D&D 5E What proportion of the population are adventurers?

Dausuul · May 28, 2019

Umbran said:
Well, consider - the population of England and Wales together, in 1500, was probably about 3 million. Is the city state/region of Waterdeep comparable to... half of Renaissance England? If yes, then fine. If not...

The city of Rome at its height was about 1 million, and Rome's walls enclosed about 16 square miles. These numbers come from different sources, and it's not clear if the population figure refers to people inside the walls only. However, both are at least in the same ballpark as the figures given for Waterdeep.

As others have observed, food is the real challenge. You can't feed a city that size by operating a few farms outside the walls; Rome was the capital of an empire, and it needed that empire. A whole fleet of ships was built to do nothing but ferry grain across the Mediterranean and stuff it into Rome's gaping maw. I don't claim to be an expert on the Realms, but I don't believe Waterdeep rules an empire at all. My impression is that it's a mercantile city with little territory of its own.

Immortal Sun · May 28, 2019

These are the great debates of our time, if indeed a fantasy setting can exist in a fantasy land using fantasy rules and magic when we over-analyze it using real-world comparisons.

Enevhar Aldarion · May 28, 2019

If people want to compare to real world populations of the late Middle Ages to early Renaissance, try to compare to pre-Great Plague populations, as the Black Death swept the world in the 1340s-1350s and killed as much as half the population of the known world. Or look at populations from about 1550 onward, as it took about 200 years for the world population to return to pre-plague numbers. Though some urban centers, such as London, still had more outbreaks that killed 20-25% of the population, making numbers from certain years not good to use.

But on the subject, the biggest creator of adventurers, mercenaries, etc, would be a just concluded major war. Thousands of now unemployed soldiers with nothing to do and nowhere to go could become mercenaries/adventurers or brigands/bandits. The end of the 100 Years War was a good example of that, with many of the former soldiers in the service of either England or France were suddenly on their own. It would be similar in a fantasy world. A long period of peace means less people out looking for their fortunes, while a recently ended period of war and turmoil would have many more people out there. And a peaceful fantasy world is a boring fantasy world, so this heightened number of unattached adventurers is normally common.

Hussar · May 28, 2019

Dausuul said:
The city of Rome at its height was about 1 million, and Rome's walls enclosed about 16 square miles. These numbers come from different sources, and it's not clear if the population figure refers to people inside the walls only. However, both are at least in the same ballpark as the figures given for Waterdeep.

As others have observed, food is the real challenge. You can't feed a city that size by operating a few farms outside the walls; Rome was the capital of an empire, and it needed that empire. A whole fleet of ships was built to do nothing but ferry grain across the Mediterranean and stuff it into Rome's gaping maw. I don't claim to be an expert on the Realms, but I don't believe Waterdeep rules an empire at all. My impression is that it's a mercantile city with little territory of its own.

Fair enough. And, if Waterdeep controlled a fair chunk of the known world at the time, then, I'd have no problems with that. But, even so, that's a city that's half again as large as Waterdeep with half the population posited.

I find the 200 (ish) thousand population within the city walls to be a lot more plausible.

Li Shenron · May 28, 2019

One PC-classed person in 1000 sounds like a nice round number to me. I'd increase the rate to maybe 1% for smaller, demihuman communities, or for everyone in a more heroic-era setting.

Derren · May 28, 2019

2 million is a bit much, but 1 million is reasonable as several cities reached that size without having an empire like Alexandria and having magic in Waterdeep is certainly more than equal to the fertile nile delta.

Some proposed number of adventurers look a bit low to me. An adventurer is basically a mercenary and there were a lot of them around.

Mercurius · May 28, 2019

Umbran said:
Well, consider - the population of England and Wales together, in 1500, was probably about 3 million. Is the city state/region of Waterdeep comparable to... half of Renaissance England? If yes, then fine. If not...

In addition to what others have said about Rome, Alexandria, et al, during the Renaissance, Britain was far less populous than France, Germany, Italy, and other parts of Europe.

But I think the point is, could Waterdeep have 200,000 people, with a region of 1.5-2M? The answer is: yes. And that is all that really matters; it doesn't have to closely fit real world analogs, it just has to be plausible, and it is.

Parmandur · May 28, 2019

Umbran said:
Well, consider - the population of England and Wales together, in 1500, was probably about 3 million. Is the city state/region of Waterdeep comparable to... half of Renaissance England? If yes, then fine. If not...

The Savage Frontier is huge, yes: the Sword Coast region is the size of the Western US, Canada and Mexico from the Pacific to the Rockies. The territory controlled by Waterdeep is probably comparable to England, or bigger; and if the Lord's Alliance is considered a nascent state, it's bigger than just about anything in Europe.

Stalker0 · May 28, 2019

Derren said:
Some proposed number of adventurers look a bit low to me. An adventurer is basically a mercenary and there were a lot of them around.

I think the issue is how you are defining it. I see it in 4 buckets:

1) 1st level “warriors”
2) higher level “warriors”
3) 1st level “fighters”
4) higher level “fighters”

Bucket 1 is probably where most mercenaries come from, and having there be a number of those makes sense. Likely the other buckets are a lot lower, especially bucket 4