D&D General Greyhawk Humanocentricism?

[Zeromaru X]

These boards are full of THACO

But Thaco is bad! He kicks puppies and steal candies from babies, and... Ah, sorry. You mean the other Thac0.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I remember Eberron having very similar issues, with Khorvaire being about as densely populated as Siberia. (I remember because I very vociferously argued that the numbers in the book were really problematic. )

It generally just shows that people who write game books aren't expert demographers.

I mostly agree. I would say that Gygax did want there to be plenty of space, and stated in the Folio that humankind was fragmented, and raiders and bandits endemic.

But yeah, I do think that even if he meant it to be low, he probably didn't really take into account just how apocalyptic he made it!

ETA- for comparison (and again I am cribbing from the excellent Hill Cantons blog!) 13th Century Europe had had 100 people per sq. mile in France, and 90 per square mile in Germany and Italy.

 

[Parmandur]

Yea, that's crazy. Like you said, that's roughly 150K square miles and is about California size. You could fit 10 races, each tens of thousands strong, in that area with enough room for them to barely interact.

It is not an isolated or even the biggest example, either: huge trscks of "uncivilized land" are all over the Flannaes.

The Vast Swamp, which is where the Tomb of Horrors lies, is almost the size of South Carolina, 50% bigger than the actual biggest swamp in the world, and ia just chock full of Lizardfolk and Bullywugs and other thigns...what's a few Dragonborn added to that?

The actual canon explanation for Dragonborn in Eberron is that they were always around, especially in Q'barra, but mammalocentric scholars couldn't tell the difference between Dragonborn and Lizardfolk.

 

[Emerikol]

Typical European middle ages would be 20 people square mile. If you only take Britain though it gets down to 5 or 6 per square mile.

 

[AnotherGuy]

In fact, the most popular dragonborn character in the D&D novels is a gay character (Mehen, from the Brimstone Angels novels).

The premise for the plot in the FR wiki seems appealing. A pair of tieflings and a dragonborn and some fiendish pacts thrown in the mix, what could go wrong?!
Some light December reading and there are 5 sequels

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I remember Eberron having very similar issues, with Khorvaire being about as densely populated as Siberia. (I remember because I very vociferously argued that the numbers in the book were really problematic. )

It generally just shows that people who write game books aren't expert demographers.

I generally avoid having such exact numbers regarding my own settings as they’re easy to mess up and usually do not matter in actual play.

 

[Parmandur]

In my head canon, the qullan and goliaths are the same species, but the qullan are a tribe that were cursed by the Egg of Cootband under its mysterious influence.

I mean, pretty reasonable: also works with placing large numbers of Goliaths in the Burneal Forest nearby.

 

[Voadam]

I remember Eberron having very similar issues, with Khorvaire being about as densely populated as Siberia. (I remember because I very vociferously argued that the numbers in the book were really problematic. )

It generally just shows that people who write game books aren't expert demographers.

I think the Eberron thing was that Khorvaire's physical geography scale got blown up something like x10 in scale last minute in editing before publication, not that Baker wrote kingdom size populations to be spread out across an entire vast continent.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think the Eberron thing was that Khorvaire's physical geography scale got blown up something like x10 in scale last minute in editing before publication, not that Baker wrote kingdom size populations to be spread out across an entire vast continent.

They also downscaled for later editions.

 

[TwoSix]

I generally avoid having such exact numbers regarding my own settings as they’re easy to mess up and usually do not matter in actual play.

Yea, they don't really matter in play, exactly. But I'm a math guy, and numbers draw images and concepts for me just like words do. Contradictory numbers hinder my ability to imagine the world and create the fiction for play.