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

[S'mon]

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.

It's definitely helpful to have a vague idea of what the planet looks like, and any vast empires, world religions, some once in a millenium historic events. However IME it's best to keep the actual maps super-vague until you feel inspiration to detail a particular area. You don't want to constrain yourself.

 

[S'mon]

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.

It's definitely helpful to have a vague idea of what the planet looks like, and any vast empires, world religions, some once in a millenium historic events. However IME it's best to keep the actual maps super-vague until you feel inspiration to detail a particular area. You don't want to constrain yourself.

 

[Jester David]

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

Available online and reasonably priced:
http://www.nobleknight.com/ProductDetailSearch.asp_Q_ProductID_E_2430_A_InventoryID_E_2148212117

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.

There's lots of fund ideas for alternate shapes or variants. If I ever design a new world it might be shaped like an icosahedron, with 20 triangle-shaped sides, that are different than other faces.

The trick is that's a lot more work, especially if you want the world to be realistic. It's easier to figure out weather and seasons, climate and terrain, based on a globe since you can mirror the real world. How does wind work on a flat disc? Are there seasons? How does it being a disc affect the day/night cycle?
It's a cop-out to just say "it works normally", shrug, and dismiss any differences as "magic". Magic when worldbuilding should be added on purpose to give a sense of wonder, not to explain why night falls like it does on a globe in a disc word. And you're also missing out on some of the unique traits that would come with variant shaped worlds.
So, generally, it's better to go with a globe unless you want to put the extra effort in.

 

[empireofchaos]

There's lots of fund ideas for alternate shapes or variants. If I ever design a new world it might be shaped like an icosahedron, with 20 triangle-shaped sides, that are different than other faces.

The trick is that's a lot more work, especially if you want the world to be realistic. It's easier to figure out weather and seasons, climate and terrain, based on a globe since you can mirror the real world. How does wind work on a flat disc? Are there seasons? How does it being a disc affect the day/night cycle?
It's a cop-out to just say "it works normally", shrug, and dismiss any differences as "magic". Magic when worldbuilding should be added on purpose to give a sense of wonder, not to explain why night falls like it does on a globe in a disc word. And you're also missing out on some of the unique traits that would come with variant shaped worlds.
So, generally, it's better to go with a globe unless you want to put the extra effort in.

It may be more work to figure out how everything works, yes. But if we look at well-established fantasy worlds, are we absolutely sure they're planets? Is Middle Earth on a planet? Is Narnia? On top of that, a lot of non-standard worlds have already been mapped out for us, so the hard work of figuring out their physics has been done. We can use Niven's Ringworld, or Terry Pratchett's Discworld, or Umberto Eco's world in Baudolino (which is a medieval world map with blemmies and monopods living near a literal edge of the world) as models or source material.

 

[Jester David]

It may be more work to figure out how everything works, yes. But if we look at well-established fantasy worlds, are we absolutely sure they're planets? Is Middle Earth on a planet? Is Narnia? On top of that, a lot of non-standard worlds have already been mapped out for us, so the hard work of figuring out their physics has been done. We can use Niven's Ringworld, or Terry Pratchett's Discworld, or Umberto Eco's world in Baudolino (which is a medieval world map with blemmies and monopods living near a literal edge of the world) as models or source material.

Middle Earth is a planet. It was meant to be our Earth in an earlier age.
Narnia is established as flat, and reaching the edge is a key plot point of Voyage of the Dawn Treader. But not a lot of thought is given to the how of the world.

While lots of the hard work is done for non-standard worlds, that does involve a lot of reading. Especially for someone like Pratchett. (And even then there's often a lot of narrative hand-waving to explain the physics: Discworld uses the "magic!" explanation for the sun and seasons, and even Pratchett doesn't bother explaining how water returns after flowing off the edge.) So, again, unless you really want to put in the work of reading and thinking, it's just easier to go globe.

 

[empireofchaos]

Middle Earth is a planet. It was meant to be our Earth in an earlier age.

Yes, but it's a planet that came into being prior to its sun and moon [!] on which it's impossible to sail from one continent to another (Aman), and on one of the continents, it's possible to live forever. And it's possible for continent-sized islands to sink into the sea. And in any event, it's a planet which is not definitively mapped (I've seen lots of different "world maps" of Middle Earth, ostensibly based on Tolkien's notes). And few would claim that Middle Earth is too hard to play on because not every aspect of its science has been clearly defined.

Narnia is established as flat, and reaching the edge is a key plot point of Voyage of the Dawn Treader. But not a lot of thought is given to the how of the world.

While lots of the hard work is done for non-standard worlds, that does involve a lot of reading. Especially for someone like Pratchett. (And even then there's often a lot of narrative hand-waving to explain the physics: Discworld uses the "magic!" explanation for the sun and seasons, and even Pratchett doesn't bother explaining how water returns after flowing off the edge.) So, again, unless you really want to put in the work of reading and thinking, it's just easier to go globe.

I guess the question is, how much of the geophysics and biology of your world needs to be clearly spelled out. So putting in the work is always important (and fun, as we agree). But do all DMs who design globes really have a completely clear understanding of how pre-modern fantasy-type societies really work, and how they're impacted by magic?

 

[SteveHardy]

This site is a good resource for calculating travel times.

orbis.stanford.edu

 

[Firmly Squishy]

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.



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).

Great point about the scale of the realm Empire! People of the realm, the everyday joe, would not know nor would they care about what is outside of their immediate surroundings other than maybe the next door town or village. Building a "world" this way totally leaves your world open to new adventures and discoveries as it is explored.

 

[Zardnaar]

Generally cities were constrained to around 20 000 people. There were exceptions.

A large river a city could get bigger, up to around 50k or so in Europe. Eg Paris or London.

The most advanced empires could hit about 200000-1000000. Those being Rome, China, Byzantium and various Islamic caliphates (Baghdad, Cairo, Alexandria). Once you're into 6 figures generally large empires with stable/advanced government's.

I think Venice also got large at one point.

Magic can change this with things like water via the Elemental planes or create food and water en masse but probably don't want to do that.

Demographics approx.

Castile 1492 4 million
Aragon 1492 1 million
France. Varies but 20-30 million.
Ottoman Empire 30 million
UK 1705 (inc Scotland) 5 million

There was a reason France was a superpower for most of the last 1000 odd years. Had a big population as far back as Gaul. Lots of water, temperate climate.

The outliers in Europe were France and Ottomans until later on (Russia, unified Germany etc). Ottomans sheer size including Egypt, France is France.

China had huge population due to double crops of rice plus plenty of water, Climate etc.

New crops from America such as potatoes enabled larger populations.

 

[Krachek]

Don’t ask yourself to be too accurate.
You can build a “relative” map, build around travelling days rather than distance.

Rather than think in population, think in term of organisation, service, culture.
Town ZZZ is a important link for travelling and commercial trade. You don’t have to state how many ships, cart, travelers pass by.