City-States

[Gilladian]

I'm thinking of designing a region of my campaign world that is a group of competing city-states.

In reading about the concept of what makes a city-state, I'm not coming up with what I feel is some basic info I need to wrap my head around to plan this mini-setting region.

How big would a dark-ages or early-medieval city state be? What would be the smallest, and the largest city sizes? How much land would a city-state be able to control around it? Can a city state have "client-towns" or even small cities? How many before it becomes a nation rather than a city-state?

Anyone with some historical knowledge or just some off-the-top ideas want to discuss?

Also, as a follow-up, describe what you think an interesting candidate city for this region might be (I'm thinking AT MINIMUM I want 5-7 cities, maybe more, and I want each to be rather different from its neighbors). I'll describe my 2-3 main ideas later.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Hard to answer because every game is different. To me a city state is the area that a MAJOR city can support and maintain.

30 miles out (1 day travel) from a city is a lot of land but can be maintained by forts. 60 miles starts to become a problem.

Add to that the fantasy race issue, hordes of orcs, elves, dwarves, etc., all with their own needs for resources, you start running into big problems.

Now, don't forget the magic. Back in the middle ages "The acre" was the amount one could plow in one days work, 90% went to the king but with magic, that acre can be increased. So, how many people will an acre feed? With today's farming, 800 sq meters, or 1/5 of an acre can feed one person a year!

You can build your own math from that. What is the population for the city? Divide that number by the amount an acre can feed, you then have how much land the city state will have to support itself. Look at your map, now where is that land going to come from? Some the sea, very little from the swamp, mountains are out.

As you can see, there is no easy answer to the question.

 

[Derren]

I can't give you answers, just suggestions where to look.

The obvious examples for city states are the ancient Greek cities like Athen, Sparta or even Troja.
But those cities are hardly medieval. For medieval example you might want to look at several Free Cities (Freistadt) in Germany during that time. But those cities were a different type of city state than the ones in Greek.
Free Cities were still part of the nation, they were just not owned by Nobility and/or Clergy and could not be taxed, bartered away and were not required to provide anything to the state except troops for defense.
Venice, although it was technically a republic, might also provide some inspiration as it was very centralized.

About the size, city states can imo own other, smaller cities. Most of the time it are cities which have been conquered. Small villages are common and dotted nearly every arable piece of land. They provided food for the city they belonged to. How big city states are and how much land they control is directly related. But it also heavily depends on the power of a city state. They could control as much territory as a small country, but would still be a city state because there is one big city which dominates everything else.

 

[the Jester]

One thing that really helps dictate the nature of a city-state is the local geography. In mountainous areas (e.g. Greece) there are issues with extending control over long distances, which lends itself to the development of smaller civilizations because it is hard to keep a bunch of disparate cities unified.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Definitely look to anceitn Greece, particularly the Classical era.

One thing you might want to consider is that even though the cities are sovereign states, they also might very well band together to form alliances (see the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League). In the case of the Delian League, many of the member cities were originally started by Athens and were actually very small. The League was never a nation, however, because they never chose to form one. Eventually they were all conquered by Macedonia and all of Greece became part of that nation. And then that was conquered by the Romans...

The populations can be all over the map, from a few thousand to a million or more. You might want to look at Constantinople, which was not a city state (it was part of the Eastern Roman Empire), but it had a couple million people living there.

 

[Loonook]

Here are a few questions I have regarding your setting:

1.) How prevalent is magic?
2.) How large do you WANT your states to be?

In theory, with magic, you can have multiple unique forms of city states that would not exist within the historical world. Just one example, to solve for logistics issues...

A portal-travel CS. Used this one as part of a previous game. A group of fortified hubs serve to protect a large, sprawling agricultural center. A series of two-way portals makes a star network topology, with a central 'portal depot' heavily protected by men from each garrison.

Using this layout your 'spokes' can be anywhere in the world. They are fed through the portals, send protection and resources back through. This allows for advantageous building conditions. The same setup may be reversed, with resources being sent from the spokes in to the hub, with promises of protection from the hub city. The overall costs are going to be in the millions of GP, but you will gain back the cash through taxation/trade between the locations.

That's a pretty basic one. Mobile cities, planeshifting states, cities in bottles... There are just so many available little tricks .

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Gilladian]

Thanks, everyone! Keep the info rolling! I've been reading up on Greek City states, and will check into the medieval German free towns, as well.

I run an E6 campaign, so only up to 3rd level magic, and low prevalence of magic items. I'm intending the city-state region to be located on a LARGE island (say 300 by 900 miles or more) in a subtropical climate. It is somewhat isolated from the mainland, but not absolutely; sea traffic is seasonal and depends on the frequency of storms, pirates and sea-monsters...

The island could probably support a population of around 1 to 1.5 million, if my calculations are close to correct, at the medieval-type agricultural level; perhaps the humanoid population would be as much as 2 - 2.5 million counting tribes of orcs, goblins, etc...

