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City Design - best supplements? rpg cities? advice?
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<blockquote data-quote="Kichwas" data-source="post: 4700379" data-attributes="member: 891"><p>My first severe complaint is the 20,000 number.</p><p></p><p>Populations like that from 3E were grossly off from history. You only saw major cities get that small in one place in the world during one specific dark period - Europe under the black plague. And even there 20,000 would be low. 3, 4 or more times that might be more normal.</p><p></p><p>At that same point in time, major cities around the world outside of Europe were in the hundreds of thousands to a million or more.</p><p></p><p>Europe itself had vastly higher populations before the plague and before the fall of Rome.</p><p></p><p>malnutrition, disease, and a breakdown in central authority all contributed to such low numbers. Most of those factors are non issues for a typical fantasy city with its magical resources. The typical pathetic excuse is monsters - but even in the depths of war, numbers don't go down like that. A monster population that severe would cause the city to resemble the black plague, with half eaten bodies in the streets and the monsters literally running around the city unchecked in mid-day.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Just looking at the maps of most fantasy RPG cities, even those produced under the 3E era, suggests cities in the low millions when you compare those maps to historic cities. Again, you might find more complex maps in some European cities, but you have to account for large portions being recently abandoned into ruin or full of rotting corpses and plague rats...</p><p></p><p>Even Rome, as it shrunk, also lost may of its buildings and took on a more simple map.</p><p></p><p>There are online sources that will show you populations and population densities at various points in history around the world. Also key would be to look at how fast populations can rise and recover after tragedy. Unless your disaster took place in the last generation, or is still ongoing, you should have a much more crowded city than a DnD game book suggests.</p><p></p><p></p><p>The best RPG related guide to building a civilization and cities is going to be "A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe Second Edition."</p><p></p><p>Its about the only book even worth bothering with. Pretty much every other source that's come out since 3E hit the shelves, even books completely unrelated to DnD, has been put out by authors that showed too much reliance on the DnD 3E DMG rather than any actual research.</p><p></p><p>That book alone marks an exception, but it tries to also work with the extreme flaws of the DMG. However it can be taken outside those flaws with ease.</p><p></p><p>I also suggest this:</p><p><a href="http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm" target="_blank">http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm</a></p><p></p><p>And the calculators it links to at its end that can do some of the work for you.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Kichwas, post: 4700379, member: 891"] My first severe complaint is the 20,000 number. Populations like that from 3E were grossly off from history. You only saw major cities get that small in one place in the world during one specific dark period - Europe under the black plague. And even there 20,000 would be low. 3, 4 or more times that might be more normal. At that same point in time, major cities around the world outside of Europe were in the hundreds of thousands to a million or more. Europe itself had vastly higher populations before the plague and before the fall of Rome. malnutrition, disease, and a breakdown in central authority all contributed to such low numbers. Most of those factors are non issues for a typical fantasy city with its magical resources. The typical pathetic excuse is monsters - but even in the depths of war, numbers don't go down like that. A monster population that severe would cause the city to resemble the black plague, with half eaten bodies in the streets and the monsters literally running around the city unchecked in mid-day. Just looking at the maps of most fantasy RPG cities, even those produced under the 3E era, suggests cities in the low millions when you compare those maps to historic cities. Again, you might find more complex maps in some European cities, but you have to account for large portions being recently abandoned into ruin or full of rotting corpses and plague rats... Even Rome, as it shrunk, also lost may of its buildings and took on a more simple map. There are online sources that will show you populations and population densities at various points in history around the world. Also key would be to look at how fast populations can rise and recover after tragedy. Unless your disaster took place in the last generation, or is still ongoing, you should have a much more crowded city than a DnD game book suggests. The best RPG related guide to building a civilization and cities is going to be "A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe Second Edition." Its about the only book even worth bothering with. Pretty much every other source that's come out since 3E hit the shelves, even books completely unrelated to DnD, has been put out by authors that showed too much reliance on the DnD 3E DMG rather than any actual research. That book alone marks an exception, but it tries to also work with the extreme flaws of the DMG. However it can be taken outside those flaws with ease. I also suggest this: [url]http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm[/url] And the calculators it links to at its end that can do some of the work for you. [/QUOTE]
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