World demographics - how many of each major race?

[Bungus]

I was thinking about world creation today and wanted something to echo medieval earth, only instead of all humans, it would be a mix of humans and fantasy races - elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, halflings, etc. The climate & overall topography would be somewhat similar to earth.

In researching world population during that era, the earth was estimated to have anywhere from 300 million to 400 million humans living somewhere around the medieval era (for ease of use - say 1000AD to 1500AD)

Not counting monstrous races like giants & dragons, and the like, what would be the major races that inhabit a world of say, around 300 million?

1) Humans
2) Elves
3) Dwarves
4) Halflings
5) Gnomes
6) Half-Elves
7) Half-Orcs
8) Goblins
9) Hobgoblins
10) Orcs
11) Kobolds

Would gnolls be a "major" enough race? What about lizardfolk? Any others? This is off the top of my head, so I could be missing a few biggies. I was thinking races like dragonborn, tieflings, genasi, devas, warforged, etc would be too rare to be considered "major" races, but I could be persuaded otherwise?

Thanks for any help/ideas.

 

[VariSami]

While the population estimates cities in D&D books are extremely bad, I believe there's a certain appeal in the fact that monstrous species are extremely populous. While actual barbarians might have had it a bit too rough to grow in numbers (unlike in fantasy literature), they might be quite common in the wilderness. German tribes did bring down Rome, after all, and that probably required quite a few men.

Personally, I prefer using Halflings as gypsies. If we think about such stereotypes, here are a few that come into mind:
1. the Moor: Middle-Eastern / South-African fantasy muslims; exotic merchants and occasional enemies.

2. the Jew: spread thin with strong communities; everyone's spitting cup (historically)

3. the Pagans: simple, rural people, not necessary nature worshippers; your average country pumpkin - might be especially common among some races (or maybe just possibly nature-worshipping witches and heretics)

And then there are social castes, many of which are inheritable, which could be tied to races due to this. Elven nobles are a cliché. How about Dwarven clergy (in the traditional sense - not combat clerics)?

 

[Bungus]

Some good ideas, but I'm not into that much detail yet.

I can easily see the traditionally lawful-evil hobgoblins as having developed into a major race with a large population - the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting has two decently sized hobgoblin kingdoms. Given some time on their own, the crafty kobolds may be able to do it as well. (my initial idea was to have the hobgoblins as the major empire of the world, covering a huge swath of land similar to the Mongols, Alexander the Great or the Romans at their peaks.)

However, I'm looking for something more along the lines of what non-human races could be factors beyond just occupying a group of caves near the local Keep on the Borderlands. Could vast amounts of orcs have a mighty kingdom in the Red Mountains? Can the goblins have developed a nation that dominates a vast group of caverns that stretch for many leagues along the mighty Roaring River? That sort of thing.

Besides the races I named above, what other traditional or semi-traditional D&D races could be a factor?

 

[ComradeGnull]

Not sure how to get real numbers, but I can think of some relative population considerations.

I think there are a couple things to consider:
1) how good is the race at question at growing, hunting, or gathering food?
2) how fertile is the land they occupy?
3) What is their breeding/replacement rate?

So Elves, for instance, have good sustainable agricultural techniques, but probably occupy forests that are better at growing berries and nuts than large-scale crops. They also have a relatively low breeding/replacement rate.

Humans are everywhere, have middling agriculture techniques, but a fast replacement rate. Just by virtue of the range of types of land they occupy, their population could be quite high.

Dwarves occupy poor land (mountains, caves, etc.), have a low breeding rate, and probably get a crop yield that is about equal with humans, for a lower overall population.

Goblins occupy crappy land, have no agricultural techniques to speak of, but have very high breeding and replacement rates. Since they are small and can eat nearly anything, however, anywhere where a more civilized race lives they can take a cut, as well as occupying wastelands that nearly no one else would live in. As with humans, the pure range of terrain they can occupy gives them pretty big numbers.

