| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So I know - we all make our own rules and screw reality in our fantasy games. Still, I'm trying to get a handle on how other GMs do this.
In my current homebrew we're in the Sothryn Wylds. The area was hit hard by a global calamity called the Wilding and most civilization was destroyed. Not surprisingly I'm running this as a "points of light"/sandbox kind of game.
To the north though is the rest of the region, a land called Rukenvall. Now this area has towns and villages in a feudal system. Trying to be realistic I've described a town surrounded by a dozen outer settlements from as small as a PF "Thorp" which I call a farmstead to as large as a village of some 400-600 souls.
Does this seem right? I've basically got civilization hexes scattered every 20-30 miles from one another along major roads and waterways. I look at published fantasy settings and they have like one town, no smaller settlements even hinted at, for every 100 miles. What do you do in your setting?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I tend to (and it's becoming sort of a cliche' with me, I think) have one or two huge metropolises surrounded by increasingly smaller settlements the farther out one goes from them. Probably not realistic, but that's how they form in my head. The next time I do a new world build I'm really going to try and go with something along the lines of what you're doing.
Though only slightly related to your original question, I limit the number of high powered NPCs in my settings. Once you get past 5th or 6th level their numbers begin to drop off sharply. This isn't to say that the PCs are the most powerful beings in the setting, because they aren't. They have to have high powered encounters and adversaries, but I've always felt populating a world with tons of high powered beings tends to take away the feeling the PCs are special. I try to to have them look at themselves as the "superheroes" of my setting, which is why people who aren't as powerful or as famous as they are seek them out.
@ Krensky: so I get the building of settlements but is it realistic to put settlements SO far apart from one another? I mean some campaign maps I look at there's a town with some outlying villages and then... 100 miles later there's another town. I thought it was more like 30 mile spreads at the most Spartan and even then villages, farmsteads and manors popped up every 5 miles or so along major roads or waterways.
Also I only just realized this looking at the Darkmoon Vale book from Paizo: their Golarion settlements assume smaller settlements in the population blocks. For example Falcon's Hollow has over 1000 people in the population for the town but in the description it talks about how many of these live in outlying farms, logging camps or other smaller settlements.
Based on that I've revised my own settlement creation ideas. Since I always thought a given settlement's population had to live in or very close to the place I always tried to draw massive, sprawling towns to encompass the 2000 + people there. I also tried to figure out where to place the 9th level caster in the town and how to justify that person not dominating everything.
With the new idea of not everyone living in the settlement or even all that close, it opens up a whole new creation style. Imagine a town with no clerics, or if there is one its very minor. "But for a Large Town there should be 5th level spells" so for this Large Town I've got a tiny village a few miles west, at the base of a mountain. Built into the mountain is a Pharasmin monastery (not monks like kung-fu but monks like monastic scribes and farmers) with an attached militant order. Here miles from the town you can find a single warrior-nun, the Abbess of the order (cleric 9) who can manage such major magics.
The town then has a population block of like 3500 but only 1000 live within the town's walls or farm the fields immediately outside. The other 1500 are scattered within 3-5 miles of the town, in farmsteads (Thorps), hamlets and villages. This also helps explain why the town has trade and a market square when there's no major neighboring settlement for 30 - 100 miles.
I'm wondering if I'm an idiot for only JUST realizing this now, and other folks have already been doing this forever or if there are others like me that are trying to fit every settlement of every size into its own stat block?
Just be sure to have realistic town sizes. Sometimes (even with Paizo) the town sizes are NOT realistic. For example, I have relatives that live in a town that supposedly is around 30-100 people. It has NEVER been self supported. It CANNOT provide all the things that one would need.
It has around six towns/cities nearby. These are within a 10 mile radius.
The closest ones are around 300 people. The are NOT self supportive. They have NEVER been self supportive. They are semi-supportive.
By this, I mean, if you have a farm, they can live all on their own if they so desire. However, for certain items like potters, blacksmiths, imports, ales, and all the things we might expect a town in D&D to have, they won't. They never did.
