Worldbuilding: How far should things be?

[Haffrung]

I agree with the general sentiment here that in a densely populated region, settlements should be around 5 miles apart, with double that for a frontier region. With those guidelines, a 30 by 30 mile starter region on the frontier would have a city, two or three towns, and a half dozen or more villages. Throw in 6 or 8 ruins and dungeons, and several monster settlements, and you have more than enough scope to take a campaign to mid levels.

The campaign I'm currently working on is situated on a 30 x 20 hex map, with 5 miles to the hex - so 150 x 100 miles. A third of the map is frontier, the rest is wilderness. I'm mapping the settled area around the starting locale at 1 mile to the hex. The location of the epic, campaign-capping showdown is 120 miles (6 days one way on horseback) from the starting settlement. That's more than enough space to run an entire campaign.

Of course, published D&D adventures get density spectacularly - almost comically - wrong. A 30 by 30 mile map in a campaign published by WotC or Paizo will typically have one town and a couple villages spaced much further than 10 miles apart, with great stretches of nothing between them. I blame the influence of Tolkien (people forget Middle Earth was supposed to be a haunted wasteland), and the fact D&D started in the American Midwest, where settlements conform to train and car travel times, not walking.

RPG publishers have also cited 25 miles per day foot travel rates, taken from the marching rate of U.S. soldiers in training - distances achieved on paved roads with modern footwear, packs, and clothing. No account taken of bad roads or cart paths, mud and streams, or the need to forage for water, fodder, and firewood. Not to mention hauling armour and heavy iron weapons, coping with recalcitrant pack mules, and the constant need to be wary of ambush.

 

[Ulfgeir]

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

I think some of that has to do with politics, and taboos. You wouldn't normally plunder the burial sites for a religion that was still active in the region..

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Even then most of those guys aren't literal monsters. Most of the monsters in the monster books aren't going to be headed to town to trade.

 

[Ulfgeir]

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.

Took that tour way back in 1994. Was quite interesting. especially the facts about how it came to be and some consequences when the city was rebuilt.

 

[aco175]

A lot has been mentioned already that is very good guidelines. As far as villages being gnome or elf or human dominated, this would depend on the primary race in the region. Typically, humans are the dominant race and you find an elf or gnome village far enough away to be out of the political realm of the lord or king. I tend to have an elf village under an elf lord, so there is some distance and/or obstacle in the way like a river or woods. There may be a dozen villages and a town of decent size between the major centers of trade. These smaller villages would have degrees of each race within, so a village next to the elf town may have 75% elf and the one next to the human town may have only 10% elf along with some of the other races depending on your campaign.

 

[Lackofname]

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.

TBH I think "three days from town" is actually pretty far for monsters.

That's a pretty long trek for a raiding party. It also means that if you raid the town, let alone abscond with victims, the town can round up a possie and, if anyone has a horse, be on you before you even make it half way home.

Being that far from their lair means they don't benefit from the biggest thing a lair provides: security. And in the case of monster groups, when you go out hunting the intent is to bring back food, and being gone for days kinda means no food for the folks back home for days. This is especially true for monsters that prefer to eat people.

The only reason I can imagine they'd be so far would be their primary hunting ground is say, a road. Though depending on location, there may not be all that much reliable travel between towns.

The way folks are saying--settlements are about 5 miles apart--your dungeon si going to need to be pretty far afield to be more than 3 days from anything.

 

[Tonguez]

TBH I think "three days from town" is actually pretty far for monsters.

That's a pretty long trek for a raiding party. It also means that if you raid the town, let alone abscond with victims, the town can round up a possie and, if anyone has a horse, be on you before you even make it half way home.

Being that far from their lair means they don't benefit from the biggest thing a lair provides: security. And in the case of monster groups, when you go out hunting the intent is to bring back food, and being gone for days kinda means no food for the folks back home for days. This is especially true for monsters that prefer to eat people.

The only reason I can imagine they'd be so far would be their primary hunting ground is say, a road. Though depending on location, there may not be all that much reliable travel between towns.

The way folks are saying--settlements are about 5 miles apart--your dungeon si going to need to be pretty far afield to be more than 3 days from anything.

Thats a good point, I know that studies of Urban Coyotes indicate that territories tend to be less than 2 square miles, with the largest being around 4 sq miles. Wolves in contrast have territories averaging at 14 Sq. miles* with the pack hunting 10% of its territory each day. Packs also tend to avoid the borders so they dont come in to conflict with other packs.
*where prey density is low the territory will be much larger

Translating that to Humanoid species, its likely that Medium size or larger races will want to have distinct territories so might be 20 miles or more away (2 -3 days?). Friendly races might allow for closer territories and even neighbouring villages.
Small sneaky races however might be much closer and you also need to account for subterranean races being able to share the same territory as the surface dwellers above them.

In my first post I put the gnomes burrow under the same woodlands where the human villagers collect their firewood and forage for berries. The humans know the gnomes are there but tend to leave them to themselves (except the mad wizard and his cat who beleives he can brew gnome essence into a potion of immortality or gold or ...).
Taking urban coyotes as a model you could even have goblins living in the city sewers or skulking around the old dump - they hide during the day, come out at night to hunt rats, pick through the midden heaps and make sure to only steal chickens and turnips from the villagers. The guards cant be bothered putting the effort into attacking the pesky gobbos when they arent causing any real issues, plus they keep the rat population down.

