Design Notes - Numbers and Things

As I have been working, here and there, on creating this new fantasy world, I have found myself thinking about many of the same things I remember thinking about all those years ago (the last time I did this sort of thing). Many of these things revolve around numbers and measures. How many people live in these towns and cities? If "x" number of people live in the major towns and cities of a kingdom, what is the total population of the kingdom once you add in all the scattered farms, hamlets and villages? What is a reasonable ground scale for the hex-based maps we make? How far can our characters reasonably travel in a day (when on foot, wagon, horse; encumbered or not)? How many years should the history of these lands be? What is a short time, and what is a long time?

Building a World

The main reason that I even care about these things is that if I am going to bother to create something like this, I want it to at least have a veneer of reasonableness. Done well, it should feel real. I want to be able to create for the players the sense that they are a small part of something larger, and that some thought has been given to how things fit together and why they are the way they are; that the world existed before they arrived in it. I could simply scribble a small map with a village on one end and a dungeon on the other, and say "dungeon's that way...off you go". But that doesn't interest me. I like to create. I'm sure I will create far more than we will ever need or use, but it's been a fun journey thus far.

I suppose there are two main schools of thought on creating fantasy worlds. Those that create something truly unique and, well, fantastic. And those (probably the majority) that opt for the traditional-fantasy world of "medieval with magic and monsters". I am solidly in the latter camp. I tend to envision the framework of a D&D world as a high medieval place (only cleaner and less squalid). So in constructing such a world, I go back to high medieval western Europe as a sanity check.

My issue with the questions I began with is that as I reread published materials from back in the day, some of the numbers they use seem jarringly off to me. (I know, I think too much). As an example, a couple of nights ago I was flipping through a particular early 1990's Forgotten Realms supplement that was referencing city populations in the hundreds of thousands, and in some cases a million or two. This struck me as ludicrously higher than I would ever want in my world. I have looked at medieval European populations at other times as part of historical miniatures gaming, but I revisited the topic and did some quick research.

Using rough but generally accepted numbers for various locations in western Europe in the mid-1300's (a population high point before plagues set the population counts back a couple of centuries), you have the following. The largest cities were Venice (100,000), Florence (95,000) and Paris (80,000). There were other large northern Italian cities, but nothing in excess of 100,000. Some estimates have Moscow at 200,000, but that is outside of the sphere I am using. Estimates for England in 1377 have London at a whopping 23,000. The next largest English cities are estimated to be York (7,000) and Bristol (6,000), with the rest of the top 10 in the 3,000-5,000 range. Numbers 11-20 on the list are at 2,000-3,000. London's population was estimated at 350,000 in 1662, and had still not reached a million by 1801. While I am not recreating Europe, these figures at least provide a frame of reference.

The end result of all this is that my cities and towns will follow these general rules: The very largest cities in the long-settled south will be in the 30-50,000 range with perhaps just a few larger. The largest cities in the Northlands will not exceed 12,000 in the newer areas and 20,000 in the older areas, and even this size will be rare. Most cities in the Northlands will be in the 5-8,000 range. Towns significant enough to be on the map will be in the 1,000-3,000 range. Independent cities and towns on the trade ways and in the frontier areas will be smaller. Historical statistics estimate that as much as 95% of more of the population was rural. My numbers in the less-settled areas will probably be more on the lines of 4-6 rural people per urban person (80-85% rural population). Numbers of people per square mile, per square mile of farmed land, etc, are readily available on the internet, and will be used to rationalize overall kingdom populations. In general terms. I find this sort of academic-ish research interesting, but I am not looking for a grotesque level of detail. Just something that seems reasonable at the macro level.

One of the last things I stumbled on before writing this was a terrific article here, on populations of medieval-fantasy worlds. Good stuff, and worth a read (if this sort of thing interests you...). The author obviously uses some of the well-known figures from the same academic works that I found easily on the internet...

I will post ramblings on movement rates and the span of history at some other point.