They have the remains of their downtowns, and normally these towns over 100 but less than 300 seemed to have a town church, a town schoolroom, a smithy of some sort, A town hall (sometimes combined with the church), and a general store (now days most have either been abandoned, or switched to a gas station and convenience store).
For the bigger items, or more complex items (weapons for example) they'd have to travel further.
The next town is around 700, it barely has enough to be sustainable on it's own. It has it's own fire department and one police, as well as it's own ability to repair appliances and other necessary items if needed.
The town over 1000 has all the things needed to keep a town going (even a doctor, though it lacks a full on medical facility, and has a bigger store, though not a chain supermarket...the store it has can fill all those items. Other smaller stores (even a dollar store), and most of the items you can find in a city, if not all the choices available.
The next city (and only city of this size for around 100 mile radius) is around 8000 people. It has everything you would think a big city would have, or the ability to special order it.
The thing I want to point out, is for some odd reason people put these villages made up of a few hundred individuals or less that are nowhere near something bigger. These people would end up living like savages or in a primitive fashion after a decade or two simply because they do not have the resources (for example, even if they have the smithy, they don't have the resources for mining or importing that would be necessary to support that smithy) to sustain it in the arena of a civilized medieval (or renaissance or later) town.
It always suprises me how people who are from the big city think that those of us in the smaller towns have this surprising ability to survive without any support systems.
I myself live in the country beyond the boundries of a small city (~10,000) and am thinking of moving to the city itself due to the entire niceties of the city.
The area I live, though in the mailing area of the bigger city (10K) is actually only around 50-70 individuals. This area is a farming area, and really has nothing. If we expand the community to include some other close areas (they are like in a 2 mile perimeter) you could increase that to around 200-300 individuals. We have a convenience store, a Tractor place, some hairstylists (that do it out of their home) and a pub. In order for anyone to ever get anything they've always had to go to the city which is around 5-10 miles away. However, even when the bigger closeby city was a mere 1000-2000 it still was self sustaining (the close by city). However, The smaller communities relied on it for the ability to sustain themselves.
Even then, to actually get some decent furniture, I either have to order it online (and find help to move it into the house) or drive 30 minutes to the real city (which is still small to some of you, it's around 30K) to have more choice and some decent quality furniture which doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to get!
The nearby city HAS furniture, it's just more expensive then the nearby city of 30K (or in PF terms, that's like a megapolis in some nations!).
There is a drastic difference between the small community I live in now and the bigger ones (we have another town around 16 miles away which is probably over 500 and probably could have also barely sustained itself with it's necessities to stay from going primitive as well...but I'd say the 500-700 mark is the minimum a town would need in order to be independent and not completely depend on a bigger nearby city or town to not go primitive.
None of that has anything to do with a medival society. A major consisting of a square mile and four hundred some adults was self sufficient.
It has everything to do with older societies as the building and such can be traced back to their origins. Furthermore, there are the old layouts and even the plans of the towns from before the modern age (as you would).
Even more applicable is if you go to small town Europe (or Asia) and see what the actual small towns really had in them and how subsistent they were on their own. Most could get along for a little while on their own, but when they needed materials they HAD to go someplace larger.
They just didn't have the manpower or materials to do mining, or other material accessibility in order to keep the smithy, general store, or other items running all on their own.
It's relevant not really with population density, but distribution. Putting a small town of 100 people over 50 miles from a city where they could get supplies like ore, material, spices, or other items will soon be shown to be rather ludicrous if you want them to remain on the same technological scale as the rest of society. Part of the reason is they didn't have cars or other fast travel back then...if they had a faster travel it was by horse...though many of them went by foot.
Even 10 miles is a good distance for a supply trip, something over 50...it starts getting a little crazy.
If you look at the town layouts of medieval societies, normally you can see the relation to the smaller communities to the larger ones. This is one reason why many of the towns are so close together...because before the invention of things like trains and the automobile, these were built closely together out of necessity.
|
Well, I usually have a metropolis in a region, housing somewhere in the ballpark of 100k to 500k people, a huge swath of farmlands and meadows for feeding that metropolis, than a huge stretch of nothing except a village or a trade post every 30 miles or so and then maybe a town or city, again surrounded by farmland and meadows.