 

[aramis erak]

While this is specific to my current situation--see post two for the setting I'm working on--it's worth asking in general: when trying to go for some sort of semblance of believability, how far should things be from one another, geographically speaking? Villages fo different races. Ruins/forgotten things from places people actually live. How far should PCs travel from one thing to the next? Essentially, how densely packed should any general outdoors region be? And how distributed should things be, racially?

I know the answer is "whatever fits your situation/setting", but I'm looking for a general practice, a rule of thumb here, beyond my specific circumstance. What makes sense at first glance. Sure you can come up with any sort of in-world explanation for it, but players may never find that out. You're fighting against the first blush impression that it's contrived, neat and artificial. It's also exhausting to come up with an in-game excuse for every design decision.

Some historic datapoints:
A typical farm was 10 to 40 acres worked by one family with 3 generations present .
A typical acre of farmland suports between 1 and 10 people. Methods, tools, soil type, climate and weather all affect this.

A village tends to be a half day to a full day's hike away. Shorter if no hamlets.
Hamlets tend to be 1/4 to 1/2 day from the village. Often, they tend to be 4 or 6 families with all the houses close to each other,
Smaller market towns tend to be 1-3 days apart - and started as a village. The key thing is that it's got two items: a market, and a full time staffed church.
Larger towns tend to be 3-10 days apart on foot... but usually 2-4 by boat.

Fishing villages tend to be 1/4 to 1/2 day's sail apart... mostly to avoid overfishing.

 

[aco175]

Another point to consider is how much monsters affect the distance. My small New England town has been around for 250 years. The first 100 was clustered in the center of town because there was still Indian attacks, or the threat of French. Eventually a train depot in the south of town clustered several farms together and another section of town has wire mills. A third section developed into a monks in an abbey. Each of these smaller hamlets is 1-3 hours walk from the center town. Not sure how they would have developed if goblins and orcs were around attacking locals trying to bring goods back and forth. The next town center on either side is roughly 10 miles, but a larger city is 25 miles.

 

[Nytmare]

I know that people have already made a lot of these same points, but I'm going to just vomit them out stream of consciousness-like so that I don't interrupt the flow.

Why are the settlements there in the first place? Are they on top of a natural resources? Is the area naturally defendable? Is it along an important trade route? Is it the only place around that isn't crawling with dragons? Have the logical origins been lost to the sands of time?

How populated is the world? The closer, and more closely knit the civilizations, the longer they've probably been around and the friendlier they've probably been. Sparsely populated worlds will have people living both close enough and far enough away to be safe. Close enough to call friends for help and to trade goods with. Far enough away for your neighbors to have not immediately come over when you were first staking your claim and robbing and murdering you in the name of their god/king/differently shaped ears.

What are the shared histories between settlements? Do they get along? Have they always gotten along? Were they united against a common enemy? Is there an unsteady alliance? Are they embroiled in a magical cold war?

What natural boundaries exist between these places? Enemies that are stuck on opposite sides of a mile wide canyon makes more sense than ones who share a city wall. Friendly allies might maintain a hundred miles of patrolled trade route with smaller settlements sprinkled between them.

Why do the humans, elves, and gnomes all have their own cities in such close proximity? Why are they so close to each other? If they're friends, why haven't they intermingled? If they're enemies, why haven't they moved away or killed each other?

Are there vast, unexplored areas of the world? Are you on the jagged edge of civilization, or smack dab in the middle of a continent spanning metropolis?

What are the power levels and attitudes of the settlements? What is their area of influence? What are their technology levels? How do people (especially the characters) get around? Is travel common? WHY is it common? Is it unheard of? Are there roads? Who maintains the roads? Is there enough travel that there are bandits on the roads? If there's no travel, why are there so many inns in this town?

How SAFE is the world? Are the ruins that are a 5 minute walk from the town gate going to get thoroughly explored and graffitied by the local teenagers? Is the village in the middle of The Really Scary Haunted Woods? Can a lonely hermit live on the other side of the mountain without getting eaten by an average roll on a Random Encounter Table?

How metropolitan is the world? Is it populated by a handful of clannish, inbred, dirt farming, kingless peasants slowly getting picked off by a False Hydra? Or is it a world full of capital cities and globe trotting sky captains where any random sampling of 20 people will include 20 different races, religions, and cultures?

There really isn't a rule of thumb that answers all of these questions.

As for how big to make the world, that's entirely a question of how far your players can explore and travel, which depends on the math of the system you're using. Unfortunately I haven't found a hexcrawler in the D&D-ey world that I felt didn't break down somewhere along the line. Personally, after wasting far too much time making my own system, I stumbled on to Mordite Press' Vagrant's Guide to Surviving the Wild which fit perfectly with what I was trying to do. Prior to that however, I found Justin Alexander's thoughts on hexcrawlers to be incredibly helpful.

Hexcrawl

As part of my essay on game structures in roleplaying games, I specifically discussed the basic structure of the hexcrawl:(1) Draw a hexmap. In general, the terrain of each hex is given as a v

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