Comparison: Strongholds & Dynasties - Empire - Magical Medieval Society - Birthright

[Silveras]

yow, that's a lot of "empty" space!

i think it's worth noting (and this analysis bears it out) that especially in the medieval period, most nation-states would have only one really big city. Paris for France, London for England, Madrid and perhaps Barcelona for Spain, Istanbul for the Ottomans, etc. there simply were no other cities even close to their size in their respective countries, and this might have something to do with it: it took large swaths of the countryside to feed the city slickers!

Which, I think, in turn may explain why the DMG does not depict such really big cities. They would need to be so far apart (for those who care) that they would be effectively "off the map" for most camapaigns. Having more smaller cities allows the PCs to travel more and find the goods they need "close to the dungeon".

 

[jgbrowning]

i'll have to respectfully disagree.

you're giving medieval Paris a population density of about 185,000 people per square mile, but even modern-day New York City only has a population density of less than half that... (see this site.)

i doubt Paris was more built up than Manhattan. (though a fantasy city could definitely be... from what i've seen in Eberron, that'd be a likely candidate for a fantasy world with huge, hyperdense cities.)

Here's the maps.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/arthistory/courses/parismaps/
http://www.paris.org/Maps/maps.html

Look at the earliest maps from 1716 (from columbia). The city walls enclose roughly 1 square mile. I think I read somewhere that Paris was about 680 acres (640 acres is a mile) and as these maps show, that's pretty accurate. Map 4 gives you a good outline of the city walls. It's the greenish/yellowis line south of the river.

The second link shows you Paris as early as 1550's. I can't remember for certain, but i think the walls were first built in 1200? by phillp august (only including the west bank and the ille de citie) and then expanded under charles V ca. 1370 and then expanded again later. Here my numbers are just from memory, so take that into consideration. I think the walls were expanded something like 5 times or so into the 1700's.

We underestimate density because we live in a car society that values personal space. Just think about how much space is dedicated to roads and how many people have private rooms.

joe b.

 

[d4]

Here's the maps.

well, i can't dispute physical evidence.

however, i'm not exactly sure we're in disagreement. as you can see in those illustrations, there's a lot of built-up areas beyond the city walls -- and i'd surely suspect the 185,000 figure i quoted above isn't just the population within the walls but rather the whole "metropolitan area," as it were.

in fact, the site i took the 38,500 urban density figure from gives medieval Paris' population at around 50,000 -- approximately one square mile. i suspect this (much lower) figure is for the city proper, whereas the higher one i found elsewhere includes the unfortunate sods who couldn't afford to get inside the walls.

 

[jgbrowning]

well, i can't dispute physical evidence.

however, i'm not exactly sure we're in disagreement. as you can see in those illustrations, there's a lot of built-up areas beyond the city walls -- and i'd surely suspect the 185,000 figure i quoted above isn't just the population within the walls but rather the whole "metropolitan area," as it were.

Yeah, there's build up outside the walls and the more secure the city is the more build up outside the walls there will be. But outside the walls the density is much less as there's less build up.

Also, from a fiscal point, farms right outside a city get the best of both worlds: city prices and almost no carriage costs.

in fact, the site i took the 38,500 urban density figure from gives medieval Paris' population at around 50,000 -- approximately one square mile. i suspect this (much lower) figure is for the city proper, whereas the higher one i found elsewhere includes the unfortunate sods who couldn't afford to get inside the walls.

Paris was that size and that density. It was also much denser and still the same size. I struggled over it when making MMS:WE and in the end decided to just go with minimum sizes. Density flexiblitity can come from the GM but it's really hard for us moderns to get it into our heads just how dense the cities were. I gasped at the maps, double checked, triple checked and finally realized that densities are very high. But that's not really that odd, in retrospect. Look at the site you posted and go to the international cities. The asian cities are still very dense and there are many european cities that are quite dense.

joe b.

 

[Silveras]

In the "putting my money where my mouth is" vein, I have been posting my modifications for Birthright to use the rules with other worlds and 3rd Edition in the House Rules folder in this thread

 

[SkidAce]

/bump

...because this is my favorite thread!

thanks Sil...

 

[Silveras]

I really feel as though the scale of the Book of War should be concurrent with Birthright provinces. I surveyed something like 15 different campaign maps and most of them were either 1 inch/hex = 20, 24, or 30 miles. Plus 24 works with D&D overland movement numbers.

This is something I'd like to run the numbers on.

Pulling out my copy of Birthright, it looks like it is mapped at 1"=25 miles. Eyeballing it, most provinces seem to run from 1/2" x 1/2" to 1" x 2"; the average appears to be 1"x1". That would put the smallest provinces "spot on" in the scale of FoB, but most BR provinces would be about 4 FoB hexes.

Matt, have you had a chance to do some measurements and calculations ?

[Edit: To check my quick impression's accuracy, I pulled the Legacy of Kings from the Wizards' web site (which has JPGs of the big map). I loaded them into Visio, and made a couple of hex overlays, 1 at 25 miles across the hex and the other at 12.5 miles across the hex. Dropping these over the Anuirean provinces depicted, it looks like most are mapped to be slightly over 1 25 mile hex in area. Ilien, the smallest nation at 1 province, looks to be about 5-6 FoB hexes in size. ]

 

[Silveras]

/bump

...because this is my favorite thread!

thanks Sil...

Glad you're enjoying it, but it looks like we've about covered everything for the moment. It has been quiet lately.

 

[Falkayn]

FoB Alternative Rulers

Given that, would it be terribly hard to add something so it you could run games where PC's are guildmasters and the like and not 'rulers'?

I am running a FoB game at the moment and I have two thoughts about this:

1. Whilst the PCs are called "Regents", FoB makes it very clear that they could be whatever you want, including elected representatives, dictators or whatever. So you could have a province controlled by a "guild" and run by the guildmaster. In that case the government upkeep cost is what it takes to run the guild.

2. If you are interested purely in giving the PCs responsibility and a way to affect the realm they live within, then Dynasties & Demagogues is a GREAT way to do that. Their rules for handling political roleplaying are without peer, and really fit nicely into just about any D&D campaign.

An interesting area where these two mesh is having the PCs run for election to achieve control of a city-state (using DaD's election rules) and then getting them to run it using the realm rules from FoB. You could easily come up with elections every 2-3 years and have the PCs go into the election campaign with ads/disads depending upon how they have managed the realm since the last election.

 

[Eosin the Red]

Now that you have had some time to digest a little bit any new stuff?