Hobgoblins are probably rarer than goblins, but still pretty numerous- they need more food to survive because they are human-sized, but rely primarily on raiding and slaves for food. They are organized, however, which gives them an edge.

Kobolds occupy the same ecological niche as goblins as near as I can tell. Competition between the two would probably be the limiting factor- in places where goblins have hobgoblin, bugbear, or ogre allies to fight for them, kobolds are a minority. In places where kobolds have hitched their wagon to a dragon's lair or something, the kobolds are top dog (-faced lizardman). Kobolds might do some small-scale cultivation of myconids or other subterranean food stuffs.

Orcs are very similar to hobgoblins, but more poorly organized. I would expect that in any area where both species lived, hobgoblins would outnumber orcs. This makes orcish hordes hard to raise, but you could situate them in a very, very large territory as a way to make that possible. I would think that orcs would live similarly to stone-age tribes, existing primarily in unsettled areas where game is plentiful and there is little need for settled agriculture. They would be the purest hunter-gatherers of the humanoid races- goblins hunt and gather when they can't scavenge or steal, hobgoblins do it when they can't raid or get slaves to do it, and kobolds scavenge for preference and supplement it with limited growing and trapping.

 

[Bungus]

Thanks - good ideas. I think I can modify the orc and/or hobgoblin backstory enough that a kingdom is possible: females stay behind & farm/fish while the males hunt/gather and also make war. Or, maybe only an elite group of the biggest/strongest are part of the armies, while the remainder take pride in supporting these armies? Those might work for hobgoblins, though probably not orcs.

 

[LostSoul]

Would this help?

The Domesday Book - Medieval Demographics Made Easy

Lower or raise the population density based on "factors such as climate, geography, and political environment".

 

[Celebrim]

The main races of my campaign world are the seven 'free peoples':

1) Fey - dryads, sidhe, brownies, pixies, sprites, changelings, atomies, selkies, etc.
2) Humans
3) Goblins - goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, great goblins
4) Dwarves
5) Elves
6) Orine
7) Idreth

Fey outnumber everything by about 10 to 1, but most of those are lesser fey so saying that fey outnumber humans is no more interesting than noting rats, cockroaches, and ants outnumber humans. Still, if they fey were actually civilized, they'd rule the world. As it is, they are effectively 'small gods' to the other six races.

Humans in turn outnumber dwarves and elves by about 30 to 1, and they in turn outnumber Orine by about 5 to 1 and Idreth by nearly 10 to 1. Since fey tend to be hidden and/or off in fairy country or the dream lands most of the time, humans are far and away the most visible race in the world.

On Korrel (that is to say, the world), the most numerous race after that would be the Giants and assorted giant-kin, who are scarcely less rare than Idreth. The various lesser servitor species - gnolls, merfolk, centaurs, sauhagin, kobolds, dark creepers, minotaurs, lizardfolk and so forth - are all really rare. There are probably 1000 humans for each of those in the world.

Currently, the campaign is set in the Decamarchy of Amalteen, a glorified city state ruling over about 24000 square miles of the surrounding territory and smaller towns. Other than fey, which number in the millions if you count the dryads, meadow spirits, naiads, gnomes, sprites and atomies, there are about 225,000-230,000 free peoples in Amalteen, with about 220,000 of those being nominally tax paying citizens and the rest being more or less independent tribes - chiefly goblins and feral elves - and transient populations (mostly Tumesi (human) gypsies, but a few Orine and Idreth as well). Of the citizenry, most are human but there are several thousand dwarves, several thousand goblins and half-goblins doing dirty jobs no one else wants, several hundred elves, a few score friendly giants mostly workign as stevedoers and log skidders, and a few score fey of the more lawful and sociable sort. There are also hundred or so Orine mercenaries temporarily in the nation, and a handful of Idreth.

