D&D 5E Mapping a fantasy kingdom - sizes and scale

SheckyS · Nov 21, 2015

I need some advice.
I am in the process of creating my own fantasy world for my D&D games.

I have a good mapping app (Fractal Mapper 8) and I have a vague idea of what I want the world to look like.

In the DMG it talks about different scales of maps (province, kingdom, and continent). But the numbers are kinda vague. It talks about how you should create a province map at a scale of about 1 mile per hex and that such a map would encompass about a day's travel in any direction from the center of the map.

Where I get lost is... how big is that? How much distance could a person travel in a day?
What is a reasonable size for a fantasy city or a fantasy kingdom?

Presumably, even a well-settled kingdom would have large areas of unclaimed wilderness within it, but I'm just completely at a loss regarding realistic scaling.

I remember I used to have a book many many years ago that described in great detail the kinds of scales and sizes to use, but I don't have it any more and I'm blocked.

Anyone know of any good resources for this kind of thing?

gamenatural · Nov 21, 2015

Unmounted/Mounted

Road 3mph/6mph
Hills 2mph/5mph
Wilderness 2mph/4mph
Mountains 1mph/1mph
Swamps 1mph/.5mph

Half the speed in poor weather.

The control area of a medieval castle was around 15-20 miles as this is how far a fighting force (such as Roman Legionaries) could march and effectively fight after the march. The distance between settlements was around 6-8 miles so that you could walk to a neighboring settlement to trade and be back before nightfall.

empireofchaos · Nov 21, 2015

SheckyS said:
I need some advice. What is a reasonable size for a fantasy city or a fantasy kingdom?

That depends on what sort of setting you're trying to model. A lot of fantasy realms are pretty underpopulated. The Shire is around 50,000-100,000 people, and Gondor (the largest realm in Middle Earth, is around 1 million.

Historically, a large city in Mesopotamia around the "dawn of civilization' was 30,000 people or so. You don't get cities of 1 million or more until the turn of the common era - Rome in the 1st century CE, Baghdad in the 8th, and China had a bunch in the 11th/12th century.

As far as kingdoms go, again, it depends. One historical model stipulates that a realm that defines itself as the entire world - i.e. something like Christendom, dar al Islam, the Hellenistic World, the Middle Kingdom - takes around 60 days to traverse from one end to the other (not at top speed, but if you're transporting goods, for example). Individual kingdoms, duchies, territories in this space are going to be significantly smaller, depending on how many the realm is broken up into.

SheckyS said:
Presumably, even a well-settled kingdom would have large areas of unclaimed wilderness within it, but I'm just completely at a loss regarding realistic scaling.

I remember I used to have a book many many years ago that described in great detail the kinds of scales and sizes to use, but I don't have it any more and I'm blocked.

Anyone know of any good resources for this kind of thing?

One thing that has started to irk me lately: when people design a world, they start modeling it as if it were another planet, so there are oceans, continents, etc. My problem with this is: how many people in your world think of it as a planet? How many people in that world know about the existence of other continents? If the answer to these questions is "zero" or something close to it, design something that you can actually use right off the bat (a kingdom, realm, may one continent), and worry about the rest later. If there are no planetary maps in your world, the players will never see the one you make anyway. So make something that tells you relative distances and locations of terrains, cities, castles, etc., and fill in the blanks later. Remember also that travel can be very unsafe precisely because there are no maps, and the chances of getting lost are pretty high (if you have no ranger, that is).

Bluenose · Nov 21, 2015

SheckyS said:
I need some advice.
I am in the process of creating my own fantasy world for my D&D games.

I have a good mapping app (Fractal Mapper 8) and I have a vague idea of what I want the world to look like.

In the DMG it talks about different scales of maps (province, kingdom, and continent). But the numbers are kinda vague. It talks about how you should create a province map at a scale of about 1 mile per hex and that such a map would encompass about a day's travel in any direction from the center of the map.

Where I get lost is... how big is that? How much distance could a person travel in a day?
What is a reasonable size for a fantasy city or a fantasy kingdom?

Presumably, even a well-settled kingdom would have large areas of unclaimed wilderness within it, but I'm just completely at a loss regarding realistic scaling.

I remember I used to have a book many many years ago that described in great detail the kinds of scales and sizes to use, but I don't have it any more and I'm blocked.

Anyone know of any good resources for this kind of thing?

Medieval demographics made Easy. A very nice web site for population details. But as for size, there should be a mix of large and small "kingdoms" as well as various other states of different sorts. The Roman empire which stretched from the Atlantic in the west to Mesopotamia in the east, and from the Sahara to the Scottish lowlands from south to north. Meanwhile Denmark was a kingdom with a territory smaller than some city states, Novgorod was a Merchant Republic with a huge expanse of territory, and some kingdoms consisted of little more than a title and claimant with no territory.

