D&D 5E (2024) Sword Coast population data from 2024 D&D Pocket Expert

[Parmandur]

It's magic Toronto, with some Renaissance flair stylings. And it does have magitech and piles of powerful Wizards, Clerics, Bards, and Druids. It even has magic robot things.

I mean, the whole northern region there has strong Canadian sword & Sorcery vibes.

 

[Hussar]

Yes, again, that's one of the parts about the pre-2E version that makes it better.

One 120k population city in a region the size of Argentina or Kazakhstan, the scattered settlements being small mining or other harvesting activity operations.

This is basically my preference. The Sword Coast is a borderland setting where communities are mostly pretty new. Iirc, Waterdeep is only settled at all for about 700 years. And most of that it was basically a pirate town.

And the 5e adventures seem to follow this path. You certainly aren’t travelling through an area with a population in the million plus range in Tyranny of Dragons. Waterdeep is not presented as anywhere near that big or powerful in Dragonheist.

 

[Parmandur]

This is basically my preference. The Sword Coast is a borderland setting where communities are mostly pretty new. Iirc, Waterdeep is only settled at all for about 700 years. And most of that it was basically a pirate town.

And the 5e adventures seem to follow this path. You certainly aren’t travelling through an area with a population in the million plus range in Tyranny of Dragons. Waterdeep is not presented as anywhere near that big or powerful in Dragonheist.

WotC had kind of a fundamental problem with the Forgotten Realms: it is their most popular Setting, by a country mile, and a good source for providing modular bits that DMs can reappropriate for homebrew worlds, so it makes sense to use it.

But in that popularity...TSR and WotC had released 4 different versions in different "eras"...and each time they did so, a fair number of people didn't "upgrade", and stuck with the 1E, or 2E, or 3E or 4E versions. So the 5E products, by and large, have tried to hedge their bets...they do move the timeline forward, but it is really easy to take Dragon Heist and run it in any of the versions of Waterdeep so far. Not much tweaking needed.

 

[Ancalagon]

...eh, what? 3E is the edition that blew up Waterdeep to a population of 1 million, and it also had the overland trade in the region centering on Waterdeep, it is is even colorfully illustrated showing the trade routes in the 3E FRCS?

It is rather an argument for going back to the 1E version.

Ah, but what's harder - remodeling an entire faction, or removing a zero from a number?

 

[Parmandur]

Ah, but what's harder - remodeling an entire faction, or removing a zero from a number?

I mean, none of thisnis rocket suegery.

My point is, 3E is specifically what introduced the problem, by shrinking comparable or larger cities around the world for some reason, and then ballooning Waterdeep out of the blue. In the OG setup, the Eastern Heartlands have a lot of cities on the scale of Watwrdeep, it is not globally super special, bit rather regionally central.

 

[GrimCo]

Setting with literal magic space ships is most definitely more advanced than early modern. So, 2 million people isn't that hard to believe. While FR doesn't have Eberron's steampunk magitech vibe, it does have that level of magitech available. Again, magic space ships. And Waterdeep has - spaceport.

 

[Zardnaar]

Setting with literal magic space ships is most definitely more advanced than early modern. So, 2 million people isn't that hard to believe. While FR doesn't have Eberron's steampunk magitech vibe, it does have that level of magitech available. Again, magic space ships. And Waterdeep has - spaceport.

It doesn't have a spaceport. Ships have to land in the water and sail in.

 

[Zardnaar]

It's magic Toronto, with some Renaissance flair stylings. And it does have magitech and piles of powerful Wizards, Clerics, Bards, and Druids. It even has magic robot things.

Magic robot things are last line of defense. Not forklifts or marching out and collecting resources.

 

[GrimCo]

It doesn't have a spaceport. Ships have to land in the water and sail in.

Technicality (but, if they have spaceships in their port, you could say it's also - spaceport). Spaceships land outside city and sail in like regular ships. But point stands. They trade with fricking space. They have solid magitech, it just isn't so front and center like in Eberron, but it does exist.

 

[Bluenose]

But in the context of Europe, which Waterdeep models, the only way to have a sustainable urban population at this magnitude seems to require modernesque (1900s) magitech. If this is the number, the local setting flavor must describe this magitech. Eberron Sharn is a good example of what Waterdeep might look like, and even Sharn is only 500k.

London passed 2 million in the 1840s - the first city in the world to do so. Which required railways, canals and a large seaport to bring in food. A tenth of the population of the UK at the time, near enough. Bear in mind this is a city powered by coal by this time, not wood. And it was the capital of an empire that by then was global. WAterdeep is rather different - not least in not having those 21 million people living in the rest of the "country"/"area of influence".