My idea is that there have been successive waves of invasion over the past several thousand years; each wave comes in, conquers some portion of the island, and establishes one or more cities. Then for whatever reason (mainly the isolated nature of the region) the invaders never consolidate their hold on the island, and they end up forming one more city-state, just keeping their culture going. Magic and/or the Gods could play a role in this recurring historical series of events.

So there are a number of cities that were founded by various different cultural and racial groups, and none are particularly "indigenous" to the island, except that after 500 or 1000 years, people forget where they came from!

One city, in the most mountainous central region of this otherwise fairly low-lying island, is controlled by the island's "original" inhabitants; the dwarves. They're an extremely lawful people with very rigid views, locked into their belief that ONLY they have the TRUE right to rule the island. LN leadership, with some LE tendencies... They're the metal and stoneworking folk, of course. They are also the single largest city, and are fairly warlike.

Another region (the southern end of the island) is fairly desertlike- it supports only small villages and semi-nomadic herders who raise the giant flightless birds that are used instead of horses on the island. These folk remember their seafaring origins, and would return to the sea, if only they knew what they had done to offend the sea-goddess...

So far, that's all I've come up with. More ideas very welcome!

 

[Razjah]

Are the city-states hostile or open to trade? If they are open to trade, then you can use the Races of the Wilds version of halflings and stylize them as traveling merchants/gypsies. This would increase trade and travel capabilities on the island.

The elves could live in a dense jungle, to keep away from bugs, small predators, and the like the elves live in houses in the trees. Add in rope bridges, and a caste system based on the elevation of one's home and you can map this to a topographical version of the jungle. The poorest elves or outsides may even be forced into huts on the forest floor as an insult or reminding the visitors that those above them are superior. This area can be rich in fruits to be gathered or farmed and the area may even have some medicinal herbs that can help function as healing components if potions are unavailable. Alchemical poultices that heal over time (boost natural healing rate?) which bring in a large revenue for maintaining the elaborate city in the treetops.

You could have a couple different human cultures. Roman style, Italian Renaissance influenced , Faux Japanese. This can allow different weapons, classes, and cultural preferences for behaviors. They may form a loose coalition of city-states that aid each other for protection from the powerful dwarven city state. The dwarves could easily sweep aside one of the city-states defenses, but the three stand united against the dwarves for survival not out of love of mankind. (This even opens up options for the party to function in unifying the human city-states of crushing them with the dwarven hosts.)

Orcs are native american styled culture but hype up the raiding. If you like the Tolkien style orcs coming from corrupted elves then they can have a caste too. Orcs->hobgoblins->goblins. Or style them after the Persians from 300 and make the orcs like the immortals.

A city-state on the water as a center of trade, travel, and news. It is the only port large enough to hold the ships that come from the mainland in the calm season. Imagine New Orleans but more fantastic. Plus faking a southern US accent can help differentiate city-states. Keep the Mardi Gras though, fun abounds adventurers in a city-state wide party and night of revelry.

 

[Tonguez]

I'm suprised noone has mentioned the Italian city states - Florence Milan Venice

These cities tended to be on difficult terrain and thus avoided conquest, there was also significant urban drift anf a huge population explosion so that the cities had over 100,000 inhabitants by the 13th century. The cities were trade centers supporting the surrounding rural zone but also saw largescale urbanisation (up to 20%)

 

[Mark CMG]

The island could probably support a population of around 1 to 1.5 million, if my calculations are close to correct, at the medieval-type agricultural level; perhaps the humanoid population would be as much as 2 - 2.5 million counting tribes of orcs, goblins, etc...

My idea is that there have been successive waves of invasion over the past several thousand years; each wave comes in, conquers some portion of the island, and establishes one or more cities. Then for whatever reason (mainly the isolated nature of the region) the invaders never consolidate their hold on the island, and they end up forming one more city-state, just keeping their culture going. Magic and/or the Gods could play a role in this recurring historical series of events.

So there are a number of cities that were founded by various different cultural and racial groups, and none are particularly "indigenous" to the island, except that after 500 or 1000 years, people forget where they came from!

One city, in the most mountainous central region of this otherwise fairly low-lying island, is controlled by the island's "original" inhabitants; the dwarves. They're an extremely lawful people with very rigid views, locked into their belief that ONLY they have the TRUE right to rule the island. LN leadership, with some LE tendencies... They're the metal and stoneworking folk, of course. They are also the single largest city, and are fairly warlike.

Another region (the southern end of the island) is fairly desertlike- it supports only small villages and semi-nomadic herders who raise the giant flightless birds that are used instead of horses on the island. These folk remember their seafaring origins, and would return to the sea, if only they knew what they had done to offend the sea-goddess...

So far, that's all I've come up with. More ideas very welcome!

Read up on the history of Sicily -

History of Sicily - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia