Design Notes - How Big is Big?

Something that has taken up some stray thought when building this world is the basic question of "how big should this place be?"

I would like to say that I had done most of that thinking before sitting down and scribbling drafts of maps, throwing things together in Hexographer, etc, but that's not true. As is often the case with any creative endeavor like this, I sit and scribble. Revise and scribble some more. I generally start very small and then work my way out from the middle. And things go where they go. That's pretty much what happened here. First there was the little area where I envisioned the characters starting, and a basic storyline. Then this was fit into a regional view of a basic conception of the larger picture. And finally an idea of how this region fit into the much larger world. Ideally perhaps, this creative process would work the other way around - from the outside in. Have a master plan at the highest level and work down into greater levels of detail as needed. I don't seem to think that way; I start with a seed and things grow where they grow, and go where they go.

Designing Inside-out

My "seed" area was no more than about 50 miles on a side (The Shearingvale). Then the "middle" layer was a region that grew to perhaps 750 miles wide and 1,000 miles from north to south (and is now maybe 1,200 miles on a side - The Northlands). Extensions of the outlines of the continent(s) beyond that have been sketched out, and vague ideas of what is "out there" are rattling around in my head - rattling around enough that a pretty good idea of the setting for this campaign has solidified in my mind.

Which brings me back to the question of how big this place should be. Or given the above, the more specific question I have been asking myself is "is this place big enough?"

I think the answer is "yes".  The initial anchor of this campaign is the Alsberg/Rimini/Mercia area and the Great North Road heading west through the Elder land of Onoria. Water is east, land is in the other three directions. [Odd, having been born and raised in the Philadelphia area, that the maps started at an east coast city...]. Anyway, if we take as an example a Philadelphia central point, and compare to the real world to see what those kind of distances mean, you get the following: A span of 1,200 miles from north to south goes from approximately Toronto Canada to Miami, Florida. Heading west, 500 miles gets you to Cincinnati, 800 miles gets you to St Louis, and 1350 miles gets you to Denver. So is a moderately well thought-out region that stretches from here to Toronto, to Miami, to Maine, and to St Louis enough space to play with? I think so.

And if not, there is always all that white space on the map beyond that.