Worldbuilding: How far should things be?

[MGibster]

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."

My pithy response is as follows: If we've found them then they're not really lost, are they? But in truth, I didn't mean to imply that lost cities didn't exist. Just that often time we think of dungeons or ruins being "over there" when very often they're under our feet. It often feels as though you can't dig in your garden in Rome or London without making some sort of archeological discovery. Even a relatively new city like Seattle, Washington has its own dungeons beneath its streets. If you ever visit do yourself a favor and take the underground tour.

 

[Tonguez]

.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.

Thats not at all true, there were a huge number of abandoned keeps and abbeys, megalithic mounds and stone structures in Europe. Sure people would mine them for useable rock, but the fact many still exist shows they werent entirely absent

 

[Tonguez]

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.

I can think of about 20 abandoned structures within 3 days hike of my location including 2 abandoned prisons, 3 cave systems, 4 Old Mill sites, a giant wreckers yard, a bridge to nowhere, an abandoned hotel and a number of old decrepit houses

admittedly not many of them are occupied by kobolds or orcs, but there are stories of ghosts, a hitchhiker with hooves and a giant red-eyed black dog.

 

[Maxperson]

I can think of about 20 abandoned structures within 3 days hike of my location including 2 abandoned prisons, 3 cave systems, 4 Old Mill sites, a giant wreckers yard, a bridge to nowhere, an abandoned hotel and a number of old decrepit houses

admittedly not many of them are occupied by kobolds or orcs, but there are stories of ghosts, a hitchhiker with hooves and a giant red-eyed black dog.

It's that second part that makes it bad.

Monsters that close to town would mean some would wander into town on a fairly regular basis.

 

[Campbell]

It's that second part that makes it bad.

Monsters that close to town would mean some would wander into town on a fairly regular basis.

Then they wander into town on a fairly regular basis. Even in active war zones the idea casual interactions between opposing forces happens fairly regularly.

 

[Lanefan]

In non-extreme climates:

Along any well-travelled road or overland path some sort of settlement, even just an inn or waystation, is likely going to develop about every 5-ish miles; as that's how far a slow-moving cart full of turnips or a laden merchant's caravan can easily go in a day when conditions aren't ideal. Settlements will also tend to develop anywhere major roads meet or intersect; or on one or both sides of a river at significant ford or ferry locations.

From there, there's models that kind of show how many of those turn into larger towns and how many of those larger towns turn into cities, and how each 'layer' (village, town, city) is spaced relative to each other.

Along any coastline some sort of settlement is almost certain to develop anywhere that has both of a) a safe, sheltered anchorage and b) a reliable source of fresh water. Sea-borne activity (usually medium-to-long-range trade, fish availability, or piracy) and the usefulness of the anchorage for larger ships will often determine which of those get any bigger than a fishing village.

In extreme climates, availability of resources (e.g. water in a desert, food in very cold climates) will tend to trump most other considerations.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Thats not at all true, there were a huge number of abandoned keeps and abbeys, megalithic mounds and stone structures in Europe. Sure people would mine them for useable rock, but the fact many still exist shows they werent entirely absent

But even when not in use, they were owned by people, which makes not abandoned, but rather unused.

And still known, whereas the OP wants them to be not just unused, but forgotten.

 

[Tonguez]

But even when not in use, they were owned by people, which makes not abandoned, but rather unused.

And still known, whereas the OP wants them to be not just unused, but forgotten.

Skara Brae, a neolithic settlement on Orkney is older than Stonehenge and was lost due to being buried under a sand dune until it was uncovered by a storm in 1850.

Herculaneum was a resort town that was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius and like Pompeii its location and name forgotten. Herculaneum was rediscovered in 1709, unlike Pompeii though few people have heard of Herculaneum.

Ani was a major City in the 10th century and the capital of Armenia. However after the Mongol Invasions and Earthquakes struck people left and then shifting trade routes and changes in political borders meant that it only survived as a monastery until the last monk left in the 17th century.
It wasnt until 1876 that Westerners returned to Ani when its territory was contested between the Ottomans and Russia.

Admittedly thats very few, but all are examples in Europe and all were rediscovered in relatively modern times.

 

[opacitizen]

Besides all the factors already mentioned, always keep practical travel distance in mind. Your average medieval people will settle just far enough from others to not bother each other but to be able to reach neighboring, friendly settlements conveniently if they want to trade, help, defend, escape to, and so on. Villages won't be too far from cities, forts, castles, etc, so that they can be protected and reached by the fortification's forces and so that they don't have to spend too much time on the road. Sure, villages will form chains. (You start from an outlying one, arrive with your cart in the next one closer to the city just in time to spend the night in an inn and maybe peddle your wares and be able to go home next morning, if you don't want to continue your journey into the city.) But after a few links, where the protection of the city will get too weak (its forces becoming too distant to deter attacks), expansion will either cease or a new power center -- a guard tower, a small fort, etc -- will emerge, forming a spiderweb of civilization.

Of course, in worlds where you have magic things get fluid. If the indestructible and clairvoyant flying guardian iron golems of the King can reach any village in an hour in a 300 mile radius area around the Capital, and if trading can be done via portal chests, villages will feel safer, and they will be farther apart from one another.

Also, worlds where you have races other than humans will have different stuff. Surface dwarven villages will probably a bit closer to each other, because their walking speed is slower. Sure, they may not be slowed by encumbrance so much as a human, but nighttime in the wild / on the road can be equally dangerous.

And so on. Consider the above factors also (besides all the others mentioned by other users) when creating a believable setting.

 

[opacitizen]

[this was a duplicate, sorry.]