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Prophet2b · Apr 17, 2007

I'm curious if someone here will know the answer to a question I've had for quite some time now.

I'm preparing a campaign set in Eberron at the moment, and I've been noticing that even "metropolis" cities rarely reach the 100,000 mark, with the largest I've found being Sharn at 200,000 people.

My question is this: why are cities for roleplaying games so small? Especially the major metropolises. Rome, at its height, was over 1 million people and other major cities of the past were similarly sized, yet I've never seen a city (not just for Eberron, but in other worlds, too) with a population over 300,000.

This really has no bearing at all on gameplay or the impact of the game, and I realize that. I'm just wondering if anyone has any comments or insight on this? Is there something about REALLY BIG cities that makes them hard to roleplay in or something?

I have to admit that I was especially surprised to find this to be the case in Eberron! In a land where magic practically recreates the luxuries and niceties that we enjoy with our own technology, I would have thought there would have been a huge, massive, sprawling metropolis nearing the size of ancient Rome, London, Paris, or any of those cities (possibly even a city today). Alas, I was disappointed yet again... (Though overall, I am REALLY looking forward to this campaign.)

Dannyalcatraz · Apr 17, 2007

1) Perhaps its because Rome, and other RW cities like it, never had to contend with actual Demons, Dragons, Fireball-slinging Wizards and divine Avatars raining down destruction on the populace on a regular basis? No predation by hundreds of different kinds of undead. Life in a FRPG campaign world is simply much more hazardous than real life.

2) Many game designers don't know the size of the more famous historical cities- Rome, London, Tokyo, etc.

In all honesty, its quite easy to forget the technological & societal sophistication of the ancient world if you haven't either done some extensive reading or travelling.

I mean, consider that the Romans invented concrete, or that Egyptians created the first artificial colors, or that weak (but functional) batteries over 2000 year old have been found. And so forth.

Heck, when European traders entered China centuries after China had closed its borders to the West, the natives were awed by some of the technologies the traders brought with them...having forgotten that many of them were Chinese innovations.

Ed_Laprade · Apr 17, 2007

Also, most steal -ah, borrow- their figures from middle ages Europe, where a 1-200,000 population was a huge metropolis.

Prophet2b · Apr 17, 2007

Dannyalcatraz said:
1) Perhaps its because Rome, and other RW cities like it, never had to contend with actual Demons, Dragons, Fireball-slinging Wizards and divine Avatars raining down destruction on the populace on a regular basis? No predation by hundreds of different kinds of undead. Life in a FRPG campaign world is simply much more hazardous than real life.

Hmm... I suppose so. I think I'll have to make that very, very evident in the next campaign, then.

Demons and Dragons and Fireball-slinging Necromatic Wizards, oh my...

2) Many game designers don't know the size of the more famous historical cities- Rome, London, Tokyo, etc.

That seems funny to me. They do such an accurate job with so many other things... Nah, it's gotta be the hordes of undead.

JustKim · Apr 17, 2007

Prophet2b said:
My question is this: why are cities for roleplaying games so small?

Eberron is a notable exception. This is conceivably because Khorvaire just emerged from the Last War, which cost the continent not only all of its heroes but a significant part of its population. Whether it was just an oversight or not, the population density is low enough that people take notice, which suggests to me that all the other settings out there have more reasonable population levels.

Or that some folks love to find fault with Eberron. Who knows?

Prophet2b · Apr 17, 2007

JustKim said:
Or that some folks love to find fault with Eberron. Who knows?

Oh no, not at all (in my case, at least). I love the setting. In fact, right now, I think my only peeve with it was that there wasn't at least one hugely massive city. I thought about the Last War being a cause... but other cities throughout the centuries (again, I reference Rome) have engaged in major wars but retained an incredibly high population nearing the 1 million mark.

Of course, this isn't even really a complaint about Eberron on my part. Like I said - I was just curious. Especially because, while Eberron retains a Medieval feel, it definitely also has a very strong 1700-1800 fantasy feel, as well, and cities during those times were even larger than in the past (3+ million for major ones). So I was expecting something more in between...

JustKim · Apr 17, 2007

I guess that reads like I was implying something, but I wasn't!

S'mon · Apr 17, 2007

You could always multiply the populations by 10? I know that adding a 0 to the end of all the listed populations in my 1983 World of Greyhawk set seems to give plausible numbers, I expect Eberron is similar.

One reason I suspect city & country figures are so low is that designers often look at what's around them; if you're in a US state the size of England with 4 million people you may forget that that's only been European-colonised for a few hundred years (and probably growing rapidly in size); whereas most fantasy worlds are more like Europe with thousands of years of settled habitation.

S'mon · Apr 17, 2007

Short of a nuclear holcaust or actual genocide wars won't empty cities, and if they did, a 90% uninhabited city would be a weird place. In the real world, a war like WW2 could wipe out up to about 10% of your population, mostly males of fighting age. About the worst thing that could happen historically, being occupied by the Mongols, could wipe out around 50%.

Dannyalcatraz · Apr 17, 2007

Short of a nuclear holcaust or actual genocide wars won't empty cities,

Agreed.

The Battle for Stalingrad is commonly thought of as being the closest to "total war" the world has ever seen.

In the Battle for Stalingrad, there were around 2M+ casualties- and its estimated that Axis military forces suffered only 850k of that total.

The city's population at the start of World War II was 600,000, although by July 1941, refugees had swollen that sum to about 900,000, and while as many as 40k of them died in a single week of bombing, you can see that despite the devastation, the city was still heavily populated.

...a 90% uninhabited city would be a weird place.

Also agreed- I enjoy "survivor fiction"- movies like Omega Man, for instance- and have read up on some of the world's dissapeared cultures- a megalopolis devoid of creators is indeed an eerie site.

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