@ Greywolf: thanks for your input. I know small towns really shouldn't be self-sufficient. That's why I'm following the model of a large village, town or city with a few if not dozens of these little settlements around it.
@ Kren: I've been basing a lot of what I've done in relation to populace on the Life in a Medieval Village by Gies as well as the Medieval Demographics website. I've never really understood the "manor system" to be honest. I've read dozens of books on it but it makes no sense. The manor is sometimes a location, sometimes not; it is a representation of the lord/ruler of an amount of land. The ruler/manor/whatever then had 1 village, maybe 4? This makes zero sense in my brain.
Firstly how then do you have landless nobles? Also how can one ruler have multiple settlements? Wouldn't he have vassals that administrate those lands? What does it take to qualify as a manor and can you lose manorial status? How doe this relate to the aristocracy? Are the landed aristocracy also manorial lords?
All of that is probably another thread though so I won't derail by expecting answers to the above. Suffice it to say in this thread I'm chiefly concerned with how you end up with a 100 mile stretch of land between major centers of commerce. Wouldn't that next town 100 miles away just basically become a free state on its own? Who's going to ride 100 miles through terrifying wilds just to collect some taxes or tell people in the next town that the king's kid is about to get married?
@ Greywolf: thanks for your input. I know small towns really shouldn't be self-sufficient. That's why I'm following the model of a large village, town or city with a few if not dozens of these little settlements around it.
@ Kren: I've been basing a lot of what I've done in relation to populace on the Life in a Medieval Village by Gies as well as the Medieval Demographics website. I've never really understood the "manor system" to be honest. I've read dozens of books on it but it makes no sense. The manor is sometimes a location, sometimes not; it is a representation of the lord/ruler of an amount of land. The ruler/manor/whatever then had 1 village, maybe 4? This makes zero sense in my brain.
Firstly how then do you have landless nobles? Also how can one ruler have multiple settlements? Wouldn't he have vassals that administrate those lands? What does it take to qualify as a manor and can you lose manorial status? How doe this relate to the aristocracy? Are the landed aristocracy also manorial lords?
All of that is probably another thread though so I won't derail by expecting answers to the above. Suffice it to say in this thread I'm chiefly concerned with how you end up with a 100 mile stretch of land between major centers of commerce. Wouldn't that next town 100 miles away just basically become a free state on its own? Who's going to ride 100 miles through terrifying wilds just to collect some taxes or tell people in the next town that the king's kid is about to get married?
Hmmm, interesting question.
If we take the outlay of the current area I'm in, going back to the horse era, the towns here are the exact same layout as back then. The distance between two major metropolises (while, that's debatable I suppose, definitely not by CA definitions...) where one is a little over 30K and the other is around 50K, is around 110 miles.
The distance between the those cities and mine (which could be considered a major metropolis back in those days, though at only 10K is hardly that now comparatively to others) is around 30 miles and 80 miles.
Following the highway of the time (which actually still exists, but it's paved and is NOT the current highway) you find all sorts of towns around 10 to 20 miles apart. Back in the day almost all of these have increased somewhat, but back then numbered enough to fall in that subsistence range or better (500-700 or more).
They wouldn't be considered the big cities, and although they are official towns, many don't appear on the general maps (because of size).
Then you have communities like mine which are probably every mile or so. In fact, though most would only see farms, just about every square mile actually is some sort of community and even has names and such attached to it. None are really official, but are known to the locals.
I suppose if we go with Krensky's "manor" system, the entire area is dotted with small communities that range in various sizes. Much of the land is owned by families and if you look at it, these lands are family lands that go back (which makes it VERY hard to buy land here at times...ever try to buy someone's family lands from them? you also have the BIG land owners, but most of them are into big ag these days and don't want to sale either. Land is either WAAAAAY expensive, or someone got foreclosed on, at least currently. To live in the country, normally you live on your family land, at least most of the folks around here).
There has always been these towns and communities along the way since they were settled in this area. These are all along the rivers and routes to the major metropolises.
Now there ARE some LARGE areas which would be considered large gaps were no one lives. Most of these are NOT along the routes between the three cities I listed above. These are owned by the government, and only the rangers live there.
