Worldbuilding: How far should things be?

[Lackofname]

By the way you guys are talking, your local D&D town should pretty much know about any local dungeons since they've mined them for rocks and needed the resources in teh area anyhow.

Now, talking about the specifics in my case...

The presence of ruins would depend upon history and politics. A castle or similar structure will be built,

By ruins I don't mean castle or city. Any stone structure that's been abandoned will do.

And the locals either have forgotten it, or it's been reduced to "we don't go there, so we only have legends at this point".

This region is pretty much "grass huts and obsidian tipped spears" levels, as anything associated with the prior civilization became downright unspeakable. (Altho the Aztecs had cities and were still using obsidian and villages were made of grass huts.)

@MGibster there fully are lost cities. (There are more, but I kept running into sites tha t insisted I remove my adblocker. ) Here's a paragraph that sums up what I'm kinda driving at: "Several of the great lost cities were found in Central America, where the great Mesoamerican civilizations flourished. The Aztec, Inca, Olmec, Toltec, and Maya people built fantastic cities of stone within the jungles, with towering pyramids and complex infrastructure, but in the 16th Century they all came to an end when the Spanish Conquistadors waged their wars of conquest on the Americas. The big cities were abandoned as the people had a better chance of survival in small towns."

 

[Tonguez]

The presence of ruins would depend upon history and politics. A castle or similar structure will be built, at least initially, for defense, and it is a major expense to build, maintain, and garrison, so they will be built on what would be a defensive terrain feature that dominates the road net leading to/from hostile nations. For that much of an investment to be abandoned would require the political boundaries to have shifted so far that the current owner would derive no benefit from rebuilding.

Villages and towns are built for a reason, not just spacing. In a medieval era the application of agriculture is primitive, so farming villages will be built where there is good growing land (not all that common), and the village can be protected. Other villages would crop up where other options exist, such as a lot of oak trees, which would provide valuable hardwoods as well as the means to raise pigs.

In a medieval era, you have to take the land as it is; there's no advanced fertilizer and mechanized means to clear and plow secondary land, nor a market for that much food (especially since storage is inefficient).

Read the histories of old cities: London, Moscow, etc. They came into being , remained in existence for centuries, and changed hands countless times because of their location.

Location, location, location: the rules of real estate are universal.

Thats not entirely correct, at least not in terms of the order in which things happen.

Locations is very very important, but even then the standard principle of village placement is 1. How much food can be produced (location) and 2. How far are peasants willing to walk to get Stuff (trade).

In medieval times due to generally low land productivity it takes about 30 acres to feed a family of 5 per year. Thats supplemented with foraging,fishing and hunting over a much larger area. Its also labour intensive and so single families are encouraged to expand into small settlements. In Englands Hyde system these small settlements (ie 3es thorp/hamlet) were rated at 120 acres as a taxable unit.
These settlements were all dependent on crops and so needed to be established near good waterways and it would be a ideal bonus to have other resources too.

Excess crops also needed to be traded for goods and so villagers started to gather in Markets. Under old English law a Town is any Village with a Market and they tend to follow the 8 mile rule (the people in the small hamlets, homesteads and villages will walk up to 8 miles to trade at a market). A Market Town might have a central Church or a nearby Keep however Castles and Churches tend to come after Towns are established.

Ruins:
I also think people tend to get caught up in the Megadungeon approach that D&D has used in the past when in fact a lot of real world ruins are much smaller: abandoned castles, disused churches, old cottages in the woods, the old cave system behind the dump, the old stone circle that the elders warn the Children to avoid - theyre all ruins

 

[Umbran]

In a medieval era the application of agriculture is primitive, so farming villages will be built where there is good growing land (not all that common),

That's assuming medieval European terrain as well.

If you are in, say, the American Midwest, and large swaths of Canada, there's more good growing land than you can shake a stick at. But there's not a whole lot of terrain that's particularly defensible either.

 

[Umbran]

Another way to look at how far apart things ought to be is in points of playablity. How long do you really want players to spend in travel time?

I'm playing a game that started with Dragon of Ice Spire Peak. I suspect the entire campaign up to level 10 or 12 is apt to take place within about a 50 miles radius of where it started. That still means PCs wind up on the road for several days getting from point A to point B.

 

[Maxperson]

Just don't do what my junior high school DM did and have every dungeon 3 days from town. A lot of people made very poor choices on where to live.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Now, talking about the specifics in my case...

By ruins I don't mean castle or city. Any stone structure that's been abandoned will do.

And the locals either have forgotten it, or it's been reduced to "we don't go there, so we only have legends at this point".

This region is pretty much "grass huts and obsidian tipped spears" levels, as anything associated with the prior civilization became downright unspeakable. (Altho the Aztecs had cities and were still using obsidian and villages were made of grass huts.)

Well, then you should look at the Aztecs and Incas, who literally abandoned cities to start anew elsewhere a couple times as part of religious and cultural mores. Cambodia has something similar.

There's no European counterpart; stone buildings are expensive and superior, and would either be used or dismantled. And the reason they existed would remain: good land, defensible positions, excellent harbors, all part of the economics of scarcity.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Just don't do what my junior high school DM did and have every dungeon 3 days from town. A lot of people made very poor choices on where to live.

Very poor choices indeed...

 

[Lackofname]

Doublepost.

 

[Lackofname]

Another way to look at how far apart things ought to be is in points of playablity. How long do you really want players to spend in travel time?

I'm playing a game that started with Dragon of Ice Spire Peak. I suspect the entire campaign up to level 10 or 12 is apt to take place within about a 50 miles radius of where it started. That still means PCs wind up on the road for several days getting from point A to point B.

That's more or less what I'm driving at. I'm sorta caught between believability vs ease of play, and can't gauge what "feels" right (or if what I feel IS right).

@MGibster @Dioltach those walking-distance rules of thumb are very helpful, thanks.

 

[MGibster]

If you are in, say, the American Midwest, and large swaths of Canada, there's more good growing land than you can shake a stick at. But there's not a whole lot of terrain that's particularly defensible either.

You have to think about the technology level and infrastructure as well. A lot of the American Midwest, the Great Plains in particular, were not good for agriculture until the introduction of the steel plow by John Deere in the 1830s. You're right that it's good growing land, we sure as hell have the wheat and maize to prove it, but you can't effectively work the land with more primitive plows, there's no building material nearby, and there's a surprising lack of rainfall. Most of the Great Plains Indians were hunters who would trade with more sedentary tribes who practiced agriculture. And until the invention of the steel plow, European settlers to America tended to favor areas where farming was a bit easier.