numbers, and also a lot of flavour. (ninja'd by Yoda8myhead)
I'd certainly consider the question of external pressures though. If the population shrinks and there's still a risk of attack by an army then the city is likely to only have the men to man an inner portion of the defenses, so the outer portion of the city will be within city walls, but will know that they are all but undefended against the hordes. This would mean that the population will try to cram themselves into whatever area remains within well kept and well-defended city walls. If, on the other hand, there's no real risk of invasion by a hostile army then there's likely to be a large shanty town sprawl outside the city walls and a consumately lower population density.
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Creative Director
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The city planners, if there were any, would have built the city to accommodate the larger population of its glory days though, leaving the current city populated well below its maximum. If Ne York lost a ton of it's population, without losing any habitable land, the population density would decrease. But I think you've already got that covered with the number you're going with, since it's well below what a major city could hold if pushed to its limits.
Which is the main reason I'm actually pretty okay at 10,000/square mile. more to the point... at that number, the SIZE of the city matches what I need it to do in the AP.
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(And it's nice to see that the later adventures actually require the designers to know the city's scale. I've always said that city maps without a scale are crap! Scales and distances just really are that important in an RPG, especially D&D. Really.)They are indeed important. They're not ALWAYS important, though.
James the real problem of your map, is not thelack of scale, but that is a caricature... in my country in turistic cities people are given maps like that, just add it interesting palces to visit being resalted and more publicity..
this is not a critizism... I just considered this from the begginig, one of those maps is good enought to give yourself an idea where you are, but is not useful to determine how big or densely populated a city is.
example: Puerto Vallarta Tourist Map
so i say don't worry yourself that much about the size of thehouses, scale the map due to population and what size you like and make distances figured through that.
i will send the information about cartographers needed to a friend.
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Creative Director
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(And it's nice to see that the later adventures actually require the designers to know the city's scale. I've always said that city maps without a scale are crap! Scales and distances just really are that important in an RPG, especially D&D. Really.)They are indeed important. They're not ALWAYS important, though.James the real problem of your map, is not thelack of scale, but that is a caricature... in my country in turistic cities people are given maps like that, just add it interesting palces to visit being resalted and more publicity..
this is not a critizism... I just considered this from the begginig, one of those maps is good enought to give yourself an idea where you are, but is not useful to determine how big or densely populated a city is.
example: Puerto Vallarta Tourist Map
so i say don't worry yourself that much about the size of thehouses, scale the map due to population and what size you like and make distances figured through that.
i will send the information about cartographers needed to a friend.
Actually... a tourist's map was precisely the goal and hope for this map. It's something we WANTED out of the cartographer, and we got what we wanted. It just turns out that it's not what a lot of customers wanted, even though what they wanted instead was not necessary to run the adventure path, in my opinion. It was, to a certain extent, an experiment. I have my results now, and in the future I suspect if we do something like this again we'll probably just be ordering two maps; a "tourist map" and a "satellite-view map." That just means that I'm going to have to be a super-charged nit-picking ogre when it comes to the "satellite-view maps" I guess, since they're even worse than a tourist map for details if they're not done accurately enough.
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Actually... a tourist's map was precisely the goal and hope for this map. It's something we WANTED out of the cartographer, and we got what we wanted. It just turns out that it's not what a lot of customers wanted, even though what they wanted instead was not necessary to run the adventure path, in my opinion. It was, to a certain extent, an experiment. I have my results now, and in the future I suspect if we do something like this again we'll probably just be ordering two maps; a "tourist map" and a "satellite-view map." That just means that I'm going to have to be a super-charged nit-picking ogre when it comes to the "satellite-view maps" I guess, since they're even worse than a tourist map for details if they're not done accurately enough.
ohh well that is understandable, je well its your fault, you have us used to really useful and marvelous maps :P this was strange, pretty but strange
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You may wish to take a look at this 1961 thesis on ancient & medieval urban population desities, produced for a masters in city planning.
It may be a little dated, but medieval population densities are unlikely to have changed much in the last century (though, of course, current opinion may).
The numbers vary a lot, but it looks like 30-35,000 people per square mile is a fair average, though it goes as high as ~177,000 (for C13 Paris).
Also... to make the problem even MORE complicated... there's the fact that Westcrown has to be a certain size in order for the adventure to be logical. If we make the population density TOO high, then all of a sudden the city itself is only a few hundred feet across and a lot of the logistics of the adventures (particularly the last two) fall apart.
At a population density of 10,000 per square mile, the scale actually works out really well for those logistics, so I'm willing to hand wave "realism" there and point out, again, that Golarion is not like Earth, and that if on Earth we can have Los Angeles and Paris representing a range of numbers in excess of 60,000, there's certainly a nice comfortable margin of error.
Using the Magical Medieval City worksheets...
The range for a metropolis is 150-200 adults per acre (~4 acres per square mile, so a net of 600-800 per square mile). 114,700 adults gives a range of 574-765 acres or 143.5-191.25 square miles.
On a "square" map, that's a city of 11.98-13.83 miles on each side (or 8.5x17 miles to 9x18 miles for a more rectangular shape)
With a population density of 10000 per square mile (or 2500 per acre), you get a square city of 3.4 miles per side (or rectangular of 2.4x4.8)
If the 114,700 includes children at say 25%, that makes the adults 86,025. At 10000 per square mile, that's a city 3 miles square (9 square miles).
Edit: Of course, the wide difference in scale from "150-200" to "10,000" tells me why you're not using the Magical Medieval City.
What you don't realize is that the map is actual size. 1 mile = 1 mile. Westcrown is very tiny, filled with even tinier people. There's some size magic involved, © Brainiac.
The range for a metropolis is 150-200 adults per acre (~4 acres per square mile, so a net of 600-800 per square mile). 114,700 adults gives a range of 574-765 acres or 143.5-191.25 square miles.One quick correction for you, there are 640 acres per square mile.
Thanks.. that's what I get for assuming I remembered something without checking it.
At that rate, the population density numbers in Magical Medieval City yield a size between 0.9 and 1.2 square miles for a population of 114,700.
What you don't realize is that the map is actual size. 1 mile = 1 mile. Westcrown is very tiny, filled with even tinier people. There's some size magic involved, © Brainiac.
I appreciate your candor.
Ok, so one mile per inch is reasonable.
I roughed it out using the dimensions of the one feature I knew the height of: the Arodennama at 90' But I was coming up with a population density of roughly one person per square foot. Which would be very, very crowded, even in the 'abandoned' sections up north.
But this post and the blog got me thinking. The city map of Egorian in Cheliax: Empire of Devils shows a scale of roughly one inch = 4,500 feet. Egorian has roughly (please note that this is all rough) 20 square miles (measuring the map at around 5x5.5 inches). This leads to a population density MUCH less than the semi-abandoned Westcrown (about 5,000 people per square mile, rather than the Wiscrani jammed in around 9-10,000 per square mile).
Now, it's mostly idle nitpicking. Westcrown could have topped out in the 20,000 persons per square mile range, it's population dispersing through death or into other smaller cities, while Egorian was kept rather rigidly quiet (a reasonable state for a Lawful Evil imperial capital: no need to let the riff raff in). In fact, looking at the sourcebook, it's reasonable to assume that it was rapidly and brutally expanded when it became the capital, leaving room for growth.
But, as an imperial capital, it could be just the opposite, packed with government and bureaucratic officials and all the services, people and things that feed off of them. Including theives, na'er do wells, lobbyists and worse. Not to mention an infusion of the decadent nobles and their households from Westcrown when the capital moved.
Just curious about thoughts on the matter.