Going south you have around 120 miles to the next major metropolis. Even then you have small communities all along the way. There is probably not a place you are at where there is not a community at least 5 miles from you. HOWEVER...if you don't know the area, you might not realize it. In fact, there is one area which you might not even notice the houses and farms. The biggest gap is one where you have 35 miles between areas where you can get things like gas and conveniences.
Now I also mentioned the area where I have relatives live. They live in a rural area in the Western US. That IS significant for one reason. That city where they live was near the last outpost of supplies (or first, depending on which way you were going) for 110 miles. In that instance, it would match what you were saying. There were no settlements or anything really, and definitely no major subsistence villages or towns. The two different towns (back then they actually would probably be considered cities, but as their sizes haven't really changed, are more like towns now) on either side of that 110 mile track are in separate states currently. NO ONE traveled regularly between them.
However, if they needed to be crossed, only settlers, postal (for a short while) and a few others actually travelled that area. It was rife with Native Americans and you had that probability of attack. You DID have an outpost or two on the way set up by the governments to try to support those who travelled that route (around two or three set at around 30-35 mile intervals). You would want to try to get to those outposts in travel. Even then, there are tales rife with attacks on the people going west. Now days, nothing really exists of those outposts as there is no need for them anymore, at least as far as I know. I don't think there's even a historic park or anything. Cars can make the trip far faster, and once the transcontinental railroad came about, though the route was still used, it was mostly settlers or people moving west rather than any government stuff.
Even once in the areas where my relatives live, back then, it wasn't completely safe. They still have the remnants of forts and some of those are parks and such.
If they had tax collectors or someone that would go deliver messages, it would normally be those who were in charge of those outposts I stated above. They would make reports back to the government and on the way deliver any news and such. These I suppose were men that were the nearest to what you might call adventurers actually. They were rather tough guys (some became little legends in the small communities around where they were in gunfighting and such) and could pretty much take care of themselves. Ironically, later on, some ran into legal problems with criminal charges and such...I suppose you would say, the tax collector was one MF bad arse. In some cases they were the best gunfighters around.
The Native Americans still messed with them occasionally.
Don't know if that answers the 100 mile stretch rule or not. But for the history of two different rural locations (at least what is considered rural today. My area, if you go back a ways, was actually considered quite modern for a while...though today many would just say it's the backwards backwoods of civilization) and some of the history of travel and other items.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The "terrifying wild" I speak of is a stretch of land dotted with primeval forests, moors and swamps. Stalking this area are dragons, kobolds, aberrations and undead. Up until a century ago the forest was much smaller, scattered and passable. There were swaths of arable land and this whole wilderness was in fact moderately settled with small towns, villages and modest castles.
The Wilding caused the forest to replenish itself tenfold. It also brought about a general surge of growth in the land itself; marsh grasses and weeds on the moors choked fields; the swamps became even more dense; even the meadows and fields themselves were overgrown and savage. Monstrous creatures either returned to the land, mutated out of the natural flora and fauna or were re-awakened from beneath the earth.
Now the area, known as the Sothryn Wylds lay in ruins. See that stand of pines? They literally sprang from a collection of buildings that were once a village. At the heart of it is a ruined tower and hall that once served the lord in residence while other boulders and rubble shrouded in moss and hedgerows was the church. The broken remains of civilization lay about the land partially digested by the wilderness.
Only in the last 20 years have those few settlements that survived here begun to reach out and explore the burgeoning wilderness around them once more. A single road, the Old Lochby that traces the western bank of the great Loch Soth survived the Wilding. This ribbon of stone is the lifeline that guides travel back to the northern reaches of the Rukenval, the name of the region as a whole.
The Wilding not only consumed the land but it changed the very landscape as well. Streams and rivers changed course. Hills rose and fell like waves against a shore. This makes old maps and writings tenuous at best for wanderers and adventurers alike. Now the populace clusters around the town of Valyg's Crossing in the Sothryn Wylds. Once this town was a center of commerce situated at nearly the center of Loch Soth with great swaths of civilization north, south and west of it. Now it is an island in a sea of ruins and wilderness.
That's basically my current campaign.