For distance travelled in a day, twenty miles is a good figure in decent travelling conditions for an individual or small group, around a hundred in a week.

empireofchaos · Nov 21, 2015

These are the links to the Middle Earth demographics I was referencing earlier:

http://www.sf-worlds.com/middle-earth/populations/

http://www.stephenwigmore.com/2012/08/populations-of-middle-earth-lord-of.html

Jester David · Nov 21, 2015

SheckyS said:
I need some advice.
I am in the process of creating my own fantasy world for my D&D games.

I have a good mapping app (Fractal Mapper 8) and I have a vague idea of what I want the world to look like.

In the DMG it talks about different scales of maps (province, kingdom, and continent). But the numbers are kinda vague. It talks about how you should create a province map at a scale of about 1 mile per hex and that such a map would encompass about a day's travel in any direction from the center of the map.

Where I get lost is... how big is that? How much distance could a person travel in a day?
What is a reasonable size for a fantasy city or a fantasy kingdom?

Presumably, even a well-settled kingdom would have large areas of unclaimed wilderness within it, but I'm just completely at a loss regarding realistic scaling.

I remember I used to have a book many many years ago that described in great detail the kinds of scales and sizes to use, but I don't have it any more and I'm blocked.

Anyone know of any good resources for this kind of thing?

Travel time is covered on pages 63-64 of the D&D Basic rules. That tells you travel time, which you can use to set the scale of your map.

As for resources, I did a blog series on worldbuilding a while back: http://www.5mwd.com/archives/190
I talk about kingdoms here: http://www.5mwd.com/archives/308
But, generally, smaller is better. Medieval kingdoms were pretty small, with larger ones being feudal realms, which were arguably a whole bunch of small kingdoms that worked together (most of the time) to support a king. Something the size of a East Coast state is probably pretty good.

Eltab · Nov 21, 2015

The World Builder's Guidebook (2e?) discusses this in great detail. I recommend it. (Maybe it is the book you used to have?)

From IRL history, to maintain in-game interest, you probably want a political system like France and/or Germany. (You want your countries to be about the same size, too.) There is a central government, the King may or may not be able to enforce his will on all the lords below him in the kingdom's (theoretical) Organization Chart. Some of the Dukes may actually be more interested in each other's doings than in the King.
Centralized empires do not have a viable social niche for 'adventurers'; the possibility of Change or Chaos - or Usurpers! - are too scary to contemplate.

Mercurius · Nov 22, 2015

empireofchaos said:
One thing that has started to irk me lately: when people design a world, they start modeling it as if it were another planet, so there are oceans, continents, etc. My problem with this is: how many people in your world think of it as a planet? How many people in that world know about the existence of other continents? If the answer to these questions is "zero" or something close to it, design something that you can actually use right off the bat (a kingdom, realm, may one continent), and worry about the rest later. If there are no planetary maps in your world, the players will never see the one you make anyway. So make something that tells you relative distances and locations of terrains, cities, castles, etc., and fill in the blanks later. Remember also that travel can be very unsafe precisely because there are no maps, and the chances of getting lost are pretty high (if you have no ranger, that is).

There are two responses I have to this, which hopefully should (imo) lead to less irkage on your part: One, developing the larger world and understanding the context and influences on the "game region" can bring a better sense of internal consistency and coherency to the game. I've played in many games in which the DM didn't really take the time to develop the world, and it always felt like we were moving in a moving game-stage, which paper-thin set-pieces. Players who prefer a more "gamist" approach don't mind this, but those (such as myself) who enjoy story and immersion into a secondary world find it, well, irking. This is not to say that a DM must spend years building a world before starting the campaign, but that some forethought and planning, and continued development really can bring the world alive.

Two, and perhaps most importantly, because world building is fun in its own right, aside from role-playing. I agree with you insofar as one is building a setting for a campaign, but some DMs, even many, build their worlds for the pure creative pleasure of it, in addition to making it a workable setting for a game.

But yeah, as far as newbie advice on world building for a campaign--and back to the OP--if we're talking relatively straight-forward fantasy with roughly Medieval technology level, a small kingdom is a good place to start. You really only need a small area detailed to begin with, then as the game progresses the DM can gradually develop the rest of the world. But I would also recommend to the thread starter that in addition to creating the "starter kingdom," consider any ways in which your world is different from our own. Number of moons? Climate? And general questions: what's the overall technological level? If you have a map that the campaign is going to be focused on for awhile, you don't need to know all the details of places off the map, but a general idea is good - because you also want to have a sense of neighboring lands, influences, etc.

Also, as far as the size of the starting area go, I would suggest taking 20-25 miles/day as a good rule of thumb as how far one can travel in a day on relatively even terrain. You could travel further, but if you're navigating hills, mountains, or marshes, then it will be a good deal slower. So really we're talking about anything from 5-10 miles for rough terrain and poor weather to 25-40 miles for flat terrain and pleasant conditions, or more on horse or if pressed (e.g. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas in the beginnng of The Two Towers when they were going after Merry and Pippin were, I imagine, traveling 50+ miles a day; you also have ultra-marathon runners capable of 100 miles within a 24 hour period. Of course this isn't sustainable over many days).

