A question about medieval society

[HalfOrc HalfBiscuit]

Something that tends to get lost in many of the campaign settings that I look at (and admittedly, I am not an expert), is that there is a decided sparcity of small towns. Sure, you have major centers, but, from that major center to the border of that land (be it a barony, duchy, kingdom or whatever) you will likely have a small hamlet or thorp, maybe only four or five houses, every 10 or 15 miles or so. Probably closer.

Looking at most fantasy maps, it looks like there are a couple of cities and then miles and miles of nothing.

Which - if they're only showing significant urban locations - is not unrealistic. You're right, I think, that many areas would have a lot of very small hamlets/villages with some larger market towns spaced only a few miles apart. But there would be large areas without any sign of a larger conurbation, and probably large areas with no habitation at all.

As a reference point, when the Domesday book was compiled in 1086, there were only 18 towns with a population in excess of 2,000 in the whole of England.

For OP - this site: Medieval English Urban History is primarily about towns, but there's an extensive list of links to other sites, some of which may help, I hope.

 

[SWBaxter]

Seminal free resource for fantasy demographics:

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

You might also want to take a look at some of the Harn products. Harn itself (described in the HarnWorld set) is very much a fantasy Britain, lots of demographic info based on English examples. It's a Britain-sized island with several civilized kingdoms and lots of barbarians in between. Shorkyne is a mainland kingdom, much larger and more settled, that also has lots of good information.

The various Magical Medieval Society books are also very good, and well worth tracking down.

 

[Umbran]

Looking at most fantasy maps, it looks like there are a couple of cities and then miles and miles of nothing.

If you look at maps form the 1400s and before,you'll find them similar. Mapping out each and every small community is a fairly modern thing. I expect fantasy setting maps are more analogous to maps of bygone eras that also only mentioned the larger or tactically important things.

 

[Thomas Percy]

Looking at the map of fantasy world, you see cities and a lot of empty space around them. Is there really nothing? In most cases – no. According to the description in the classic fantasy campaign settings (e.g. Eberron®, Forgotten Realms®, Greyhawk®) there are thousands of thorps, hamlets (manors), villages and small towns; streams, minor roads. Things too typical and too unimportant to be marked on the map of a large scale. “Strongholds” is a description of such places – four typical castles of four nobles from various steps in the feudal pyramid. PCs can rule them or fight them. Our story is based on historical sources, but the knowledge is selected to keep the spirit of “Dungeons and Dragons”® – legend of knights in shining armor and gothic cathedrals. The proposed economical system is compatible with “Player’s Handbook”®, “Dungeon Master’s Guide”® and “Monster Manual”® rules and late medieval reality. Magic is an integral part of economy and warfare.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

This is a bit later than you want, but it does point up what some others have been saying. When Eric Flint wrote 1632 (an alternate history novel) he switched a modern american town with a six mile diameter area of 1630s Germany that only had a few burnt out farms on it. This was supposed to be a one-shot, but sales turned it into a series. When he, and a bunch of internet fans, looked for a place to put it in the proper period they couldn't find any place in Germany of the time that the switch wouldn't take out a village.

 

[painandgreed]

Looking at the map of fantasy world, you see cities and a lot of empty space around them. Is there really nothing? In most cases – no.

Depends. One thing that most D&D fantasy worlds have that the real one doesn't is lots of dangerous predators that are higher on the food chain than humans. I would think that there would be very different feeling between civilized lands which would be filled with villages and little wilderness and the borderlands where each population center would be a island in pristine wilderness.

IMC, most lands are lots of widlerness, because all those large monsters that PCs fight have to live someplace. Most villages or even cities are walled or fortified and few people venture out at night. Even during the day, they go in groups or only in known areas because just about any wandering monster will make mince out of a commoner. There are a few areas where population density has destroyed all the monsters habitat and it is realativly safe for people to live and travel, although very boring for adventurers.

 

[Faraer]

See Gary Gygax's Living Fantasy for an excellent and explicit discussion of the adaptation of medieval/renaissance society to fantasy roleplaying that was implicit in D&D from the start.

 

[Whimsical]

The Dungeon Master's Guide II has a chapter on medieval life.

 

[Banshee16]

Which - if they're only showing significant urban locations - is not unrealistic. You're right, I think, that many areas would have a lot of very small hamlets/villages with some larger market towns spaced only a few miles apart. But there would be large areas without any sign of a larger conurbation, and probably large areas with no habitation at all.

As a reference point, when the Domesday book was compiled in 1086, there were only 18 towns with a population in excess of 2,000 in the whole of England.

For OP - this site: Medieval English Urban History is primarily about towns, but there's an extensive list of links to other sites, some of which may help, I hope.

It's probably best to consider the campaign maps as overviews of the main points of interest. There are tonnes of small hamlets, thorpes etc. between those main points. Even looking at modern maps, some maps show a very high-level view.....some maps of Canada just show the "major" cities...Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, etc.....as if those are the only places people live. But there are plenty of smaller cities...you just need a more detailed map.

The Dragonlance map of Ansalon in the Time of the Dragon boxed set (the big blue one with the Companions on the cover) was probably the best RPG map I've seen for D&D. It has the major cities, but it was *covered* in smaller locations that filled up all the blank spaces from the older maps.

Could be that setting designers are simply outlining the important points, and then leaving the rest to the DM who runs the setting to fill up with whatever he/she wants.

Banshee