There are a couple thousand saughin living just off the coast (or were, as most are dead now), as well as a half dozen storm giants, and a few hundred sea elves. There are about a hundred centaurs roaming the wilder parts, tolerated so long as they agree to hunt less desirable vagrants. There are infestations of kobolds numbering about 200 or so in various places. The last adult dragons were killed off in Amalteen about 100 years ago, but there are always a number of juveniles killed each year after trying to settle and there is a young adult sea dragon currently off the coast making shipping hazardous (which in normal times would have gotten taken care of by now, but times aren't normal).

 

[Hand of Evil]

There is not going to be a easy answer to this and what it is going to come down to, is what you make it. Personally, taking in the races listed, I would put the population somewhere at 1 to 2 billion and then I would do a break down your world map into a population chart, each area has a single dominate race that makes up 40 to 60% of the population. Then limit the "races" of the area.

There are two problems with fantasy populations:

• Underground races - this makes number of people in a square mile to number of people in a cubed mile!
• Magic - this is the antibiotic of the fantasy world - good thing there are monsters!

 

[Desdichado]

I'm not sure that it matters too much, personally. How exactly does that impact your game to know exactly how many people belong to each race? And whether or not a race is major depends entirely on where you set the game geographically, right?

But for fun, I'll throw some numbers out there for my setting. Which is more "Golden Age of Pirates" meets "Old West" rather than medieval in terms of style, but I suspect that "total world" population might be roughly the same anyway. Not that I've given much thought to the entire world population, or anything else that happens outside the geographically constrained area that I've mapped.

My setting is set around a large Mediterranean-style sea, and has land to the north, to the south and to the west of the large sea, which dominates the center of my map. In area, it's about the size of the Europe up through the Alps and northern Africa, and the Levant. Maybe it has surface area (not counting all the water) roughly equivalent to the lower 48. Roughly. That area of the setting has--at most--100 million people in it. But that may be overstating it by as much as a factor of 2. I'd break down my population as such, and where my races don't exactly correspond to D&D races, I'm picking the closest analog I can think of to not get into the homebrew details:

1) human--various ethnicities--69% (69, dude!)
2) tiefling--hamazin ethnicity--12%
3) fire genasi--8%
4) shifters--5%
5) neanderthals--3%
6) ghouls--3%
7) tieflings--2nd edition style variable-- >1%
8) vampires-- >1%

 

[Yora]

When I recently made such calculations for my setting, my start was to come up with some basic ratios that I already knew would be assumed.

1.) Elves and Lizardfolk are the major races, all others are the minor races.
2.) There are more Wood Elves than Dark Elves.
3.) There are more Elves than Lizardfolk.
4.) There are more Lizardfolk than either Wood Elves or Dark Elves.

Based on that, I set these ratios:
- the major races make up 2/3 of all humanoid people.
- The ratio for them is 4: 3: 2.
- That means Lizardfolk 8/27, Wood Elves 6/27, Dark Elves 4/27 (or 30%, 22%, and 15%)

For a generic fantasy world, I would start with making two big groups of "civilized people" and "monster people". I guess a ratio of 2/3 and 1/3 would be a good start.
Then you could say you put humans, halflings, elves, dwarves, and gnomes at the ratio 12: 6: 4: 2: 1. The result is Humans 24/75 (32%), Halflings 12/45 (16%), Elves 8/75 (11%), Dwarves 4/75 (5%), Gnomes 2/75 (3%).
And you can change all the numbers anyway you want.

I think it's best to stay away from absolute numbers and even percentages for as long as possible and work with groups and ratios as much as you can. And it first, it only has to be "group A is bigger than group B".
Things do get a bit complicated when you then start to split up the entire humanoid population into specific countries. I often end up with a homebrew race that I want to be 10% of the entire population, but it only lives in one small country that suddenly is many times more populous than any of the surrounding lands that are isolated pockets of elves and gnomes. So consider first if it is more important to have the global ratios, or to have the ratios for all regions individually? You may start with the plan, that there are only 5% dwarves, but you happen to make so many large dwarven kingdoms that the end result is almost 20%!