Then I would think in terms of your starting point, and consider a radius of a week to 10 days from that. 10 days x 25 miles = 500 miles, so a map of 500 x 500 miles should be plenty big to start. That's roughly the size of France. Actually, I would consider drawing two maps to start: one, a larger regional/kingdom map ("France") and secondly a smaller map of the local area, maybe 100 x 100 miles. As I mentioned above, at some point it wouldn't hurt--and could be quite fun--to sketch out a larger world map at some point, with the understanding that most of it you'll never use and you're mainly doing it for your own enjoyment.

empireofchaos · Nov 22, 2015

Mercurius said:
There are two responses I have to this, which hopefully should (imo) lead to less irkage on your part: One, developing the larger world and understanding the context and influences on the "game region" can bring a better sense of internal consistency and coherency to the game. I've played in many games in which the DM didn't really take the time to develop the world, and it always felt like we were moving in a moving game-stage, which paper-thin set-pieces. Players who prefer a more "gamist" approach don't mind this, but those (such as myself) who enjoy story and immersion into a secondary world find it, well, irking. This is not to say that a DM must spend years building a world before starting the campaign, but that some forethought and planning, and continued development really can bring the world alive.

Two, and perhaps most importantly, because world building is fun in its own right, aside from role-playing. I agree with you insofar as one is building a setting for a campaign, but some DMs, even many, build their worlds for the pure creative pleasure of it, in addition to making it a workable setting for a game.

But yeah, as far as newbie advice on world building for a campaign--and back to the OP--if we're talking relatively straight-forward fantasy with roughly Medieval technology level, a small kingdom is a good place to start. You really only need a small area detailed to begin with, then as the game progresses the DM can gradually develop the rest of the world. But I would also recommend to the thread starter that in addition to creating the "starter kingdom," consider any ways in which your world is different from our own. Number of moons? Climate? And general questions: what's the overall technological level? If you have a map that the campaign is going to be focused on for awhile, you don't need to know all the details of places off the map, but a general idea is good - because you also want to have a sense of neighboring lands, influences, etc.

Also, as far as the size of the starting area go, I would suggest taking 20-25 miles/day as a good rule of thumb as how far one can travel in a day on relatively even terrain. You could travel further, but if you're navigating hills, mountains, or marshes, then it will be a good deal slower. So really we're talking about anything from 5-10 miles for rough terrain and poor weather to 25-40 miles for flat terrain and pleasant conditions, or more on horse or if pressed (e.g. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas in the beginnng of The Two Towers when they were going after Merry and Pippin were, I imagine, traveling 50+ miles a day; you also have ultra-marathon runners capable of 100 miles within a 24 hour period. Of course this isn't sustainable over many days).

Then I would think in terms of your starting point, and consider a radius of a week to 10 days from that. 10 days x 25 miles = 500 miles, so a map of 500 x 500 miles should be plenty big to start. That's roughly the size of France. Actually, I would consider drawing two maps to start: one, a larger regional/kingdom map ("France") and secondly a smaller map of the local area, maybe 100 x 100 miles. As I mentioned above, at some point it wouldn't hurt--and could be quite fun--to sketch out a larger world map at some point, with the understanding that most of it you'll never use and you're mainly doing it for your own enjoyment.

I certainly agree that designing a larger world is fun, and it gives you as a GM a better sense of the surroundings, the history, and various influences. The only thing that irks me is the easy assumption that the fantasy world must resemble our modern idea of what a "world" is - i.e. a spheroid planet with oceans and continents. A fantasy world might have more than one moon, as you point out. But it might also be flat as a coin. With an outer Okeanos surrounding one landmass. Or with an edge, from which you can fall off. Or with islands that float up in the sky. This would give the world designers considerably more freedom to create distinct worlds.

S'mon · Nov 22, 2015

For D&D purposes I recommend small & diverse - lots of small independent states, 60-80 miles across is plenty. That way you can have lots of kings & princesses!

You can have political intrigue, save-the-kingdom, war & conquest etc at a scale the PCs can impact. Avoid large centralised states - Greyhawk beyond the Wild Coast is a very poor model. A loose federation like medieval Holy Roman Empire comprised of lots of smaller states might be ok. My Wilderlands campaign is mostly micro-states, each town and most villages politically independent with their own ruler. Forgotten Realms is close to that, and it works great. My Yggsburgh campaign was larger independent Counties/Baronies mostly in the 60-80 mile diameter range, that also works well for a slightly different feel.

D&D 5E Mapping a fantasy kingdom - sizes and scale

SheckyS

First Post

gamenatural

First Post

empireofchaos

First Post

Bluenose

Adventurer

empireofchaos

First Post

Jester David

Hero

Eltab

Lord of the Hidden Layer

Mercurius

Legend

empireofchaos

First Post

S'mon

Legend

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